Google Fiber Launches 5Gbps Service 54
Google Fiber is launching the 5Gbps internet plan it began testing in October. Engadget reports: The service will initially cover four cities, but Google says the $125-per-month service will expand to other areas later this year. The new plan is available today in Kansas City, West Des Moines and Fiber's Utah cities. It has symmetrical upload and download rates, an upgraded 10 Gig Fiber Jack (the small box housing the fiber cable's entrance into your home), professional installation, a WiFi 6 router and up to two mesh network extenders.
The upgraded speeds are part of Google's rejuvenated focus on Fiber. The company also recently announced its first network expansion in years. But, perhaps more crucially, it reestablishes Fiber as an industry disrupter pushing competitors to upgrade speeds and lower prices (maybe) on existing plans. Comcast already offers 6Gbps service in some areas, but it costs a whopping $300 and doesn't include symmetrical uploads. Google also reiterated that Fiber's 8Gbps option, also announced late last year, is still "coming soon." That service will also include symmetrical uploads and downloads.
The upgraded speeds are part of Google's rejuvenated focus on Fiber. The company also recently announced its first network expansion in years. But, perhaps more crucially, it reestablishes Fiber as an industry disrupter pushing competitors to upgrade speeds and lower prices (maybe) on existing plans. Comcast already offers 6Gbps service in some areas, but it costs a whopping $300 and doesn't include symmetrical uploads. Google also reiterated that Fiber's 8Gbps option, also announced late last year, is still "coming soon." That service will also include symmetrical uploads and downloads.
I have 10Gbps service. (Score:2, Informative)
It's weird for the first time to not be worried about bandwidth for anything. No data caps. Most downloads are limited by the sending server, not me trying to pull data through a coffee stirrer.
I am 100% in favor of 10Gbps becoming the "standard" service level in the US. I'd argue fiber should have been pushed harder five, or even ten, years ago. But here we are now, and the future's pretty glorious.
Re: (Score:1)
I am 100% in favor of 10Gbps becoming the "standard" service level in the US. I'd argue fiber should have been pushed harder five, or even ten, years ago.
Pushed harder ... by who? The corrupt politicians who are getting bribed millions of dollars by the phone/cable monopolies? Good luck with that.
If you are able to get gigabit fiber, good for you. But widespread gigabit fiber will not happen in our lifetime. It require
Re: (Score:2)
You're unlikely to get a fully routable IP from a home internet provider due to the fact that the IPV4 pool is running out, if it isn't already.
You can likely use a service like DynDNS to deal with the dynamically assigned IP issues. Or talk with your provider for a commercial connection.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Must be nice. Unfortunately no one is deploying new FTTH, they are all pushing for 5g for home internet.
Re: (Score:2)
Unfortunately no one is deploying new FTTH
Funny. The guy who installed a fresh new piece of fiber in my home sure wasn't a hallucination.
They're pushing 5G in some cities, but I there will likely be a fiber provider sometime in the near future, if there isn't one already.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Not here in the States. The providers have a duopoly in their respective areas. If you already have two internet options no company will make the investment to expand into your area. This has meant that most areas of the country will never see fiber to the home.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah but who has just one computer anymore? We have a laptop, a gaming tower, two nvidia shields, a smart tv in the bedroom, a couple quest 2 headsets...
For us it would be a bigger problem if steam didn't lock the entire game library instead of just the game you are playing. Otherwise we'd definitely have multiple cloud gaming streams going in parallel.
I'm not sure Google is really leading the way here though. We already have 5Gbps on FIOS.
Re: (Score:2)
"The best things in life are titties and pussy and you don't get those playing videogames."
You sir are WRONG.
https://www.patreon.com/tempestvr
https://hub.virtamate.com/wiki/getstarted/
https://www.sexlikereal.com
Re: I have 10Gbps service. (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Most people don't have 10GbE though, a good NIC is still pretty expensive (and even a mediocre one is still a good hundred bucks.) And the cabling requirements are significant, too. 1GbE is trivial and omnipresent, 10GbE is neither.
It's probably going to be at least two more generations of PCs before they typically come with 10GbE, most PCs don't even have 2.5GbE yet!
Re: (Score:2)
Sure. But 10gbps service also has the advantage of pushing the network bottleneck all the way to the consumer's equipment. So accessing it becomes their problem, not the ISPs.
And sure, no one can access 10Gbps today. But give it a few years. We've already seen dramatic increases in speed and capacity demands in the last five or ten years or so. I would expect the next few are going to be the same way.
Re: (Score:2)
Still, we should build the infra for that future.
WiFi limitations ... (Score:2)
Most WiFi on most devices cannot actually use 5Gbps ...
Re: (Score:2)
Most WiFi on most devices cannot actually use 5Gbps ...
True. But a half dozen or more devices hanging off your router could easily saturate a 10G connection.
Re: (Score:2)
Most of us would probably have a hard time saturating a 10G connection even with multiple devices.
Netflix says they only require 15 mbps to stream a 4k movie. Even something like a UHD bluray only has 92 Mbps data rate. So you could stream 100 BluRay discs at the same time on a 10 Gbps connection.
Re: (Score:2)
It's a chicken and egg situation. Without faster internet, what's the point of faster wifi and cabled ethernet?
Re: (Score:2)
Access to your own internal in-house data? video files, security camera footage and such for me.
I am not sure what normal application anyone has that can consume 1gbit, noting that 50Mbps is good quality 4k x264 video. And it is not like the upstream providers have enough of a ratio of servers/uplinks to users for even a tiny percentage of users to use anywhere close to 1gbit.
I have 200Mbit and that is enough for me to reasonably fast sync motion recordings from several remote security cameras.
There se
Re: (Score:2)
I am not sure what normal application anyone has that can consume 1gbit....
You're thinking like a walled-garden consumer. But even in that limited world, 1gbit can be easily saturated by a well-connected home. My family has multiple PC's, multiple VR headsets, multiple phones, and multiple tablets. They all automatically update, so several of them can be downloading large system updates at the same time. There's an easy gigabit right there.
Throw on top of that a desire to run an online presence (web server, mail server, file server) through my fiber, and a gigabit can easily seem
Re: WiFi limitations ... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
There are plenty of fanless 10G switches.
If you put "10G switch" into Amazon, all but one of the first page of results are fanless. (And the one that has a fan is a 48-port PoE unit)
Re: (Score:2)
my search returned cisco catalyst switches at $2k, definitely not fanless and they were not 10g either. The next 4 were actually gigabit switches with a 10g uplink except for TP-Link and honestly that brand is serious trash. Are you sure you did not rush the results? Most of these switches are gigabit switches with an uplink port. The number of 1gig ports doesn't even add up to 10gig. The WAN port of your wireless router is still 1gig for a vast majority of them, so your wireless devices have that bottlenec
Re: (Score:2)
It's getting much easier and cheaper to get 10G switches, although you do still need to be far more careful with your wiring than you need to be with GigE. As for fanless, you can get a 8 port fanless 10G switch [ui.com] for $269 from Ubiquity and fanless switches with a couple of 10G and a bunch of 1G are getting pretty reasonable (and likely all that most home users need).
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, I know it's SFP+; I have one at home. The price of SFP+ modules has come way down in recent years. For in-rack patching I use SFP+ to SFP+ patch cables [amazon.com] (that one is $7). These days you can get a pair of multi-mode 10G SFP+ OM3 [amazon.com] transceivers for under $30. These days both short [amazon.com] and long [amazon.com] fibre patch cables are as cheap as decent ethernet cables. If you have tight spaces with tight bends and the radius is too small to get fibre around the corner then you do still need to 10Gbase-T, which these days still
Re: WiFi limitations ... (Score:2)
Of course, since it's Google Fiber... (Score:4, Informative)
It's only going to be available in about 6 major cities. The rest of us will still be patiently waiting for Comcast to "upgrade" us to Gigabit internet, along with some new surprise service charges.
I think that the cable companies and telcos are going to fall for this bluff twice. They already know that Google isn't serious about expanding broadband service because the profit margins aren't good enough for them.
Re: (Score:2)
This is very true. It's simply not profitable. Expanding fiber is hugely expensive. It's why we don't typically see two cable companies in a single area. To build out the system costs hundreds of millions or billions. And with that kind of investment, they have to be able to know they will capture the majority of the market. But the reality is that most people aren't unhappy with their current service. It does what they want and the hassle of switching isn't enough to get them to change. Since the potential
Re: Of course, since it's Google Fiber... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Google Fiber Is Behind (Score:2)
Cute. My provider has offered 10Gig residential for quite some time (they also offer 100Gig). Google has really fallen behind in this area.
Re: Google Fiber Is Behind (Score:1)
...they also offer 100Gig
You'll need PCI-E 5.0 for that...
Re: Google Fiber Is Behind (Score:2)
Re: Google Fiber Is Behind (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
No one said it's really meant for residential users, simply that it's available in residential homes. One would assume if you're paying for such service you have a setup designed to handle it.
The WiFi 7 consumer routers we're seeing come to market from folks like TP-Link do have 10 Gbps ethernet WAN ports. They also have a 10 Gbps SFP+/RJ45 Combo WAN/LAN port. A number of WiFi 6E routers on the market also include such ports.
Your claim that not one consumer device has 10Gig ethernet isn't true. The Mac mini
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I worked in the NOC for the largest internet pipeline in the central US and also for a Tier-1 provider. Thanks for all that. Not sure who needs it.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
And yet, as with every other wifi standard, the early devices have been fully compatible when the standard is ratified, as they don't go into production until the hardware basis is set and any small software changes can be adjusted. For instance, Apple shipped a number of machines before 802.11n was finalized and they were all fully compatible once it was, despite the hardware being issued well before then.
Re: (Score:2)
Problem is that Router (Score:1)
For their 1G service they're happy to just leave you with a port. For 2G+ they want you to use their router & wifi access points with no other options. Sure you can disable most of it, but I have actual quality routing hardware I want to use, not their prosumer gear.
I don't know why we can't just terminate to a normal 10G port and call it a day.
Re: (Score:2)
That's good to know. I debated the 2G package but it's useless to me if I cannot use my own opnsense router.
Not really seeing the need here (Score:2)
Yay! Yet higher speeds that I can't access! (Score:2)
This announcement has the same effect on me (and most Americans) that an announcement of 1Tbps or free internet from Google would have -- absolutely nothing! I live in the middle of Silicon Valley and the availability of fiber to the home is hit or miss, but overwhelmingly miss. For most Americans, Google Fiber doesn't exist. Any announcement about it is as relevant to me as upgrades to luxury yachts.
Re: (Score:2)
Move out of the Valley a little bit and Sonic will have you covered.
This coverage map is surprisingly accurate: https://broadbandnow.com/Sonic... [broadbandnow.com]
So it's there. And it's growing. They just hung the fiber in my neighborhood about 9 months ago. 4 months later I got service.
Put your address on their waitlist.