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Google Fiber: No Charge For Peering, No Fast Lanes
An anonymous reader writes "Addressing the recent controversy over Netflix paying ISPs directly for better data transfer speeds, Google's Director of Network Engineering explains how their Fiber server handles peering. He says, 'Bringing fiber all the way to your home is only one piece of the puzzle. We also partner with content providers (like YouTube, Netflix, and Akamai) to make the rest of your video's journey shorter and faster. (This doesn't involve any deals to prioritize their video 'packets' over others or otherwise discriminate among Internet traffic — we don't do that.) Like other Internet providers, Google Fiber provides the 'last-mile' Internet connection to your home. ... So that your video doesn't get caught up in this possible congestion, we invite content providers to hook up their networks directly to ours. This is called 'peering,' and it gives you a more direct connection to the content that you want. ... We don't make money from peering or colocation; since people usually only stream one video at a time, video traffic doesn't bog down or change the way we manage our network in any meaningful way — so why not help enable it?'"
So what do you make money from if I become a Google Fiber customer? That's what I'm concerned about. If it's just the fair-market cost of the service I'm paying for, then that's fine. If your noble stance hides the fact that you attach yourself to the fiber like a tick to suck value by monitoring my use of the service and selling that information to the highest bidder, then we have a problem.
If your noble stance hides the fact that you attach yourself to the fiber like a tick to suck value by monitoring my use of the service and selling that information to the highest bidder, then we have a problem.
Why do "we" have a problem?
There are plenty of people (including myself) that would happily trade the devil we know (Comcast/Quest/etc) for the unknown of reasonably priced much faster connection speed, which just happens to also give Google some aggregate data.
I'm not really a fan of Google collections - I use their services sparingly for just that reason. But I think the value tradeoff in that case is pretty decent and only Google really has the power to break through local connection monopolies.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The phrase 'Fiber Server' does not appear in the article.
Blame the submitter.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Is it sad that we've come so far as to have a company make a press release assuring customers and peering partners, that they will continue to abide by industry practices that have existed for decades?
They list their peering policy as Selective in their peeringdb entry https://www.peeringdb.com/priv.... They should have an open peering policy. Or is only open if you are a interesting content provider?
"One person" may only stream one video at a time, but "people" as a whole may stream thousands or tens of thousands of videos all at the same time, and that's what creates the bottleneck in the peering connection. These same "people" are the "people" who currently stream videos over Comcast et.al. and create the peering bottleneck between Comcast and Level 3.
It is Comcast creating the bottleneck and it is done deliberately. They want you to believe it is Netflix that has the problem but they could have solved it for their entire customer base for ~$30K according to Level 3. And Netflix offered to host their own servers inside of Comcast's network which would eliminate the bottleneck altogether but Comcast refused instead demanding tribute before allowing more Netflix traffic.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
They list their peering policy as Selective in their peeringdb entry https://www.peeringdb.com/priv.... They should have an open peering policy. Or is only open if you are a interesting content provider?
Probably. So what is wrong with that? "Interesting" to Google Fiber would be a content provider that is starting to use up enough transit bandwidth that it makes sense to move them to a peering port. That is always how things have worked on the Internet.
Municipal fiber is the way to go. It would change the world and give the US economy a badly needed shot in the arm.
ISP costs have risen four times faster than inflation. We're on the road to having just two national providers. When that happens, costs will go up even faster.
1) Designate ISPs as common carriers.
2) Break up any ISP that provides content.
3) Take a bow for having brought about the digital revolution part 2.
Unfortunately, our elected jackoffs are too beholden to corporate money to do anything like this. Obama, who was supposed to be the first president who "got" the Internet, turned out to be the worst of the bunch, appointing telecom lobbyist Tom Wheeler has head of the FCC, and they're not poised to put the last nail in the Net Neutrality coffin. Obama is a failed president on that count alone.
You are welcome on my lawn.
This is Google's hedge against increasingly higher costs for peering and neutrality breaking ISP's, so why would they then turn around and be hypocrites by ruining the very reason they're moving intro infrastucture to begin with?
Android started in much the same way, to avoid telcos getting control over the content people access on their phones. While the base OS of Android is still free, a lot of the standard applications are now licensed from Google and the terms for licensing them are becoming more strict. Google's fiber is neutral today, but that doesn't mean it will stay neutral forever.
"So why does Netflix have to pay?"
Because Netflix competes with Comcast/TWC/AT&T's ka-ching buckets-of-money-spinning video distribution platforms. If Netflix gets popular enough, Comcast is reduced to a dumb internet pipe for $50 a month (profit of $5), not a primarily a video provider ($100+ bills, profits of $20+).
Which is the problem. If Comcast *were* an internet-tube provider (only), they'd generally be pro-peering. They might try to charge Netflix some (they like money), if the market would bear it, but mostly it's to their advantage to peer. However, most of the ISPs in the US are not pure-internet providers, so if Comcast video can use Comcast internet to hamstring Netflix, that's a natural reaction.
Fiber server? huh?
I realize that it's all marketing hooey, but I wish that the director of network engineering for google wouldn't mish mash terminology like that. Keep that for the marketing droids.
Well, we could get all wrapped up in semantics, but let's not, m'kay? The real message is that Google gets it when it comes to making networks run efficiently. They aren't deliberately introducing an artificial scarcity in order to squeeze more revenue out of their "investement". They're selling a service using a 21st century business model, unlike the LEC's who still long for the days when a T1 would fetch $1,200 per month.
The price of a T1 hasn't really changed all that much. Due to LEGAL requirements for the SLA associated with a T1, its unlikely to change for the foreseeable future.
Now getting far more than a T1's worth of bandwidth for far less is easy, but thats not a T1 nor does it come with the SLA that will have the provider working at 3am on a Sunday morning to get it back on line as required BY LAW.
Just because you get 1.5mbit of data doesn't mean you're getting an actual T1.
LECs are still the only ones who can offer a T1 for the most part.
If you knew what the terminology you are using actually meant you wouldn't have made such statements.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
The price of a T1 has not changed because it is entirely obsolete. No one sane would want one, and specialty items are expensive.
In places with competitive markets, you can get the SLA you want with the technology you want.
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