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Google Is Lighting Up Dark Fiber All Over the Country (vice.com)
sarahnaomi writes: For years, San Francisco has had a robust fiber optic infrastructure laying dormant underneath its streets. Google announced Wednesday that it's going to start lighting some of those cables up. Welcome to the future of broadband in major cities. Most people don't know that many cities throughout the United States are already wired with "dark fiber": infrastructure that, for a variety of reasons, is never used to provide gigabit connections to actual residents. This fiber is often laid by companies you rarely hear about, like Zayo and Level 3, which lay fiber infrastructure in hopes the city, a provider like Google, or a corporate customer (like an office building) will eventually make use of it.
Google long ago bought up much of this fiber and has been sitting on it. Patiently waiting for ATT,Comcast, Verizon to all back themselves into a corner.
Yes, Level3 laid a lot of extra fiber (and conduits) throughout major metro areas.
The fiber itself was not very expensive (they use horizontal boring tools that have become the standard for under-street improvements), the real cost is in the gear needed to light and amplify signals on the fiber. My most recent former employer set up a 10GbS link between primary and colo sites for minimal cost by leveraging the Level3 fiber.
If a well-funded organization like Google (Level3 has been cash constrained since the telecom crash) can lease and light these fibers it will be (yet) another major disruption to the metro network players, and frankly, it is about damned time
It looks like the companies that own the "dark" infrastructure would be in a perfect position to conquer the market. Comcast isn't exactly competition.
Those companies didn't "lay the fiber" of their own accord. Many municipalities have dig-once laws which require conduit and fiber to be laid during any excavation along a public right-of-way.
Once again, we see the government stepping in to solve a problem private industry wouldn't touch.
Here in Charlotte, there are crews all over trenching in new fiber conduit - both for Google and for AT&T. I found it interesting that the AT&T crews that I've seen are putting in a single 1-inch conduit, whereas the Google crews are putting in multiple (sometimes as many as five) 2-inch conduits. Maybe Google is just trying to catch up. Or maybe they have bigger plans.
nope, that's just dead wrong. The "dig once" laws are designed to create and strengthen the monopolies. This is an artifact of private industry making an investment in the future, in this case, Layer3 and a few others putting in 25 strand bundles when they needed one.
We got enough railroads. What don't have is new boxcars to replace old boxcars at the end of their 50-year lifecycle.
The number of boxcars in service in North America fell by 41% in the past decade to just under 125,000 last year as 101,600 cars were scrapped and only about 13,800 replacement were added. That downsizing accelerated a decades long shift by railroads to more specialized railcars and intermodal carriers that allow shipping containers to hop from trucks to trains.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/shortage-of-railroad-boxcars-has-shippers-fuming-2015-06-21
I know they made Moonlight and that was a piece of shit.
Most people don't know that many cities throughout the United States are already wired with "dark fiber"...
except those who have been a part of Slashdot because it's been talked about before, more than once. E.G. (ca. 2005) http://tech.slashdot.org/story...
If they actually start lighting it up in more places, however, that would indeed be good news.
Zayo and Level 3 don't just lay fiber and hope someone else will use it, they also provide ISP service to businesses. I've worked with both companies to light up buildings for either multi- or single-tenant use. Single tenant may require a multi-year commitment to make it worthwhile, but they can and will provide complete service from physical layer on up.
"for a variety of reasons, is never used to provide gigabit connections to actual residents"
This means you've paid billions in Tax subsidies to telecom's only to get absolutely nothing in return but price gouging . The deal was for telecom's to wire everyone with fiber, but the United States Government is so corrupt and in bed with so many bribes by telecom's that the USA is behind like 30 countries as far as internet speed goes, and your tax dollars simply line the pockets of CEO's at these companies.
I'm glad google is doing this but the title here is over the top. Running fiber in a handful of high population cities is not 'all over the country'. This is like a half dozen cities at best. And they only cover the highest density areas. Google came to Austin last year and my address isn't covered even though I'm less than 25 minutes from downtown. This is great PR for them, but they are not really impacting that much. Still glad they are doing it but we should't act like they are hero's disrupting the hated phone or cable companies.
Peace, or Not?
We got enough railroads. What don't have is new boxcars to replace old boxcars at the end of their 50-year lifecycle.
Interesting, but I think what they meant was "we should have more passenger rail in the US". The only passengers for whom boxcars are relevant are hoboes, and they're a sadly unrepresented demographic these days.
This business model makes sense for Google since they can essentially sublease this fiber that they are leasing for more than they are paying. They can show an ROI for the investment since they will have no problem getting customers and that will pay off their fiber electronics quick enough. It often does not really make sense for most entities that want to actually use the leased fiber for their own needs as these leases represent significant opex costs, which come directly from the bottom line, as opposed to capex costs for a brand new fiber network (while though very expensive, can earn an ROI by doing the reselling of dark fibers or eliminating other telecoms costs). The end result is that Google Fiber customers will end up paying more for their subscriptions since there is a middle man involved.
Massive amounts laid along railroad tracks.
Google isn't the only company doing this. CenturyLink just lit up old dark fiber in my neighborhood. I just got my gigabit install setup last night with them. It is really sweet to finally see some serious competition in the fiber to the home space after almost two decades of failed promises.
The city I live in has more dark fiber in the ground per unit area than just about any major American city, most of it owned by a subsidiary of a local utility company. However, nearly none of it goes near residential areas, it's strictly commercial, government and university areas that are served. This is not a solution to the "last mile" problem.
Interesting, but I think what they meant was "we should have more passenger rail in the US".
The majority of traffic on the railroads is freight. Passenger railroad often means high-speed rail, which has become something of a joke. For example, the high speed line between San Francisco and Los Angeles should have run straight up the coast. The line is currently being built through the Central Valley to connect one end with the other end. Amtrak already has a service line in place that does job at a better price.
People proposing more Passenger Rail in the US, don't understand a few things, and typically are comparing the US to some small European country (like Denmark).
First, the USA is quite large, compared to Europe. See: http://i.imgur.com/GML5Ei0.png
This creates huge problems for people who think France is big. Who in Europe would take a train from Madrid to Tel Aviv ? Yet these same people would be happy to tell us that we should build a rail line from LA to Atlanta. Or Seattle to New York. Or San Francisco to DC.
My first point is that people from Europe (I have French relatives) who don't have a clue how big the US actually is.
Second, we already have High Speed Rail here, they are called Airplanes. For most case scenarios, Air travel works much better than HSR does. It is less expensive, faster and more convenient than HSR. But they aren't as romantic as "trains" for some reason.
I am intrigued by the notion of a hyperloop for intermediate distance travel. Espeicially if it could incorporate travel from city centers (downtown) to suburban neighborhoods. On demand travel of intermediate distances would be a huge benefit to most cities.
I am not opposed to building out mass transit systems, but they have to make sense beyond some romantic notion or socialist utopia viewpoint.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Interesting, but I think what they meant was "we should have more passenger rail in the US". The only passengers for whom boxcars are relevant are hoboes, and they're a sadly unrepresented demographic these days.
With President Trump on the way, I'm sure we'll have a lot more people riding in boxcars soon.
http://www.vosizneias.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Holocaust-Street-Hono_sham.jpg
All hail Amerika!
USA! USA! USA!
Right now, I'm stuck with Time Warner Cable at 15/1. ("Up to" 15Mbps which sometimes means 17Mbps and sometimes means 8Mbps.) There's no FIOS or anything else where I live. Faster speeds - up to 50mbps - are available, but cost a ton. I'd love if Google could light up some dark fiber in my neighborhood (Capital Region of New York). I'm not going to hold my breath, though.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
This creates huge problems for people who think France is big. Who in Europe would take a train from Madrid to Tel Aviv ?
Nobody. But plenty of people take the train from Paris to Lyon, or from Brussels to Antwerp.
An unused resource laying dormant for 15 years is a hint that someone didn't want it to be used or developed.
That someone is usually the one who eventually uses or develops it.
The question is this: Why did they suddenly decide to start using it?
As a transport engineer dark fiber means there is no equipment on there to check. Zayo sells a lot of dark fiber which means the connect directly to your fibers without something like a Ciena 6500, Cisco 15454, etc in there.
We got enough railroads. What don't have is new boxcars to replace old boxcars at the end of their 50-year lifecycle.
The number of boxcars in service in North America fell by 41% in the past decade to just under 125,000 last year as 101,600 cars were scrapped and only about 13,800 replacement were added. That downsizing accelerated a decades long shift by railroads to more specialized railcars and intermodal carriers that allow shipping containers to hop from trucks to trains.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/shortage-of-railroad-boxcars-has-shippers-fuming-2015-06-21
I'm a bit baffled why this is a problem. Who uses boxcars nowadays? Everybody has shifted to 20ft and 40ft shipping containers. There's plenty of rail cars to handle these. They can even be double stacked in many parts of the country. A shipping container has the added advantage of being able to be loaded before the train comes, then simply lifted onto the car. If you load by forklift or pallet jack, it is a lot easier to fill up the container since the door on all standard containers is at the end, not the middle. You don't have to make a hard 90 degree turn after entering the container and deal with the loading difficulties that imposes. Containers also eliminate a lot of the problems of intermodal transport. You can lift the container right off the train and put it on a truck, or a ship. No need to unload the boxcar manually and repack it.
The only advantage that a boxcar seems to have is that a single car has a higher weight capacity than a single 40ft container. 1 boxcar has a weight capacity of roughly 2 40ft containers, if you're packing it full of paper at an average density of 0.9g/cm^3 (as the complainers in the linked article are). The many advantages of containers mitigate this disadvantage, in my opinion.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
I don't disagree with anything you said.
I think that the romance of trains vs. planes might be related to how miserable commercial airline travel has become. Of course, it's still cheaper than rail for pretty much any distance, so perhaps you get what you pay for?
Need Geek Rock? Try The Franchise!
Who uses boxcars nowadays?
Probably manufacturing companies that still have a railroad siding next to the warehouse.
Another much talked about project was the countrywide wifi network, wi-max or something. Google was supposedly trying to completely bypass all the cellular companies, provide free wifi for everyone in exchange for the permission to snoop even more deeply into your email traffic. What happened? It sold out to the cell companies?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Well, color me pink and feed me cat food...
Lobbyists, under-the-table deals, kickbacks, bribes, and general ass-hattedness of politicians is no longer funny.
And SJW and FBI/CIA/DHS/EPA and special-interests aren't either.
It may be time to actually do something other than post here.
Super-Tuesday is coming...
Coincidence? I think not...
Google is lighting up dark fiber all over the country, and I'm lighting up blunts all over the country.
Win-win.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I am aware of older SM fiber laid around Y2K that is not capable of quality operation at gigabit speeds.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Blah blah blah. Even China and Russia build high speed rail - China is about as large as USA and Russia is twice the size. High speed rail would work just fine for routes like New York to Boston or, say, LA to Las Vegas. Or Miami to New Orleans.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
The fiber was installed around the country in cities and wherever back in the '90's and early naughties. The vast majority of original companies went bankrupt either during or right after installation and the fiber has been dark ever since. Y'all should talk to some of the retired techs about all the infrastructure that was put in, but never used.
Exactly my point. Except you probably missed my point.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Except Rail costs more, takes longer, and isn't in rail cars for much of the trip in many cases.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Great! You want us to become more like Russia and China, and fail to see the real connection between trains and economic systems ;)
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Nobody. But plenty of people take the train from Paris to Lyon, or from Brussels to Antwerp.
Brussels to Antwerp is 30 miles. Paris to Lyon is 300.
Our major population centers are further apart than Europe's.
In the US, LA to NYC is 2700 miles. Even a Chicago-NYC line would be about 800 miles.
High speed rail is about 200 MPH, so you're looking at 4 hours for Chicago-NYC and 10-15 hours for LA-NYC.
Flying is the same speed or faster---generally faster---and it is only affected by ground conditions at the takeoff and landing sites.
To justify the enormous capital expense of high-speed rail, it needs to offer something big since travel time and convenience won't be among them.
---
According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
My point is this: Instead of taking a US map and superimposing it on Europe, take a map of France, and superimpose it anywhere on the US. Then compare the French railroad network to the US network at that location, and see how many US travellers take a comparable train trip to Paris-Lyon.
We got screwed. We paid for it. I can see across the street a bundle of fiber with my address on it and the last hundred meters is too far. Way closer than a mile and it's been paid for every month. In utility terms the sunk cost gets the rates increased forever. The only way it might work out well is if Verizon is able to roll out reliable secure 100 meter wifi.
have you been to Texas? Mostly cows and tumbleweeds.
Paris to Lyon is about the same distance as Dalla to Galveston
Hey look there is a rail line between the two. http://ftp.dot.state.tx.us/pub...
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
We got enough railroads. What don't have is new boxcars to replace old boxcars at the end of their 50-year lifecycle.
Interesting, but I think what they meant was "we should have more passenger rail in the US". The only passengers for whom boxcars are relevant are hoboes, and they're a sadly unrepresented demographic these days.
Don't worry. We may not have the Great Depression anymore, but outsourcing should replenish the hobo supply soon enough!
A lot of people aren't aware of it, but Google has been using existing infrastructure like this for years; here's one of their older ads. The difference? Note that it used to be free!
Hi, this is "news for nerds". Stating that:
"This fiber is often laid by companies you rarely hear about, like Zayo and Level 3,"
is ofensive to nerds. L3 is top-tier operator, both in US and international (peering directly with many IX's worldwide).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tier_1_network
And that's the way the cookie crumbles...
Running fiber in a handful of high population cities is not 'all over the country'. This is like a half dozen cities at best. And they only cover the highest density areas.
They have to start SOMEwhere.
Google came to Austin last year and my address isn't covered even though I'm less than 25 minutes from downtown.
Tell me about it.
My ranch in Nevada has slow dialup - like 32kbps. (Options: Satellite. The local WISP stopped beaming my area.)
My Silicon Valley townhouse has legacy half-MEGAbit DSL that flakes out in wet weather, due to underground copper about a half century old.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Are there maps of these dark fibers?
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
This creates huge problems for people who think France is big. Who in Europe would take a train from Madrid to Tel Aviv ? Yet these same people would be happy to tell us that we should build a rail line from LA to Atlanta. Or Seattle to New York. Or San Francisco to DC.
Well you typically don't build a long HSR line because you expect everyone to ride it end to end. I agree that that coast to coast I'd rather fly. But the east coast from Miami to Portland could easily have HSR, not beacuse you'd go all the way but some go Portland-Boston, Boston-New York, New York-Washington, Washington-Raleigh, Raleigh-Atlanta, Atlanta-Jacksonville, Jacksonville-Daytona Beach, Daytona Beach-Miami. Usually you can estimate around 3 hours @ 150 MPH as the break-even, including acceleration/breaking and maybe a stop or two 350-400 miles is a realistic range where HSR is as quick or quicker than plane and a lot more comfortable. And with night trains you could do trips like New York-Atlanta overnight, it's often just as comfortable as rushing with a plane and crashing at a hotel to get up in the morning. The killer is the investment cost and getting the right of way, once it's operational it's pretty neat and lasting infrastructure.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Our major population centers are further apart than Europe's.
In the US, LA to NYC is 2700 miles. Even a Chicago-NYC line would be about 800 miles.
You're defining major population centers as only the very top cities by population? If you want to do that you'd find Europe is also quite spread out. The top 3 cities in Europe by population are Istanbul, Moscow, and London. They are quite far apart. Istanbul to Moscow is like 1500 miles. Istanbul to London is 1800 miles. I don't think there's high speed rail between those cities.
But really there are hundreds of population centers of interest that could be connected in the US and many of them are much closer than that. Forget Chicago to NYC, how about Chicago to Minneapolis or something. And it doesn't even have to be population centers, it could simply be popular attractions. I live in Raleigh, NC and I think high speed rail to the beach would be great, combined with a bus service that went up and down the coast to major beaches, hotels, shopping areas, etc. If I could get to the beach in 1 hour instead of 3 hours driving, I'd go a lot more often, even in the off season. It's quite nice to walk along the beach in fall and winter, but not nice enough to justify 6 hours round trip driving more than once every few years.
Oh and getting rid of the terrible, awful menace of trying to find a parking spot at the beach? Priceless.
Yaknow, admiring authoritarian governments for their ability to brutalize the people and steal their property is horrifyingly common these days. There were massive protests in China against the HSR because they just wrote the lines anywhere they wanted and then "confiscated" (i.e. stole) any farmer's land that got in the way. The Texas TGV failed because the government there didn't have this power to "confiscate". And all you have to say is "blah blah blah"? There are hemp ropes and cottonwood trees waiting for you fuckers.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
And now focus on the second part of his comment. How many passengers actually take that trip by train, as opposed to by car?
CURIOUS as to how much 'dark fiber' the NSA may be leasing within the United States for purely domestic purposes, and where. If there are any Mark Kleins out there who have noticed anything funny, do share! This includes fiber leased to anything you may suspect is a shell corporation, for which you (the technician) can see that the paperwork is a bit odd; or an unusual number of individual fibers terminating in a locked room, where the normal requirement is a few.
With the rise of cloud computing the issue is clouded somewhat, there are plenty of start-ups with goofy names whose business models call for more resources than they need. But the discrete number of fibers terminating in a room, especially if routed from/to places which are obviously not associated with the same entity, might be your best clue. A specific scenario is a number of fibers without proper paperwork that run from passive tap/splits to a server room where the traffic is analyzed, streams selected and (leased) fiber is used to push the chosen data somewhere else. Such as Utah. We're looking for evidence of Big Domestic Packet Listen infrastructure.
If you notice something unusual, you might try disconnecting it and see who complains and how quickly. With a little hands-on we could get to the bottom of this much sooner.
If you do not have an interesting story to share, just make something up. We'll know if your tale is relevant, because we're the NSA and we know where our stuff is, and we're only here to help. We are putting out this request for information to find out if anyone else got there first.
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
The problem is corrupt government which enforces monopolies granted to the handful of media companies that agreed to allow warrantless wiretapping.
I've seen a ton of houses with a taped off fiber line sticking out of a pipe in the back yard. A decade or more ago.... WTF
The rhetoric of bandwidth bottlenecks are kinda moot when the 1beeeelionBaseT light pipe is being chewed on by rover....BAD DOG!!! I might need that some day to get my email....
Tweet, tweet, all id10t's out of the gene pool, open swim is over.
And now focus on the missing part of the question, how much does it cost to go from place to place by rail, and how often does it run?
I'll give you a hint. I just drove from Nor Cal to Seattle and back, and it took around 12 hours each way driving. There were four of us in the vehicle, which didn't get great mileage. Total cost of the trip was around 175 in fuel. Traveling by train would have taken around 1.5 times longer , and cost per person one way at around $90 each ($1440 total for all four) and on a limited schedule.
Tell me, why would I go slower, pay more and only have two chances to get on board?
Now, you may argue that it would cost less if more people would use it. Fine, but airfares between the two closest airports is $79 ea way (still less) and much faster than any train. Again, explain to my why paying more, having less flexibilty and slower makes any sense?
Trains, do not make sense except in some weird sort of romantic liberal rose tinted world.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.