Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

What Are Google and Verizon Up To?

Posted by Soulskill on from the what-aren't-they-up-to dept.

pickens writes "Robert X. Cringley has an op-ed in the NY Times in which he contends that Google has found a way to get special treatment from Verizon without actually compromising net neutrality, by beginning to co-locate some of their portable data centers with Verizon network hubs. 'With servers so close to users, Google could not only send its data faster but also avoid sending it over the Internet backbone that connects service providers and for which they all pay,' writes Cringley. 'This would save space for other traffic — and money for both Verizon and Google, as their backbone bills decline (wishful thinking, but theoretically possible). Net neutrality would be not only intact, but enhanced.' So why won't Google and Verizon admit what they're up to? 'If my guess is right, then I would think they're silent because it's a secret. They'd rather their competitors not know until a few hundred shipping containers are in place — and suddenly YouTube looks more like HBO.'"

4 of 120 comments (clear)

  1. Google presentation on their data centers by mbone · · Score: 4, Informative

    None of this would surprise me. Akamai has been placing gear in ISP's premises (for free!) for over a decade now.

    Here is a 2.4 Mbyte pdf on Google's approach to data centers, and a video tour.

  2. Re:Google TV by odies · · Score: 5, Informative

    Well, I don't really understand what is so interesting about this. Akamai and other CDN providers have been doing this for 15+ years already. It's nothing new.

  3. So? by nweaver · · Score: 4, Informative

    This is the entire Akamai business model: It saves money for BOTH google AND Verizon, and improves latency for Google.

    And unless the user is actually transferring data at full line rate (saturating buffers), does not penalize anyone else. (During full rate transfers, TCP dynamics cause short RTT flows to be favored).

    --
    Test your net with Netalyzr
  4. Re:Google TV by AnEducatedNegro · · Score: 4, Informative

    Yes. In fact, if you watched the worldcup on ESPN online you were watching the stream coming from a local server hosted by your ISP.

    Although, to be pedantic, not all CDNs host in every ISP's datacenter... only the really rich ones do. Everyone else just uses anycast to reduce latency. A good write up about anycast is here