Slashdot Mirror


Google Fiber Launches In Provo — and Here's What It Feels Like

Velcroman1 writes "I've seen the future. It's called gigabit Internet by Google Fiber, and it just launched in my hometown of Provo, Utah, the second of three scheduled cities to get speeds that are 100 times faster than the rest of America. 'What good is really fast Internet if the content stays the same?' you may ask yourself. I certainly did, before testing the service. Besides, my "high speed" Internet from Comcast seemed fast enough, enabling my household to stream HD videos, load web pages quickly, and connect multiple devices as needed, largely without hiccup. I was wrong. Using gigabit Internet, even in its infancy, opened my eyes to speed and reminded me of why I love the Internet."

338 comments

  1. Eat more by Ashenkase · · Score: 0

    Fiber

  2. Throughput? Latency? Peerings? by JWSmythe · · Score: 3, Insightful

    What was your throughput like? If they're providing GigE, you still won't see it on a single workstation. Did you measure the uplink speed?

    What was your latency like? You could have GigE, but if it's 1000ms pings, that's going to be worthless for most of this audience.

    Where are they peering? What did your traceroutes look like?

    There are lots of ways we can quantify how good or bad a connection is. You missed the important parts.

    --
    Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
  3. But... by The+RoboNerd · · Score: 1, Insightful

    All that symmetrical bandwidth + restrictions against running servers. Woot! http://worldofends.com/

    1. Re:But... by Aelanna · · Score: 4, Informative

      That's not entirely true, they amended their agreement to allow servers so long as they're not for commercial use. They also mentioned that they have commercial/business offerings in the pipeline that would bring back services such as static IPs, one of the few things that I will miss from Veracity.

    2. Re:But... by The+RoboNerd · · Score: 2

      Sounds like they actually listened then. Kudos to Google. Perhaps this will kick the other ISP's into actually competing again.

    3. Re:But... by farble1670 · · Score: 1

      Perhaps this will kick the other ISP's into actually competing again

      not when comcast et al. are lining the pockets of local governments to keep out competition.

    4. Re:But... by noh8rz10 · · Score: 1

      Perhaps this will kick the other ISP's into actually competing again.

      absolutely! google raised the bar, and gave the ISPs a standard to strive for. how fast again? 1gbps? how expensive? free? ommyeahno the ISPs are not interested in competing with that.

    5. Re:But... by Bengie · · Score: 1

      They didn't amend their agreement in the normal sense, they clarified it. Parts of their ToS already mentioned you could do non-commercial servers for stuff like friends and family, even game servers, but another part of their ToS was written in an absolute tone saying that no servers of any kind were allowed. It was also asked on their official forums and they said personal servers are fine, just don't be making money on it.

  4. Until you experience the speed ... by Taco+Cowboy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ... I was a researcher in a very advance research facility. At that time we had a (supposedly) "big pipe" to the Net, a 100Mbps line. (That was several decades ago)

    I was feeling kinda "proud" that I get to "play" with the "high speed link" to the world, that I, somehow, is on a higher pedestal than the rest of the peons ... until I visited South Korea.

    In a friend's home, yes, private house, I experienced for the first time, what raw speed meant.

    The 1Gbps speed just blew my fucking mind away, and imagine, they got that in their home, and I, a researcher, only get to play a supposedly "big 100Mbps pipe".

    --
    Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
    1. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I have a 100Mps fiber optics connection, it's more or less the standard where I live, and can't see any need for 1Gps. Besides, why "stream" things as Google advertises? Streaming is stupid technology, download instead and 100Mps will be fast enough.

      Now 1Gps download and upload with no restriction on use, including commercial one, that could be something useful...

    2. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Informative

      Sure, but do you really want to live in a country where there are on average 1200 people per square mile, vs the USA where there is on average 84 people per square mile? http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0934666.html my source.

    3. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Why "stream" things as Google advertises?

      Because

      Streaming is stupid technology

      For the consumer. For a provider, it's a godsend. Grant access to your material in some obfuscatory wrapper and call it an "app", and now you control all access, assuming you scramble the encryption keys once a week and bake them deep enough into the wrapper when you update. If your connection speed is fast enough that an end user can't tell the difference between it and their hard drive, there goes a good half? three quarters? of the incentive for bored nerds to liberate your content.

    4. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by uniquename72 · · Score: 4, Informative

      Your question implies a false equivalency -- one that's pushed by the telecoms in the U.S.

      While it's true that the US has much few people per square mile, that's because most people live in cities. There's absolutely no reason that our major cities (at least) can't match the internet speeds of any other similarly sized place in the world.

      New Yor City has 27,532 people per square mile. Vegas isn't even that dense and has nearly 4300 people per square mile.

      Slow connection speeds in US cities have nothing at all to do with population density.

    5. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by hawguy · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Sure, but do you really want to live in a country where there are on average 1200 people per square mile, vs the USA where there is on average 84 people per square mile? http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/... my source.

      People keep blaming lackluster USA broadband options on density, but when I lived in a USA city with a density of 17,000 people per square mile, my broadband choices were Comcast with up to 15mbit (12mbit was more typical, except for when it was worse or down), or AT&T DSL (not U-Verse) which could offer "up to" 1.5mbit due to my distance from the central office. When you look at my entire metropolitan area, it encompasses 7000 square miles (about half the size of The Netherlands) and has a density of 1000 people per square mile.

      So yeah, if I lived in a field in the middle of Nebraska, I probably shouldn't complain when I have limited options, but if I live in a city, why do my poor broadband choices get blamed on population density?

    6. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by JWSmythe · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I brought up quite a few fresh GigE circuits in datacenters. For the first day or so, it was exclusively mine to use. Once I got bandwidth monitoring up, I got to see what the line could really do.

      With plenty of sites, I couldn't pull more than 1Mb/s. Your throughput is still totally dependent on the throughput of every point from their disk to you.

      My laptop couldn't saturate a GigE line. The same as the previous statement applies. If the laptop won't pass 1000Mb/s for any portion, you won't get the full speed. It could be the bus, disk, or just the software handling the connection.

      To saturate the line, I'd bring up a few idle servers, and then have multiple large downloads going to multiple places. Like, downloading distro ISOs from various mirrors.

      Sometimes the equipment you have in between is the bottleneck. I put GigE in at my house, because I have servers and my home LAN. The consumer router for the home LAN I was using did GigE on all ports. I couldn't pull more than 80Mb/s through it. I swapped it for a slightly better consumer router, which will pass about 400Mb/s.

      Even with 400Mb/s between the two rooms, I can see the throughput suffer if a server is overloaded, or is doing something dumb.

      Watching my uplink graphs, I see that I very occasionally pull 80Mb/s from the Internet. Actually last night was 85.3Mb/s. They are tiny spikes when intensive traffic hits. I believe, because of when it happens, that's a backup event from a remote site. Normal daily use is single digit Mb/s. Like, someone on the LAN as I'm writing this is playing a FPS online. Their latency is in the single digits. They're pulling a whopping 220Kb/s.

      I guess if you had 5 or 6 torrent boxes running, you could saturate your GigE line. Normal use, most people won't be able to tell the difference between a 10Mb/s uplink and a 100Mb/s uplink.

      --
      Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
    7. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by hawguy · · Score: 3, Informative

      Why "stream" things as Google advertises?

      Because

      Streaming is stupid technology

      For the consumer. For a provider, it's a godsend. Grant access to your material in some obfuscatory wrapper and call it an "app", and now you control all access, assuming you scramble the encryption keys once a week and bake them deep enough into the wrapper when you update.

      It can be good consumers too -- I don't want to wait to download an entire movie before watching it, I want to click "play" and have it start playing immediately. And I don't necessarily want to store every movie or video clip I watch anyway - there are lots of things I watch only once and never want to see again. Streaming certainly can be bad for consumers, but it has its good points.

      If your connection speed is fast enough that an end user can't tell the difference between it and their hard drive, there goes a good half? three quarters? of the incentive for bored nerds to liberate your content.

      What does connection speed have to do with pirating content? I don't think anyone pirates a movie because it loads too slow from Netflix, given that bittorrenting a movie can take all night.

    8. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by Jeremy+Erwin · · Score: 1

      The population density of my county is 2455 people per square mile. I prefer the urban bits of my surroundings-- the suburban sprawl of the less dense parts sometimes does little for walkability.

    9. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by Anne_Nonymous · · Score: 2

      In Best Korea we have 1000Gbps to all homes in the country. Even researchers.

    10. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by discordia666 · · Score: 1

      Sure, but do you really want to live in a country where there are on average 1200 people per square mile

      Yes.

    11. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by Jah-Wren+Ryel · · Score: 2

      New Yor City has 27,532 people per square mile.

      FWIW, Seoul and Hong Kong are probably the two cities with the cheapest high-speed internet. I recall seeing something on the order of 1gbps for the rough equivalent of $25/month in those cities in news articles past.

      Seoul's population density is 45,000 per sq mile
      Hong Kong is 67,000 per sq mile

      --
      When information is power, privacy is freedom.
    12. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by JDAustin · · Score: 1

      Where in the SF Bay area do you live? I ask because I had crappy DSL (and it doesn't matter who your ISP was, speed is the same; I had DSLExtreme for years) cause I lived 10k+ feet from the office and switched to Comcast and I get 50mbit+ now.

      BTW, I'm in CV.

    13. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by hawguy · · Score: 1

      Where in the SF Bay area do you live? I ask because I had crappy DSL (and it doesn't matter who your ISP was, speed is the same; I had DSLExtreme for years) cause I lived 10k+ feet from the office and switched to Comcast and I get 50mbit+ now.

      BTW, I'm in CV.

      That was when I lived in the Sunset district of SF -- I've moved out of the city since then and now have Sonic.Net Fusion DSL. 15mbit (5500 feet from the CO) plus a free phone line for $39/month (taxes + equipment rental make it closer to $55) -- great deal, great service. I still have a Comcast 50Mbit connection, but will drop that as soon as my 12 month term is up -- when it works, it works well, but once or twice a week, packet loss and latency go through the roof, and the line becomes unusable for 30 - 60 minutes at a time. Calls to support have not been helpful, by the time I go through their standard script (reboot the computer, renew DHCP, power cycle the modem, etc), the problem either resolves itself or not, but even when it doesn't all they say is that they can send a technician to look at my wiring, but if there's no problem, I'll have to pay.

      I got the Sonic connection to use as a backup to Comcast, but for the past few months, I've flipped around with Sonic as the primary and Comcast as the backup and the Sonic connection has been great.

    14. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by Cramer · · Score: 1

      For anything I ever plan to watch more than once, streaming is inefficient. It's easy enough to do it the way Tivo (amazon, blockbuster, etc.), and DTV/DISH video-on-demand is handled... download to the DVR, in sequence, from the beginning; you can begin watching it immediately, but that depends on the various networks being able to keep up -- in my experience, the CDN is usually too slow, 'tho I know it doesn't have to be. (*cough*netflix*cough*)

    15. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by Cramer · · Score: 1

      Live there? Not so much. Be an ISP there? You BET! High density makes for cheap, efficient, networking.

      Put another way: would you rather provide networking to every street light along I-20, or every apartment in a single, one block, 12-story building?

    16. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Why is it harder or more expensive to drag a sliver of glass 4-5 (or 40-50) miles up a country road than a twisted pair? Over longer distances (the boonies), optical is currently cheaper for high-bandwidth connections, even over the mythic last mile. Again in the boonies, fiber has much lower maintenance requirements, is impervious to EMI, shorts, corrosion, moisture and so on. At the point of use, fiber can be split into Cat 6 or Cat 5e, for nominal GB-ethernet under 100m - think automated farm.

      I call BS on the pop. density issue, the fiber is already in place over huge swaths of the US - drive any interstate, or state highway to observe the ubiquitous Fiber-Optic warning posts along the way. I noticed this on a drive from Cleveland to Texas, and again Texas to Colorado - talk about low population density!

    17. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What does connection speed have to do with pirating content? I don't think anyone pirates a movie because it loads too slow from Netflix, given that bittorrenting a movie can take all night.

      I'm on slow DSL. I can either Netflix at so-so 480p quality and really slow down the internet for everyone else in the house, or plan ahead and bittorrent the 720p quality mp4 when the download won't impact anything. Technically the bittorent is pirating, even though I could have watched it on Netflix.

      For new movies though, I just RedBox the Blu-Ray.

    18. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by Cramer · · Score: 2

      This is also a red-herring. Go ask Verizon how "easy" it is/was to get fiber everywhere in NYC. Red tape out the wazzo from the city itself. And then an independent fight with every major property owner. And then the city has to put it's nose in there again. (damned extensive grounding requirements for a f'ing glass fiber connectivity device.)

    19. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by misexistentialist · · Score: 1

      I guess if you had 5 or 6 torrent boxes running, you could saturate your GigE line.

      Don't see why you'd need more than one, though it's true you'd need to optimize the disk configuration

    20. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by ReverendLoki · · Score: 3, Interesting

      This is why Google is rolling out to KC, Provo and Austin. I know in KC, the city agreed to streamline and cut a deal on government costs on rolling out the hardware - less giving "big business" a break, and more taking the course of action that's best for it's citizens, really. I believe Provo and Austin have done similar, and if I recall, Provo even had a small, existing fiber rollout in place to start from.

      --
      09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
    21. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, i live in an area with i would wager 10 or 20 per square mile. i have a 13mbit connection and its expensive. some people live in cities with populations in the hundreds of thousands that are getting 10 or 20mbit. it can be done, and in a short while, my isp has agreed to lay fiber to my house, though my cost per month would probably crack 200 bucks for service and we havent negotiated bandwidth yet. but with true visionary outlooks of what the internet should be, even a country bumpkin could be set up better than some areas in cities where 10mbit or so dsl is commonplace.

    22. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by icebike · · Score: 1

      But how many things are ever watched more than once?

      --
      Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
    23. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by icebike · · Score: 1

      This is also a red-herring. Go ask Verizon how "easy" it is/was to get fiber everywhere in NYC. Red tape out the wazzo from the city itself. And then an independent fight with every major property owner. And then the city has to put it's nose in there again. (damned extensive grounding requirements for a f'ing glass fiber connectivity device.)

      Why wouldn't you ground it?

      Is the fiber not armored? Does it not have a metal shield?
      It could be rather unpleasant dicking around with your unplugged router and getting 110 zap because you bone headed neighbor decided it was ok to run his fiber thru his toaster of something.

      --
      Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
    24. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by Areyoukiddingme · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Four words: Small children and Disney.

      You have no idea.

    25. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by Areyoukiddingme · · Score: 2

      Normal use, most people won't be able to tell the difference between a 10Mb/s uplink and a 100Mb/s uplink.

      That's easier than you think for a normal person to see these days. Four separate people streaming four separate HD streams can run right up against the 10 megabit ceiling and wish for more.

      Of course, the cable company desperately wants to strangle that use case, and force all of their subscribers over to their ultimate walled garden of digital cable and On Demand(TM) streaming. It's just that normal people are resisting. Damn those normal people anyway.

    26. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by xyzzymage · · Score: 2

      If you're in the Bay Area, then you had more choices than just the big two, but you have to do your homework via web searches &asking on forums like DSLReports, rather than rely on ads to know about them. Just to name the most well-known ones that I know are available all over the Bay: Sonic.net & DSLExtreme both have DSL and Fusion (if you're not too far from the central office), plus Sonic.net has fiber in a couple of cities now.

      Regarding DSL, you can also have shitty speeds because of how old your neighborhood is. Even with nice new wiring inside my house, we max out at 6mbit -- we're a fairly large distance from the phone company's central office, plus the neighborhood's all-underground wiring is over 40 fucking years old. My father lives only a few miles away, but the neighborhood is only around 15 years old and is much closer to the central office, so they get 12mbit instead.

      The real reason fiber isn't deployed, of course, is that people are still willing to shell out the money for the shitty overpriced service they have. The only way things are going to change is if people learn about and start switching to other providers with at least nicer pricing.

    27. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by green1 · · Score: 2

      Depends what they are using. The fibre used by our local telecom has no metal shield, there's no reason for it. The metal shield on copper is to limit RF interference. glass doesn't have that problem.
      (and before you say the metal is to protect from physical damage, actually look at the cables used by telcos. the metal is paper thin and wouldn't protect against anything, it's the plastic sheath that offers the physical protection, not the metal.)

    28. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by Nutria · · Score: 1

      But how many things are ever watched more than once?

      Come to my house and see how my daughter loves to watch the same romance movies over and over.

      --
      "I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
    29. Re: Until you experience the speed ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Regarding your cable issues...

      Make sure your modem is connected to a direct run from the pole - no splitters or any signal-loss inducing gadgets in between.

      Quality cabling - make sure the cable you're using can support the necessary bandwidth. A free visit from your local cable tech to test the cabling may be necessary if you don't have the hardware laying around.

      DOCSIS 3.0 compliant hardware is crucial. I've found a lot of DOCSIS 2 hardware causes the precise problems you've described and those problems vanished when newer hardware was installed.

      Also, before you do any of the above, write a script to measure latency/bandwidth so you have stats to show the tech. Running them on a device connected via wired Ethernet is recommended as that eliminates any possible wireless spectrum issues. That's a whole different can of worms.

    30. Re: Until you experience the speed ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I take it you have no experience with fiber. No it does not have metal shielding and there is no reason to ground it.

    31. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Just download to a RAMdisk

    32. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by AlphaWolf_HK · · Score: 1

      EMI, shorts, corrosion, moisture and so on.

      Hmm not exactly. You still run copper alongside fiber - you need it mainly to power the repeaters, but on some fiber runs you also want it to encase the fiber line in a copper shielding to protect it while still being a little bit flexible. And copper does carry all of those drawbacks no matter what (though EMI is much easier to correct for.) In addition to that, in urban settings, you're more likely to run into people digging holes in seemingly arbitrary spots to say...put up a mailbox, fence post, etc. Digging tools and already laid fiber lines don't mix.

      Of course, you can run these along power lines, but you still want the repeaters to be off of the grid, or at least have access to their own grid in case the main one falls (communication is pretty important during disasters.)

      --
      Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
    33. Re: Until you experience the speed ... by icebike · · Score: 1

      All the fiber I've dealt with (and yes, son, I've dealt with a lot of it) is armored, for direct burial.

      --
      Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
    34. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by Darinbob · · Score: 1

      Wow, 1Gbps, that's like half an hour until you hit the monthly cap!

    35. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      For new movies though, I just RedBox the Blu-Ray.

      That's what I do. Fast enough Internet access to do that here in Seattle is just a pipe-dream for most people. In three or four days, I can BitTorrent most 750 Mbyte movies. It would be very nice to have a fast connection and be able to stream Netflix like you do so I wouldn't have to wait days to watch something. You don't realize how lucky you are.

    36. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by Cramer · · Score: 1

      Go look at what's required in NYC installations and tell me it's not way overkill. The fiber will not have any metal in it. Buried cable usually will have a small metal tracer in it to make it easy to locate. Within an apartment building, there's no need for that (esp. given the expensive of that stuff.) The ONT itself is a low-voltage device. Requiring it's power brick be grounded, as well as the coax TV output, and the POTS telephone outputs... is stupid. It's not required anywhere else, nor have millions of people been fried by the lack of uber-grounding.

    37. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by JoeMerchant · · Score: 1

      NYC, Chicago, LA, and other major metros have a long history of getting burned (literally) by utility providers. They enacted local city codes to try to stop the tragedies from repeating in their city again - maybe not always efficient or helpful to cutting edge tech, but given their histories, they're ready to let other cities "try things out" first.

    38. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by JoeMerchant · · Score: 1

      It's all that desert, man, like, sucking the energy out of the glass fiber to feed the crystals in Taos, oh - and the sand - like, have you ever seen the white sands in New Mexico? And, then, you can go North to the mountains, where it's colder, but you can still get baked, legally.

      So, yeah, like no surprise that density of the population is causing a problem with getting your data faster, ya know?

    39. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by Darinbob · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Gotta improve the UI too. A 15 year old DVR has a better experience than streaming this stuff. Rewind 5 seconds to catch something that was missed and the streaming video wants to pause and rebuffer.

      Then there's the content: streaming usually won't let you skip past ads, and closed captioning and alternate audio channels are rare even with the big boys of streaming even though these are considered must-have features for traditional media.

    40. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by Darinbob · · Score: 1

      With a DVR I don't have to wait for the entire movie to download, I can start watching it immediately and then pause while it's still downloading. Then if I rewind or watch it later there is no need to redownload a second time.

      Even better you can have these thngs downloaded already for you, if you manage to have self control instead of demanding instant gratification. Schedule a download for the middle of the night so that it's ready to go. Friends coming over for movie night means you can prepare for it instead of having them groan when the movie starts skipping or rebuffering.

      Except the current powers are likely to never allow this. First there are far to many "now! now! now!" people that they can ignore the rational customers. And second hollywood kills a kitten everytime someone timeshifts content or watches a second time without paying a second fee And finally it gives hollywood much more control over how, where, when, and if you get to see their precious content (Han shot second, and no one has any proof to the contrary).

    41. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by Darinbob · · Score: 1

      What, people watch things only once? We're now in an official snapchat alternate universe?

      All those people who buy DVDs, they spend $20 just to see a movie one time only? What about rewinding in case someone missed something while they were off making a sandwich? Or the kids shouting over and over "I wanna see Finding Nemo AGAIN!" I know I rewatch TV shows with a clif hanger just before a new season of someting starts so I can get caught up again, or to untangle some threads (ie, Dr Who, Lost, etc).

    42. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by RR · · Score: 1

      Besides, why "stream" things as Google advertises? Streaming is stupid technology...

      Not everything can or should be downloaded in advance. One thing I hate about our Internet is that we have almost no upload bandwidth. VoIP is stuttery. Complete off-site backups via the Internet are impractical. HD video calls are an unattainable dream.

      It even has OpSec implications. I want to host a Tor exit node, so I can generate plausible deniability. I can't afford the upload bandwidth.

      I hate the traditional carriers, and I can't wait for the Google vision for the Internet to be realized.

      --
      Have a nice time.
    43. Re: Until you experience the speed ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      i don't worry about my neighbor. This arrogant class of stupid this guy displays wil get you killed everytime. (

    44. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by hawguy · · Score: 1

      If you're in the Bay Area, then you had more choices than just the big two, but you have to do your homework via web searches &asking on forums like DSLReports, rather than rely on ads to know about them. Just to name the most well-known ones that I know are available all over the Bay: Sonic.net & DSLExtreme both have DSL and Fusion (if you're not too far from the central office), plus Sonic.net has fiber in a couple of cities now.

      No, I really didn't. Or rather I did have some DSL options, but they all ran over the same AT&T copper, so all gave equivalent speeds -- Sonic's Fusion product wasn't available in my CO at that time, but they could have given me ADSL at the same speed that AT&T offered.

    45. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by Proudrooster · · Score: 4, Insightful

      That's because in Korea, Star Craft is a professional sport and latency is not acceptable. When you live in a country where the population takes online video games seriously, there can be no lag.

    46. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by hawguy · · Score: 1

      With a DVR I don't have to wait for the entire movie to download, I can start watching it immediately and then pause while it's still downloading. Then if I rewind or watch it later there is no need to redownload a second time.

      Even better you can have these thngs downloaded already for you, if you manage to have self control instead of demanding instant gratification. Schedule a download for the middle of the night so that it's ready to go. Friends coming over for movie night means you can prepare for it instead of having them groan when the movie starts skipping or rebuffering.

      I already have "plan ahead if you want to watch a movie" service, can get pretty much any movie I want, even those that aren't available in any streaming catalog, and I can have my movies "downloaded" to my home in 2 - 3 days with full Blu-ray quality. They arrive in the mail in a red envelope.

    47. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      how many households are regularly streaming 4 separate HD streams? That would have to be a pretty fringe scenario that most would never see.

    48. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by the_B0fh · · Score: 1

      Normal use, most people won't be able to tell the difference between a 10Mb/s uplink and a 100Mb/s uplink.

      Nonsense. I can tell the difference between the 10mb/s and the 30mb/s fios I'm using.

      And for everyone who keeps moaning about how 1gb/s is not anything you can use, go back to your 8086.

    49. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by JWSmythe · · Score: 1

      It all depends on a lot of things besides the disks. Can the NIC actually provide full line speed? What's the bus speed?

      --
      Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
    50. Re: Until you experience the speed ... by blahbooboo · · Score: 0

      Uh the max speed you get on a gige line is about 80MB/s. The theoretical Max is 100MB/s. I don't think you got 400MB/s on your slightly better consumer router. That's not possible on gige

    51. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by JWSmythe · · Score: 1

      Well.. I have a 75/35 line, and I measure throughput at my firewall. Looking across today, most (like 99%) was below 10Mb/s. There were a few spikes, not nothing really amazing.

      I've monitored offices with 30 to 50 users, and a 100Mb/s link was overkill for them.

      One place I worked, they were perfectly satisfied with 300Mb/s for 3,000+ users. It was a quiet secret that the desks were locked down to 5Mb/s, and people still watched YouTube and Netflix from their desks. I won't say it was 3,000 users all watching movies at the same time, but with an organization full of overpaid underworked employees, I'm sure they probably viewed every cat video on the Internet at least 20 times a week.

      People *love* to overestimate their need, and misguess their utilization constantly. Most people don't monitor and graph their utilization, so they honestly don't know if they need 1Mb/s or 100Mb/s. When the ad says "You can watch streaming HD movies, if you upgrade to xxx", they'll do it. End users are suckers.

      --
      Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
    52. Re: Until you experience the speed ... by JWSmythe · · Score: 1

      Pay attention to the notation. I said 400Mb/s, not 400MB/s.

      400Mb/s = 50MB/s.
      1000Mb/s = 125MB/s.

      Most people measure bandwidth in Mb/s. I suspect it's to throw off people who try to relate disk usage to throughput. We also measure the total throughput, not packet payload, which has a whole set of headaches with it.

      --
      Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
    53. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by noh8rz10 · · Score: 1

      (and before you say the metal is to protect from physical damage, actually look at the cables used by telcos. the metal is paper thin and wouldn't protect against anything, it's the plastic sheath that offers the physical protection, not the metal.)

      have you ever even used a cable? you would know that the pretty plastic colors are just for looks. also stop buying them at radio shack!

    54. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by WindBourne · · Score: 1

      that was also because they granted them local monopolies.

      --
      I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
    55. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by WindBourne · · Score: 1

      except that Google does not have a cap.

      --
      I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
    56. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by Nemyst · · Score: 1

      ... Which would pit the cost of 1gbps at less than $50/mo, assuming density is a good linear indicator. I'd even give you $100/mo. Right now you'll get 100mbps/mo for that if you're lucky and it's going to be heavily metered.

    57. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by Yalius · · Score: 1

      No telco should be running its ONTs off a power brick unless the entire building is on a backup generator or you put a UPS on every ONT. They carry POTS, too, and you can't have that drop every time there's a power outage. We have a hybrid system, UPS running off mains for the early areas that were converted to fiber 6 years ago and 400v DC carried over legacy copper for the more recent installs. That way we can power the ONTs during a power outage with diesel generators at the remotes or in the CO.

    58. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by BLKMGK · · Score: 1

      Years ago while awaiting a position on a contract with my employer I was using a workstation and decided to download some large files from Lotus. I started several file downloads at once and though nothing of it until I noticed that my mouse was acting jittery and weird. When I investigated I found out why - the download was hitting the computer so damned hard that HDD light was solid and the computer was choking on the download. I quickly stopped one of them and then marveled as the first continued to download at speeds I had NEVER seen before. Honestly I was stunned that Lotus had that kind of capacity and really surprised that my employer was letting ME suck up so much of it. I never asked what our pipe looked like but it was a pretty big employer and we were situated in an area where getting fat pipes was possible but wow I'd never seen that before or since. Sadly I don't recall the numbers and if I did I'd probably be depressed to find I do as well at home now or something even if I can't manage to stress any of my computers :-)

      --
      Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
    59. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by wirefarm · · Score: 1

      I had gigabit in Japan in 2007 or do, as did my girlfriend across town.
      I could mount a disk at her place using AFP and a little port forwarding and play movies from her disk as well as if they were on my desktop.

      Seriously sweet, especially considering that in around 1999 or 2000, the best you could get was 56K ISDN and evening rates where you didn't pay by the minute.

      --
      -- My Weblog.
    60. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by BLKMGK · · Score: 1

      Metal tracer is conductive - no? While the equipment it may be attached to is low voltage there's no telling what's likely to happen later. Nails driven through it - and a high voltage conductor. Rubbing against high power cables. Stuck in conduit that rubs it and then somehow gets energized. Weird. Shit. Happens. People do stupid stuff, go lookup some of the redneck repair sites to see what i mean. Some of the shit is dangerous and downright scary. One of my faves that actually worked was a guy who built a contraption for his BBQ grill that he used to heat his POOL. Seriously. You can't fix stupid and while that might not exactly be the worlds biggest example I would put forth that people do some weird shit and it's better to be prepared than get electrocuted or have your house burn down because of it if possible...

      --
      Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
    61. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      As usual, you make completely unsubstantiated claims so outlandish that it boggles the mind. "Several" decades ago the home was lucky to get ISDN at 128Kbps. Either you don't know what "several" means, what "decade" means, or you're full-on delusional and lying.

      Even supposing you're right and some mysterious private individual had 1Gbps at home, what, precisely, would you be downloading to even tell how fast you are? What did you connect to?

      I'm calling BS on you and your posts. That's right, not just this post, but all your posts. You're full of shit.

    62. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by BLKMGK · · Score: 1

      I don't know too many geeks with just one device though. Between streaming services (ick), games, VPNs to friend's homes to share media and do backups, and all sorts of other things I think I'd really really enjoy Gig internet. I also think I probably wouldn't be saturating that and I'm okay with that. I think I'd be looking for ways to host interesting things, perhaps interactive things. I can certainly see where having THAT much bandwidth would drive all sorts of new innovation and applications as people tried harder and harder to find uses for it. I think we could really use that!

      --
      Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
    63. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by BLKMGK · · Score: 2

      Capacity != latency. you could have a 1Gb SAT link and still be driven near mad by the high latency :-(

      --
      Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
    64. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by Boronx · · Score: 3, Insightful

      What they have is governments committed to technological progress instead of telecom profits.

    65. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by Boronx · · Score: 1

      Not fringe at all. It's called having lots of kids.

    66. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by mysidia · · Score: 1

      Metal tracer is conductive - no? While the equipment it may be attached to is low voltage there's no telling what's likely to happen later

      Metal tracer is not and can't be attached to network equipment. The metal tracer will typically only be in the outdoor cable, which may often contain additional armoring, causing it to be expensive, or Icky pick, causing it to not be allowed inside, due to the cable's high flammability.

      More likely than not, there is a fiber splice at the point of entry, and the cabling transitions from outdoor cable, to an indoor rated cable; with no metal tracer. No metal gets near the ONT or other device for terminating the cable, THEN there is no reason for extra grouding requirements on the ONT gear.

      The purpose of metal tracer, is to enable a fiber locate -- the technique requires a technician to place an induction device along the length of a cable.

      A signal in the form of a current (RF signal) is induced in the tracer cable, and the signal is then received by a remote receiver device, in order to locate the cable.

      So YES, the tracer is definitely conductive --- the very process of locating the cable requires that the cable be conductive and Non-Grounded, in order to act as an antenna for inducing the signal in the receiver/tracer.

    67. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by noh8rz10 · · Score: 0

      how is it technological progress to get you more porn? let private companies make money, and they will make technological progress. what if the govt took over search in the 1990s to abolish evil companies like yahoo and google? do you recognize your silliness now?

    68. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by noh8rz10 · · Score: 0

      try not to talk too much while you're filled with poop.

    69. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by noh8rz10 · · Score: 1

      WiLine worked really well for me on the peninsula. 20 up, 20 down, $20.

    70. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by noh8rz10 · · Score: 1

      what is 1-20?

    71. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by noh8rz10 · · Score: 0

      bsbsbsbs. I bet even octomom doesn't have 4 simultaneous HD streams going into her house. you know octomom?

    72. Re: Until you experience the speed ... by noh8rz10 · · Score: 1

      actually, most people measure bandwidth in mbps. you much be from !america.

    73. Re: Until you experience the speed ... by JWSmythe · · Score: 1

      millibits per second? Strange. Americans measure it in megabits per second. What distant land do you call home?

      --
      Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
    74. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by noh8rz10 · · Score: 1

      what is lotus? lotus 123?

    75. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by Cramer · · Score: 1

      (capital eye) INTERSTATE HIGHWAY number 20

    76. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by Cramer · · Score: 1

      We aren't talking redneck installs here. We're talking proper, to code, in-building installation by (presumed) professionals. If your fiber is in a conduit with power, you've already failed. If your fiber is rubbing against *high voltage lines* you've failed big time -- or something else has failed as well (think: downed power line.) The tracer isn't a big wire, and it doesn't have to be continuous -- no signals cross it, it's only there for a metal detector to detect. (a BB every few inches would do the same thing.) Any tracer / armor doesn't go all the way into the ONT; it's not bonded to the ONT. For the NYC cases, the in-building cable doesn't have tracers or armor, so there's nothing at all to conduct any "dangerous nail induced high voltage." The installation of an ONT doesn't add any additional risk to the pre-existing coax and/or phone wiring.

    77. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by Areyoukiddingme · · Score: 1

      I've no doubt you're right, but bear in mind, the current consumer internet is sized under the assumption that the current last mile oligopoly will maintain its strangehold while steadily raising prices (because profits must always improve) and keeping current bandwidth limits as close to frozen as possible.

      And yet, I remember the days when a single T3 was all the bandwidth 45,000 people could use at my alma mater. I think we can all agree those days are gone. Is it likely people's ability to use bandwidth is going to diminish? I don't think so. We've all seen the XKCD comic about extrapolation, but in this case, it's safe to say there's a trend, and it's upward. Ma Bell may wish she could freeze current bandwidth limits, but despite all efforts to the contrary, and all the graft, greed, and corruption an unfettered monopolist can bring to bear, the limits have still been rising.

      I too monitor my bandwidth at my firewall, with both ntop and gkrellm, and I've seen what's been happening lately. It isn't the endless cat videos on YouTube that you have to watch out for. Most of YouTube is still encoded at the cruddy bitrates of yesteryear, the bitrates that made cable companies think the Internet was no threat because who was going to watch cruddy camerawork the size of a postage stamp? But today, Comedy Central is streaming at up to 3 megabit. Netflix is streaming at up to 6 megabit. For a single stream. It only takes two Netflix streams to blow out your 10 megabit ceiling, if two people can find content they actually want to watch that's available in those encodings (not an easy task, necessarily). Three years ago, people overestimated their need. Two years ago, people overestimated their need. Last year? Maybe not. This year? Probably not. Meanwhile software distribution is more and more digital download only, and software sizes, especially entertainment software, has ballooned even beyond video sizes, with no end in sight.

      Google is betting the demand will only continue to go up. I think they're right. I'd subscribe to Google Fiber in a heartbeat if it came here, or the equivalent if somebody deployed it. I may not be able to use a fraction of it this week, but I bet I can use more next week. And I could use the low latencies of gigabit fiber today. Throughput isn't everything ya know.

    78. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by BLKMGK · · Score: 1

      Lotus WAS a company in and of itself before IBM bought them and at the time I was downloading Lotus Notes both server and workstation. At the time those were fairly beefy downloads :-)

      --
      Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
    79. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by BLKMGK · · Score: 1

      Interesting, you say it's for metal detection the other guy says it's for being charged by RF and is continuous. Someone ain't right. Regardless, once the cable goes in the ground, is attached to a house, is strung on a wire, and is then left alone - shit happens. One would hope the original installer did it right (I've seen some FIOS installs...) but after he leaves? Jimmy Bob does who knows what and might even just bury some Romex on top of your cable :-) Hell I've actually SEEN guys use ductape to secure ladders before climbing to some pretty decent heights and couldn't help but shake my head. In my area code inspectors actually got into a heated argument about how best to run power to an outbuilding I was having constructed. My contractor simply excused himself, allowed them to continue, and we had it inspected with the bare minimum to pass. Right after they left we had a licensed electrician run it the way he best knew how and called it a day - they haven't seen it since or the double handful of circuits I added once the box was in. "Code" has to take into account freaky things and while it's extremely possible this was simple stupidity of them treating glass like copper it's also possible they've seen things and decided to protect against them. Code seldom ever sits still either, it seems ot be ever changing and fluid plus it varies from locale to locale

      --
      Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
    80. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by noh8rz10 · · Score: 1

      oh i see. does it run between two cities? which ones I guess?

    81. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by SnowZero · · Score: 1

      Manhattan has 1.6M people at an average density of 70,500 per sq mile. I don't know of any 1 Gbps service for $25 there.

    82. Re: Until you experience the speed ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, armored, but I meant electrical grounding, i.e. "shield".

    83. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by Jedi+Alec · · Score: 1

      Besides, why "stream" things as Google advertises?

      Because some things are a lot more fun to watch in real-time at the same time as other people. Think (e-)sports and things like that.

      Sure, I can watch the match the next day on youtube, but it isn't quite the same.

      --

      People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
    84. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by Dunbal · · Score: 1

      Once I logged into CompuServe at 9600 baud when everyone was using 300 baud.

      --
      Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
    85. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by Psyborgue · · Score: 1

      Here in France, a provider called "Free" provides gigabit ftth. They also give you a static IP. Their network is also native IPv6. They don't care how you use your bandwith either. Their "box" has a built in seedbox and plenty of ports for external drives (both esata and USB). They don't throttle and they have a history of ignoring the French three strikes law as well. The only issue is they have a peering disagreement with Google so you can't even watch youtube with all that speed at peak hours.

    86. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by mysidia · · Score: 1

      My laptop couldn't saturate a GigE line. The same as the previous statement applies.

      Old hardware....... today ISPs are using 10Gig circuits, and a laptop with a reasonably specced Haswell proc can easily push or pull much more than 1 gigabit.

    87. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by mysidia · · Score: 1

      With plenty of sites, I couldn't pull more than 1Mb/s. Your throughput is still totally dependent on the throughput of every point from their disk to you.

      It's dependant on more than throughput. Most file transfers are performed over TCP as well, which means that the bandwidth delay product that matters.

      For example: the maximum possible throughput will be limited by an amount that depends on the Round-Trip Latency, and the maximum TCP window size; even if the connections are 5 gigabits end to end; at 200 milliseconds of latency, the maximum possible TCP transfer speed with the standard window settings, will be about 2 Megabits. At 80 milliseconds of latency, the maximum throughput of a TCP stream is 25 MB/s.

      Using BitTorrent, Microtransport protocol, or a large number of TCP streams; sidesteps limitations for long-fat networks related to TCP congestion controls --- since the link capacity used will converge with the link capacity, and the BitTorrent protocol is specifically designed to provide a much much better congestion control algorithm than what is available in TCP protocols such as FTP --- BitTorrent or UDP-based file transfer software are much better choices of protocol for file transfers over links exceeding 100 megabits.

    88. Re: Until you experience the speed ... by Insomnium · · Score: 3, Informative

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I...

      It's called SI or The International System of Units.

    89. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by flyneye · · Score: 1

      Well F$%^ing good for you, while I go out and beat my AT&T lines with the garden rake just to shake a webpage or two into my laptop...

      --
      *Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
    90. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by swampfriend · · Score: 1

      "Until you experience the speed ..." Why does everything about this article remind me of drug addicts chasing the dragon?

    91. Re: Until you experience the speed ... by noh8rz10 · · Score: 1

      well there's no thing as a "millibit" so I think the term mbps is unambiguous.

    92. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by Mashdar · · Score: 1

      In fact bandwidth often comes at the expense of latency!

    93. Re: Until you experience the speed ... by iamhassi · · Score: 2

      Google vision? Am I the only one concerned with how evil Google has gotten in recent years? Yesterday there was an gmail outage and I couldn't access any google service on my account. No emails, no google+, no youtube, nothing, it was like my account didn't exist. Then I realized how completely reliant I am on google applications. But it's not just outages I'm worried about. I'm actually moving away from chrome and back to Firefox to ween myself off google products

      --
      my karma will be here long after I'm gone
    94. Re: Until you experience the speed ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's not the cable that costs. It's the equipment on either end of the glass. Also most of that fiber you see "all over" only has 4 or 12 strands in it. That's fine if your using ROADM or DWDM technology. But it's not feasible in a persons home. Also the infrastructure already exists to deliver copper (DSLAMs). But many of them are ATM based and it requires a fork lift upgrade at the CO to deliver services ofer fiber. We will get there... But it takes time and money to cover all those square miles.

    95. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by green1 · · Score: 1

      I work for said telco. My job is installing and repairing both the copper and the fibre. So yes, I have used them. We aren't talking the wires they sell at radio shack here. And I'm not taking about the coloured coating on the copper itself within the sheath. I'm talking about the sheath itself. The fibres have a few layers of protection. First there is a coating directly on the fibre, this is basically just to stop it from breaking under it's own weight when you have a few inches exposed. Next is the buffer tube which limits accidental over bending. Next is a fibreglass yarn that protects against some impact damage and provides some tensile strength. Then comes the outer sheath that also has kevlar strands to protect against over stretching and provide more resistance against over bending. Finally the whole thing is placed underground in a plastic conduit. There is no metal at all.

    96. Re: Until you experience the speed ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I was mostly refering to the fact that in the si system there is no such thing as mli. capitalised letters make the difference, just like bitween b and B

    97. Re: Until you experience the speed ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Just in case you missed the point SI system is base 10 with exponent of 3. Bits and bytes are not part of the system. 1B is 8b. its base 8. inthe computer world base 2, 8 and 16 are commonly used. and sometimes the si system is used as a reference.

    98. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by JWSmythe · · Score: 1

      Oh, don't get me wrong, if Google offered GigE to my house, I'd get it too. It's just overkill. I don't mind overkill at all. I actually play in the land of overkill on a daily basis. :)

      I do agree that user needs have increased over the years. They always will. We're a long way from "needing" GigE. Like far enough where they could have deployed with 100Mb/s, and upgraded it to 150Mb/s in 5 years, which would still be overkill.

      If I had a choice between Verizon FiOS selling me 100Mb/s and Google selling me 1000Mb/s, but testing throughput and latency showed Verizon FiOS to be faster, I'd stick with it.

      Where I am, our choices are Verizon FiOS, Brighthouse cable, and a few rather sad DSL providers. Brighthouse frequently has killer deals. I've used both, in residential and commercial settings. The Brighthouse solutions advertise high speeds, but can't deliver the speed or low latency on a consistent basis.

      I had a friend who was a loyal Brighthouse user. She set up a FiOS line to use for a few servers in another room. Because of problems with Brighthouse, we ran an extra network drop from the server room to her office room, so she could switch her default gateway as needed when Brighthouse took a dump. It became often enough where she dropped the Brighthouse line. Sadly, it was a good way for her to test what outside users saw.

      Most of it is a last mile problem. Brighthouse oversells their last mile. Verizon doesn't. We won't even discuss the DSL providers, since they're just providing legacy services on antique technology.

      --
      Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
    99. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by Areyoukiddingme · · Score: 1

      If I had a choice between Verizon FiOS selling me 100Mb/s and Google selling me 1000Mb/s, but testing throughput and latency showed Verizon FiOS to be faster, I'd stick with it.

      That would be a perfectly sensible thing to do. But here's the thing. I live in an AT&T service area. I will never ever have the option of Verizon FiOS here. This is AT&T territory, pod'nuh. Verizon will never offa' any kand of wared service hea'. That would be ungentlemanly.</texasdrawl>.

      Google might. They're not gentlemanly at all. At least, not to the pricks who try to treat me like an animal to be milked every month.

      Our conversation has made the situation fairly clear. It's not the bandwidth that's the thing, at least not today. Better latency, better service reliability, and better prices are the thing, the fruits of actual competition. The bandwidth is just icing on the cake. Another day, perhaps, the bandwidth will also be useful.

    100. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by Bengie · · Score: 1

      High density is actually more expensive. It's hard to run new fiber through a large apartment building than a house. The optimal density is lots of small houses or duplexes packed near each other, not 30 story apartments made of concrete.

    101. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by Bengie · · Score: 1

      The fiber conduit I saw my ISP lay had metal trace lines sticking out at the ends so they could be located underground later on. Even the fiber hooked to my house has a large finger thick diameter cord with a metal center, which is cut off at the end points because it serves no purpose other than acting as a trace and giving the fiber. The fiber in the conduit does not have this thick additional piece, only the run between my house and the conduit does.

    102. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by Bengie · · Score: 1

      I only have a UPS powering my ONT, but I haven't had a land line for over 15 years now. Your direct power sounds a lot more resilient, but 400v DC sounds dangerous. I assume 40v DC?

    103. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by Bengie · · Score: 1

      you need it mainly to power the repeater

      What repeaters? Ever fiber case study I've read talks about having no in-field electrical devices. Modern 1gb fiber ONTs have an 80km range.

    104. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by JWSmythe · · Score: 1

      You have my deepest sympathies on AT&T. I wish you the best of luck getting a good provider in soon.

      Have you considered moving? :) Ya, I have actually moved to get better Internet service. At the time I *needed* upload bandwidth. Anything measured in Kb/s just wouldn't do. I frequently created ISOs, and it was troublesome to drive to somewhere with good bandwidth to make them available, especially if I was making a change at 2am, and someone needed it ASAP. The whole "Well, let me get dressed, drive down to the datacenter, and copy it over to a server" just didn't cut it.

      --
      Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
    105. Re: Until you experience the speed ... by Bengie · · Score: 1

      You can purchase 144 strand fiber cables with a single metal tracer built in for $0.40/meter in batches of 1km runs or longer. That's a fraction the cost of a single COAX hardline cable and it's about 1/7th the diameter for the entire cable. You could fit about 130 144 strand fiber cables in the same thickness of a COAX hardline, so about 18,720 fibers. That's enough fiber for at least 18,720 houses or 600,000 houses if using GPON with a 32x split.

    106. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by bhiestand · · Score: 1

      I do agree that user needs have increased over the years. They always will. We're a long way from "needing" GigE. Like far enough where they could have deployed with 100Mb/s, and upgraded it to 150Mb/s in 5 years, which would still be overkill.

      I think you're looking at it the wrong way. Your points are all valid, of course, but has nothing to do with utilization of current capacity. It's about things you can't or won't do with the current capacity, but might with increased capacity.

      For me, 1000 Mb/s would enable serious changes in storage utilization.

      I do a lot of photography, and have several TB of data that I want/need to have protected off-site. It has been a lot of work to ensure I never lose data, and I would gladly outsource this job to AWS, Google, or some other provider.

      But with 1000 Mb/s, why would I bother keeping another copy locally? So there goes this big stupid external hard drive, and my internal spinning disks. Everything that can't fit on flash goes to the server.

      Of course this says nothing of what other uses will be developed to make increased capacity worthwhile. Streaming 3D 4K porn? A consumer Citrix subscription for mom? Advances in online gaming?

      --
      SWM seeks new sig for a brief fling
    107. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The consumer router for the home LAN I was using did GigE on all ports. I couldn't pull more than 80Mb/s through it. I swapped it for a slightly better consumer router, which will pass about 400Mb/s.

      My router is benchmarked for almost 500mb/s of WAN-LAN, but it crumbles under lots of sessions. I decided to forgo a firewall for now and going to purchase a L3 switch, which is rated for full line rate L3 routing. Since there is no NAT, I'm going to purchase some static blocks from my ISP for a few dollars. I'm just going to set the switch to block TCP SYN packets from the WAN port for TCP ports below 1024.

    108. Re: Until you experience the speed ... by Bengie · · Score: 1

      What kind of crap gig ports do you have? 1gb/s is a max of 125MB/s and I can get 114MB/s sustained doing file transfers over SMB on my two 7 year old BestBuy desktops, and that's with my CPU staying below 5% utilization and my switch doesn't support jumbo-frames. Well, I did upgrade them both with SSDs, but that's not the point. The point is any decent NIC can handle full 1gb speeds.

    109. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by Bengie · · Score: 1

      Modern TCP stacks use the RTT to determine the latency, then adjust the window to sized up to a logical 4GB max. I'm sure most OSes will have a max limit lower than this to not consume all of the memory for a network buffer.

    110. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by JWSmythe · · Score: 1

      Ya, I've seen that on various consumer routers. It's kind of sad when they crash and burn.

      I'd still strongly recommend NAT. You really don't want your desktop to be public facing. All it takes is one stupid update, or installing something that seems ok, to put your machine at risk.

      We sit behind a Linux firewall for everything, and then a consumer router for the desks. So for the most part, the desks would be safe if I wanted to give them public IPs. With the router, I can keep adding internal stuff without sucking up my public IPs. It's fairly normal for us to have ... ummm ...

      2 workstations, 2 tablets, 2 phones, 1 laptop, 2 e-readers, 1 thermostat (Whoo, web configurable thermostat).

      We had some people over, so that number jumped. Everyone got on the LAN with their phones, plus their tablets or laptops. The silly thing was, once they all got online and checked their mail and Facebook, they didn't touch their electronics for most of the visit. But it was available if they wanted it.

      It would have been silly to issue them a whole list of static IPs to use, and then run the risk of a conflict if different people came over who were each assigned the same static IPs. Some people can do it. I have better things to think about than if guests may have conflicting IPs.

      --
      Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
    111. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by JasonGoatcher · · Score: 1

      What does connection speed have to do with pirating content? I don't think anyone pirates a movie because it loads too slow from Netflix, given that bittorrenting a movie can take all night.

      Maybe the RIAA will jump on me for this post, but when you pirate, you don't have to worry about streaming hiccups. Plus, I very seldom watch my tv shows the moment they come out, I tend to wait a few hours and the watch them on Hulu or Amazon. Tbh, I'd like to do both, be able to download them fully, then either pay for them or have commercials added on the fly.

    112. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by green1 · · Score: 1

      As I said in my initial post, all depends what they use. Our fibre has no metal at all in the fibre or the conduit. Locates are done by sliding a metal fish tape temporarily in to the conduit, or more frequently by locating the power utility lines that are buried in the same trench.

    113. Re: Until you experience the speed ... by Insomnium · · Score: 1

      u much be shupid.

    114. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by DroneWhatever · · Score: 1

      I would run into this all the time from our cabinet and cloud customers in Level3. The question or accusation was always the same. "How do I know I am getting a 100Mbps or a 1Gbps handoff from you guys?" "I just tested and I can only get X amount of bandwidth, just look at my Cacti graphs and you will see I am not getting the full amount I am paying for".

      So after a short explanation of how a single connection to their server will never fill up the pipe, I would have them run the test, or I would login to their server and run the test for them, while having them monitor the Cacti graph. Cachefly and a few other CDNs have a 100mb.bin and 1000mb.bin files that are not compressible and are not affected by WAN accelerators, etc... So, the trick was to start clicking on the files for download to the server as fast as you could, and watch the pipe fill... most often, their RDP, or whatever remote solution they used, would get so lagged, they thought the server was dying. The files would finish downloading and the remote connection would be normal again.

      Me: "What does Cacti show now?" Them: "Thanks, I am going to use that test on everything from now on, very cool". I would look at the Cacti graph afterwards and you see what you expect, a steep 90 degree hill of all green for a few minutes and then back to the 1-2Mbps sustained that they are used to seeing. There may be better ways, but I never had a customer argue with me after using this method and seeing the results in Cacti.

    115. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by JWSmythe · · Score: 1

      That way always works. :)

      --
      Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
    116. Re: Until you experience the speed ... by RR · · Score: 1

      It is true that Google is quite evil. But Google is not monolithic. Google includes DoubleClick, Chrome, and Google+. All very annoying, and turning out to be harmful to the Internet.

      Google also includes Internet evangelism, under Vint Cerf, one of the inventors of the Internet. Google still has one of the best search engines in the world, which you can use for free. Now Google also includes some of the fastest and most affordable home Internet in the United States.

      Frankly, all of the options for Internet access that I have are evil to some extent. Google at least is working to make high-speed Internet available to me.

      --
      Have a nice time.
    117. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I do not have "plan ahead if you want to watch a movie" service. I have on demand movies in HD, I do not have to plan ahead, I just watch what I want and when I want, same movies as my local video shop (as it is provided by the same company)
      I can have these movies downloaded to my DVR or streamed within directly within 5 to 10 seconds.
      This is a paid subscription service, I have a 300Mbps / service.
      I also get the same movies streamed to my mobile / any other device.

    118. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by Bengie · · Score: 1

      I don't think a single city in the USA has a density that low. The average density of the Universe is less than 1 person per cubic light year. Obviously there is no reason to deploy fiber anywhere.

    119. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by Bengie · · Score: 1

      Seems they have to ground their ONTs because Verizon is run by tards because all metal entering a building must be grounded and Verizon decided to enter a building with metal. My ISP removes the trace line and even strips the jacket prior to entering my house. They have an all plastic flexible coil that completely wraps around the fiber and the fiber could be easily pushed through it. No metal entering the house.

    120. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by Man+Eating+Duck · · Score: 1

      In three or four days, I can BitTorrent most 750 Mbyte movies.

      Really, you have a <24 Kbps connection?

      You probably mean that you can't decide on a movie, prepare tea, and then watch it, but you can very likely download any movie in a few hours (I assume you're not on dial-up). I have the nominal bandwidth to get that movie in two minutes, in reality it would take something like 10-15 minutes because the torrent takes some time getting up to speed, and I prefer higher quality.

      Still most episodes sit unwatched for days or weeks after downloading (I generally don't download movies). As of now I am lucky that I can very easily download something I want to see on short notice, but I rarely do. If I had to wait several hours for a single show I would just maintain a queue of already downloaded stuff like I do today.

      The point is that any line faster than a dial-up would be ample to satisfy my viewing habits. A fast connection is nice, and I would miss it, but it's not strictly necessary to enjoy digital content (which apparently is what you experience as well, making my post superfluous. Oh well).

      --
      Are you a grammar Nazi? I'm trying to improve my English; please correct my errors! :)
    121. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      My wifi access point is my current router, so I'd leave that for the guests. What I plan on doing is having special guests, like lan party people, get set to the static IP VLAN, where the switch hands out IPs via DHCP from my assigned static IP blocks. The default VLAN will be on the LAN side of the NAT, which will give out 10.0.0.x addresses. Because everything is going through the switch, I can configure it to route between the 10.x and the local public IP addresses.

      As for "protection" from the firewall, the NAT doesn't offer much real protection. All it does is block incoming data by default, but if a local machine is compromised, UPNP will easily punch a hole on request by the compromised machine. I can get 99% of the same protection by just blocking TCP SYN packets on ports below 1024

      Some day I will build a proper PFSense firewall. Depends on how much money I get back from taxes, maybe I can get both a L3 switch and a Haswell based firewall.

    122. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      My ISP uses Level3 exclusively for upstream. L3 f'n rocks.

    123. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > Really, you have a 24 Kbps connection? [google.com]

      That is if I was only downloading a single thing at a time and not pausing the downloads while doing other things. I also often forget to restart them, but that's a different problem.

    124. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by Man+Eating+Duck · · Score: 1

      That is if I was only downloading a single thing at a time and not pausing the downloads while doing other things. I also often forget to restart them, but that's a different problem.

      I understand. I would check out if you could set up Quality of Service traffic shaping either on your computer or on your router. That way you can put a very low priority on torrent traffic so that it yields to other activity, and still have it run full blast when you're not doing anything else. I have had very good results with it on a WRT54GL when I had a couple of flatmates who were unable to configure their clients.

      --
      Are you a grammar Nazi? I'm trying to improve my English; please correct my errors! :)
    125. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Even better you can have these thngs downloaded already for you, if you manage to have self control instead of demanding instant gratification.

      I value my time, I guess you don't. If you like exercising patients, you should take up an Amish life style and travel the world using your own two feet and a paddle boat.

    126. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by Bengie · · Score: 1

      If you're waiting for buffering, blame your ISP. Netflix and YouTube both play near instantly(less than 1sec, closer to 1/2 sec) for me and seeking is just as good, even with 1080p. 4K resolutions do take 2-3 seconds to buffer, but fine once it gets playing, but seeking is annoying. Maybe I should upgrade to 100mb/s.

    127. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by Bengie · · Score: 1

      It's just overkill.

      It doesn't matter, it's cheaper. 1gb fiber is cheaper than POTS, yet alone DSL or Cable, in the same way your Rasberri Pi is cheaper than the ENIAC. You get cheaper and faster all at the same time.

    128. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Relative latency, but not absolute latency. Increase your bandwidth 10x, but the speed of light is fixed, now your ratio of bandwidth to latency just increased 10x, but your latency hasn't actually gone up.

    129. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by Darinbob · · Score: 1

      The UI on youtube is clumsy. You can not just backup 5 seconds easily, or go to any specific location, and the longer the video the more coarse it is. No rewind, double speed, etc.

    130. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by JWSmythe · · Score: 1

      You are correct about the UPNP protection (or lack thereof). The big advantage is that people scanning for machines vulnerable for 0-day exploits (or exploits in general) won't be able to reach it.

      Once a machine is compromised, not much is going to help unless you're doing deep packet inspection.

      Really, there's no good reason to give a workstation a public IP. I know people scream about gaming, or some random annoyance. I've had my workstations behind NATs and firewalls (both, not either/or) for plenty of years. The only "problems" I have are firewall issues with specific games, which can be worked around.

      The only things I've lost out on with my gaming machines are being able to share local drives out for remote users to SMB connect to, or to put up an arbitrary FTP or web server on my workstation. Those are begging for vulnerabilities and exploits that your workstation shouldn't be exposed to.

      --
      Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
    131. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by Boronx · · Score: 1

      What's you brilliant explanation for why bandwidth in US costs so much for so little?

    132. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by noh8rz10 · · Score: 1

      Idk. What does that have to do with anything???

    133. Re:Until you experience the speed ... by godefroi · · Score: 1

      I download my TV shows wirelessly. It's very high bandwidth, too. I *NEVER* wait more than an hour for a one-hour 1080i episode (though I never wait less than an hour either), and I can download several episodes at once without slowing down or impacting other users of the network in the house.

      The best part? There's no monthly fee, and it's *LEGAL*.

      OTA, it's the future.

      --
      Karma: Poor (Mostly affected by lame karma-joke sigs)
  5. I've had Google Fiber for a while and it's awesome by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I live in Kansas City, KS and have had Google Fiber for a few months now. It's as incredibly awesome as you probably think it is.

  6. Thanks... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    For making those of us who don't have access to it feel hatred.

  7. ISPs and Net Neutrality by Concerned+Onlooker · · Score: 1

    I've been perusing the Google Fiber site trying to understand how it works. Is Google going to be the ISP? Are they just working with local ISPs to implement some of this?

    And if I get Google fiber who is in charge of making sure I can't get all the content of the web at equal speeds?

    --
    http://www.rootstrikers.org/
    1. Re:ISPs and Net Neutrality by Aelanna · · Score: 5, Informative

      At least in the case of Provo, Google Fiber is the ISP. All of the former iProvo customers on Veracity have been given notice to transfer their service by signing up for new Google Fiber accounts (which can be regular Google accounts) before Veracity dumps them completely.

    2. Re:ISPs and Net Neutrality by Em+Adespoton · · Score: 1

      Google’s ultimate plans are unclear, however. The company spent years buying unused fiber optic cables around the country ahead of announcing the service, but hasn’t said whether it will roll it out nationwide.

      Does that answer your question? They offer fiber to the door, and it's on the same network Google uses for its own services. They're already a backbone ISP in potentia; it's just taking time for them to light it all up. Meanwhile, they are lighting up targets where they can get competitive peering agreements with the rest of the internet. Once they have enough of those, they'll be able to light up the rest of the fiber and just route around opponents to net neutrality.*

      *providing Google services for free**

      **Free being "paid for once already, but we didn't get to double dip"

    3. Re:ISPs and Net Neutrality by fermion · · Score: 1
      My real concern is that Google is in the advertiser business, and when someone ventures outside their core, one has to ask hy. Obviously customers connecting directly to Google servers makes data collection easier. Every website, every email, every chat, every call, logged categorized and even saved for the NSA or whatever other customer is willing to pay for it.

      I run about 20gb/s. I have have higher connections elsewhere, and frankly I don't see a big difference most of the time as most web sites can only deliver data so fast, and most websites have to get data from many different location, including ad locations. I have said this before, but when a web page hangs there is a good chance it is google analytics.

      Now, it is predictable that fox news would push everyone to sign up for a service where the government can more easily spy on all of us. But I am willing to wait for a service where I am paying a company to serve me, not where I am the product being sold.

      --
      "She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
    4. Re:ISPs and Net Neutrality by Gadget27 · · Score: 1

      Plenty of people out there are already using Google Search, Chrome, GMail, Hangouts, Google+, YouTube, Google DNS, Android and more. I can't imagine what additional information you'd risk exposing by using their Internet service as well. I suspect maybe they would be collecting data regarding your TV viewing habits as a result of this. After some thought, I think that I would welcome that collection of data if it were put to use. I have a hard time believing the accuracy of Nielsen ratings based on their results, or has taste in this country declined that precipitously? At the end of the day, I think its in Google's own interest that more people have fast as possible internet. The more bandwidth available, the more its users consume its products. In this case, its a win-win scenario.

    5. Re:ISPs and Net Neutrality by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You clearly don't understand online advertising, nor Google's vision as a business. It hasn't changed since they started and being an ISP is a compliment to that core vision (and it is not advertising alone). Google has always wanted to be the interface to information. Advertising supports the vast majority of this. But being an ISP is a "moat" to their castle -- their core vision. Similarly, Google has no reason to sell or give away personal information, nor would they want the NSA to have that. They sell ad *targeting*. Selling personal information is giving away key to the castle. You should learn how online advertising works.

      You are correct though that Fox News sucks. So, maybe there is hope.

      Now, go forth, and read:
      https://fiber.google.com/legal...

    6. Re:ISPs and Net Neutrality by TheGratefulNet · · Score: 1

      I would not run google as an ISP.

      I try to avoid google; the last thing I'd want is to have them at the other endpoint of my link!

      bandwidth be damned; privacy is worth more to me than that.

      --

      --
      "It is now safe to switch off your computer."
    7. Re:ISPs and Net Neutrality by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      bandwidth be damned; privacy is worth more to me than that.

      I bet if you lived someone where Internet access is not a priority and faster than 1.5 Mbps connections were nearly impossible to get that you would change your mind. Here in Seattle Internet access is complete crap for most of the city because the city government doesn't think it is important nor do the residents because most of them are so nontechnical, especially Microsoft employees, that they just don't care. The government and the majority of the people just don't get it. I share a 1.544 Mbps T1 connection at work with more than a dozen artists. CenturyLink doesn't offer DSL since the neighborhood's cabling is more than fifty years-old, and Comcast's cable is more than a block away. It's horrifically painful, but it is the best connection we can get. We have another office in Bellevue, WA about ten miles away where we have a 0.768 Mbps connection (12 64 kbps channels and inexplicably they require moving to a T3 for than 12 channels even though a T1 has 24 channels), because that city granted a monopoly on the block to Time-Warner. We can upgrade to nicer speeds, but the price jumps more than ten-fold for the next higher option. Also, IIRC they wanted $5k upfront and nearly $1k per month for the lease on a cisco 3900 router with a T3 interface. IIRC, the entire plan was over $2k/month to get more than 768 kbps. That's one reason technical companies are fleeing Seattle, and there are so few start-ups here. Start-ups need Internet access, but the city doesn't fucking get it.

      Again, if you were in this shithole known as Seattle, you'd give-up privacy to get more than 2.5 Mbps so you could start enjoying streaming from Netflix, HBO, ESPN, etc..

    8. Re:ISPs and Net Neutrality by TheGratefulNet · · Score: 1

      no.

      I lived with 1.5meg dsl for nearly 10 years. I don't rely on 'streaming'. in fact, when the odd youtube page needs to be seen, I run youtube-dl, grab the whole file and watch with no buffering needed.

      if I need a movie, I hit the bay (or equiv).

      streaming is over-rated and not at all a must-have.

      hard to believe that seattle has things that bad. its NOT a non-tech area of the country - so I'm at a loss to understand what the actual problem is.

      --

      --
      "It is now safe to switch off your computer."
    9. Re:ISPs and Net Neutrality by SuperKendall · · Score: 0

      streaming is over-rated and not at all a must-have.

      After a few years of using streaming services like Netflix extensively, let me say on behalf of everyone:

      You are an Idiot.

      if I need a movie, I hit the bay (or equiv).

      Oh, sorry, elitist idiot.

      --
      "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    10. Re:ISPs and Net Neutrality by noh8rz10 · · Score: 1

      After some thought, I think that I would welcome that collection of data if it were put to use.

      good for you! it's very polite of you to lube up your butt before you let goog have its way.

    11. Re:ISPs and Net Neutrality by frozentier · · Score: 1

      I would not run google as an ISP.

      I try to avoid google; the last thing I'd want is to have them at the other endpoint of my link!

      bandwidth be damned; privacy is worth more to me than that.

      Implying your ISP doesn't know, and possibly log, every move you make now.

    12. Re:ISPs and Net Neutrality by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You have no privacy NOW. And you have shit slow connection speeds that are insanely expensive.

      That's a bad deal all around.

      I'll take no privacy AND fast speeds... Still a bad deal. But better than you'll get anywhere else.

    13. Re:ISPs and Net Neutrality by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      A decade before Snowden, we had Room 641A:
          http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R...

      Even if you aren't using AT&T, do you think your ISP is going to be any more ethical?
      If you have a small/boutique ISP, apply this to whoever owns the actual cables.

    14. Re:ISPs and Net Neutrality by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How much are you being paid to push the Google Way Of Life. It is salary or contract? Google has always been an advertising company. The search simply was a way to get users to enable cookies. Once users figured out how to spell 2o7, for instance, they were toast.

    15. Re:ISPs and Net Neutrality by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I would not live in rural or backward cities. In fact, I often spend time on a connection that has a 100 ms latency and 2 MB/s. It is not intolerable, though i might sell myself to google for faster speeds.

    16. Re:ISPs and Net Neutrality by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Seattle is too close to redmond. Google doesn't want to provide fat pipes for M$ employees.

  8. TL; DR by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    http://www.nelson-haha.com/

    (pointing towards all of our pathetic measured-in-mbps internet connections)

    1. Re:TL; DR by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I have dial-up, you insensitive clod!

      (Well, not really, since I moved. But I had one more recently than you might think - the year was 201X. Pretty constant connection speed of 5.6 kBps for pocket change per year, and if you stick to content-oriented sites like Wikipedia and give up the idea of videos, it's quite usable.)

  9. Really? by hawguy · · Score: 1

    Even when I use the gigabit connection at work, I don't notice a huge difference between that and the 50mbit connection at home unless I'm doing a big download (but even so, I rarely get gigabit speeds unless I'm connecting to one of the servers on the other end of our gigabit pipe -- the internet and server on the other end tend to limit the speed).

    Pages don't seem to load any faster (which I assume is due to rendering time and time to wait on slow ad networks to spit out their javascript to let the page finish loading), and videos don't seem to load any faster, since the time to buffer enough of the video to start playing isn't that significant, even at a paltry 50mbit).

    And this quote:

    Then try panning to another area of the painting. It drags, doesn’t it? It may even slow your browser across other tabs—it did on mine.

    So somehow downloading data faster means that your browser won't slow down over multiple tabs? I'm on a 10mbit connection now, and my browser pans smoothly, but I have to wait a second or two for the hi-res image to load.

    I'd be happy to have gigabit at home if it were affordable, but I don't see it being a miraculous change. And I bet a lot of people wouldn't notice any difference at all between a 10mbit broadband connection and a 1000mbit connection.

    1. Re:Really? by demonbug · · Score: 2

      I don't see a whole lot of use for the gigabit speed right now, you're right. The biggest thing I see is the symmetrical connection, and significantly lower prices than competitors at similar speeds. 1000/1000 may not be all that useful in the vast majority of cases unless you have a lot of people sharing the bandwidth, but 100/100 for the same price as the 15/1.5 I'm limited to now would be huge. Online backup would be nearly transparent (it took about 3 weeks on my connection, and that was only backing up the "important" stuff - plus actually utilizing the 1.5 upstream brings the downstream bandwidth to a crawl on my Uverse connection, making it an exceedingly tedious process - can't stream netflix or even just browse the web without hiccups), it would no longer be a pain to upload videos or high-res photos to share with family and friends, etc.

      I'd probably go with the gigabit service if it was available where I live, but I think the real impact of Google Fiber is the pricing pressure it puts on slower connections that are eminently usable right now (even if Google is currently cherry-picking places they can do things cheaply).

    2. Re:Really? by SydShamino · · Score: 1

      I have gigabit to my desk at work, though the pipe outside the company is maybe a gigabit per 100 of us. Besides the Linux-ISO-in-seconds thing, the best benefit is the complete lack of latency on random data hogs like Google maps panning, or how quickly I get the HD feed on streaming Netflix (at the company gym onto my iPad). Or really the ability to do all of the above simultaneously with the guy next to you, and not really notice anything. That just doesn't happen at home right now on a 40 MBPS AT&T fiber-to-that-box-a-block-away plan.

      We're in line for Google fiber at home in the next year and I'll sign up right away, and dump AT&T at last and for good.

      --
      It doesn't hurt to be nice.
    3. Re:Really? by timeOday · · Score: 1

      When we have truly adapted to gigabit Internet, there won't even be "pages" to "load" faster.

    4. Re:Really? by PopeRatzo · · Score: 1

      I'd be happy to have gigabit at home if it were affordable, but I don't see it being a miraculous change. And I bet a lot of people wouldn't notice any difference at all between a 10mbit broadband connection and a 1000mbit connection.

      But people who are paying AT&T for a "1 megabit per second" connection that is actually a >200kbps connection would see a huge difference.

      I don't really care about fiber or gigabit ether. I would just like to see some requirements that providers actually provide the service they are selling.

      And I'm not comfortable with Google as my ISP. I don't trust them. You know they're trying to figure out how to ban people from using AdBlock or Epic Browser or in some other way avoiding their business model.

      I want to pay for bandwidth and get what I pay for. Period. I don't want to buy into some deal where the real customer is someone besides me, who's paying for my eyeballs or my info. Just provide me with Internet service and leave me the fuck alone. There's no way I trust Google to do that once they get rolling with this fiber. If they become one of the big providers, how long do you think it will be before they change their mind about net neutrality?

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
  10. Localhost by Spy+Handler · · Score: 1

    as a website maker (I hesitate to use the term developer on slashdot since javascript and php get a lot of hate), I load tons of pages from my own computer -- both my own coded pages and prepackaged stuff like Prestashop ecommerce software and Joomla. And loading pages from localhost is even faster than Google Gigabit fiber internet.

    And guess what, it's nice but not life-changing. For example, doing ecommerce admin on a live customer website on the internet via DSL, vs. doing the same thing on my test localhost site. It's faster and less laggy but nothing I would kill for.

    The difference between dialup internet and decent cable/DSL was way bigger.

  11. You're still using 8 megabits? by atari2600a · · Score: 4, Funny

    You don't own a Google Fiber modem yet!? You HAVE seen the speeds right? Only Google Fiber has the gigabit speeds I require for BLAST PROCESSING! Google does what Comcan't!

    1. Re:You're still using 8 megabits? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You can run BLAST on your own machine. Though really, these days you should be running BLAST+ anyhow.

  12. Chattanooga Too by Jah-Wren+Ryel · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Chattanooga has symmetric 1gbps internet available to the entire city and suburbs for the same price as google fiber (but no "zero-cost" option for low speed). And, as a plus, it isn't google, it is the local electricity co-op.

    https://epbfi.com/internet/

    --
    When information is power, privacy is freedom.
    1. Re:Chattanooga Too by bob_super · · Score: 3, Funny

      But but but ... who's mining your browsing data then?

    2. Re:Chattanooga Too by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Sounds like socialism to me.

    3. Re:Chattanooga Too by ChunderDownunder · · Score: 1

      You say that like it's a bad thing...

    4. Re:Chattanooga Too by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Well, since they're a TVA provider, and that's a federal corporation, that's the NSA....who would be doing it anyway.

    5. Re:Chattanooga Too by swillden · · Score: 1

      Chattanooga has symmetric 1gbps internet available to the entire city and suburbs for the same price as google fiber (but no "zero-cost" option for low speed). And, as a plus, it isn't google, it is the local electricity co-op.

      Was the rollout spurred on by the news of Google Fiber? If so, then Google will call that a win for them.

      --
      Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
    6. Re:Chattanooga Too by Jah-Wren+Ryel · · Score: 1

      No, they were deploying well ahead of google. They were upgrading their electricity command-and-control system to fiber and realized they could also be an ISP for only marginally more money since they were running fiber on all the electric poles anyway.

      There pricing is directly inspired by google, the gig price used to be around $300/month until about 6 months ago. But they are probably making more money with the lower price level because practically no one paid for 1 gig anyway. Bringing the price down has made it a much smaller leap to go from 100mbps at ~$55 to 1gbps at $70 so, I expect a lot more people have decided to pay the extra $15/month for the top-tier now,

      --
      When information is power, privacy is freedom.
    7. Re:Chattanooga Too by swillden · · Score: 1

      Cool. I'd love to see more of this. And I think Google would still count this as a win, given the pricing changes and the fact that they led to wider adoption.

      --
      Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
    8. Re:Chattanooga Too by eulernet · · Score: 1

      But but but ... who's adding value to your browsing data then?

      FTFY

    9. Re:Chattanooga Too by Jah-Wren+Ryel · · Score: 2

      > Chattanooga's fiber requires massive taxpayer subsidies as well as cross-subsidy from utility ratepayers.

      That is incorrect. They took the federal stimulus for rural isp money in order to accelerate roll-out to rural areas, but they were on track to do it without the money at a slower rate. As for cross-subsidy, it is the other way, the ISP service is subsidizing the electric ratepayers by about 20 million a year.

      --
      When information is power, privacy is freedom.
    10. Re:Chattanooga Too by Jawnn · · Score: 1

      Chattanooga has symmetric 1gbps internet available to the entire city and suburbs for the same price as google fiber (but no "zero-cost" option for low speed). And, as a plus, it isn't google, it is the local electricity co-op.

      https://epbfi.com/internet/

      But wait... That sounds like..., like... socialism! I thought that socializing anything (except corporate expenses, where you can swing it) was bad. I just don't know what to think anymore. I knew that the public utility model has been extremely effective in delivering inexpensive and reliable electrical power to large portions of the U.S., but now you're telling me that the same model will work for internet service too? How can this be? I mean, the challenges of delivering both services are virtually the same but... Oh...

    11. Re:Chattanooga Too by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      not here in in Knoxville :-(

    12. Re:Chattanooga Too by cjjjer · · Score: 1
  13. Carrier Has Arrived by Guppy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Funny you should mention Net Neutrality, because this is what it's all about. And an example of how farsighted Google is compared to their opposition, always a step ahead in their strategic planning. If Net Neutrality continues to get rolled back, expect Internet companies to get squeezed hard by the big ISPs (I predict Netflix will be the most vulnerable example of this). "Nice Market you got there. Would be a shame if anything happened to it."

    Google is anticipating such a development, and demonstrating to those providers that they are not quite untouchable as they think. They don't need to roll out Google Fiber everywhere (though that would be awesome), just do it enough times to demonstrate to ISPs that they can do it anywhere.

    1. Re:Carrier Has Arrived by farble1670 · · Score: 1

      They don't need to roll out Google Fiber everywhere (though that would be awesome), just do it enough times to demonstrate to ISPs that they can do it anywhere.

      they can do it anywhere, but not everywhere. not even google could afford to fiber enough of the US to even put a small dent in Big ISP's wallet.

    2. Re:Carrier Has Arrived by MrDoh! · · Score: 1

      Yeah, this is exactly what I think they're doing. Covering themselves to say 'we don't really want to, but if you force us to, we're in a position to take away every bit of business you've currently got, and we will, so what was that about you wanting us to pay to give your (soon to be ours) customers content? At the moment, I think they're a bit limited as to FCC/laws on owning everything, but with the telcos wanting to be more than just dumb pipes, they're setting themselves up to confronted about their tactics. In my ideal world, every Google router sold had a mini-hotspot/mini-cell tower attached to the outside of the house, to provide cell phone coverage around the city at these ludicrous speeds. For 99% of the time, that'd do me just fine.

      --
      Waiting for an amusing sig.
    3. Re:Carrier Has Arrived by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Actually, they just need to roll out enough along a core and fan out from there.
      Utah, Kansas, and Texas are just the beginning.
      I could see Seattle and San Francisco next followed by Atlanta and New York.

      DWDM's theoretical capacity on a single fiber pair is 1,600,000,000,000 bits/sec! (O_O)

    4. Re:Carrier Has Arrived by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If they're offering the service at a profit (which they are) the money problem will solve itself in not too long. First one city, then two, then four, ...

    5. Re:Carrier Has Arrived by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      All they have to do is poach the lucrative high-density markets and the ISP's profit margin evaporates. Remember that in the world of shareholder-owned companies, if you miss a quarterly target by even fractions of a cent, your stock tanks.

    6. Re:Carrier Has Arrived by noh8rz10 · · Score: 1

      -1 disagree. the greatest threat to net neutrality is google trying to own the content and the distribution. funny enough that youtube gets free distribution but netflix has to pay... why would that be?

    7. Re:Carrier Has Arrived by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't know, I think Google is capable of fibering the whole US. They would have to borrow a ton of money, but hey there would be a ton of revenue as well. I'm not sure the economics would be a sound business plan, but not totally impossible.

    8. Re:Carrier Has Arrived by Areyoukiddingme · · Score: 1

      funny enough that youtube gets free distribution but netflix has to pay... why would that be?

      Because Google wasn't stupid. When they bought YouTube in 2006 (yeah, it's only been since 2006), they saw how much bandwidth YouTube was already using and did something about it. They started buying dark fiber. Transcontinental dark fiber. I even remember the job posting on the Google site. They specifically asked for a person who specialized in buying dark fiber. (Who knew you could ask for someone for that job and find someone with experience?)

      In the end, Google became a Tier 1 provider, with peering agreements with all of the other backbones. Google hasn't paid for transit for anything in years. They own enough fiber that they simply swap data with the other networks. They also own their uplinks from their datacenters to their backbone. They don't pay some third party for those connections (modulo the complexities of non-US regulatory regimes). That would be stupid, and judging by the service quality of the nearly reincarnated Ma Bell, it would ruin them. Their link would be down all the time. Ma Bell is aware of this, even if other people aren't. That's why you periodically hear whining out of them about charging Google for access to "their" customers (as if they own us like a herd of sheep). Incidentally, that doesn't mean their uplinks are free. It just means they're as minimally expensive as possible. Google pays the salaries of engineers and logistics people to make sure those links stay up, a cheaper proposition than paying for those same engineers and logistics people plus a fat profit on top of it to some other company.

      The Google Fiber project isn't as much of a stretch for them as is commonly believed. Google is already a networking company, not just in the software sense, but in the hardware sense. Google Fiber is just addressing the other end of a network they already own.

    9. Re:Carrier Has Arrived by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Most of the problem is the last mile issues, all Google needs to do there is demonstrate enough of a track record and build enough political presence that they can take any particular market whose ISPs are bothering them. The initial costs are high but the running costs of buried fibreop are pretty close to negligible and that is the big open secret of the North American telecommunications market: These companies are making money hand over fist for no effort whatsoever to most of their customers most of the time. All it takes is a sufficiently large competitor to muscle in on their gravy train to scare them shitless if they have any brains whatsoever, and Google is pretty well funded and connected in D.C. these days.

    10. Re:Carrier Has Arrived by zippthorne · · Score: 1

      I predict that Netflix might be big and popular enough that they can push back with a counter-offer of pay us or we'll stop offering Netflix to your customers. Comcast might entertain that as a good thing for a while, but I doubt AT&T will like it when their customers start canceling/down-grading their plans because they don't need them any more.

      --
      Can you be Even More Awesome?!
    11. Re:Carrier Has Arrived by Bengie · · Score: 1

      That's old. We already have 16tb/s per fiber using currently used fiber. The newer fiber tech being tested is already about 850tb/s per fiber. 1.6tb/s is so slow, current research tech has shown transferring 1tb/s over 12,000km of fiber. That's almost 1/2 around the Earth at its widest part.

  14. not fast enough for this tiger by epine · · Score: 1, Funny

    Besides, my "high speed" Internet from Comcast seemed fast enough, enabling my household to stream HD videos, load web pages quickly, and connect multiple devices as needed, largely without hiccup. I was wrong.

    Is there a special Olympics for underestimating one's needy narcissism?

    There are first world problems, and then there are 90210 problems, and then there is the unreliable gardener who once over-trimmed the bonsai tree beside the Arowana pond in the sunken garden of your private Luxembourg vacation villa, and then there's this.

    I didn't think I needed a seventh naked women with especially plump breasts dropping peeled grapes into my mouth, but I was wrong. — Caligula

    I get it. The Concorde is sexy. If I sunk my backside into a Bugatti Veyron the first words out of my mouth would be "I could get used to this real quick."

    Need? Not so much.

    1. Re:not fast enough for this tiger by ewhac · · Score: 3, Insightful
      15 years ago, nobody "needed" broadband. Dialup was, "good enough."

      Today, try doing anything other than text-only email over 56Kb dialup.

      Broadband uptake enabled a new class of Internet sites and services. Google is betting that history will repeat itself by kicking speeds up by two orders of magnitude. It also has the beneficial side-effect of lighting a fire under AT&T's slothful ass.

      Also keep in mind that GFiber offerings are symmetric. That means you get to upload your photos and videos at 1Gb/sec as well, and not through the 768Kb straw that DSL and cable providers decided was "good enough" for consumer-class Internet.

    2. Re:not fast enough for this tiger by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      Yeah, I know what you mean, I'm jealous too.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    3. Re:not fast enough for this tiger by Jah-Wren+Ryel · · Score: 1

      Let this be the beginning of the end of centralized social networks like facebook and g+.
      The biggest value they provided was photo hosting. Now you can do it at home on your own personal server. Its just going to take some smart decentralized (p2p?) software to handle it.

      --
      When information is power, privacy is freedom.
    4. Re:not fast enough for this tiger by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not that it matters, but the whole "dialup was good enough" meme isn't very realistic. I remember back to 300 baud. We always thought it was slow. No one thought it was good enough. It was just the only damned thing available outside of major college campuses or some government offices.

    5. Re:not fast enough for this tiger by bloodhawk · · Score: 2

      15 years ago, nobody "needed" broadband. Dialup was, "good enough."

      That really isn't true. Dialup was all we had but it certainly was slow as all fuck and EVERYBODY hated it. I had plenty of friends at the time that invested thousands of dollars to have ISDN to their house because dialup sucked that much.

    6. Re:not fast enough for this tiger by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What a load of shit.
      I remember dialup days.
      I remember 300ms+ pings in online games.
      I remember 15 minutes to download a 5mb file. (or was it 3mb?)
      I remember lamenting the total lack of broadband in my area only to have some clueless privileged big-city jackass tell me to just stop using 56"gay" and get cable... 3 years before cable or dsl was available in my area.
      I remember having to tie up a phone line the entire time I was online. I had to get a separate line just for Internet usage.
      I remember feeling fortunate that the ISPs I used were the unlimited kind. When unlimited meant the number of hours you could be connected each month.

      Dialup was never "good enough".
      Even 128k ISDN would have been a little better. When I first heard about it in the early 90s and I only had a 2400 baud modem. Then I anxiously awaited cable and dsl.. from when I first heard about those in the mid-90's (1995/1996).

      Fuck you and your positive bias for a past that never existed.

    7. Re:not fast enough for this tiger by zippthorne · · Score: 1

      The need for broadband is as much about pages over-loaded with 3rd party scripts and poor design as it is about people actually having greater expectations about content delivery. The most popular site on the internet started out as little more than a plain white page with a single-line text input field.

      --
      Can you be Even More Awesome?!
  15. Re:Throughput? Latency? Peerings? by Lennie · · Score: 1

    If it's the Google network, than that would be one of the most peered with networks in the world you are connected to.

    I think Google doesn't even buy transit. Just like a Tier 1 network.

    So peering shouldn't be an issue.

    --
    New things are always on the horizon
  16. Utah County/NSA/Google Coincidence? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Maybe my tin foil hat is too tight but it seems curious to me that Provo in Utah County is the first city to get this service from Google when just a little way up I-15, at the point of the mountain, is the largest NSA facility in the country. Just sounds like a match made in heaven.

    1. Re:Utah County/NSA/Google Coincidence? by sexconker · · Score: 1

      Maybe my tin foil hat is too tight but it seems curious to me that Provo in Utah County is the first city to get this service from Google when just a little way up I-15, at the point of the mountain, is the largest NSA facility in the country. Just sounds like a match made in heaven.

      Google is a front for the NSA. Can't believe there are people who still don't know this.

    2. Re:Utah County/NSA/Google Coincidence? by deconfliction · · Score: 1

      Maybe my tin foil hat is too tight but it seems curious to me that Provo in Utah County is the first city to get this service from Google when just a little way up I-15, at the point of the mountain, is the largest NSA facility in the country. Just sounds like a match made in heaven.

      Google is a front for the NSA. Can't believe there are people who still don't know this.

      Google Pwnz the NSA, or was it vice versa... Can't believe there are people who still don't know that one of those is true.

    3. Re:Utah County/NSA/Google Coincidence? by Patent+Lover · · Score: 1

      So are Yahoo, Cisco, AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast. Not much people can do.

    4. Re:Utah County/NSA/Google Coincidence? by sexconker · · Score: 1

      I don't think you know what the term "front" means.

  17. Thank for informing us about Google fiber by wjcofkc · · Score: 1

    But we already know about it. Could you have maybe written up an nice little review of you experiences, such as what is suggested in this post:

    http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4709907&cid=46062875

    I'm sure you could flesh it out more with your families in home experience, in regards to the various bandwidth related applications and device we use these days. It's great that it reminded you love the internet, but a little content on why could have helped. Google Fiber is a month or two away from me. When I get it, can I post the same article with Kansas City related news links and get on the front page too?

    --
    Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
  18. No local RSN's and the old Veracity had root by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1

    https://static.googleuserconte...

    for 84601 you should get

    http://www.directv.com/DTVAPP/...

    also they seem to be missing the BIG TEN overflow channels.

    Veracity seemed to least have root sports.

    http://residential.veracitynet...

  19. Re:Throughput? Latency? Peerings? by rahvin112 · · Score: 1

    Google IS a tier 1 network. They own a significant amount of fiber on long term leases. Where they actually selling access (outside their test projects) they would be one of the larger international networks.

  20. Re:Content? by FriendlyStatistician · · Score: 1

    The content is in the first link.

    It could have been identified better, but it is there.

  21. Re:Throughput? Latency? Peerings? by FriendlyStatistician · · Score: 3, Informative

    He doesn't mention latency, but he does say he clocked 915 Mb/s both up and down.

    You could try reading the article.

  22. What google feels like? by Okian+Warrior · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Google Fiber Launches In Provo — and Here's What It Feels Like

    Why all the hate for Google?

    Here in New Hampshire we have to choose between Fairpoint or Comcast.

    Would you like to know what *that* feels like?

    1. Re:What google feels like? by Greyfox · · Score: 4, Funny
      Gigabit Fiber - Like being sucked off by an angel.

      Choice between Fairpoint and Comcast - Like having sex with a porcupine.

      Is that pretty close?

      --

      I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?

    2. Re:What google feels like? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      You might want to consider counseling.

    3. Re:What google feels like? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They hate of company popular with nerds because they wouldn't get attention otherwise.

  23. Sounds like this article was written by Google by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    First of all Google Internet was not 100 times faster in Provo. Provo has had fiber that could go 1Gbps for almost 10 years now and everything he said he could was being done 10 years ago. The biggest difference is that Google now owns the $40M fiber network that they paid $1 for instead of Provo City. What makes it even better is the citizens still have to pay for the $40M bond that built the network. But wait, there's more. What they didn't tell you is Google is kicking all commercial customers off their network and now government agencies and schools have to pay for the network instead of getting it for free.

    To sum it up, Provo gave up millions of dollars a year in revenue for the opportunity to have Google come to town and charge them for the same Internet that they already had for free while simultaneously offending all business owners by kicking them off the network and sticking them with the bill.

    1. Re:Sounds like this article was written by Google by Patent+Lover · · Score: 1

      Sorry, Provo had more pressing issues like trying to get rid of gay marriage.

    2. Re:Sounds like this article was written by Google by khallow · · Score: 4, Interesting

      To sum it up, Provo gave up millions of dollars a year in revenue for the opportunity to have Google come to town and charge them for the same Internet that they already had for free while simultaneously offending all business owners by kicking them off the network and sticking them with the bill.

      Sure they did. According to this story, Provo was paying over $3 million annually just in debt service on this fiber (called "iProvo") and losing money on the service even ignoring those bond payments. It might have had "millions of dollars a year in revenue", but it was a net loss.

      Google now owns the $40M fiber network that they paid $1 for

      Sounds like iProvo was such a money sink that Provo would have paid someone to take it on - even ignoring the bonds. That's not the sign of a $40 million asset, but of a considerable liability.

    3. Re:Sounds like this article was written by Google by jader3rd · · Score: 2

      To sum it up, Provo gave up millions of dollars a year in revenue for the opportunity to have Google come to town and charge them for the same Internet that they already had for free while simultaneously offending all business owners by kicking them off the network and sticking them with the bill.

      Provo was caught between two right wing ideals, being pro business/growth and being anti government. Provo knew that a fiber network in the city would make the city more appealing to businesses and residences. Enough people were excited about business and growth opportunities in it that they were able to get a bond passed to build the network. But, the only way to appease the anti-government folks was to not increase taxes on the population and only have customers pay back the bond. The anti-government folks remember how big bad government forced sewage lines, paved roads, electricity and phone lines on them (or their parents), and they sure weren't going to let government fool them one more time.

    4. Re:Sounds like this article was written by Google by khallow · · Score: 1

      But, the only way to appease the anti-government folks was to not increase taxes on the population and only have customers pay back the bond.

      This sort of phrasing makes me wonder if you understand economics at all. Sure, I could deliver terabits per second to your computer in the near future, if other people are paying enough to fund it. But the best sign that something is worthwhile is that someone is willing to fully pay the cost of it in order to receive those goods or services.

      So we have a service that the users aren't for whatever reason will to pay enough to support. That sounds to me like a service that wasn't worth the bother, at least being run by the Provo government.

    5. Re:Sounds like this article was written by Google by bogjobber · · Score: 2

      Apparently "free" in your mind does not include the millions of dollars a year the city government was losing operating the service. Pretty sure that wasn't monopoly money they were spending. Residents can still get a 5mbps synchronous connection for free. Schools are still getting free gigabit. It's just the gigabit residential/business that is $70/month, which is what a fair amount of Americans pay for service that is orders of magnitude worse. Provo City is making out like a bandit. I wish the other UTOPIA cities could get on board.

    6. Re:Sounds like this article was written by Google by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      While "not increasing taxes" might sound nice, the way they get around this is by having ALL Provo residents pay the bond off through their utility bill. Every month I see a line item as following:

      Telecom Debt Charge - $5.35

      Businesses/Industrial have to pay more as outlined here: http://secure.provocitypower.com/Schedule%2021.pdf

      My favorite part of that document: "This Schedule will automatically expire upon the final payment of the debt unless extended by the Municipal Council."

      Can't wait for them to try to extend the payment just cuz everyone's used to paying it...

      That being said, I was one of those that voted for iProvo to get built including the issuance of the bond, and have been using the network since inception. Still not converted to Google Fiber yet, but can't wait :)

    7. Re:Sounds like this article was written by Google by jader3rd · · Score: 1

      So we have a service that the users aren't for whatever reason will to pay enough to support. That sounds to me like a service that wasn't worth the bother, at least being run by the Provo government.

      Exactly. If businesses looked at the market and say 'we couldn't get enough customers to pay for the service' the business doesn't invest in that project, and that's exactly what happened here. Businesses didn't do it, but the city did. But the city didn't act like a government (ie. tax everyone because it benefits everyone/majority), it acted like a business in a venture that business felt was too risky to take on.

    8. Re:Sounds like this article was written by Google by bhiestand · · Score: 1

      So we have a service that the users aren't for whatever reason will to pay enough to support. That sounds to me like a service that wasn't worth the bother, at least being run by the Provo government.

      You are completely ignoring some other [more likely] explanations:

      1. Provo's costs may be too high (whether due to mismanagement, regulations, peering agreements, etc.). Google can probably do it much cheaper

      2. A higher rate would be acceptable economically, but not politically

      I haven't read enough about the situation in Provo, but I suspect both points apply in this case.

      --
      SWM seeks new sig for a brief fling
    9. Re:Sounds like this article was written by Google by khallow · · Score: 1

      I cover both those possibilities with "at least being run by the Provo government".

    10. Re:Sounds like this article was written by Google by bhiestand · · Score: 1

      Ahh, I did not interpret it that way. Fair enough.

      --
      SWM seeks new sig for a brief fling
    11. Re:Sounds like this article was written by Google by Bengie · · Score: 1

      To sum it up, Provo gave up millions of dollars a year in revenue

      They were bleeding a net loss of $1m/year. They cut their losses while retaining most of the benefit.

  24. Home Servers by hackus · · Score: 0

    This use of high speed internet is a waste unless home servers are permitted.

    Right now I have to fight with my ISP for even connecting to my VPN.

    They want $320 dollars a month if I want a server on my home network. at 10Mbit down, 1Mbit up.
    (Time Warner)

    -Hack

    --
    Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
    1. Re:Home Servers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > They want $320 dollars a month if I want a server on my home network. at 10Mbit down, 1Mbit up.

      I'd pay that in a second if I could. I'm stuck in Seattle with $66.93 per month (soon to increase to $68.93) for less than 1 Mbps. That's ten times faster for less than five times the price. With 10 Mbps, I could start streaming ESPN3, HBO GO, and Netflix. Since my block doesn't hav ecable, I'm currently stuck with OTA TV and Red Box so that would be life changing for me. I just wish Seattle's city government would get off of their asses and force either CenturyLink or Comcast to offer service that nice.

    2. Re:Home Servers by koan · · Score: 1

      How would they know?

      --
      "If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
    3. Re:Home Servers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      dyndns or the like dumbo

  25. A wild competition appeared by nmb3000 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    An interesting side effect of Google's fiber offering is the sudden competition it's putting in some places where it hardly existed before, and allowing us to examine the results.

    I have a friend who lives in Provo (about 10 miles south of me) and will be eligible for Google Fiber when they open it up in his area this March. He has had Comcast Internet service for a couple of years now and is planning on switching to Google when he can. However, about a month ago a Comcast representative came directly to his home, unscheduled, to talk about a "new and improved" service level he was now eligible for.

    This Comcast rep told my friend that, effective immediately (all he had to do was call Comcast), he could change his current ISP service to a package that offered 250 Mbps down / 150 Mbps up, no bandwidth cap, for $25 / month. To compare, he was currently getting 25 Mbps down and paying $75 / month. A couple of weeks ago he made the switch and has been very happy with the order of magnitude speed increase and 66% price drop.

    I understand the concept behind competition and the magical invisible hand, but this sort of behavior sickens me. If Comcast can drop their prices and increase their service offerings so quickly in response to new competition, it just goes to show how badly they are screwing over most of their other customers. And, of course, when I called them to inquire about this amazing new Internet service they were offering, I was told it was a "not available" in my area and that different "geographical regions" have different prices.

    There's a real argument here for municipal/state owned and funded fiber networks being leased out to various commercial (or otherwise) ISPs. If Google and Comcast can both offer this kind of bandwidth for these prices, the current state of affairs in most of the rest of the country is completely unjustified. I'm sick and tired of a few "elite" corporations getting an effective monopoly on Internet service offerings in vast areas, able to charge anything they please because people have no other option.

    --
    "What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
    /)
    1. Re:A wild competition appeared by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ever stop to think that Google may have forced Comcast's hand to upgrade their backbone and other infrastructure? Maybe they really can't offer this service everywhere and it's not just them trying to rip you off.

    2. Re:A wild competition appeared by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > Comcast ... offered 250 Mbps down / 150 Mbps up, no bandwidth cap, for $25 / month

      Here in Seattle, Comcast doesn't even offer service in much of the city for any price. As you pointed out, that's because there is no competition. There's no reason to spend the money to upgrade amplifiers to support the return path so they don't. If there was a viable option other than CenturyLink, that only works if you're close enough to the CO and have high enough POTS lines, but even then doesn't usually give you more than 1 Mbps, then Comcast would offer faster service and offer it for a reasonable price. Instead here in Seattle, we're stuck with not even being able to get Comcast.

    3. Re:A wild competition appeared by Zebai · · Score: 1

      I think you may be incorrect on those speeds. Comcast speed tiers are 3/6/25/50/105/515(certain Northeast markets only) There may be regional offers on price but the actual speeds are uniform

    4. Re:A wild competition appeared by Zebai · · Score: 1

      I forgot one tier, some areas have a 305 package also

    5. Re:A wild competition appeared by SuperKendall · · Score: 0

      I understand the concept behind competition and the magical invisible hand, but this sort of behavior sickens me.

      If you aren't upset with the regulations that keep Comcast in a position to do that in most areas, you are upset for entirely the wrong reasons and at the wrong people...

      --
      "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    6. Re:A wild competition appeared by Nemyst · · Score: 1

      Comcast (and every other ISP out there) has had years to upgrade their infrastructure while getting massive profits each year. I have absolutely zero pity or understanding for them. They took taxpayers' money in the form of basic infrastructure and sat on it while overcharging their "customers".

      If Comcast can't provide the same sort of package in another area, they should be forced to upgrade. Make them actually be worth something.

    7. Re:A wild competition appeared by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Have him get in touch with his local cable ombudsman. People In Charge should be made aware of that shit.

    8. Re:A wild competition appeared by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They sure are. http://www.multichannel.com/distribution/comcast-light-250-meg-broadband-service-provo/145182

    9. Re:A wild competition appeared by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think you may be incorrect on those speeds. Comcast speed tiers are 3/6/25/50/105/515(certain Northeast markets only) There may be regional offers on price but the actual speeds are uniform

      http://www.fiercetelecom.com/story/google-fiber-now-faces-comcasts-250-mbps-offering-provo/2013-08-29>
      http://www.multichannel.com/distribution/comcast-light-250-meg-broadband-service-provo/145182

      I think that they were fine on the speed, but not sure about the price.

    10. Re:A wild competition appeared by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There's a real argument here for municipal/state owned and funded fiber networks being leased out to various commercial (or otherwise) ISPs

      Isn't this what we have now?
      We paid the ISPs to roll out "broadband" with tax dollars several times over.
      Local munis gave right-of-way on telephone poles, helped dig trenches, and gave juicy exclusive contracts to ISPs.

      You want speedy 'net access? Start showing up to city/town council meetings and let your voice be heard.

    11. Re:A wild competition appeared by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What would really increase/provide competition would be to take the last mile out of the current hands and make it a municipal utility. Just the "wire" and that half of the central office (CO) to be precise. You would pay a monthly fee to "maintain" the wire/fiber back to your CO.

      Then in the CO, companies could bring gear into the other half and sell you services over the last mile.

      Ultimately any existing phone or cable wires could be replaced with fiber and all new construction would be fiber, all the way to the home.

      The last mile needs to be a dumb pipe, but the current maintainers of the last mile do not want to be just a dumb pipe. Here is the fix.

    12. Re:A wild competition appeared by swillden · · Score: 1

      An interesting side effect of Google's fiber offering is the sudden competition it's putting in

      Which is the whole point of Google fiber. Google fiber is more than a stunt, it's a real, profit-generating business, but the purpose of the project is exactly to create competition, making truly high-speed Internet widely available.

      --
      Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
    13. Re:A wild competition appeared by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If Comcast can drop their prices and increase their service offerings so quickly in response to new competition, it just goes to show how badly they are screwing over most of their other customers.

      Considering that the average business has approximately 5% net income, I would say that a 66% reduction in cost and a substantial increase in the service is costing Comcast a lot of money. I'll explain why I believe they're doing this. Consider a scenario where you recently signed a lease, but got a job offer in an other city. Now you could pay for two rents at a time, but you decide to sublet your old apartment instead. The problem is that on such short notice, you can only get someone to pay half the price of the rent. Now even though you're still losing money, you're still way better off than you would have been otherwise. I suspect it's a similar situation with Comcast. It's expensive to operate at such a substantial loss, it's even worst to have your infrastructure just sitting there without anyone using it.

    14. Re:A wild competition appeared by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      My mayor started his own computer business when he was in high school, he still runs that business, he keeps up with tech, has 3 majors from our local Uni, including public services and political policy, and he's still in his early twenties. He's obsessed with getting fiber Internet to our city, and large portions are already hooked up and running. Zoom Zoom. He won the vote with a major land-slide with votes from across all ages and he caused our highest voter turn out, especially in the younger ages. He has a long background of charity work, helping people with technology consulting, and gives a lot of talks for our Uni and other events around the state as a repeat guest speaker for both politics and businesses.

      We're in good hands.

    15. Re:A wild competition appeared by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Government/municipal ownership may not be necessary (excepting certain cases such as remote/rural regions). However, some vertical separation between content creators (movie studios, TV stations, etc.) and content delivery (ISPs, cable, etc.) may help avoid conflicts of interest.

      Additionally, virtual networks (like those available on wireless services like PagePlus Cellular and H2O Wireless) could help by buying bandwidth and selling to the user. The actual fiber/cable companies sell to the virtual networks and the virtual networks sell to the customer.

  26. Google is the Walmart of the Internet by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    I don't think I need to explain the analogy, especially to those who live in small town USA like I do where every commercial property except the Walmart is boarded up and for sale.

    1. Re:Google is the Walmart of the Internet by green1 · · Score: 1

      Who's going to cry when the local Comcast or Time Warner is boarded up?

    2. Re:Google is the Walmart of the Internet by koan · · Score: 1

      All those highly trained tech support agents in the call center "did you reset your modem? Reset it again... still not working? ok I'll send someone out and we will charge you"

      --
      "If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
    3. Re:Google is the Walmart of the Internet by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Don't worry; XMission's not going anywhere.

    4. Re:Google is the Walmart of the Internet by green1 · · Score: 1

      You think Google won't need those same monkeys?

    5. Re: Google is the Walmart of the Internet by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I do think that.

  27. UTOPIA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The Utopia broadband project serves a number of cities along the Wasatch Front including right next door to Provo (Orem).
    They're making it sound like a 1GB fiber connection is something new and innovative that google has come up with. But folks in Orem (right next door to Provo) have had it to their homes for going on 2 years now. When Google announced their GB service Utopia dropped their price to match.
    Also with Utopia you have your choice of dozens of providers, including what I consider the best ISP in the world Xmission www.xmission.com. With Google Fiber, you're stuck with Google and all the amawesomeness that entails.

  28. third or fourth, not first by raymorris · · Score: 1

    > but it seems curious to me that Provo in Utah County is the first city to get this service from Google

    Does it seem less curious when you realize Provo is NOT the city? Kansas City, Kansas got it, then Kansas City, Missouri. Before either of those, a neighbourhood in California. So there were two and a half other cities before Provo.

  29. Side effects by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    No one seems to know or post about the side effects. I live in the city next to Provo and work at a company in Provo. Google Fiber does not service businesses, only residential. Many local ISPs need revenue from both business and residential, when they lose one part of the market, they have to increase prices for the other or go out of business. There are several businesses that are leaving Provo because of this. Several members of the Provo city council are regretting their decision to allow Google to take over their fiber project. They are afraid that the company I work for will be leaving Provo because it pays a lot of taxes. Anyways, I heard about this from the person in charge of building or whatever her title is, she is the one tasked with finding another office site and such. She goes to the various city council meetings and such and happened to tell me this.

  30. Re:Content? by icebike · · Score: 1

    Maybe click the first link in the story ?

    Nah, that would never work.

    --
    Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
  31. lol... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I feel bad for anyone stupid enough to make google their ISP.

  32. I don't see need for 1Gps either by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Considering that many web sites are smaller than a few hundred KB, and with tabbed browsing, I don't see how getting above 1 mb/s is so necessary. Maybe the vocal people like to use Netflix out the wazoo. I don't want to pay for a snazy 1Gbs home connection.

    I would like lower prices, AT&T....

    1. Re:I don't see need for 1Gps either by DarwinSurvivor · · Score: 3

      Maybe a few years ago. I just did a quick google check and everything seems to point to around 1.2 to 1.3MB. On a 1mb/s connection, that's about 10 seconds to load a webpage. I'm sure popular websites like Facebook and Twitter (with large images and photo galleries) are significantly higher.

      You also need to keep in mind all of the things we currently cannot do because of these restrictions. I'm a scout leader and often take lots of photos at our meetings and outtings. For privacy reasons we aren't comfortable posting them on social websites. I would love to be able to put them on my home server and let parents download them directly (possibly with a password or something), but our shit upload speeds (2.5Mb/s is about the max around here) make that VERY difficult. Throw in some videos and the simple act of sharing media with parents has saturated my internet connection to the point where I can't even receive emails.

      Even something as simple as uploading a high definition video to youtube can literally take overnight for the vast majority of North Americans.

    2. Re:I don't see need for 1Gps either by 2fuf · · Score: 1

      Instead of hosting a server at home you could upload it to a cloud storage service like Google Drive or something.

    3. Re:I don't see need for 1Gps either by DarwinSurvivor · · Score: 3, Insightful

      First of all, we shouldn't have to rely on offsite hosting, we should be able to do this ourselves. Second of all, some of us like to keep control of our files ourselves, particularly when it comes to banking files, personal photos, tax forms, etc. Third of all, syncing with services like Google Drive can be a P.I.T.A. to set up and can be very disruptive when these services are modified or closed down.

      If we had proper (bi-directional) home internet connections we wouldn't need large storage devices with us and could simply remotely access our files from home whenever we want to listen to music or transfer a report we've been working on for work/school/etc.

    4. Re:I don't see need for 1Gps either by frozentier · · Score: 1

      If we had proper (bi-directional) home internet connections we wouldn't need large storage devices with us and could simply remotely access our files from home whenever we want to listen to music or transfer a report we've been working on for work/school/etc.

      You have NO IDEA how much more dangerous that could potentially be than storing them at a third party site.

    5. Re:I don't see need for 1Gps either by 2fuf · · Score: 1

      > syncing with services like Google Drive can be a P.I.T.A.

      Well, the desktop client let's you sync as a background process (it even runs as a service so you don't need to start it up manually).
      Works like a charm and is very easy to set up IMHO. It also let's you manage the file permissions in a very clear way.

      What I *do* find a P.I.T.A. is manually installing and configuring Apache / FTP on my local home computer and making sure it's not going to be a security vulnerability...

    6. Re:I don't see need for 1Gps either by zippthorne · · Score: 1

      Are you using tabbed browsing to workaround one of the failures of all modern browsers - back always results in a page reload?

      --
      Can you be Even More Awesome?!
    7. Re:I don't see need for 1Gps either by zippthorne · · Score: 1

      Apple iCloud might be a better solution for you, specifically photostream. There is the level of control that you're seeking. The only requirement you listed that it doesn't offer is that the files are hosted on someone else's machine.

      There are benefits to offset the drawbacks, though. For instance you don't need to worry about maintaining the machines, and you also don't need to pay for the power and equipment for a whole server.. just whatever fees they are charging for your amount of data.

      --
      Can you be Even More Awesome?!
    8. Re:I don't see need for 1Gps either by DarwinSurvivor · · Score: 1

      Let's see, using key-only ssh access to a home server versus one of the many cloud systems that have dozens of attack vectors (webdav, ftp, http(s), etc) enabled. Personally, I like having control of which services have access to my data (ex: turn ftp 100% OFF, disable ssh password authentication), how often fixes are applied and brute-force prevention/monitoring. Not to mention that I don't have to worry about somebody else's account hosted at the same data centre as mine causing an FBI red flag and having the entire data centre confiscated.

  33. But it doesn't actually SAY what it feels like by Megahard · · Score: 1

    So I can only assume it's like having sex with a supermodel on a flying unicorn.

    --
    I eat only the real part of complex carbohydrates.
  34. zooming speed by nurb432 · · Score: 1

    So you can get your Advertisements and spam delivered even faster...

    --
    ---- Booth was a patriot ----
  35. Re:Throughput? Latency? Peerings? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Hey! Sit down and shut the fuck up. This isn't about numbers and technology. This is about praising Google at every possible turn.

  36. Obligatory car analogy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I learned a simple principle years ago that helps keep things like Google Fiber in perspective: A fast car is only as fast as the road conditions allow. In this case, 1 Gbps fiber service to the home is only as fast as the content delivery needs to be or is allowed to be by the content provider. My home Internet connection is provisioned for 75 Mbps down / 35 Mbps up. According to Ookla (speedtest.net), download speed averages between 87 and 90 Mbps from a server 100 miles away and is faster than that of 96% of the rest of the world and 97% of the United States.

    Don't give me that "You don't know what you're missing" crap. Codecs and other delivery technologies have advanced to the point where the only things a typical consumer "needs" a 1 Gbps connection for today are synthetic benchmarks and dubious bragging rights. My family can have two simultaneous 1080p video streams from different providers, an online game, video conferencing (Skype) and a VoIP call going at the same time without ever breaking a sweat. I guess if we were running continuous off-site backups, operating a call center, or running some type of streaming video server, connection speed might become a bottleneck. But we don't. And neither do 99% of other home users.

    If anything, you could have said that 1 Gbps everywhere enables better "killer apps" because content providers would not have to worry about matching the slow speeds of 99% of their user base. Even then, many Internet users are using comparatively slow wireless (WiFi/3G/4G) connections whether at home or on the move. I think most of the effort will be spent improving delivery to mobile devices, not optimizing delivery for the special few with wired Gigabit to the house.

    Disclaimer: My employer built and maintains one of the highest capacity transit networks in the world. And every employee has - what, you were going to say 10 Gbps fiber to their desk? No, we have a 100 Mbps symmetrical connection to each desk because it offers more bandwidth than most employees will ever use.

    1. Re:Obligatory car analogy by BLKMGK · · Score: 3, Insightful

      What bitrate are those "1080p" videos at? Oh, I thought so.

      Imagine having that 1Gb connection. Imagine that you can't use it all but that you can do anything you want with it. do you think maybe you might sit down and ponder, that you might try to imagine better ways to use it? Cloud backup service is obvious and done. Video is done and being done. Keep going. Just sit and use your imagination and I suspect that you will eventually think of something new that cannot be done now with existing normal bandwidth. Maybe it's something silly, maybe it's something crazy, maybe it turns out to be something life changing.

      THAT is why we need to have bandwidth well over and above what we have now. We need to have enough that people sit down and think up new ways to use, innovate, maybe find a way to save a life or help another. We've done this with CPU and GPU for a long time, disk space too. My first HDD was 40MEG and nearly the size of a shoebox. Suppose way back then someone had spoken as you have and decided that we would never need more and was listened to. We need to bring fuel for dreams and imagination - right now we're WELL behind the curve for that...

      --
      Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
    2. Re:Obligatory car analogy by noh8rz10 · · Score: 0

      keep dreaming, dream boy. The reason why it works with the computer components is that every time the technology advanced the costs did not expand. If anything, all the mfrs knew they were in a commodity business and the only way they could avoid being beat by the chineese ahas to make something that seemed new.

      In contrast, big fiber networks are $SSSSSSSS$$$SSSSSSSS$SSSSSSS$$$SSSSS$$$. Unlike a single speedy computer which helps a particular usu. I'm really sleepy.

    3. Re:Obligatory car analogy by BLKMGK · · Score: 2

      and yet we apparently have dark fiber all over the place. Aren't we squeezing ever more capacity out of existing fiber? Is bandwidth somehow getting more expensive? That would be odd now wouldn't it?

      --
      Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
    4. Re:Obligatory car analogy by noh8rz10 · · Score: 0

      last mile, as sole! the arteries and vanes aren't a problemo; it's the capillaries that kill you.

    5. Re: Obligatory car analogy by BLKMGK · · Score: 1

      Google is doing it, DOCSIS 3 gets us 300+Mbps, and FIOS has made some inroads with fiber into the home - I have it. Other countries are doing it too albeit with more density.

      My point was that it CAN and would be utilized and that there IS a point for rolling it out. If we all took the attitude of "good enough" I'd still be listening to a 2400baud modem making connections.

      --
      Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
    6. Re: Obligatory car analogy by noh8rz10 · · Score: 0

      you're wrong - there ISN'T a point for rolling it out, you said so your self. Above you said a company should spend billions of $$'s to install something nobody thinks they need, and then let's see what ideas happen.

      hint: back in the 2400 days everybody agreed that it was EXCRUCIATINGLY slow. your analogy fails.

    7. Re:Obligatory car analogy by Bengie · · Score: 1

      The only thing more expensive than a big fiber network is a big copper network. About every 5-8 years, AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast each spend enough to cover the entire USA in fiber, just to keep their copper networks up to par. That means every 5-8 years, they together spend about 3x the cost to upgrade the USA to all fiber. Fiber has about a 30% lower opex than copper, and opex is about 60% of the cost of a modern ISP. They could reduce their total costs by 15%, and when you're making 5% margins on your revenue, reducing your costs by 20% over all is like quadrupling your net profits.

    8. Re: Obligatory car analogy by BLKMGK · · Score: 1

      We currently have shit for bandwidth, many people want way more bandwidth and could argue they need more bandwidth NOW much less in the future. Billions? How about the money already given to these companies by our Govt. actually be used for rolling it out? The Govt. and the people, except apparently for you, recognize that bandwidth offers opportunity and innovation. I will point out, again, that if everyone had your attitude we'd still be using 2400baud modems to download ASCII p0rn instead of streaming HD movies from Netflix. Were it not for bandwidth Netflix simply wouldn't have the business opportunity that they have now. You apparently think that all of these opportunities are done and gone despite what Google is doing - wake up.

      Other countries are already doing this - we are FAR from the top of the heap when it comes to availability much less bandwidth. I spoke to someone just tonight from Finland who told me that network access was as much a critical utility as water where she's from. Our attitudes, and yes your's, are all wrong. If there's fail here it's you.

      Done feeding the troll now O/

      --
      Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
  37. Re:Throughput? Latency? Peerings? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Google IS a tier 1 network.

    Not according to any definition I've ever seen. They still buy transit and have a default gateway.

  38. Comcast Cable by koan · · Score: 1

    The new dial up.

    --
    "If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
    1. Re:Comcast Cable by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ...and still hands-down, by far, the worst ISP in all of human history.

  39. Cool by koan · · Score: 2

    What's the data cap?

    --
    "If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
  40. It Feels Like I Just Got Home by PaddyM · · Score: 1
  41. Re:Throughput? Latency? Peerings? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    > eWhat did your traceroutes look like?

    Fine.

  42. Anonymous Coward by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Think ahead.

  43. Was there a story for this post on /.? by aliquis · · Score: 1

    Or am I missing something?

    1 gbps = he likes the Internet.

    End of story?

    "k"

  44. Re:Throughput? Latency? Peerings? by JWSmythe · · Score: 1

    Peering is *always* an issue. Some companies do it well. Some do not.

    At this point, no one has said who the carrier really is. It could be Google. It could be a locally source carrier. A few traceroutes would at have given us a hint.

    --
    Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
  45. But to what? by Sycraft-fu · · Score: 1

    Most people who love to post these high speedtest numbers are people who's provider runs a speedtest server. Ok, so you can get that speed to their central office. Big deal, I get those speeds to our speedtest server at work... because it is down the hall from me.

    A real speed test involves going off network and a good distance away. I generally test to FastServ Networks in California because they have a solid network on their test server, it is off my ISP (at home and at work) and in a different state. If my speed is good to them, I can confidently say my Internet connection is fast: I have a good uplink all the way to the outside world, off my network.

    Also there is the question of congestion, or rather lack of it. I can't imagine Google is doing point-to-point fiber. It is probably GPON. That means the more subscribers in an area, the less speed.

    I just question his gushing a bit because at work, I have "gigabit" speeds. I'm on a gig link, to a 10gig building link to our central systems. I'm not sure what our total off campus speed is, it's around 2gig to the Internet, 10gig to I2, but I haven't looked. Speedtests to FastServ show about 400mbits up and down generally during the work day. Downloads are nice and zippy, a Linux torrent just screams, and we have Akamai cache engines on the network so things like Windows updates are almost wire speed.

    However for all that, I don't notice much difference over my home network, which is about 30mbit. I do for big downloads, of course, but not for general browsing. The speed of page loads seems to be limited mostly by rendering all the javascript and DHTML they use these days, not by the line, and I can stream whatever I like with no issues.

    1. Re:But to what? by Shirley+Marquez · · Score: 1

      Even a good Speedtest result to a server that is not run by your ISP is no guarantee. Your ISP's traffic shaping could be special-casing Speedtest to make their product look better.

      A better test is to do a real-world download. Grab something large enough that it takes at least a minute to download on whatever connection you have. See how long it takes. For example, on my Comcast connection at non-peak times I will see download speeds of 5-6 megabytes/second; it drops to 1.5-2 megabytes/second during the evening, which is the busiest time for networks in a residential neighborhood. (These results are for a level of service advertised as "up to 50Mbps" - note that is megaBITS not megaBYTES - and are consistent with the company's promises. I avoid doing really big downloads like multi-gigabyte ISOs during the busy hours.) The real-world test may fail on a REALLY fast connection like Google Fiber because it will be difficult to find a download source that can keep up!

    2. Re:But to what? by Bengie · · Score: 1

      Also there is the question of congestion, or rather lack of it. I can't imagine Google is doing point-to-point fiber. It is probably GPON. That means the more subscribers in an area, the less speed.

      They use wmd-PON, which gives each end point it's own dedicated 1.25gb/s of bandwidth with no sharing. My understanding is they can handle about 400 customers per network chassis and each chassis can support 400gb of uplink. These chassis plug directly into their core route which has 100gb ports.

      I'm not sure what kind of routing speed their core routers have, but with current tech, one could roll out 1gb/1gb to 500,000 houses, and give them non-blocking full speed, even on the uplink. That kind of design would be expensive and there is no reason to assume a large population would need a full non-blocking design at the core, but from the last mile to the core, it is simple to do non-blocking.

    3. Re:But to what? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes but his provider is google. So that is a realworld target. Many users spend their entire internet life on googles services. It is rare but possible.

  46. Re:Throughput? Latency? Peerings? by JWSmythe · · Score: 1

    My mistake.

    I for one welcome our Googleie Overlords(tm).

    Praise them in their GooGooGooglie Goodness.

    --
    Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
  47. Think different. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I have. My thoughts are that the present is and future of Internet access will continue to be wireless. Wireless technologies - the type that you use for your tablet and smartphone in the office, in a hotel, on the road, in a train, in an airplane... - are bandwidth limited by the spectrum available in that area. Even with reliable 1 Gbps wireless technology, the number of simultaneous users in the same coverage area competing for spectrum will limit bandwidth available for any one user.

    No, I still think content providers will continue to optimize for the 99% who do not have access to a 1 Gbps Internet connection. It's how the best studios mix a recording for broadcast - they buy a cheap radio and set of speakers from the local department store and use that as their tuning reference. If they can make the recording sound good on equipment 99% of the listeners have access to, it will sound really good on top of the line equipment that only 1% own.

    1. Re:Think different. by BLKMGK · · Score: 1

      Yes, this is exactly why so many TV shows are now broadcast in 5.1 surround sound - for the cheapo' radios that the 99% have /s

      --
      Build it, Drive it, Improve it! Hybridz.org
  48. Re: Throughput? Latency? Peerings? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    They also have open peering. They will peer with anyone at zero cost to you.

  49. Right of Way, outdoor enclosures? by awfar · · Score: 1

    Can anyone comment on the type of enclosures they are using in the public right of ways, from an aesthetic point of view? Are they large? I recall that other communities have been up in arms about their size and placement. If you are the unlucky one where they plop it down right in front of your house is there any recourse?

    1. Re:Right of Way, outdoor enclosures? by Areyoukiddingme · · Score: 1

      People were up in arms over AT&T U-Verse enclosures, not Google Fiber. For fairly good reason. U-Verse boxes are as big as the largest stop light control boxes and they have a bright status LED on the side. Around here, AT&T sited them adjacent to people's backyard fences, obscured by a utility pole, as much as possible. Those that couldn't blend into the existing landscape, they buried. They contain caching servers for AT&T's digital video, plus the bits and pieces that make them into essentially a miniature central office. Basically they're a big boxy kludge to get around the copper AT&T did not replace.

      Google Fiber requires no such box. It's fiber. Fiber signals can propagate 80 to 100 km without amplification, even through a reasonable number of splices. 120km unamplified at 2.5 Gbps is achievable if splices are kept to a minimum. Google is pulling brand new fiber. I'm sure they can minimize the number of splices in their new installation. The head end doesn't even have to be in the same county as the customer, at those distances.

  50. what about ad companies by Sri+Ramkrishna · · Score: 1

    what I've found is that you can only load web pages as fast as the ads that it links to load it. You can literally wait for an ad companies embedded ad to load before seeing the rest of the page. :/

    1. Re:what about ad companies by amaurea · · Score: 1

      In my experience, you only have to wait for the ads to fail to load, which they do immediately due to adblock.

  51. Doesn't bother me by billstewart · · Score: 1

    Yes, I'm only using 3 Mbps at home. It's slightly better than 1.5 Mbps, and for video it's way better than 384 kbps. I've got a T3 at work (45Mbps), shared with a couple of coworkers, and for downloading large software images it rocks, but I don't download a lot of Linux ISOs at home. (And most of the video I watch at work is training or equivalent, with talking heads and slides; 384kbps was plenty for that back in the day.)

    As it is, when I'm doing Ubuntu updates, it usually takes longer to install them than to download on the 1.5Mbps T1, for the virtual machines that live over in the testing side.

    --

    Bill Stewart
    New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
  52. You by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Think.

  53. I had an OC48 to my desktop at work. by ralphaostrander · · Score: 1

    I am ruined for all else.

  54. Here's what I'm wondering.... by PensacolaSlick · · Score: 0

    So this is clearly the wave of the future for household dopamine production. I'll explain: I didn't ditch cable tv last year because my wife needed today's Oprah/Dr.Phil/Real Housewives show, and my 3 kids needed today's Peppa Pig/Dora/iCarly. I have friends who have been off cable/sattelite tv for years, because they're content with a smaller, better quality content selection. With the coming latency drop teased by this google publicity stunt, the current mega-ascension of NFLX, etc, and the rumor that Hulu will deliver any show the day after, I'm tempted to ditch cable. But with peak possible media usage of, say, four concurrent high-bandwidth streams in my household, I'm not convinced we're there yet. Do I wait for gigabit to get to my neighborhood? Or do I just adopt today? Sure would be nice to cut down that $200/month bill.

  55. Provo's nearest neighbor is the NSA! by cplusplus · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Does anyone find it just a little coincidental that this latest Google fiber rollout is only about 20 miles from the NSA's newest datacenter in Bluffdale UT? Lots of bandwidth infrastructure was already in the neighborhood :)

    --
    "False hope is why we'll never run out of natural resources!" - Lewis Black
    1. Re:Provo's nearest neighbor is the NSA! by Polo · · Score: 1

      You got it backwards. Google gets protection from fiber's mortal enemy... the backhoe.

      What backhoe would hang around fiber with the threat of dangerous black SUVs around every corner?

      :) :)

  56. Parkinson's Law coming to a fat pipe near you by utkonos · · Score: 1

    Data expands to fill the space available. It doesn't matter what the super fast super large digital thing is this year, at some point it will feel slow and old. Remember 10Mbit ethernet? That was TEN times as fast as 1Mbit!!!!!! It GIFs loaded instantly from your fileserver compared to waiting for them to load on dialup.

  57. Google shilling and false advertising by Khyber · · Score: 1

    " the second of three scheduled cities to get speeds that are 100 times faster than the rest of America"

    Excuse me? I get 300 mbit on my cable modem. 100 times faster? Try THREE.

    False advertising like a motherfucker, Google.

    Slashdot should be held responsible for the additional false advertising they're doing.

    --
    Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
    1. Re:Google shilling and false advertising by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      you have to learn the difference between bytes and bits.

    2. Re:Google shilling and false advertising by Khyber · · Score: 1

      I knew the difference before your ignorant ass was ever born.

      --
      Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
    3. Re:Google shilling and false advertising by Bengie · · Score: 1

      The "Rest of America" has an average of just under 10mb/s, so 1000mb is about 100x faster than the average.

  58. Speed != Good internet by danknight48 · · Score: 1

    As with all ISPs, speed means shit:
    - Whats the contention ratio, compared to other ISPs in the area?
    - How many hops to your favourite website, vs other ISP's?
    - How stable is your ping, vs other ISPs?
    - When the service becomes more populated, how much impact will this have on your connection?

    For people like me, who play online games, low latency and stability is everything. A 100TB connection means nothing if a 5mbit connection with 1:1 ratio can provide a smoother, more stable internet.

    I suppose i'am lucky. I've had the chance in my past career to use a 1:1 10mbit leased line at midnight to see what true internet really is. My 80mbit/40mbit BT infinity doesnt even come close to it.

    It might be a year or two before Google's internet starts to show its suffocation on the network, but it will. And when it does, that advertised speed wont mean shit :)

    1. Re:Speed != Good internet by Bengie · · Score: 1

      As with all ISPs, speed means shit:
      - Whats the contention ratio, compared to other ISPs in the area?
      - How many hops to your favourite website, vs other ISP's?
      - How stable is your ping, vs other ISPs?

      According to my ISP, 0 contention. Having talked to a senior network engineer, they do not over-subscribe their network in the last mile and they have no middle mile as all connections go strait from your house to their trunk over a dedicated fiber per house.

      Well, my ISP does not use any caching of any kind, except DNS, and they have no peering so no CDNs, but my ping to most web pages is about 8ms. In one of my other posts, my ISP's DNS servers give me a cached response time of under 1ms RTT. That is network latency plus processing latency.

      Ping stability is about less than 0.5ms std dev during peak hours to any major IX in the USA, including LA, Dallas, Chicago, and New York. My std dev to London, Paris, and Frankfurt is about 2.5ms. If you haven't guessed already, they use Level 3.

  59. Good thing since FIOS is fucked by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The nice thing about Google, they won't be bought off like Verizon. FIOS was actually a pretty good system - until the cable companies paid them off to prevent it from being rolled out any further. How the FUCK that was done legally, I'd still love to know. Isn't that called Collusion?

  60. Re:Throughput? Latency? Peerings? by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

    I have been using gigabit internet in Japan on/off for a few years now. You can get close to gigabit speeds on a single PC, certainly in the 90-100MB/sec range for downloads. Latency to nearby services is under 5ms.

    This all really misses the point of having gigabit internet. It allows multiple users to act freely without disturbing each other, even if one decided to start a torrent or something. Cloud services are extremely usable because your upload and download speed means even large files are not a problem. Anonymous P2P systems like Perfect Dark work well too. Services that don't exist here, like streaming HD from a smart TV to your phone, exist too. In fact even your phone can get 150Mb/sec WiMax 2 here.

    --
    const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
    SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  61. Kids repeat viewing of Disney by Hanzie · · Score: 1

    Oh lord. It used to be commonplace for parents to regularly place Disney VHS tapes. The same movie, multiple times.

    I honestly wouldn't be surprised if kids found a way to wear out Disney DVD's. They can certainly grind the players to dust.

    --
    ********* sig: If you don't like the law, get filthy stinking rich, and buy a better one.
  62. those are three names I enjoy... by die+standing · · Score: 1

    Google, Fiber and Provo.

  63. Browsing From Inside A Level3 Datacenter by DroneWhatever · · Score: 3, Interesting

    As part of my job some years ago, I would routinely visit Level3 data centers across the US. We were a simple stub network, but where I usually plugged my laptop in, was only a hop a way from the Level3 core routers at each facility. Everything was gigabit, and very fast, but not as fast as you would think, being that close to the backbone. I had to use our own DNS servers for resolution, which were not available in every facility, and, page loads were fast, but you could tell you were always waiting on the web servers to deliver the content. Point: Sometimes raw speed is not where it is at. There is something to be said about an ISP having massive amounts of cache/caching servers and a speedy DNS infrastructure.

  64. "opened my eyes to speed" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    LOL

  65. Re:Throughput? Latency? Peerings? by ganjadude · · Score: 1

    Great googlie mooglie!

    --
    have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
  66. Re:Throughput? Latency? Peerings? by JWSmythe · · Score: 1

    Really, your download speeds are very dependant on other factors between you and them. If they're on a 10Mb/s pipe, or they're serving 10,000 users on a GigE pipe, you won't get your 100MB/s. When I go looking for bottlenecks, that's where I find most of the problems.

    Friends usually call or email me when they're having throughput issues with sites. They ask me to try downloading from somewhere, because it's slow from there. Sometimes it's the user's problem. Frequently it's something closer to the server.

    Edge CDNs, and better bandwidth for servers is helping that a lot. I could be mistaken, but I don't think anyone is being offered 10Mb/s drops any more (thankfully).

    --
    Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
  67. Re:Throughput? Latency? Peerings? by JWSmythe · · Score: 1

    Praise the Great Googlie, brother.

    --
    Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
  68. It's not the speed by Bengie · · Score: 1

    Using gigabit Internet, even in its infancy, opened my eyes to speed and reminded me of why I love the Internet

    I used to have 100mb cable Internet, but it didn't seem much faster than the 18mb low end cable service. I later switch to another ISP that offered FTTH and markets all residential connections as dedicated bandwidth, not to mention they use dedicated P2P fiber.

    This 50mb fiber feels several times faster then my old 100mb cable. My bet it has something to do with my sub RTT 1ms average cached query latency from their DHCP assigned DNS servers(0.000-0.001 according to Steve Gibson's DNS Benchmark program), plus they do no traffic shaping and have no choke points in their routing. I gave up running a local DNS server because their DNS servers are faster than anything I can build, even though mine are on my local network and their's are 2 hops away. I have yet to find a route to anywhere in the world that has congestion at any time of the day, so long as the route stays on their upstream provider's network. Their up stream provider has a strict "no congestion" peering policy, so you will never see a peering link with congestion, though you may see the hop after the peer showing congestion.

    It's not the connection speed, it's the quality of everything beyond the connection. My 50mb residential connection feels faster than my work's 10gb connection, which they also use the same company that sold me my 100mb cable.

  69. Ah and then the SPOF by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Working at a large three letter computer company (think HAL) and I remember about a year ago when we suddenly lust phones for our 1000+ employees at our site. We are located in the midwest, and a city of 55,000. In checking we found that not only did we lose our IP phones dues to internet being down, so was most the city telephones through Centurylink. And since backhaul for at least one major cellular provider used the same path, they were down as well.
    Turns out some construction company dug through the fiber lines for the Centrurylink about 40 miles south of us. The redundant lines for the connection, were in the same bundle, and cut as well. We at the company and the city itself was down for several hours as they repaired the lines.
    Ironically anyone with cable internet still had phone service and internet (well unless they were phoning to a phone company supplied phone.
    911 communications had to be rerouted to a city 100 miles away, state radio was used to communicate with police and sheriff cars for calls locally. So you could try to call for help to a police/fire station a couple blocks away without help.
    Much was addressed after this outage, including separate paths for the redundant lines but it was interesting how isolated we quickly became with that fiber cut.
     

  70. Damn spell checker by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Make that LOST phones not lust :)

  71. Re:Throughput? Latency? Peerings? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I just tested from mid-town Kansas City using speedtest.net and got 19ms ping, 907.23 Mbps download and 918.45 Mbps upload.

  72. Re:Throughput? Latency? Peerings? by Bengie · · Score: 1

    1gb with 1,000 ms latency means 125MB of buffer, multiply by 1,000 ports and you're talking about over 100GB of network buffers on a single switch. When you're talking about a modern Ethernet based network, latency indicates congestion which means you don't have 1gb of bandwidth. You don't get latency, you get packet loss.

  73. Re:Throughput? Latency? Peerings? by NickGasparovich · · Score: 1

    You could try reading the article.

    "Reading the article?" You remember this is Slashdot, right?

  74. Blah by Vrtigo1 · · Score: 1

    While I agree that fiber is probably the most future proof way to implement a new network, gigabit Internet access doesn't really get me super excited. The average household simply doesn't have a compelling use case for it. In my area I get 30Mbps down / 2Mbps upfor about $60/mo and it works fine. My wife and I each have a smartphone and tablet, we have a computer, two Netflix-connected TVs (we don't have cable TV) and a Chromecast. It all works "good enough". The only time I really find I want more bandwidth is the rare occassion I upload a video to Youtube.

    So yes gigabit Internet is great, and I wouldn't turn it down, but the problem is getting enough people excited about it. I think if you took 100 people from all over the USA and gave each of them a choice between 1) upgrading their Internet go gigabit for the same monthly price 2) filling up their gas tank or 3) dinner and a movie you wouldn't get more than a third of the folks taking the Internet offer.