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Google's Dark Fibre Plans?
sebFlyte writes "According to news.com "Google is looking for Strategic Negotiator candidates with experience in...(i)dentification, selection, and negotiation of dark fiber contracts both in metropolitan areas and over long distances as part of development of a global backbone network." Is the search giant planning to build a global fibre-optic network?" Or perhaps simply use unused fibre that they can get for cheaper then from the datacenter providers; although at least from my talks with the datacenter folks, Google's not paying much per Mbps as it is.
Not "then".
Ah, so has Google unified String Theory, Dark Matter, and Dark Energy?
"Absorbing your worst..."
Once Google went public, now they have joined the Dark Side. The Chairman will show you the true nature of the force, he is your master now.
this article is horribly written! impossible to understand.
You really can't fail with responsive organisational projections - the consultants recommend interactive administrative time-phases. Actually the solution can only be homogenised management mobility..
BTW, the Light Reading guys were the ones who "broke" this story back on January 6th
Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
And thus it begins....it was difficult to see at first; what Google's plans were. Only after it had struck first using highspeed fiber to initiate the subroutines in the Google desktop search companion did humanity realize its vast mistake. Only it was too late...Google was selfaware...and it was hungry...for pie...I mean Pi...
Did you know you can be apathetic to apathy? Not that I give a shit...
The AMS-IX is the largest Internet Exchange / NAP in Europe.
This is your sig. There are thousands more, but this one is yours.
People are mad at Microsoft, but google is a forthcomming world dominator....
Maybe this is the beginning of Google Broadband. With all the other non-search areas they've gotten themselves into, maybe they're looking to take on MSN and Yahoo in the ISP realm.
GoogleISP: Dark fiber to your city, fiber to you home coming soon.
And after they can give everyone a super high speed broadband connection, it's just one more step to selling a subscription for the comping suite of web-based apps that GMail proves they're so good at.
hmmm....maybe this could provide the bandwidth needed for the initial indexing of video material? And maybe the constant re-indexing of TV shows, etc. straight from the providers.
Bastards :) :)
They want to take over the Internet.
Create a new backbone. Replace InterNIC and all the suits who control the net now.
Then compete and eliminate most first tier providers, and generally own the global network.
Best luck, Google! I hope you will succeed!
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
They've got several (lots of?) datacenters that have to sync up lots of data. Anyone with enough data to transfer around can save money just buying the strands of fiber or wavelengths on lit fiber instead of paying a provider to light it. It's not surprising that Google has enough of this work to do that they want to hire someone with experience in it.
I had no fscking idea what dark fiber was.
-- john
if google were to go into the telecommunications business they could make a killing if they did it properly.
What i am thinking though, they want to build their own private network which links their many datacenters around the US, so that we can get our search results even faster, or any of the other things like gmail.
Storing mail in two seperate locations is possible, but it would make for a pain in the ass if it takes to long to sync the changes between the servers in different datacenters to get people even faster response times from gmail.
This is off course all speculation.
Google in the telecommunications being a competitor to Verizon, T-Mobile, bell, Comcast, OOL, and other internet providers would be a good thing. They would be on of the only companies that would know how to do VOIP the right way.
cat
I would be. It's far from their core competency and there's so much competition in the telco business that everyone sells at cost anyway. Maybe a datacenter chain like Equinix would be a better acquisition target.
Which word is "dark" modifying, "plans" or "fibre"?
--
so dark, you'll forget the fibre
No no no.
Why the hell would Google want to buy up an existing ISP/telco with all the crap that that entails?
What they are doing is actually very sensible.
By looking to negotiate purchase/lease of dark fibre over the medium term they are avoiding the big cost which is actually putting fibre into the ground.
I imagine that they would ensure that the maintenance of that fibre is the responsibility of the provider, so they don't need to run their own maintenance crews either.
And the BIG plus with having access to fiber is that you can then ramp up your capacity by using WDM (Wave Division Multiplexing) to get more bandwidth out of your fibre.
They have probably realised that to ramp up their networks to cope with their future plans they need more bandwidth that they can afford to buy as "service" from a regular telco. Its just too damn expensive!
By leasing the fibre themselves, they light it how they want, rather that how the telco wants to sell it to them.
This *might* have biogger up front costs, but the recurrent costs are MUCH lower.
They don't add to the discussion, but they add to something that every news site should value - good use of language. Are you stupid or what?
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
Do you have any statistics to prove what you said that "The AMS-IX is the largest Internet Exchange / NAP in Europe."?
Last I heard the largest Internet Exchange was located in London.
cat
And even where there is overcapicity, it is mostly in the urban areas, put in place for business, not single family homes. Good luck getting dark fiber in the 'burbs, let alone the sticks
"Well, good luck finding a judge that doesn't run a bestiality site."
It is? I was always under the impression LINX held that honour..
Blaming GW Bush for the Iraq war is like blaming Ronald McDonald for the poor quality of food.
They're going to build a huge pair of AI called Icarus and Daedalus. They will merege to form the AI Helios. You will be given the choice to merge with Helios - using your Google branded brain implant, or stop using Google alltogether - causing a new dark age.
Or you could just go to a rave.
I'm sorry, your question isn't clear. I am not sure what your alternative to stupid is. I must be stupid. :-(
Worst. Sig. Ever.
you know it might just be me, or my google desktop search tool, but if google does it, it must be good.
I think people may be reading too much into this. They're talking about hiring out a small number of positions. Going from that to wanting their own national fiber network is a huge leap, but I suppose its fun to speculate...
I watched this video (flash) just a few days ago EPIC and now this?...hmmm
Maybe they will hire Anakin Skywalker, to go to the Dark Side of de Fiber(TM)
It is "cheaper than", not "cheaper then". Only on slashdot does a Belgian reader teach English grammar to an American editor.
Apparently both the LINX and the AMS-IX claim to be the largest. Let's just say that the AMS-IX is one of the largest. It's not about measuring dick size ;-)
As for stats, I could not find stats for the LINX; the AMS-IX peaks at 49.7 gbit/sec and they have 210 members using 322 switch ports.
This is your sig. There are thousands more, but this one is yours.
They're only talking about hiring out a few experts with expertise in dealing with new fiber negotiations. Going from this to a plan to own a major telco backbone is a huge leap, they would likely have to triple their headcount to manage such an operation...one in the past that has bankrupted many other companies.
Am I the only one who thought of a few laxitive jokes when they read this?
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
Ok, I'm really nit-picking here, but can we get some spell/grammar checking in the editor's comments? There's a difference between than and then.
Both AMS-IX and LINX staff can impress the girls/guys with having the bigger one. LINX's switches are pushing more data (71 Gbit total include private+public/49.23Gbit for public peering) Ams-ix is doing 49.7 (dunno if that includes private)
;-)
AMS-IX has more members 210 against LINX having only 169 members.
However they are both equally fun to party with.
Use Adsense for Charity
Is this some sinister plot, or does Google have plans to capitalize on the glut of unlit fiber?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
If they were truly making such plans they would also have to hire literally tens of thousands of people, or make a monstrous acquisition. Neither of which appears in the cards from what I can tell.
If google was to go the ISP route, then they will most likely buyout current ISP (like AOL, which probably can be had at bargain basement prices in a few years). Somehow, I don't think this is google's plan. If I could distill their main objective, they're around to make the internet more "meaningful"--better search results, better email, heck better social connections (with Orkut). Providing a connection to the internet doesn't appear to fit into this mold--they'll leave it up to others to do. I could be wrong. Personally I think they should stick with their original plan and stay the course with devices such as google boxes in private intranets for fast indexing and searching; and making their search engine more refined since content on the internet has no where else to go but up.
Linux at home
I for one would like to welcome our new dark Google overlords...
OK, here's my WAG. Google needs to up revenue soon, beyond what they are doing now. They provide a ton of services, quite a few of which are really free, as ads are easily ignored.
*Maybe* they will keep the freebie version of google for the peons, then offer a "corporate enterprise class scalable google data searching and management solution" whatever buzzspeak over this new controlled-by-them backbone setup. Say one of the features might be much better content filtering, spam control, antivirus scanning of webpages offered, whatever. Perhaps different search results, more fine tuning of results, more features, etc. Charge bigbuck$ for it.
Yeah, they could be busy filtering out duplicate story submissions!
Dear ANTRat,
you spelt fibre wrong.
Sincerely,
The rest of the English speaking world.
>>"...that they can get for cheaper then from..."
/. really doesn't use editors.
At last, proof that
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Can't you see the connection between "I don't believe in first posts." and my signature. Funny (5).
"Until you do what you believe in, how do you know whether you believe in it or not?" -- Leo Tolstoy
Wouldn't "dark fibre" be powered by dark suckers instead of light sources? Hence the term "dark fibre"?
1) buy dark fiber from dot com burnouts without explaination
2) link vast amounts of data and services without described reason
3) ? 4) Profit!
Did you know you can be apathetic to apathy? Not that I give a shit...
forgot a break
Did you know you can be apathetic to apathy? Not that I give a shit...
more seriously, could someone shed light on what use dark fibre would be (could be something other than just another internet backbone) that couldn't be achieved merely by using existing providers?
If google can provide both the line and the ISP service, they could annihilate all the crappy ISPs and bandwidth providers that are on the market today.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
Don't forget that Google parks hardware all over the place. They've got a pile of it sitting in datacenters run by Savvis, who bought up the dregs of the Cable & Wireless operations (who bought up the dregs of the Exodus operations). But unlike Exodus, C&W also had tons of dark fibre. Savvis has been trying to make everything lean and mean, but they've got a pretty nice inter-datacenter-network... but not necessarily any bargains when peering with other people's operations. I can imagine that Google would love to get outside the loop of having the datacenter operators dictate what terms they're willing to live with when setting up new peering arrangements. Especially as Google's needs become more instantaneously multi-directional (rather than crunch-and-publish, it's real-time ad stats, mail, etc).
Even if all these new hires do is help Google's datacenter providers make good decisions about new or altered peering networks, they'll probably earn their keep.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Or maybe after grabbing a significant amount of backbone, they will sniff it, and start attaching targeted advertising to each packet... But seriously, they could acquire quite a bit of data by mining the traffic on a backbone.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
this HAS been a huge topic for awhile and I'll be interested to see where this is going...Google guys we KNOW you're reading all this!
Did you know you can be apathetic to apathy? Not that I give a shit...
Hello,
Considering what Google has built internally for server management and redundancy, I would hypothesize based upon available data (i.e. GFS) that they're looking to light up fiber between their data centers, while running either TCP/IP or IPv6 (with modifications of existing IGP and routing protocols, more than likely BGP or OSPF) between them.
This is a very smart move on their part, if this is true. This would allow them to do their own internal traffic control and shaping over a private network, and develop/modify algorithms for efficient transfer of data over said network, without having to "play" by Telco/ISP rules.
In other words, they're more than likely building their own global network to more efficiently transfer data over the Internet by completely bypassing it for their inter-server traffic. This is a very smart move, if true.
FWIW it is very common for larger companies to buy up Dark Fiber from large telco providers. All of the Tier 1 Telcos sell Dark Fiber as a standard product line, and you will find many of the Fortune 100 companies out there own their own. I highly doubt this is Google's atempt to change business plans and enter the depressed Telco sector.
They're going to create a global super computer. Local servers gives higher performance. What do you think the Google bar is for? Coming versions will ask you if you want to donate your free CPU cycles to Google. Google in turn will sell these to corporations that needs CPU power.
There's a difference between these two. I leave it as an exercise for the editor to discover.
would all these pipes allow us to watch shows we want, whenever we want, where ever we want? And google gets to add their own special advertisement within the video clip? hmmmmmmm another thought is VoIP/IM but I dunno how Google will make money other than charging people.
gLax... hahaha.
Google is mother of all distributed filesystems; as anyone who has tried to run, say NFS over a WAN can attest, latency kills. Running your own fiber links with essentialy zero latency is probably a lot less trouble than dinking with a vendor's occasionally flaky network and trying to recover from the eventual glitches.
What can a bunch of geeks do with a lot of fiber, a lot of money, and disruptive technology?
Google + WiMAX + VoIP = enough technology and brains to stomp any RBOC or cable company.
The only problem with this is that the WiMAX timeline is far away, and it's unclear how much the end-user antennas will go for. Will users want to install another dish?
Even if they don't go this route, that dark fiber could be a useful asset down the road. If they can price it well enough, they'll be on the "buy" side of a make-or-buy decision.
Maybe they'll buy akamai while they're at it.
But 'Dark Fiber' is the first industry catch phrase which, A) Actually means exactly what it says, and B) Doesn't make me want to strangle business pigs by their tasteful neckties. Those two things are almost certainly related.
Have a great day!
-FL
Just because Google can "do no evil" now, doesn't mean we shouldn't watch them closely. They are a publically traded company now, which means whatever conscience they might once have had is gone. "Power corrupts..." so the more powerful they get the more skeptical we should become.
One possible explanation is that Google is looking for something to do with their current $55B stock valuation. Other than making the founders incredibly wealthy, the high stock price by itself isn't particularly useful to the company. But it can be used as collateral for loans to acquire assets that could be useful both now and in the future. Given the massive storage and computing resources that Google already manages, I suspect that they can manage their own fiber network for very little incremental expense (I'm less sure about the physical care of the fiber -- who fixes your dark fiber when someone cuts it?). As they attempt to provide more and more services, they may simply want more control over the underlying transport.
AMS-IX has more members than LINX (list of LINX members http://www.linx.net/members/index.thtml compared to AMS-IX http://www.ams-ix.net/connected/ but that's probably due to the fact that to become a LINX member you have to fork out the best part of £10,000 (GBP), whereas I'm pretty sure (although feel free to correct me) AMS-IX is no where near that amount.
Most ISPs value their LINX peering much higher than any other peering (how many web hosts have you seen state they are a member of AMS-IX before they state LINX? Also LINX is generally seen by most ISPs are the main peering point between US and Europe (not even just the UK). Large ISPs in the UK (non-Telco ones) such as Claranet, Demon, Nildram etc have 'fatter' pipes to LINX rather than other European peering points (such as PARIX or DECIX).
Google could easily provide a much richer DNS service.
-S
If the telcos can afford to stay in the market, there is still profit in it for them. And if there is profit for them in it, there is some money there to be saved.
Telcos only know how to do things the expensive way. Look at VOIP for an example. People just want inexpensive dialtone.
What next? Google goes into the music business, and everyone suggests they align with the RIAA?
Google will create a massive distributed infrastrucutre for processing all electronic communications using their existing search technology and their keyhole mapping technology. The system will be complemented by a series of satellites launched by Google to monitor all activity on the planet. Google will purchase North Dakota and set themselves up as an independant state, and will then sell the results of their new search system to governments for a nominal fee. Governments will flock to the new service as it reduces the cost of maintaining their own spy network and allows them to avoid pesky local privacy laws.
We joke about welcoming our new overlords, but, in earnest, I for one welcome our new all seeing, all knowing, all searching Google overlords.
A more likely reason they would want to build a backbone network in the US is to attempt to get peer relationships with the large backbone ISP's rather than just being a customer buying transit service.
Traditionally, peering was free, buying transit service was not. Now such relationships are done by secret contract so the exact economics vary contract by contract, but it is a safe guess that peering is dramatically cheaper than transit. Google is likely getting to the scale (both from their web crawling and customer access) that the difference is important.
returned 75 hits.
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
Once you have the data mining infrastructure in place, what better way to examine and control people than to be their ISP too...
"Patterns of John Doe's surfing habits", downloaded files and IM conversations.
One step closer to the Total Information Awareness that it is.
A problem with a lot of the dark fibre is that the equipment to transfer data on that kind of fibre is old or obsolete. poeple wouldn't abandon it if it werent useful. My office still has miles of coax in the walls next to the cat5. We just never use it because we would need ISA cards and slots to utilize it and things with ISA slots inside are pentium and 486 machines
http://shit.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/17/1 224259
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I kept getting an error posting saying I had to few chars, 7.4 per line, so I had to add this to post.
But now their pooped!
First there was the web, ang Google became the best search engine, allowing you to check on anything, even if your credit card number is exposed somewhere out there.
Then there comes email, and Google figures out how to provide the best email service.
Next comes spam, and Google buys dark fiber to produce entry points into the Google Mail Facility, where you can rest assured that if the GMF sends you mail, it is not spam. The corollary will be, the only way to get email delivered is to have the GMF accept and deliver it.
Same Google knowledge is transferrable, massive cpu power to analyze email for spam patterns, massive database to identify/track spam sources, Google Way of cheap computers, smart software.
Why didn't I think of it? Oh, the day of spam is coming to an end! Oh, the humanity!
Truthfully, Google's major expense now is power. The best place to put their servers is somewhere with really cheap power. Where is power the cheapest? It's where the power is essentially free, which means hydropower, like the TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority was a public works project during the Depression that had people making dams to produce power). The problem is that there are no data centers there and likewise no cheap bandwidth.
They can make their own data center (buy an old bank, put the servers in the vault and a generator in the basement). However, there's no way that Google's going to be able to rent a cheap multi-gigabit link to some small town in Tennessee. The solution is not to lay fiber, but to simply rent some dark fiber that's passing through town. Remember that the fiber pretty much just follows the railroad tracks, so it passes through tons of small towns on its way to the big cities.
aQazaQa
Shouldn't a fibre be connected to a datacentre?
...beyond what they do now with their corporate search engine, to take advantage of this new fiber they are buying. Perhaps they intend that corps would not only get their search features like now (that they sell), but they could possibly add content management and other features and also do it on this new fiber, a separate (mostly) very high speed network for "special clients". Call it internet 3.
Well I do believe in hot babes...
I guess the submitter is of Commonwealth origin, as all his comments use "re", while the quoted (American) ad uses "er". Just one of those little details editors are supposed to notice.
I see lots of incorrect information floating around this board in regards to the costs of constructing a fiber optic network. I have constructed a decent variety of optical networks...all video, pure ethernet, Sonet...etc. And I can tell you from real first hand experience that the costs associated with this type of network are most expensive in relation to the fiber.
It is NOT the electronics to light it. People heard that 5 or 6 years ago, when it was true and have not let it go. I buy these type of electronics all the time and the price has dropped like there is no tomorrow (crash and all). The cost of the fiber network though, digging up streets, the fiber itself, the crews to hang it, trench it, pull it...all that good stuff has not gone down at all.
Ah Hah! Now we know Sergey was so frugal with his new-found wealth, he didn't simply limit his purchase to a few new pairs, but he bought inferior materials and shipped it off to Thailand to have them knitted by underpaid pre-pubescent sex workers.
Don't be evil, my ass!!!!
So it's not a North-American-educated editor either.
what if someone made a wireless mesh backbone? something that provided at least 1-5 mbit/s and under 40-50ms of latency to clients. Right now I am trying out the Locustworld mesh approach which is free as long as you have the compatible pc hardware which can be purchased using froogle or ebay. So far I have 3 locustworld nodes (home built) running in this appartment complex. My 802.11b network covers at least 5 buildings with good signal up to 3mbit/s. I know this is small.. but imagine 20 of my home-brew mesh nodes with more than one uplink and radio(s) that offer more bandwidth. This would make a network that could span many residential blocks for very low cost. if you want to donate to my idea feel free=].