Google Fiber Is Getting Outrageously Fast 20Gbps Service (arstechnica.com) 53
Google Fiber plans to upgrade some users to 20Gbps service by the end of the year. Ars Technica reports: Google's Wednesday blog post calls this part of a "GFiber Labs" experiment and says the service "will initially be available as an early access offering to a small group of GFiber customers in select areas." The 20Gbps service is made possible by new networking gear: Nokia's 25G PON (passive optical network) technology, which lets Internet service providers push more bandwidth over existing fiber lines. Google says it's "one of the first" ISPs to adopt the technology for consumers, though at least one other US ISP, the Tennessee provider "EPB," has rolled out the technology. Customers will need new networking gear, too, and Google says you'll get a new fiber modem with built-in Wi-Fi 7.
Fierce Telecom spoke with Google's Nick Saporito, head of product at Google Fiber, who said, "We definitely see a need" for 20Gbps service. For now, Saporito says the service is "a very early adopter product," but it will eventually roll out "in most, if not all, of our markets." According to that Fierce report, Fiber is built on Nokia's "Quillion" Fiber platform, which is upgradable, so Google only needed to "plug in a new optical module and replace the optical network terminal on the end-user side" to take its 5 and 8Gbps infrastructure to 20Gbps.
There's no word yet on the price or which utopian Google Fiber cities will get access to the 20Gbps service, but Google has already run trials in Kansas City, Missouri. Currently, Google Fiber costs $70 for 1Gbps and $150 for 8Gbps. Interested customers can sign up for early access at this link.
Fierce Telecom spoke with Google's Nick Saporito, head of product at Google Fiber, who said, "We definitely see a need" for 20Gbps service. For now, Saporito says the service is "a very early adopter product," but it will eventually roll out "in most, if not all, of our markets." According to that Fierce report, Fiber is built on Nokia's "Quillion" Fiber platform, which is upgradable, so Google only needed to "plug in a new optical module and replace the optical network terminal on the end-user side" to take its 5 and 8Gbps infrastructure to 20Gbps.
There's no word yet on the price or which utopian Google Fiber cities will get access to the 20Gbps service, but Google has already run trials in Kansas City, Missouri. Currently, Google Fiber costs $70 for 1Gbps and $150 for 8Gbps. Interested customers can sign up for early access at this link.
Re: Finally! (Score:4, Funny)
Nokia originally called Passive Optical Relay Network but apparently someone already trademarked it.
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Seriously though, the reason Japan has had this for years and it's only now coming to the US is that Huawei developed the technology initially. They actually have 50Gbps products out already. I guess Google didn't want to install Huawei equipment so waited for Nokia to clone it.
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As for tactile, it requires sub-millisecond latency to feel natural. As such, you have to transmit motion vectors with direction, amplitude and acceleration so the client can predict motion as the speed of light won't a
Isn't it still basically just St Louis and Utah? (Score:2)
Last I remember, Google fiber was basically only available in St. Louis, Provo Utah, somewhere in Kentucky where the whole thing went to shit, and a few even-smaller backwaters. The availability link is based off of street address, which is a bit specific for a cohesive idea of overall coverage.
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Last I remember, Google fiber was basically only available in St. Louis, Provo Utah, somewhere in Kentucky where the whole thing went to shit, and a few even-smaller backwaters. The availability link is based off of street address, which is a bit specific for a cohesive idea of overall coverage.
THey recently put it in some placeds in Texas over the last year. The problem seems to be that they have to tear up the street with a trencher to lay the fiber. Then (I think) it runs to a junction box which only covers a few houses. When you subscribe, they have to go install a fiber port somewhere inside your house, which the networking equipment connects to. The entire process of installing the street equipment is so expensive that they'll never recoup the cost. I could just stick with my cable. This obv
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Austin TX has it widely. I think 2GBps is available too.
Re: Isn't it still basically just St Louis and Uta (Score:5, Interesting)
Answer: Better Streaming (stadia 2.0?) (Score:3)
I'm curious who's actually using fast services and for what.
Google, MS, Sony and others want to stream video games to you. If we had fast enough internet, we could theoretically stream cloud video gaming services. I don't think I'd be interested in it personally, but it would be kinda cool to play Cyberpunk 2077 on a phone while waiting in the doctor's office.
However, Google would love to rent you video game cloud services at huge profit and most major game studios would love to earn profit by renting hardware as well as reduce support costs by ensuring a consi
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I'd still need a client that can support those speeds be it for gaming or anything else.
6e: 5.4GB
7: 40GB
8: 100GB
But 7 is a ways out and 8 is still pipe dream material for users.
6e is becoming more common but most still don't have it.
I see this as more of a far future experiment for Google than a real product.
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But streaming works today, on today's current Internet. Faster internet doesn't get you much more. I mean, you can do it on a plane using the inflight wifi.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts... [youtube.com]
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Google recently closed its streaming game service, Stadia. They seem to have given up on that idea.
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Connection speed isn't much of an issue with video game streaming. It already works fine at today's speeds, with "reasonably good" internet connections. The issue is input latency, which isn't helped at all by increasing the connection throughput, as it's a distance and therefore speed-of-light problem. If it weren't for the intractable problem of latency, I think streaming would quite possibly be the dominant video game platform by now.
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For me, I find that high bandwidth service also has lower latency and handles multiple streams better. So, while downloading a whole season of some program, I saw no impact in other things like youtube and web browsing. I might not have been using more than 100Mbps, but if I had 100Mbps service instead of gigabit, i'd have seen everything slowing each other down and spurrious freeze-ups going round-robin between them.
Another aspect that gets overlooked is that slower internet is artificial scarcity. There's
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When 56k was the best thing going to homes, I used to covet my friends IDSN line (144kbps!) especially while playing the ORIGINAL team fortress, but I used to say 'I cant imagine what a T1 could be used for' (1.544 mbps!). Needless to say, 1.544mbps is pitiful in today's environment. The internet will adapt, and while it may be difficult to think of things that could even saturate a 1gbps pipe, I will NEVER say I'll never need it. 640k ought to be enough for everybody and all that.
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Big Oil gets almost that much in subsidies annually too. And charges us for the privilege
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We should give more money to the telcos to bring broadband to rural areas.
Again. Like the last few times they took the money and didn't do it.
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Truth, bro, we should ban everyone we don't like.
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A good part of Charlotte, NC has Google Fiber
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They have been quietly installing San Antonio Texas for the past few years, and it finally reached my neighborhood a few months ago. It's not turned on yet, but I hear that it will be very soon. They basically dug trenches on the side of the street about 18 inches deep, and put in a lot of half-inch orange conduits. Then they filled the trenches with mortar and covered the top with tar. There's a small green access panel in the ground between every other house, and some larger gray panels about two or three
Are /. articles like 25% sponsored content (Score:2)
I can't be the only one who thinks this. It can't be free running the place and the ads are so easily blockable. Heck, they let you block them with a checkbox...
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Could be. It's easy to ignore uninteresting ones.
They might be getting X ad-share now too - often more comments there than here.
No, because you can't buy Google Fiber. (Score:2)
Google stopped rolling out their fiber service years ago. You can't buy it even if you wanted to. Therefore this really can't be considered an advertisement.
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But... (Score:5, Informative)
Can I get 500mb for $35? Or 250mb for $18? That would be even better then 1gb for $70.
Re:But... (Score:5, Informative)
Try the backwater of Australia where 1G/1G is costing me $500/month.
so 25G spilt X users with each at 20G max? (Score:2)
so 25G spilt over X users with each at 20G max?
or does each customer get there own 20G link back to the local CO?
Pretty much a waste of money (Score:4, Informative)
I have 1Gbps symmetrical and in basically all instances it is the other side that is slower and I have like 1.5ms RTT to Google and the next Internet Exchange Point with all important PoPs in it. Gear for 1Gbps is also lot cheaper. Don't waste your money.
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Japan has had 20Gbps fibre for several years now.
The value is that multiple users can never slow each other down, or interfere with other services like 8k TV delivered over the same fibre optics.
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That is not true either. For example, I could get 10Gbps for exactly the same price from my ISP and a $150 or so installation fee. Not interested, because the head-end hardware for the fiber connection, which probably serves around 100 people (or more?) each, is only connected via 10Gbps to their internal backbone as there simply is no need for more. Also, apparently, streaming 8k needs only around 50Mbps.
Hence 10Gbps speeds to your home is a complete waste of money.
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8k streaming is around 400Mbps average for the video, plus 22 channel audio on top. That said, audio might be Atmos these days. But that's the average, it can peak higher.
Remember it's not just 8k resolution, it's 10 bit or higher colour and 120 FPS. And in a household it could easily be 3 or more streams.
With 20Gbps service in Japan they reserve some of it for the TV stuff, so internet use can't interfere with it.
Because I need all that bandwidth to...? (Score:2)
I hear lots of aspirational messages from Google Fiber including "20 Gig customers will be able to truly harness all that speed for whatever they dream up."
I've also dreamed up all kinds of things and haven't ever gotten close 50% utilization of 1 Gig fiber. Do I really need to host thousands or millions of players to my VR game to utilize that pipe?
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Remember when 56k modem was the best there was? When a T1 line was jaw dropping speed (1.544 mbps BTW)? You could not browse the modern internet on either of those speeds without some serious waiting on load times. That was only about 25-30 years ago. Give it another 30 years and 20gbps will be considered 'slow' internet, and you will wonder how you EVER got by with 'only' 300mbps or 1gbps...
Not That Fast (Score:2)
My provider has 100Gig service for over a year now. Google Fiber has always been behind others and has lingered in the past since they started.
20 down? or 10 each way? (Score:2)
Is this for real 20gb down? Or 10gb down and 10gb up?
I ask because UTOPIA fiber has had symmetrical 10gb networking for several years. Costs $200/mo. lmao!
Anything useful is against TOS (Score:2)
Not sure what the plan is, more youtube, google tv? They have some sort of plan. Regular use can't make use of that much bandwidth. TOS in any ISP I've seen prevents reselling it, so splitting it up between people is a no go.
Most commercial uses are typically band as well. You can't start hosting websites, files and services on those services either. No single service can provide you those speeds, your own hardware is most likely unable to sustain or make use of such speeds, and if you get the hardware need
What for? (Score:2)
It is great they keep pushing for technical advances but⦠I mean, unless you are running a massive datacenter at home, what would you use that for? Even streaming and video conferences typically will not saturate Gigabit, so even getting 8Gbps is a huge stretch. But 20? I just cannot see anything really filling up that kind of bandwidth in the next decade. Or am I that out of touch with bandwidth requirements? Plus, what kind of insane backbone would they need to even deliver multi-Gigabit to a w
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Remember when 56k modem was the best there was? When a T1 line was jaw dropping speed (1.544 mbps BTW)? You could not browse the modern internet on either of those speeds without some serious waiting on load times. That was only about 25-30 years ago. Give it another 30 years and 20gbps will be considered 'slow' internet, and you will wonder how you EVER got by with 'only' 300mbps or 1gbps...
Duh, you can buy that right now in Japan (Score:3)
almost everywhere.
Google Fiber is only available in a few city blocks.
Holy hell (Score:2)
My home network switches *only* operate at 1Gbps and I'm pushing that through CAT5e which I really need to upgrade. These faster speeds are awesome but I would guess those that run home networks will have some upgrading to do in the future. Where is the limit? Do we really need 20Gbps to the home? I imagine in 20 years I'll be asking, "do we really need 100Gbps to the home?" Time and technology marches on.
try getting a 20G wired connection (Score:3)
just getting 2.5G is feasible, 10G is quite hard in a home LAN, try 20G. this is not realistic.
wifi 6e turned out to be snake oil, you move more than 3 feet and you get kicked out of the 6ghz band.
get back to me in 10 years and maybe home lan technology has caught up and you don't have to spend so much to get your LAN ready. although by that time Google will probably be selling you 1 Tbit
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One would hope that developments like this would convince laptop and desktop manufacturers to standardize on 10 Gbit Ethernet ports on all of their new equipment. Gigabit has basically been the standard for nearly 20 years now, and it's really time for an upgrade.
It would be nice if consumer Wi-Fi routers could actually sustain Gigabit transfer speeds without requiring you to be under 15 feet away from the transmitter, but one problem at a time I guess.
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Bandwidth at this size is not really meant for just one connected device. If that is your thinking you are just wasting money.
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My fiber is in that range ... (Score:1)
... but my router has only 4Gb Ethernet and 1.2Gb WiFi.