Google Fiber

http://fiber.google.com/

by benackles • 14 years ago

344 210 14 years ago

fiber.google.com

suyash2• 14 years ago

how is it going to be useful for everyday developer?

Once internet of this speed is ubiquitous, bandwidth is no longer a concern. Imagine what you can do when bandwidth is out of the picture.

sliverstorm5• 14 years ago

You are far more optimistic than I. I expect developers will quickly find ways to write software which consumes an entire 1Gbps link.

CrazedGeek• 14 years ago

Continue worrying about latency? :P

(This speed isn't going to be ubiquitous for a long time, at least in North America. Too many rural and cell phone users.)

Cogito8• 14 years ago

I think bandwidth will continue to be a problem, no matter how big the pipe gets.

The domain of bandwidth restricted problems may shift, but it will almost certainly still be an issue. Historically we seem to be really good at using whatever bandwidth is available.

The main thing that might prove this sentiment wrong is the other choke points in the system: it's no use pumping data down the line if our hard drives can't store it quickly enough, or we can't render it as fast as we get it.

kennywinker• 14 years ago

Background for those who aren't following this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Fiber

Cogito8• 14 years ago

Thanks for the context, the page itself was quite devoid of information.

I would love to see how this service compares to the roll out of fibre we are seeing in Australia at the moment. There is a lot of resistance from the opposition as the government is largely funding our new network.

In particular, many commentators claim that rolling out wireless technology is more financially viable then fibre to the home. In Australia we do have a sparse consumer distribution, so the context is a little different, however if google's model is viable (as you would assume) it might make a strong case study for our situation.

Looking forward to seeing how it all progresses.

EDIT: spelling

nl8• 14 years ago

In particular, many commenters claim that rolling out wireless technology is more financially viable then fibre to the home.

I don't think anyone claims that wireless isn't cheaper than fibre-to-the-home (FTTH). Some commentators claim it offers similar performance to fibre

(They are wrong: at scale, with a large number of geographically concentrated users wireless doesn't offer anything near fibre performance. Comparing the best wireless case performance - where there is a single client on an uncongested network, against the cheapest available - bandwidth capped - fibre plans is clearly an invalid comparison)

jacques_chester2• 14 years ago

> In Australia we do have a sparse consumer distribution

Nonsense, Australia is one of the most urbanised countries on Earth. We are less dispersed than the USA.

> There is a lot of resistance from the opposition as the government is largely funding our new network.

The government is right that FTTP is the most future-proof technology choice. But the way the project is being run is shameful -- they're carefully hiding the costs and debts behind "commercial-in-confidence" for a company wholly owned by the government.

And the dealing with Telstra, and creation of a new monopoly ... there's lots not to like.

packetslave• 14 years ago

Thanks for the context, the page itself was quite devoid of information

I imagine that's because it says in big letters "Look out for an announcement at google.com/fiber on July 26" which is tomorrow.

taligent3• 14 years ago

Be careful about how you phrase that, "government is largely funding our new network".

The government is LOANING the money and are expecting to make a profit out of the effort.

bcherry• 14 years ago

Unlikely to be any news about service beyond their long-planned Kansas City project. The skyline in the teaser is a dead ringer for the Kansas City skyline (for example, http://4photos.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/Kansas_City_Skyli...)

FPSDavid• 14 years ago

Great detective work!

jtchang• 14 years ago

I am absolutely ecstatic that Google is attempting to build the next generation wired network.

Why does this matter? Well owning the pipe is always a good move especially in the face of net neutrality. But there are all sorts of other tie ins. For one, payments.

Our current payment infrastructure is based around private leased lines. If you really wanted to take on the payments industry you have to start with the infrastructure. Otherwise you are always at the mercy of a credit card processor just shutting you off. When you own the network where the transactions actually flow it is a different story.

ricardobeat3• 14 years ago

That's basically what Dwolla did/is doing.

wmf5• 14 years ago

If you really wanted to take on the payments industry you have to start with the infrastructure. Otherwise you are always at the mercy of a credit card processor just shutting you off.

Today Google Wallet is at the mercy of credit cards, but in the future... people will pay their Google Fiber bill with credit cards. I don't see where you're going.

nl8• 14 years ago

Umm..

Credit card processors have other, more obvious ways of shutting you off that taking away a leased line.

The leased lines used for credit card processing are such a minor factor that you can pretty much ignore it. Yes, it is a weird way to do it, and no, if you were building a replacement you wouldn't use leased lines, but that isn't what is holding back payment technologies.

damian2000• 14 years ago

> owning the pipe is always a good move especially in the face of net neutrality

... so that Google can achieve further market domination in the search and search advertising space?

Karunamon• 14 years ago

Not sure how owning the pipe would help them there. Google's search domination is (arguably) a result of them having a superior product, with advertising being completely coupled to that.

dmishe• 14 years ago

Any chance that in the future, this project will drive ISP prices down? Internet in the US is ridiculously expensive compared to, say, Eastern Europe.

cloudwalking3• 14 years ago

That is the goal of the project.

ricardobeat3• 14 years ago

1gbps is not as impressive 2 years later... 100mbps broadband is already becoming affordable here in Brazil, it's a given that 1gbps will be available in large scale in 2-3 years.

sliverstorm5• 14 years ago

Internet speeds may improve by 10x every 2-3 years in Brazil, but that isn't how it's been going in the USA.

If it was, the USA would already have 10Gbps for bargain-basement prices.

ricardobeat3• 14 years ago

Ha, that's funny now. You're almost there :)

BadassFractal• 14 years ago

It'd be amazing to even have affordable 10mbps here in the US. We're pretty 3rd world as far as Internet speeds are concerned.

rogerbinns3• 14 years ago

Until December last year the fastest I could get was 3mbps. I was then able to double to just under 7mbps. I'm also forced to pay for landline service I don't want or use as part of that giving me a total bill of $65/ month ($5/mo less than when I had 3mbps plus phone line).

I live in a city of 60,000 residents 20 km from Silicon Valley.

jzawodn• 14 years ago

Which city?

dkasper• 14 years ago

So I'm all for getting better broadband in this country, and good on Google for trying to make it happen. But allow me to place devil's advocate for a minute. This is like AOL 2.0 right? Isn't it a really bad idea to have one of the largest sites on the internet also be your ISP?

wmf5• 14 years ago

This may be a case where in theory openness and competition are better but in practice well-executed vertical integration is better.

lsc2• 14 years ago

meh, the last mile buried fiber is a 'natural monopoly' - personally, I think that fiber to the home should be a municipal service, like power, and fiber to the business in santa clara. I mean, the majority of the value there is the public right of way; private companies simply can't do it without subsidies (in the form of right of ways granted by the municipality)

But, see, that only gets you from your house to the CO. I think that going from the CO to the internet could be an active and healthy free market.

Paul Vixie has advocated something similar...

http://public.freemuni.net/sf-news/paul-vixie/Page-4

Laremere• 14 years ago

There is something that I call the paradox of Google. The only real content which Google makes that I can think of is their front page doodles. They are an entirely service focused company. For the most part google products fall into two categories: Services which serve advertisements, or services which feed into category one. Their entire strategy is to use content created by other people (websites in search, videos in youtube, etc.) to give a reason to provide content people pay them for you to see (ads.) Therefor the paradox lies in this: In order to grow and thrive as a company they must keep the internet free. If the web is monopolized by a small number of large corporations, the need for Google to facilitate access to a large number of small websites diminishes. Youtube is their most resilient platform to this notion, and even it requires companies to remain small enough where using Youtube's service still makes sense. Also, this is why I think their products are so good: Every last little bit of quality in a product allows that much larger of a company to still find it more useful to use Google as their gateway to the web. So all in all, having a major website be an isp may be dangerous, but powers which guide Google guide it to be an open portal to a free web, instead of being the one stop content shop. In fact, I think this is possibly their biggest driver for doing fiber: to ensure the later doesn't happen.

bicknergseng2• 14 years ago

This was true until Google started making phones and tablets and opened the Google Play store and Google Apps for business and ...

Actually wait.... Google has been "making [and selling] content] for a while. Their main business might still be search advertising, but that doesn't mean that rerouting the pipes won't benefit them and absolutely destroy others.

ebtalley• 14 years ago

please santa, please oh please oh please.

donbronson• 14 years ago

Google will have to offer cable TV for this to work. I really hope they do. The MSOs deserve some competition.

Zigurd3• 14 years ago

"Google will have to offer cable TV for this to work."

It isn't necessary to have separate bandwidth for TV. And any kind of bundling with Google Play would make the product a lot less attractive.

rachelbythebay• 14 years ago

Honest question: what sort of support can you expect when something goes wrong? Fiber attracts backhoes (buried routes) and bored hunters with shotguns (aerial ones). It's a fact of life. Who's going to do customer service, Google, or some other agency? What's their track record like?

(As the old gag goes, this is why you should carry a short piece with you, in case you are stranded on a desert island. Bury it and when the backhoe shows up, get a ride back to land with the driver).

jaggederest3• 14 years ago

Knowing google, they're just going to run 8 different routes to any given place and leave cut cable in the ground, then replace the whole network in 10 years or so.

ajasmin2• 14 years ago

Right. Embrace failure.

rapind• 14 years ago

This is a great question. I love Google for the most part, but their customer support is absolutely and utterly terrible. And by design it would seem. No doubt backed up by data mining and A/B testing telling them that offering good customer support is terrible for their bottom line?

For something like this I sincerely hope they find and partner with a great customer support provider.

robomartin• 14 years ago

...until Google algos shut down your account; now you loose gmail, docs, drive, etc., etc., etc., and fiber.

OK, I am kidding to some extent. Maybe not. I'd sure like to see them move in a direction that assures users that all services will not be cutoff without recourse for unknown algo violations.

jellicle• 14 years ago

I don't know why this was modded down. Google Fiber customers will certainly be required to use their Google Account to sign up.

SoftwareMaven• 14 years ago

And that part scares me. That is a whole lot of my personal info to provide to a company that is really good at processing it.

Of course, I'm probably being stupid about that. My network data was probably sold a long time ago. And they have also probably already correlated it with my google account.

Zigurd3• 14 years ago

That is a real concern.

But the cure is found in faster service: With fast connections you can host your own services.

What we really need is multiple competitors in connections this fast.

angryasian2• 14 years ago

why is it a concern. Just don't use their services then.

antimatter15• 14 years ago

Going to the 404 page reveals a menu which hints (well, it says that there's going to be some plural number of cities, not too much else) at what is being announced tomorrow: http://fiber.google.com/savethedate/404

The main menu has links to "About", "How to get it", "Plans & Pricing", "Cities", "Help" and a button "Pre-Register"

Also, since that page doesn't seem to indicate the time, the Google fiber blog (http://googlefiberblog.blogspot.com/) says it's at 11AM CDT. Also an impressive stat is that they've apparently laid down over a hundred miles of fiber.

Cogito8• 14 years ago

Interestingly, they all redirect to a 404 page except Cities/Pre-register, at http://fiber.google.com/cities/ which is a 'broken' link.

What could it mean??!?

thronemonkey• 14 years ago

If this is in my city, I will be so upset. I just signed up for a year of comcast :(

Tuna-Fish• 14 years ago

Even if it is in your city, getting new fiber laid to you in a year is optimistic.

kevinalexbrown• 14 years ago

This move might be good for Google, but I find it somewhat alarming as a consumer. Those who control or curate content (Google, NBC/Comcast, Facebook) should not control infrastructure. This was less of a concern when Google was acting as a conduit of information, but as Google moves to treat personal (if aggregate) data as property and profits from user-generated data like YouTube or Google+, the lines become significantly blurred.

There may be nothing wrong intrinsically with controlling content and infrastructure, but it seems to be bad for consumers generally, as exhibited by Comcast[0]. And while a high-speed competitor to local cable monopolies is exciting, I worry about trading one dictator for another just because there's some competition in the transition period from the old guard to the new.

Is there some safeguard in place Kansas City and other fiber recipients have arranged to prevent Google from having the power to exert cable-esque control? Not rhetorical, genuinely curious.

EDIT: I'd like to make it clear that I'm not anti-Google, I don't think they're evil, or abuse consumer data, or are actively trying to become the next Comcast. I am, however, expressing concern over the position of power they will find themselves in if Fiber takes off. So far I've seen a lot of comments suggesting Google is not evil, to which I agree, but I haven't seen any indicating that there are adequate checks in place to (relatively easily) prevent the abuse of power.

[0]http://scrawford.net/blog/comcastnbcu-will-raise-costs-for-c...

grandalf2• 14 years ago

You're worried about Google censoring content or protocols?

zmmmmm4• 14 years ago

I think it is more about anitcompetitive effects.

Consider a service competing with Youtube; will they have the same streaming performance when delivered over Google's fiber as Youtube? It might even just be accidental (say, Google colocates it's services with its fiber infrastructure) - but it could easily give competitors a big disadvantage if they can't get access to the same performance as Youtube has.

rashomon• 14 years ago

Google's corporate motto is "Don't be Evil" and the United States has the 16th fastest broadband speeds in the world, and we invented the damn thing. Comcast, I agree, is a terrible monopolistic crack-baby of the capitalist society but Google is genuinely improving things.

taligent3• 14 years ago

Except Google has been acting pretty 'evil' recently.

The disgraceful FRAND abuses, the privacy abuses, the anti-competitive expansion of Google Search. Hence why they are under multiple investigations by ITC, EU, US governments.

So it is far better to assume NOBODY should be trusted.

skeltoac• 14 years ago

What good is a corporate motto if the shareholders can't sue to enforce it? Some good, sure. I always liked it. But it is about as binding as it is well-defined.

sounds• 14 years ago

While your concerns are legitimate - content should not control infrastructure; look at cellular carriers for the case study - there are also wins that are worth thinking about.

Not to be Pollyana; Google needs to be watched. So we all keep each other in check. The following disruptive moves benefit Google _and_ your average Joe:

1. Reduce bandwidth costs. Google pays to send data and we pay to receive it. This is just your classic elimination of the middleman, in this case the anti-competitive backbone and last-mile carriers. In theory the first to benefit from this are the startups with large bandwidth bills today.

2. Reduce delays associated with new tech. Google wants new tech like a larger TCP Initial Congestion Window [1], IPv6, SPDY / HTTP 2.0, or Strict Transport Security [2] to happen faster. As long as your average Joe has a fast enough pipe, these are a win-win. The lag in adoption comes from slow-moving risk-averse players, such as incumbent backbone providers.

3. Reduce mobile bandwidth costs. Google is already heavily invested in mobile broadband clients. In especially congested areas like New York, anything to reduce mobile broadband costs benefits Android first: the top tier of customers who don't feel the costs are probably using iOS.

There are more win-win situations but those are my top 3.

[1] http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-tcpm-initcwnd-00 [2] http://dev.chromium.org/sts

jjcm• 14 years ago

While true, I trust Google more than I trust AT&T/Comcast/etc. The major ISPs need some competition. Google will provide it.

kunle• 14 years ago

> Those who control or curate content (Google, NBC/Comcast, Facebook) should not control infrastructure.

Why not?

> while a high-speed competitor to local cable monopolies is exciting,

It's not just exciting, it's everything. Comcast, TW et al, can get away with being massively valuable enterprises even though they provide the absolute worst service on earth. Any kind of competition for them, can only be a good thing, even if its from another company that controls both content and infrastructure.

chaostheory• 14 years ago

> Why not?

Because they will favor transmission of their own content over competing content. See Net Neutrality. This being said, Comcast is already doing this and I trust Google more than the big 3 internet providers.

austenallred• 14 years ago

In general I would agree, however I feel that this is more of a reaction to poor infrastructure than a land grab "let's control everything" move.

Zigurd3• 14 years ago

Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

Of course it would be preferable to have true structural separation in service providers, having a competitor that has interests that are not aligned with most content publishers is a pretty good consolation prize.

While Google has products that overlap with legacy content publishers, that doesn't appear to have made Google enthusiastic about keeping bandwidth prices up, and content under tight control.

w1ntermute3• 14 years ago

> This move might be good for Google, but I find it somewhat alarming as a consumer. Those who control or curate content (Google, NBC/Comcast, Facebook) should not control infrastructure.

I don't know about you, but I'll take Google over Verizon, AT&T, Comcast, etc. any day of the week, regardless of their conflicts of interest. Google has a proven track record of doing things in my favor.

incongruity• 14 years ago

> Google has a proven track record of doing things in my favor.

Thus far.

The point still stands, as a principle – that sort of combination of function/power and interests has, historically, not been one that has resulted in good things for consumers, in the long run.

antidoh3• 14 years ago

Wasn't ATT before the divestiture their day's equivalent of an owner of infrastructure and a controller, if not owner, of "content?" You got good, reliable service. What was more reliable than the phone?

ary• 14 years ago

> Google has a proven track record of doing things in my favor.

The current, publicly acknowledged level of intercourse between Google and the U.S. Federal Government is already worrisome. Perhaps your data has been a part of those exchanges, perhaps it hasn't. You and I don't know.

Now, imagine that Google begins relaying traffic unrelated to their services on behalf of internet users. It isn't hard to fathom that Google will come under the same pressures to give the U.S. government access to user traffic as have Verizon, AT&T, Comcast, and others.

That could just be the tip of the iceberg though. How long before the company caves in and decides to start including user internet traffic analysis into the search engine's signaling and ranking? Would it still be doing you a favor?

Edit: typo

keeperofdakeys• 14 years ago

> Google has a proven track record of doing things in my favor.

Don't forget all the horror stories of trying to sort out customer support issues. Given the range of issues that supplying internet to houses can have, this would discourage me a lot.

sigkill• 14 years ago

It's fine today, but what about when the management changes? And I'm sure, Google's management change could easily occur during our lifetime. Heck, look at Apple and Microsoft. Steve Jobs -> Tim Cook and Bill Gates -> Steve Ballmer.

jc123• 14 years ago

With track record, hope the customer service is an improvement.

jamesaguilar• 14 years ago

Meh, people said the same thing about Chrome but I know of almost no one who thinks that has been bad either for the market or any individual segment of the market.

Retric2• 14 years ago

I know plenty of people that blame Google's interests for Chrome's add block technology lagging significantly behind what was available on Firefox.

ralfn• 14 years ago

You are completely right, but its just a piece of the puzzle.

The whole market is becoming vertical. There is a war going on who gets to extort content providers, by controlling the access to consumers.

The hardware vendors can control access and demand a slice (apple, amazon). The operating system vendors can control access and demand a slice (microsoft, google). The connection providers can control access and demand a slice (phone/cable companies).

Here in Holland, we now have net neutrality. But maybe thats not enough. Maybe we need app/media store neutrality as well, by requiring OS vendors to allow side-loading. Maybe we need OS neutrality as well, by demanding HW vendors to offer their machienes "rooted".

For now, Google is pro net neutrality, and has not abused their position. Maybe this is just a defensive step. Neverthless, google, like any other ISP should be forced to treat packets neutrally. But that really should be a law, not a contract.

Ralith• 14 years ago

> Maybe we need app/media store neutrality as well, by requiring OS vendors to allow side-loading. Maybe we need OS neutrality as well, by demanding HW vendors to offer their machienes "rooted".

Maybe? There's no question. Manufacturers are already abusing these holes.

zanny2• 14 years ago

I don't get why anyone thinks any company should control infrastructure. We don't have private electric lines, or private roads that are corporate funded. We don't expect train tracks to be privately laid. Our entire phone and cable infrastructure were built by private companies (mainly AT&T) by getting tremendous government subsidies and being effectively publicly funded for private enterprise.

There is absolutely no reason that any local government in the US worth its weight in salt couldn't start a fiber to the home initiative where they take a tax hike for a few years to pay off laying fiber to everyone in the district. They could contract with neighbor regions, or with private long line services like Level3 to provide internet access, and then nobody gets ripped off when they get a telecom monopoly in their area, because it is a publicly owned utility.

It is getting to the point where internet access is so ubiquitous and essential that we need to see the rise of public fiber and wifi to enable competition in an area where for the last 30 years there has only been collusion and monopoly abuse. I consider myself a social libertarian but we have proven time and time again in history you can not effectively privatize infrastructure and expect long term benefits to society from that.

csense3• 14 years ago

"There is absolutely no reason that any local government in the US worth its weight in salt couldn't start a fiber to the home initiative where they take a tax hike for a few years to pay off laying fiber to everyone in the district."

We. Can. Not. Afford. It.

In case you haven't been paying attention:

Unemployment is high, so new taxes are tougher to sell than usual, and income tax revenue is declining.

Home values have just taken a big hit, so property tax revenue is declining.

The housing market is having a difficult time clearing in many areas; i.e. prices are still too high and there's a surplus of homes, which sit abandoned. This stretches local services (fires, copper theft, copper theft of e.g. gas lines which causes fires, homeless, drug activity, etc.).

Expensive pensions, healthcare, etc. cause costs for government employees to keep going up.

In short, state and local governments are overextended and are feeling a need to cut services, not expand them. The federal government is too, to some extent, but they can essentially print money.

Of course, these are generalizations; they obviously won't apply to every locality.

JumpCrisscross• 14 years ago

Most of the U.S.'s railway system was laid by private companies. Similarly, private companies laid much of the electrical grid, too. They are regulated utilities today but were once free companies.

Even when governments build infrastructure they typically contract that work out to private companies. I'll let you decide whether government contractors and bureaucracies are preferable to making the guy who built it have his skin in the game.

More importantly, if someone else wants to build it, as long as they follow rational rules (that can be imposed ex post facto) it is irrational for the taxpayer to clamour to pay for it.

ori_b• 14 years ago

> This move might be good for Google, but I find it somewhat alarming as a consumer. Those who control or curate content (Google, NBC/Comcast, Facebook) should not control infrastructure.

I agree. I hope this spurs competition, more than anything else.

bertomartin• 14 years ago

Your phone company is the same. They store trove of data about you, you'd be surprised.

donniezazen• 14 years ago

I am more concerned about current internet providers blocking technology for sake of their vested interest in old ways of business. Unlimited and unrestrained internet access is something so important and one of the basic needs. This morning I heard that ATT requires you to buy additional plans for Facetime. After data caps by all vendors, this is heights of absurdity.

MikeCapone• 14 years ago

Ideally, the goal is to be like Tesla Motors, a catalyst for the industry.

snorkel• 14 years ago

! Gbps upload and download speed. Wonderful. Unless you can give me an static IP address and let me serve whatever I want from that IP than I'm not failling out of my chair over this.

jmillikin• 14 years ago

If you're just looking to run a server, a VPN service like Linode or bulk hosting like S3 will be more effective and less expensive than residential hosting.

ajasmin2• 14 years ago

Speaking of IP addresses. Does Google Fiber supports IPv6?

Not that you want to host an IPv6 only website just yet...

spaghetti• 14 years ago

What happens when a large company that Google deems a competitor tries to buy bulk use of the fiber? I could see Facebook lobbying for government regulation of Google's fiber in an attempt to secure competitive pricing.

Nrsolis3• 14 years ago

Honestly, the more network is out there, the better.

There is probably an upper limit on the number of networks any given city can support, so it's going to be natural for some combination of content sources to be partnered with fiber distribution networks to revenue share.

It's enormously costly to deliver "wireline" fiber to the home service. Most of this is labor cost, but you also can't discount the impact of property taxes and upkeep on infrastructure that is supposed to weather the elements and wildlife (including human) for upwards of 30 years.

Fiber is a great solution but wireless is still the most economical way to deliver access for the "last-mile". If we ever find a way to provide low-cost, high bandwidth wireless service within a one mile radius that doesn't make the NIMBY types have an aneurism, then fiber-to-the-home will seem as quaint as an individual copper pair to every residence.

disclaimer: In 1997-1998 I worked at a municipally owned city utility that was able to deliver 10mbps symmetric Internet access to a development of homes in FL. Bellsouth subsequently had laws passed to prohibit political subdivisions from engaging in the provisioning of telecommunication services.

jaggederest3• 14 years ago

Fiber is fundamentally no different than wireless. It's just at a high enough frequency the light is visible. That means you get much higher bandwidth. There's just no way around that.

If you could rig up visible-light laser communications, you wouldn't need the fiber. Fiber's just a convenient container.

Cogito8• 14 years ago

Fundamentally, the two are very different.

Whilst the information carrier, photons, is identical in both cases, the medium is extremely different.

In the case of fibre we have a highly controlled, flexible medium with extremely good quality of service and very little attenuation. This comes at the price of requiring relatively expensive infrastructure between network nodes.

Wireless technology on the other hand travels through air as a medium. You remove the end-to-end infrastructure requirement, but the trade off is much higher attenuation and lower quality of service. Additionally, you require some amount of 'direct line of sight' depending on frequency. Lower (and hence slower) frequencies are able to refract around mountains and even off the outer atmosphere, providing quite good coverage, but visible light has no such capability. Repeater satellites or LOS base stations would be required to effectively use such a frequency.

This is why HAM radios are great for talking to people kilometres away, but can't be used for effective wireless internet, and why hotspots don't cover more than a few hundred metres at most.

nilsbunger4• 14 years ago

We have google fiber at home - Stanford faculty homes have had it the past year, like Kansas City.

It's pretty cool. My record so far is to consume 400Mbps, using 4 computers downloading from about 10 places, all wired through gigabit switches.

In practice, though, it doesn't make much difference compared to a 30Mbps cable modem for most consumers:

most streaming video is < 10 Mbps;

large file downloads are generally limited by a server (or somewhere else in the network?), so it's hard to exceed 30-40Mbps download speed;

web browsing feels about the same, because it's limited by round trips of DNS and http requests, not by bandwidth (spdy will help here?);

many consumer-grade NAT boxes (linksys and friends) are capable of only 100-200 Mbps

The one place it's made a big difference so far is uploads. For example, backup to a cloud backup service (backblaze) often goes 50Mbps or higher. But I did have to try several backup services because some were limited on the server side to a few Mbps.

Running services from home could be a use case too, but then you get into reliability of power/etc, and the fact that so far you can't get a static IP address through google fiber.

So for now google fiber is mostly a fast cable modem from a "don't be evil" provider. I think the real disruption will come with new services that don't really exist yet. What kind of new things can be built if there's enough audience?

epikur• 14 years ago

What cloud backup provider did you settle on? Dropbox has very slow uploads for me, so I'm curious what else is out there that works.

nilsbunger4• 14 years ago

Backblaze. But it's really cloud backup, not storage/sync like dropbox.

ghshephard• 14 years ago

Backblaze has been a rock star for me over a year. It used to be very, very slow (My first backup took the better part of a week to get the "Initial" image in place) - but it was okay because their constant background backups only needed around 1 mbit to be effective (and, more importantly to me - invisible. Time Machine had a bad habit of ramping up my CPU).

But, recently, they must have made modifications to their system - because I routinely see backup in excess of 15 mbits/second. Highly recommended.

msy• 14 years ago

I'm finding spideroak superior to backblaze - it actually backs up my entire system rather than skipping /Library & /opt and allows me to backup external drives without needing to have them constantly plugged in. I think the pay-for-what-you-use model allows them to be a lot more flexible.

dpcx• 14 years ago

With an internet connection like that, CrashPlan might be more interesting. The fact that you could back up to a friends computer would be nifty to test.

eavc• 14 years ago

Are downloads of torrents similarly limited or does the distributed nature allow for much higher speeds?

nilsbunger4• 14 years ago

That's a great question! Downloading a 1GB file, I peaked at 65 Mbps download rate just now. It ramped up slowly over a period of a few minutes. I was connected to 58 of 60 peers to get that rate.

jmreid• 14 years ago

Most new home routers will route much more than 100-200 Mbps: http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/lanwan/router-charts/index.ph...

I have the Asus RT-N66U, which is rated on that chart for 730+ Mbps (of course, QoS will bring that down). Even the AirPort Extreme is rated for 400+ Mbps, but not QoS to speak of.

GICodeWarrior• 14 years ago

Some of those number are higher than I expected. Though, I am not sure it is a representative sample of what you will find on a store shelf.

Also, less than half of the list is above 200mbps, let alone "most" or "much more".

Array.prototype.map.call(document.querySelector('table.chart').querySelectorAll('td.number'), function(speed) { return parseFloat(speed.textContent) > 200 ? '>200' : '<=200'; }).reduce(function(previous, next) { previous[next] = (previous[next] || 0) + 1; return previous; }, {}) => { "<=200": 40, ">200": 37 }

minikomi3• 14 years ago

Snooping through the css I found this cute hyper-rabbit http://fiber.google.com/static/img/cities/rabbit.png

Edit:

Other interesting sprites:

* http://fiber.google.com/static/img/sprite-devices.png

* http://fiber.google.com/static/img/sprite-networks.png

also, tooltip:

http://fiber.google.com/static/img/cities/business_address_e...

Last edit : curl > grep > sed > jsfiddle:

http://jsfiddle.net/LyHbH/embedded/result/

petitmiam• 14 years ago

Did you save the rabbit? It's a 404 now.

minikomi3• 14 years ago

Found it:

http://i.imgur.com/eXGWz.jpg

Edit: This looks ominous:

    .fooled-image{position:absolute;top:55px;right:-30px;width:160px;height:243px;background:url(/static/img/you_have_been_fooled.png) no-repeat;}

sakopov• 14 years ago

As a Kansas City resident, this is going to be inexplicably interesting. We have a pretty decent tech scene here. I'm just wondering how this will impact it, if it will at all.

jebblue• 14 years ago

If Google doesn't do it who will? Who else has the vision? As long as they keep not doing evil everything is cool. If they do start doing evil we are screwed but we will have high bandwidth to get on the Internet and read about how messed up we are.

ww520• 14 years ago

This is pretty amazing. It's a transformative move if Google can pull it off. Google might be best served by being the wholesale pipe provider rather than customer facing ISP.

revelation• 14 years ago

There is not much difference in perception to a normal customer between 50Mbit and 1Gb - the former manages two 1080p YouTube streams perfectly well with quite some headroom for extra misc traffic. Torrenters will always crave more bandwidth, but even there its going to be tough to fill 1Gb downstream.

But all of that is missing the point. The internet is not just a better TV with cats - it has true full duplex communication!

It's hard to believe because the monopolies in control of the last mile will generally offer you tons of downstream with little to no upstream. In some cases, the upstream is merely enough to send TCP ACKs for when you use all of your downstream. Its a natural move for these big old companies because upstream traffic from customers is more expensive for them and they are still stuck in the mindset of the "media consumption machine".

Google, of course, realizes that 1Mb of upstream is bad news for Google Hangouts and terrible for uploading 1080p video to YouTube. And all kind of distributed systems benefit tremendously from matching upload and download bandwidth.

Legion3• 14 years ago

There's no good reason why I shouldn't be able to participate in lifelike HD video conferences from here in Austin with my team back in CA, along with our other remote members.

But, of course, the problem is that while all of us easily have enough bandwidth to pull down streams of high-quality HD video, the video streams we're trying to pull down are choked into low quality by the sender's lack of upstream bandwidth.

jsz02• 14 years ago

For cable systems there have historically been some good technical reasons why upstream speeds are much lower. DOCSIS3 solves most of those problems. If there is a demand for it cable upload speeds can jump to 10-15Mbit/sec in the near future without much trouble.

MrFoof2• 14 years ago

These speeds are already available. I've had 50Mbps/15Mbps from Comcast for over a year, for about $100/month -- and I actually get those speeds so long as the server with the content is willing. Dual-stack support is soon as well, so I'll have an IPv6 address.

In the next week or so, my downstream will be increasing to 105Mbps at no additional charge[1]. In some markets (mine included) Comcast will be offering 305Mbps downstream service (granted at $300/mo), which is 90% of the bandwidth the DOCSIS 3.0 specification would allow over 8 channels.

Granted, on the opposite end we have Verizon now trying to slowly kill their DSL service and replace it with LTE. [2]

[1] http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/07/comcas...

[2] http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/07/op-ed-verizon-wil...

Legion3• 14 years ago

Man, was I pissed when Austin lost out to Kansas City for the Google Fiber for Communities pilot project. The lack of FIOS in a city like Austin is painful. Austin is "AT&T territory" and AT&T's UVerse service isn't even worth talking about.

I sure hope this announcement is, "Fiber is coming, and Austin's in the first wave!"

astrojams• 14 years ago

I've got Fiber through Time Warner Austin (Wideband) and it pulls at like 50Mbit down and 5Mb/sec up. Not too shabby.

lkbm• 14 years ago

Isn't that $350/mo.? I'm hoping Google's fiber will be a little cheaper.

Legion3• 14 years ago

I have the 50/5 plan from Time Warner as well, and it's definitely best option around. But 5Mb upstream is still pretty chintzy.

Go up to Dallas and you can get 50/25, 75/35, 150/65, and now they're rolling out 300/65. It gets expensive on the extreme end of that, but I would sure love even 50/25. Major, major difference in upstream bandwidth.

lizzard• 14 years ago

For about 3 seconds I thought maybe this was about yarn.

csense3• 14 years ago

What does Google hopes to accomplish with making fiber available?

They want to enable entirely new applications.

For example, online video was an application enabled by the widespread availability of broadband Internet. Before broadband, downloading videos was possible, but streaming was not. Simply put, the (average) rate at which you download frames of video has to be greater than the rate at which frames are displayed for streaming to work.

The most interesting changes were not quantitative, but qualitative.

Google -- and most HN readers -- probably believe that higher broadband speeds are an inevitability, although the process has been going much slower in the US than most of us would like. And new ways of using the Internet will be enabled as speeds get faster. And, if it offers fiber, Google will be at the forefront of that wave, which will help Google by:

(1) Accelerating the change, pushing those new markets to be created sooner than they would have been created without Google Fiber (2) Putting it in a good position to capture the new markets -- i.e. if Application X is eating a lot of bandwidth on Google Fiber, that might be an early signal that the Application X space is a growth market and Google should find a way to get involved.

radarsat1• 14 years ago

Google is coming out with a breakfast cereal?

salimmadjd• 14 years ago

As google gets larger and larger the slower and less nimble it becomes.

But given the other competitors in this market, I'm glad google is making their move, US is falling behind other countries when it comes to broadband access and this will only open up so many new business opportunities in US. However, as others said I'll be curious about neutrality of Google when it comes to content. Will they block vimeo in favor of youtube?

conradfr• 14 years ago

I'm so dumb I thought for a moment that Google would announcing some kind of new clothes fabric.

corkill• 14 years ago

In Turkey at the moment.

Just got a fibre plan 20mbps for $30 US per month, no contract, they also give the router and modem. Although had to pay $70 or so upfront for the no contract option.

They also have a 1000mbps plan. First world countries really dragging there feet on fibre networks.

andyjsong• 14 years ago

How does Google fiber compare to other countries around the world like S. Korea and Japan where their bandwidth is much higher. We're #1? USA?! USA?! err Kansas City?!

DonnyV• 14 years ago

I work for a GIS Services company and I know one of the major issues from us not going full cloud is that we deal with really large data-sets. If we had access to a large fiber pipe we could easily dump all our servers. I would imagine any engineering, graphics or video production office runs across the same problem. I see this as completing the cloud story and alleviating business of having to run there own data centers.

vampirechicken• 14 years ago

> hose who control or curate content (Google, NBC/Comcast, Facebook) should not control infrastructure.

And those who were granted a monopoly in order to build the infrastructure should not control the content.

jervisfm• 14 years ago

The announcement is now streaming live at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uZVqPuq81c&feature=play...

allbombs• 14 years ago

This confirms Google can't win the TV race without owning internet access

Google Fiber

Related Stories