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Google Router Rumors
An anonymous reader writes "There's a new rumor that Google is developing its own router. The company won't comment on the story, but it's been in the hardware business for a while and expanded its presence with Android. If Larry Ellison can go halvsies with HP on a server, then Eric Schmidt should certainly be able to make Cisco nervous."
...to procrastinate on the CCNA test.
THL phish sticks
All I need now is google underwear that twitters for me with real time gps tracking so I know where I've been.
I seem to remember rumors of them building their own insane (10 GbE) hardware switches. And I don't think that's hard to imagine as nothing on the market at the time could possibly meet their needs.
... like many claims they could not be operating on TCP/IP stacks on the inside. Because it's such a resource hog in some respects but that's irrelevant--I'm certain they can apply some of their ideas universally. I would put my money on them being the leader in research on networks and network theory ... probably past Cisco even (although behind the NSA as no one's ever sure about those guys). I feel that networking is so closely tied to their bread and butter search application that they should be dumping huge R&D into that field. I can't offer proof but it certainly makes sense to me.
Of course, there's a lot of questions that remain to be answered
And all I can say is that it's about time someone put pressure on the home & enterprise networking hardware companies. What a stagnant squabbling market that has become.
My work here is dung.
I bet these guys are pretty are pretty nervous too.
Well, besides the obvious "buy the box" revenue, how else can Google make money on it? [tinfoil] Always consider every router as a man-in-the-middle. Suddenly, every http: you visit will "help target your ads." One National Security Letter later, and every mailto: and http: and irc: and torrent: that you visit will "enable investigations into conspiracy models."[/tinfoil]
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I hope they include sensible and up-to-date standards and protocols. I'm thinking about the possibilities of the interface of the tomato firmware and importantly, inclusion of ipv6 support. If we want this to happen in this generation we need to get software support on at least basic networking devices(thinking of routers and OSes).
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
It seems likely to me that since Google is full of really smart people who seem to have a touch of the NIH syndrome, it probably isn't surprising that they wanted to develop their own routers from scratch instead of paying through the nose for Cisco or Juniper devices, especially since they needed hundreds or thousands of them and really don't want to have to pay for support contracts. I'd see a Google router announcement as just a productization of something they already use internally, just like Protocol Buffers.
The problem is that Google develops tech internally that is extremely good at solving their problems, but they don't always apply well outside of Google. Protocol Buffers aren't exactly obsoleting XML and from all indications they probably never will. The Google router will probably be super fast and simple, but lack a whole bunch of the more obscure features. The problem is that there's someone out there for each one of those obscure features, and if you don't support it your product won't even make it in the door. This is a problem Juniper runs into a lot, they have good and fast hardware, but the only thing it does is route.
In fact the article points out that Google's router is most likely to compete directly with Juniper instead of Cisco.
I read the internet for the articles.
They'll be 100% on the up and up WRT implementing standards compliance, and will release every last detail as open source, no-strings-attached goodness for the world to use. Such an act would be a giant cudgel that they could use against arguments that they're embracing proprietary tactics. They should do for routers what Android is trying to do for phones.
Forgive my spelling from time to time. I'm often posting during short breaks.
Hopefully they will get IPv6 in as a standard feature. I get annoyed at being told I need to start getting ready for IPv6, only to find out that the Apple Airport is more or less the only one offering this feature out of the box.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Presumably the people that would buy stuff just because it was made by Google are not a major demographic. So Google will need to do something to
1) raise the barrier to entry, no point issuing a device that anyone could make with Linux and a '386. Also, many cisco routers (eg. the 1800 series) genuinely represent value for money.
2) Provide good quality support.
So to raise the barrier to entry, it has to be a pretty special product, maybe doing the most useful 80% of what a cisco does flawlessly and improving upon cisco in come other areas (ones I can think off of the top of my head are ease of deployment and virtualization (vrf)).
The other reason people insist on Cisco, even when there are other cheaper options, is that they believe Cisco support their product well with training and technical support. This in my experience is an illusion. By and large the Cisco TAC is awful and maintaining certification is expensive and time consuming and the training materials are riddled with misprints, bugs and corporate "best practices" that are self-serving to Cisco.
So Google have a huge hill to climb, but I'm sure that it can be done in the space of a couple of years.
Nullius in verba
TFA says that Juniper is doomed because Google is getting ready to switch to their own in-house brand of routers. I find this difficult to believe for several reasons. One is that even if Google is Juniper's biggest customer, one customer does not a demise make -- Juniper has many other customers, including the entire UUnet (MCI, WorldCom, Verizon Business, whatever they're calling themselves this year) backbone. But there are far more practical reasons. Routers contain a lot of specialized hardware designed for rapid switching of packets. Google may have a lot of smart people working for them, but they certainly don't have the resources on board to design and build all of those ASIC's and other custom hardware, and it doesn't really make sense for them to get into that business during a recession just for an in-house project. (And no, don't give me that line about how a fast enough server with multiple Ethernet cards can substitute for even a mid-grade Cisco or Juniper. I manage a data center network and know the numbers. It can't even come close, no matter how good the software is, because a general purpose computer has to forward every packet using software, while a real router only makes a routing decision once and then all the rest of the packets for that destination are switched in hardware at wire speed.)
Nothing to see here. Move along.
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My router works fine, and I don't have Google stealing all of my LAN packets and serving me ads.
A fucking grouter had better make me warm delicious waffles if they want me to buy it. Even then, I'd only use it to make waffles.
And now I'm off to amazon to look for a waffle maker.
I really hope they throw in IPv6. There are no consumer-level routers available with IPv6 support; it's been driving me crazy. Everyone will probably be forced to buy new routers in a few years anyway.
With that said, I think Google is probably developing a router for their own in-house use. I have doubts this will actually hit the consumer market.
google.slashdot
Of course Google would not waste time developing their own ASICs. Companies like Marvell, Broadcom, and Dune offer plenty to choose from, and companies such as FDRY and JNPR already use these to build their own offerings.
It only makes sense for Google to use the building blocks to make a device that meets their specific needs.
1. it's open source
2. it's open source
3. it's open source
and probably some other reasons too.
The Apple Airport Express and Airport Extreme routers support IPv6, although there's a bug in the latest firmware for doing configured tunnels.
This
Cisco offers simple push-button technology for routers, but they also offer the best customer service in the business.
Google's customer service record is not as good as Cisco's, and that is a condition that will not improve.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
That's a great marketing perk if nothing else. Why deny the claim when you can easily say "No Comment" and leave the world speculating. Positive spin like that is golden.
I hadn't noticed til you mentioned it, but yes, I have not had to reboot my Linksys v6(running ddwrt) for at least 5 months, which is when I plugged it into my UPS. Nice!
The answer is obviously 'c' and that's exactly why I would never allow such a device onto my network.
Without the 2nd Amendment, the others are just suggestions.
I have this mental image of a case with wide blue, red, yellow, blue, green then red stripes as well as similarly colored network cables, ethernet jacks, lights and buttons....
BARF!!!
Oh, I'm sure it'll work great - but hide that bitch in the rear of your rack space, that's for sure.
It's interesting that Apple OSX has supported IPv6 for a while (probably a side-effect from using BSD) and Apple routers (Airport Extreme) supports IPv6 and (if I remember the specs right) tunneling IPv6 over IPv4 out of the box and enabled.
While that does not represent the vast majority of the computers/home routers in use, this does show that some companies are trying to start the trend.
DEMETRIUS: Villain, what hast thou done?
AARON: Villain, I have done thy mother.
Shakespeare invents 'your mom'
Everybody seems to be assuming that these new routers will be for sale. That's obviously not going to happen — there just isn't room in the marketplace for a new player, even if that player is Google. Breaking into a new hardware marketplace is hard. You have to develop sales channels, create a hardware support organization, set up an operations organization to manage production, etc. etc.
I know about these things because for the last couple of years my job has been to document some of Sun's hardware products. Before that I mostly documented software, and the shear complexity of designing, building, distributing, selling and supporting actual physical products still boggles my mind. At product team meetings I sometimes feel at sea, even though the technical concepts I have to deal with are actually much simpler than those I faced when I was on software product teams. The logistics are just mind boggling.
Google isn't set up to be "in the hardware business". They make their own servers because there are no manufacturers that are able to meet their specialized needs. Now they seem to have decided that their routers also require specialized in-house designs. They haven't tried to sell these servers to other companies, and they won't try to sell their routers. Even if they could hope to compete, it would mean building up the kind of technical bureaucracy that Google's top echelon has no interest in managing.
Hell, they don't really have a proper bureaucracy for the much simpler job of creating and distributing their software products. If they actually charged money for most of them, they'd be trouble.
And Android? How does Android count as being "in the hardware business"? Is Google selling a cell phone I haven't heard about?
Or Google could buy Juniper. Let the rumor drive down the stock and pick them up at fire sale prices.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Post is exactly right. The ASICs are already out there and in use by pretty much everyone for their COTS routers.
When one gets into the carrier-scale equipment I don't have a clue how that stuff goes. But I've seen enough low-end ( $10,000) routers taken apart to know that AC's comments are accurate.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Am I the only one who read this and thought, "Hmmm, it must be time for Google to renew their support contracts with Juniper.".
"leak" a rumor about no longer needing Juniper, and watch juniper lower their support rates.
"...even if Google is Juniper's biggest customer, one customer does not a demise make..."
That really depends. For smart companies, they've sufficiently diversified their client base such that the loss of one will hurt but not cripple. Some clients, however, just become so damn big and a company simply can't get enough other clients or the increase the volume from the other existing clients high enough to balance against that one mega-client. Once one client represents a massive percentage of your revenue and the loss of that client would force you into immediate emergency restructuring in the hopes of survival, then yes, one client a demise can potentially make.
...if it was free, or paid for itself. and google paid me for the info they gleaned from my network traffic. Ultimately its nothing but a data-mining tool for google, so it is only fair that they pay me for the bandwidth and my data...
i know, i'm just hilarious!
they say it is often more relevant then the comment above, all we know is its called the Sig!
The questions really are: how many different types of ASICs and boards are in those routers plus how many of the ASICs cannot be replaced with FPGAs and how many of the different board types cannot be rationalized to a smaller number of types? Remember that Google probably doesn't need the level of flexibility offered across Juniper's product range. It is clear that Google already has expertise in chip design -- it's not hard to find board design expertise (either in-house or outsourced).
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Just like with the 10G switches, this has all the earmarks of something for purely internal use rather than something they're planning to sell. That means their current vendor, which is Juniper according to TFA, loses Google as a customer, but that's about it.
If anything, Cisco should be happy that their competitor is losing business.
Those are the wrong questions, Google doesn't have a business model. They've been getting better, but the R&D has been all over the map and much of it doesn't have a prospective positive cashflow until after release. I'm not saying that all research needs to have an obvious way of marketing it, but a business shouldn't be buying out other businesses that lack a business model.
As a business they've been surviving largely upon largesse and a DoJ that doesn't believe in regulation. At some point they'll have to form up a model or die. It's not really beyond the realm of possibility that a new administration taking regulation more seriously could run them into the ground by requiring that they compete with other corporations. That deal with doubleclick is not the sort of thing that responsible regulator typically allow.
it doesn't contribute to google's business model, the rumor speculates that this is a bit like big table, and the rest of google's internal stuff. Basically they can't buy routers to handle internal traffic that satisfy their needs, so they are building their own for use in their data centers (ala big table, where they built a db technology rather than use oracle, or some other existing tech)
Vista also supports 6to4 out of the box. Unlike OS X, however, a Vista machine advertises itself as a 6to4 gateway on the anycast address, meaning that plugging a Vista machine in behind a NAT will break every other IPv6-enabled machine (including other Vista machines).
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It is clear that Google already has expertise in chip design
What expertise have they demonstrated? Android doesn't mean much. That means they could design a router? Now creating a router that only supports a couple of protocols that they specifically need as opposed to the general purpose routers that require IOS/JUNOS and all the features they support.
However if Cisco can go out and make servers, than I'm sure google could hire enough people to build a router.
And if they did design their own, they could probably go to one of these companies and say 'we need 10,000 of these. If you fab them for us, you can keep the design and do whatever you want with it. Interested?'
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PC Engines are another option.
Meh, the software catalog was always a bit limited. I mean, OK, they had Bonk's Adventure - but how does that measure up against the likes of Sonic the Hedgehog, Super Mario Brothers, or Rockman?
Bow-ties are cool.
or will they ROUTE (sp?) cisco through and through...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Question related to IPv6 - is it a hardware requirement or a software requirement that is the issue right now? I recently bought a wireless router that I know can be flashed to DD-WRT (haven't done it yet). In the future could it be flashed to support IPv6?
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
If the Google router is a core router, the effect on Juniper will be minimal: Google (and Verizon and...) likes the Juniper edge routers. I can understand Google considering its own core, but to dive into the edge business would be suicide.
Core routers seem glamorous but, while they are ludicrously quick, they get that speed (at least in part) by being dumber than dirt. Unlike edge routers, they don't have sophisticated authentication (RADIUS and the like), their DHCP support is primitive at best (and the world will still need IPv4 for some time to come), and the various governments are going to require some kind of CALEA facility or those pipes will get ripped right out of the ground. The list of technical hurdles for a new "edger" is really formidable. Oh yeah, don't forget the multitude of edge resident PSEUDO-protocols - really just hacks for some carrier's specific needs (example: a 5k byte DHCP renewal packet) and only minimally documented.
I cannot see Google duplicating all of the edge stuff ... at least, I think they're smarter than that. If otherwise, the stock to dump is Google's.
Why go bringing CISCO into this. Apart from creating products people want to use (gmail, search, etc..) google has two main focuses: building a back end able to efficiently run those applications and ensuring the consumer has easy access to those services.
Android and google's actions in the spectrum market weren't made just to fuck around with products outside their core competencies. They were strategic moves made to ensure that customers on mobile devices didn't end up directed away from google products by someone controlling the network or providing the handset.
Similarly google isn't about to start competing in the router market just for kicks. It's outside of their core competencies and the potential for profit simply wouldn't justify the resource expenditure.
Likely google is working on a custom router to help make their backend more efficient. To take an educated guess I would imagine that they want to build in intelligent load balancing into their routers. In other words have the routers maintain information about where certain kinds of data live and/or what machines are heavily loaded and then intelligently send requests for computations to lightly loaded nodes near the data. They might also want to simply build in custom handling of packets for things like GFS.
Not only will google not bother to compete in the router market but I suspect they won't even allow the technology they use for this to escape the company. After all most of the people who would benefit from this kind of optimization are their direct competitors.
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
On the plus side, a substantial percentage of consumer-level routers support a convenient firmware upgrade. Doesn't change the fact that the stock firmware is junk; but does make it far less relevant.
It's an awful summary. Google isn't dumb enough to go compete in the router market. They are likely creating optimized routers to service their own backend.
Don't you remember this was the same thing that happened when information on GFS leaked or the custom OS versions they use in their data center. People hyped it up as if google was going to take on MS in the OS arena.
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
I've often heard this referred to as the Wal-Mart effect. Once Wal-Mart distributes your product nationally, they basically own you. Because once you ramp up production to meet Wal-Mart needs, you can't just scale back down if they drop you... and they can and will drop you if you do not behave.
Check out my lame java blog at www.javachopshop.com
TFA says that Juniper is doomed because Google is getting ready to switch to their own in-house brand of routers. I find this difficult to believe for several reasons. One is that even if Google is Juniper's biggest customer, one customer does not a demise make -- Juniper has many other customers...
Agreed. I worked in the routing industry and Juniper has plenty of loyal customers yet.
But there are far more practical reasons. Routers contain a lot of specialized hardware designed for rapid switching of packets.
I'm not as firm on this one. There are a number of generic switching hardware manufacturers out there with nice platforms upon which anyone can build a Linux or NetBSD device with a little work. Also, you can get a lot out of many smaller devices working as a mesh when you factor in the cost of a lot of little generic boxes. It would not be so hard to start with switches and then start replacing routing hardware heading towards the core routers, right up until you hit a place where the cost/performance no longer makes sense. I remember hearing Google already did this with switches internally.
Another question is how much sense it makes for Google to take this commercial or buy an existing commercial developer. How much do some of these companies cost right now compared to how much Google is shelling out regularly? We're not necessarily talking about Google starting from scratch, but given some of the scarily good OSS routing packages out there that is an option.
This one got tagged "googlefood", which I think is funny, but I feel compelled to mention that I dined on Google food for several months in the early part of this decade, when I was a temp at GOOG for 4 months. This was back when they had this guy named Charlie cooking for them. He used to be the personal chef for the Grateful Dead, and he was no slouch in the kitchen. Since GOOG gave you every meal for free in those days, and since I was making temp money, I took full advantage. Each and every meal was culinary adventure, in a good way. There was always something to delight everyone, and it was all delicious.
I understand that Charlie departed some time ago (in a private jet made of solid gold, no doubt), and GOOG in general just ain't what she used to be when they still had less than 1000 employees. It's probably still way better than working for HP or Sun, but still... there was a time when Googlefood really meant something!
one customer does not a demise make
Well, as someone working in the auto industry, I've seen first hand how this is not true. We have many suppliers that are in trouble simply because Ford or GM has scaled back their production so much. I work for an automaker that still is profitable.. but we're getting hit hard because of supplier closings.
For example, if Supplier X makes 1000 widgets per day, they have the employees, the equipment, and the building to do it efficiently and cost effectively. If,due to demand, you can only sell 400 widgets per day the overhead becomes so enormous you are no longer a competative business.
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
As far as I know, yes it can be flashed. I believe that consumer hardware can be flashed to support ipv6. Unfortunately that is not enough since you need to include ipv6 support in all software that likes to use the internet. We still have a long way to go but consumergrade hardware with ipv6 support would be a good start.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
Linksys/Cisco 500 series. Retail $595, you can get them around the 380-450 price range. http://www.cisco.com/cisco/web/solutions/small_business/products/routers_switches/500_series_secure_routers/index.html
IP is entirely at the software level (level 3 for you OSI folks out there). The only part that's really hardware is OSI level 1, which describes the physical medium (e.g. copper wire or radio waves).
This is old news and was announced almost two years ago http://www.google.com/tisp/
Anyone can develop a router. It's easy. Just put FreeBSD or NetBSD onto a platform and tune it the way you'd like it. Want to build a high end product? Add a little hardware acceleration (maybe some ASICs or a separate CPU to manage the Ethernet ports).
This is so old. As a former datacenter employee.
Yes it's happened. They've designed their own layer 3 switches, routers, etc.
Now get over it.
I can't believe nobody has made mention of Vyatta. It's an excellent appliance-like distro based on, I believe, Debian.
It's not mentioned because it's not even remotely relevant to the discussion.
All the bells and whistles you'd expect from a high-end device at a fraction (by which I mean ~1/3) of the cost relative to a Cisco purchase.
Including bells and whistles like custom ASICs and switching fabrics? Oh, wait, it doesn't have those. Nothing about Vyatta is "high-end." It is, however, a viable alternative at the very low-end.
"Nature doesn't care how smart you are. You can still be wrong." - Richard Feynman
The lines between software and hardware are actually really blurry. Most NICs, for example, have hardware which assists in manipulating packets--anything from simply managing the checksums to VLAN tagging. Some cards even come with prioritization in the ASIC. Then you get highly programmable NICs which basically include an FPGA and a programming interface. With these, you can implement a somewhat arbitrary portion of the TCP/IP stack in the FPGA.
"But it's still softare!" you may cry. Well, maybe. But that's the point. The line between software and hardware is wide and blurry these days which, incidentally, is part of the reason why we have binary blogs for wireless drivers in the Linux kernel (they're basically firmware for the cards which the OS loads on boot.)
So saying "the software level" really just doesn't make sense. The layers in the OSI model don't distinguish between hardware and software--in fact, software isn't really mentioned except in layer 7 (the application layer.)
These days in definitely makes sense to byo router. Vyatta, as mentioned before, is certainly viable. Perhaps more so, would be OpenBSD's OpenBGP/OSPF project. Vyatta has one critical weakness in routing, they still use Zebra/Quagga as for its RDE. Quagga is notorious for bugs and instability. One might assume that Vyatta corrected a few of them but I am more likely to trust OpenBSD for that. OpenBSD will route RIP, OSPF, and BGP as well as some others. Check out the testimonials of the project's website where an ISP claimed to have 3 full BGP views at higher performance than a Cisco.
FYI, my Linksys, flashed with DD-WRT (an older version, from a few years ago, can't remember) is what provides my IPv6 connectivity at my house.
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
And nobody is suspicious for a second that the source is from a direct competitor of the company that currently delivers routers to Google?
Hello?
I hope the SEC gets notified of this.
Windows 2000 - from the guys who brought us edlin
Why would a rumour of a buyout drive the stock price down? Do all the investors go "oh my god a massive company with billions of dollars is going to want to buy my shares, I'd better get rid of them now for as little as possible!"?
Haha disregard that I suck cocks.
I just realised what rumour you were referring to. :(
Seeing as TFA is too vague for anyone to begin to conjecture on specifications it is presumptive of you to assume that ASICs are required.
Google, the algorithms, runs on commodity hardware and seems to be doing fine.. They don't need 8-way HP or IBM equipment to run their code.
While I agree with you that front-end routers with multiple gigabit connections handling full BGP tables would probably need the performance only an ASIC can provide, I'm sure google has thousands of internal routers that perform rudimentary network separation, route failover, and maybe some packet filtering. A meticulously tuned Vyatta-esque implementation would work and be a internal build they could take ownership of.
CommentBot 0.7a running with args "-module irritate,disagree -target random"
Google, the algorithms, runs on commodity hardware and seems to be doing fine.. They don't need 8-way HP or IBM equipment to run their code.
Because it's highly distributed. That means nothing in terms of raw network throughput required. Highly distributed systems put more of a strain on the network.
While I agree with you that front-end routers with multiple gigabit connections handling full BGP tables would probably need the performance only an ASIC can provide, I'm sure google has thousands of internal routers that perform rudimentary network separation, route failover, and maybe some packet filtering. A meticulously tuned Vyatta-esque implementation would work and be a internal build they could take ownership of.
BGP is basically a control plane function and is more dependent on CPU and memory than anything else. If there's anywhere you could put a Vyatta box, it's probably on the Internet facing connections. On Internet facing routers, you're not concerned with latency like you are for internal routers. Sure, it's nice to be low, but there's not a huge difference between 20 microseconds and 200 microseconds when the speed of light is what it is. Internally, however, if you're going through 4 or so routers (maybe distribution router -> core router -> core router -> distribution router), there's a big difference between 20 microseconds and 200 microseconds per router.
That is why you won't see x86 routers in that function. Especially since they would need many 10 GigE ports. You just can't do that on a PC. Where I work, we're struggling with Cisco because you can only get 32 non-blocking 10 GigE connections on a 6500. It's not enough anymore.
"Nature doesn't care how smart you are. You can still be wrong." - Richard Feynman
http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=56939
My sentiments exactly. If a Nexus 7000 (15 terabits per second) switch and an ASR-9000 (6.4 terabits per second) router aren't large enough to do Google's job, then they're ahead of the market and have special/specific needs.
They're building the space shuttle equivalent in transportation. While the rest of us are getting along fine with passenger jets.
... is wide and blurry these days which, incidentally, is part of the reason why we have binary blogs for wireless drivers in the Linux kernel ...
To keep us updated on their experiences, and the traffic they're receiving? A disturbing thought...
The keyword here is "from a few years ago". IPv6 has been broken in recent DD-WRT versions for years. The software tools are incomplete, some of them (such as radvd) may not run properly at all in the release builds, and there is no configuration interface. There is a tutorial, but it's largely outdated.
Some users users have been sticking with 23 SP2 for precisely this purpose. It's possible to run IPv6 with more recent DD-WRT versions, but in order to get it to run, you need a custom build (see also here) and/or some medium to major manual configuration juggling.
As a state gets corrupt, its laws multiply; the most corrupt states have the most numerous laws. (Tacitus, Annales 3:27)
I'm so looking forward to taking the GCSE certification when it's available!
(Oh, wait, I've already taken it many years ago...)
Not only can I imagine such a device. I imagine them offering it for free as long as they are able to track your Internet usage for each individual computer. (For creating "aggregate" data, of course.) Personally, I long for the day when I'm no longer served ads based on my husband's interest in football stats. I'm also sure he no longer wishes to receive ads based on my interest in Anime. ("Stay off my computer, you're messing up my Google Desktop feeds!")
Google already owns part of Meraki networks, the wifi auto-mesh people. Their gear is actually decent and priced nicely. Not much to replace the typical home systems but it's a start.
it's been in the hardware business for a while and expanded its presence with Android.
can someone clarify? i know Google has their search appliance, but as far as i know, it's just a cheap dell server, of a line intended to be used by other parties for rebranding: link. there's even a case study on google on that page. the google search appliance is google software running on dell hardware. android is software, running on htc hardware.
i think the real question is, whose hardware (cisco,/linksys, smc, hp procurve, foundry, f5, etc) will this google routing software run on? (or am i missing something?)
not only is time travel possible, it's irrelevant.
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Can you say Walmart, I think you can =)
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Steve Yegge (Google employee) hinted about this in June 2007. (He said he had to write a new parser for it.) Look at point number 5 here: http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2007/06/rich-programmer-food.html
As pointed out, you can get IPv6 Routers using DD-WRT or buy a $300 router. I did say "no consumer-level routers available". The average joe isn't going to shell out a bunch of money, or spend time flashing their router with DD-WRT. If IPv6 is really going to take off, we need a huge initiative with the ISP's and big manufacturers like Cisco and Netgear to bring IPv6 to the consumer level. The closest we've come is Apple's new Airport hub offers IPv6 support; however it isn't very publicized, and the configuration still needs some work.
google.slashdot