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Google Businesses The Internet IT

Google's Dark Fibre Plans? 201

Posted by Hemos from the reduce-reuse-recycle dept.
sebFlyte writes "According to news.com "Google is looking for Strategic Negotiator candidates with experience in...(i)dentification, selection, and negotiation of dark fiber contracts both in metropolitan areas and over long distances as part of development of a global backbone network." Is the search giant planning to build a global fibre-optic network?" Or perhaps simply use unused fibre that they can get for cheaper then from the datacenter providers; although at least from my talks with the datacenter folks, Google's not paying much per Mbps as it is.
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Google's Dark Fibre Plans? More

Google's Dark Fibre Plans?

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  • You mean "than" (Score:1, Informative)

    by vilms ( 106676 )
    Not "then".

  • Dark Fibre (Fiber) defined. (Score:5, Informative)

    by sanityspeech ( 823537 ) on Monday January 17, 2005 @11:35AM (#11386060) Journal
    The free encyclopedia definition: [wikipedia.org]
    "Dark fibre or unlit fibre (or fiber) is the name given to fibre optic cables which have yet to be used. They are hence not yet connected to any device, and are only there for future usage."

    • Re:Dark Fibre (Fiber) defined. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by FrYGuY101 ( 770432 ) on Monday January 17, 2005 @11:45AM (#11386185) Journal
      Thinking about it... maybe Google is planning an entrance into the ISP market?

      I mean, Google might be getting cheap rates for www.google.com, but that probably wouldn't extend to customers, plus accessability wouldn't be that great...

      I'm not quite sure what Google's angle on the market would be, except perhaps high-speed/low-cost, but that doesn't seem as elegant as Google's usual offerings...
      • They're going to build a huge pair of AI called Icarus and Daedalus. They will merege to form the AI Helios. You will be given the choice to merge with Helios - using your Google branded brain implant [google.com], or stop using Google alltogether - causing a new dark age.

        Or you could just go to a rave.
      • FWIW it is very common for larger companies to buy up Dark Fiber from large telco providers. All of the Tier 1 Telcos sell Dark Fiber as a standard product line, and you will find many of the Fortune 100 companies out there own their own. I highly doubt this is Google's atempt to change business plans and enter the depressed Telco sector.
      • Face it.
        Google is flush with cash, they have always
        run lean & mean, and there are a lot of
        dead and/or dying telcos that own "dark"
        fiber. Buying unused fiber from the likes
        of Global Crossing, PSINet, and WorldCom
        would put them in the forefront of possible
        ISPs. And considering the brave new world
        of VoIP, Google might just want to be your
        next phone company, too.

        I welcome our new ISP/telco overlords!
    • Actually - in the storage world - Dark Fibre is defined differently. And it's lit, not dark. Go figure.

      Google "dark fibre" SAN [google.com].

    • Re:Dark Fibre (Fiber) defined. (Score:4, Informative)

      by rwyoder ( 759998 ) on Monday January 17, 2005 @12:00PM (#11386363)

      Dark fibre or unlit fibre (or fiber) is the name given to fibre optic cables which have yet to be used. They are hence not yet connected to any device, and are only there for future usage.

      There is a second meaning: It is fiber which is not lit by the provider. For example if you have two locations and lease a dark fiber between the two, you are essentially getting two ends of a single fiber with no networking equipment in the loop. You will then connect your own equipment at each end and light it your self.

    • Re:Dark Fibre (Fiber) defined. (Score:5, Informative)

      by seanadams.com ( 463190 ) * on Monday January 17, 2005 @12:05PM (#11386413) Homepage
      There's more to it than that... my understanding is that when you lease "dark fiber" it means that when you get it, the fiber is _still_ dark from end-to-end, i.e. there is no mux/demux equipment or any telco "value add" services associated with it. It's sort of like the "alarm circuit" that telecoms used to sell, which was a "dry copper" pair from one location to another with no telecom switch or repeaters on the line. It's not just "unused" fiber - it's fiber that you get to signal on however you want (within some power limits I'm sure).

      This means you provide the equipment, potentially giving you vastly more bandwidth than the telecom could sell you on that fiber. It also means you can upgrade your equipment later for faster speeds. It also means less points of failure on the line because its just optics all the way through.

      Dark fiber usually isn't sold by the telecoms. Usually you'll have to get it from companys such as the railway and sewer owners - the guys who oversee the cables themselves, not the higher level services.

      The disadvantage of dark fiber compared to a telcom OCx circuit are 1) you can't get channelized services eg split this DS3 into a few DS1 to this locations, and few DS1s to that location, a couple DS1s for ISDN PRI, etc etc. 2) you have less flexibility in choosing the endpoints - your choices are limited to big data centers where the vendors are willing/able to provide dark dervice 3) you don't get to deal with the really nice helpful people at the phone company

      • Re:Dark Fibre (Fiber) defined. (Score:4, Informative)

        by Tony Hoyle ( 11698 ) <tmh@nodomain.org> on Monday January 17, 2005 @12:14PM (#11386524) Homepage
        You can lease dark fiber from a telco... I worked for a company that did it for a short while.

        There's probably 100* more dark fiber than lit fiber in the world - when they're putting it down it's dirt cheap to put a few more bundles in. You can get it pretty much anywhere to anywhere (where there's some kind of physical link anyway).

        The real cost though is lighting the thing. It costs a fortune to rent the mux equiment, and it's large enough that space considerations at the other end come into play. That's mostly the reason why it's still dark in the first place (that and the telcos have so much excess bandwidth already they don't know what to do with it... it's more cost effective to negotiate a cut rate on a piece of existing fiber).

    • Damn. I was hoping it was fibre made out of dark matter [utk.edu]. That sounded much more interesting.

    • Doesn't "dark fibe" use "dark suckers"? (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Wouldn't "dark fibre" be powered by dark suckers [ox.ac.uk] instead of light sources? Hence the term "dark fibre"?
    • To help clarify this.

      Whenever railroads or sewers are run fiber is generally run along with it.
      These fiber lines are often unused, or used in a very minimal capacity.

    • Re:Dark Fibre (Fiber) defined. (Score:5, Funny)

      by nizo ( 81281 ) * on Monday January 17, 2005 @02:19PM (#11387836) Homepage Journal
      The nice thing about dark fiber is that it is more efficient. While regular fiber uses light to transmit data, dark fiber uses a lack of light to transmit data.

  • Unification (Score:5, Funny)

    by Fleetie ( 603229 ) on Monday January 17, 2005 @11:35AM (#11386062) Homepage
    Ah, so has Google unified String Theory, Dark Matter, and Dark Energy?
  • Once Google went public, now they have joined the Dark Side. The Chairman [perantivirus.com] will show you the true nature of the force, he is your master now.
  • You really can't fail with responsive organisational projections - the consultants recommend interactive administrative time-phases. Actually the solution can only be homogenised management mobility..

  • I wouldn't be surprised to see 'em buy a Level 3 (Score:4, Interesting)

    by xmas2003 ( 739875 ) * on Monday January 17, 2005 @11:38AM (#11386092) Homepage
    Seems like buying a Level 3 (or similar sized network provider) would be an easier route, as these guys got hammered in valuations due to over-capacity and a lot cheaper to buy existing capacity rather than building your own.

    BTW, the Light Reading guys were the ones who "broke" this story back on January 6th [lightreading.com]

    • Re:I wouldn't be surprised to see 'em buy a Level (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Tancred ( 3904 ) on Monday January 17, 2005 @11:46AM (#11386195)
      I would be. It's far from their core competency and there's so much competition in the telco business that everyone sells at cost anyway. Maybe a datacenter chain like Equinix would be a better acquisition target.

    • Re:I wouldn't be surprised to see 'em buy a Level (Score:5, Insightful)

      by vyzar ( 11481 ) on Monday January 17, 2005 @11:47AM (#11386209)
      No no no.

      Why the hell would Google want to buy up an existing ISP/telco with all the crap that that entails?

      What they are doing is actually very sensible.

      By looking to negotiate purchase/lease of dark fibre over the medium term they are avoiding the big cost which is actually putting fibre into the ground.

      I imagine that they would ensure that the maintenance of that fibre is the responsibility of the provider, so they don't need to run their own maintenance crews either.

      And the BIG plus with having access to fiber is that you can then ramp up your capacity by using WDM (Wave Division Multiplexing) to get more bandwidth out of your fibre.

      They have probably realised that to ramp up their networks to cope with their future plans they need more bandwidth that they can afford to buy as "service" from a regular telco. Its just too damn expensive!

      By leasing the fibre themselves, they light it how they want, rather that how the telco wants to sell it to them.

      This *might* have biogger up front costs, but the recurrent costs are MUCH lower.
    • They're only talking about hiring out a few experts with expertise in dealing with new fiber negotiations. Going from this to a plan to own a major telco backbone is a huge leap, they would likely have to triple their headcount to manage such an operation...one in the past that has bankrupted many other companies.

    • Re:I wouldn't be surprised to see 'em buy a Level (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ScentCone ( 795499 ) on Monday January 17, 2005 @12:31PM (#11386686)
      Don't forget that Google parks hardware all over the place. They've got a pile of it sitting in datacenters run by Savvis, who bought up the dregs of the Cable & Wireless operations (who bought up the dregs of the Exodus operations). But unlike Exodus, C&W also had tons of dark fibre. Savvis has been trying to make everything lean and mean, but they've got a pretty nice inter-datacenter-network... but not necessarily any bargains when peering with other people's operations. I can imagine that Google would love to get outside the loop of having the datacenter operators dictate what terms they're willing to live with when setting up new peering arrangements. Especially as Google's needs become more instantaneously multi-directional (rather than crunch-and-publish, it's real-time ad stats, mail, etc).

      Even if all these new hires do is help Google's datacenter providers make good decisions about new or altered peering networks, they'll probably earn their keep.

  • The Google Empire (Score:5, Funny)

    by imthatguy ( 772683 ) on Monday January 17, 2005 @11:38AM (#11386096)
    And thus it begins....it was difficult to see at first; what Google's plans were. Only after it had struck first using highspeed fiber to initiate the subroutines in the Google desktop search companion did humanity realize its vast mistake. Only it was too late...Google was selfaware...and it was hungry...for pie...I mean Pi...

  • They've been connected to the ams-ix for some time (Score:5, Informative)

    by Erik Hensema ( 12898 ) on Monday January 17, 2005 @11:39AM (#11386112) Homepage
    I have seen traces from the Netherlands to www.google.com go over the amsterdam internet exchange [ams-ix.net] for some time now. According to their member page [ams-ix.net] they have been connected since march 2004. Traceroute:
    5 bb2-ge6-0.amsix-telecity.home.nl (213.51.158.153) 28.478 ms 27.683 ms 26.895 ms
    6 r2-ge1-2-0.amsix-telecity.home.nl (213.51.158.158) 26.563 ms 35.185 ms 33.987 ms
    7 core1.ams.net.google.com (195.69.144.247) 32.044 ms 32.543 ms 30.484 ms
    8 64.233.175.246 32.806 ms 32.560 ms 30.529 ms
    9 216.239.46.173 30.058 ms 29.058 ms 26.684 ms
    10 216.239.49.254 37.532 ms 36.958 ms 39.685 ms
    11 216.239.48.50 41.163 ms 41.902 ms 43.109 ms
    12 216.239.49.62 35.543 ms 34.004 ms 33.173 ms
    13 * * *

    The AMS-IX is the largest Internet Exchange / NAP in Europe.

  • GoogleISP (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 17, 2005 @11:39AM (#11386116)
    Maybe this is the beginning of Google Broadband. With all the other non-search areas they've gotten themselves into, maybe they're looking to take on MSN and Yahoo in the ISP realm.

    GoogleISP: Dark fiber to your city, fiber to you home coming soon.

    And after they can give everyone a super high speed broadband connection, it's just one more step to selling a subscription for the comping suite of web-based apps that GMail proves they're so good at.

    • Doubtful (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Ars-Fartsica ( 166957 )
      Google does not have access or ownership to a last-mile network, and more to the point the management of such networks is incredibly costly. If Google tried to be a later-day SBC I imagine their stock would begin to look a lot like SBC (translation: not good for present owners of GOOG).

      If they were truly making such plans they would also have to hire literally tens of thousands of people, or make a monstrous acquisition. Neither of which appears in the cards from what I can tell.

    • If google was to go the ISP route, then they will most likely buyout current ISP (like AOL, which probably can be had at bargain basement prices in a few years). Somehow, I don't think this is google's plan. If I could distill their main objective, they're around to make the internet more "meaningful"--better search results, better email, heck better social connections (with Orkut). Providing a connection to the internet doesn't appear to fit into this mold--they'll leave it up to others to do. I could be w
    • If google can provide both the line and the ISP service, they could annihilate all the crappy ISPs and bandwidth providers that are on the market today.

    • Re:Google WiMax VoIP (Score:3, Interesting)

      by mveloso ( 325617 )
      What can a bunch of geeks do with a lot of fiber, a lot of money, and disruptive technology?

      Google + WiMAX + VoIP = enough technology and brains to stomp any RBOC or cable company.

      The only problem with this is that the WiMAX timeline is far away, and it's unclear how much the end-user antennas will go for. Will users want to install another dish?

      Even if they don't go this route, that dark fiber could be a useful asset down the road. If they can price it well enough, they'll be on the "buy" side of a make
  • hmmm....maybe this could provide the bandwidth needed for the initial indexing of video material? And maybe the constant re-indexing of TV shows, etc. straight from the providers.

  • I know! (Score:3, Funny)

    by SharpFang ( 651121 ) on Monday January 17, 2005 @11:41AM (#11386134) Homepage Journal
    Bastards :)
    They want to take over the Internet. :)
    Create a new backbone. Replace InterNIC and all the suits who control the net now.
    Then compete and eliminate most first tier providers, and generally own the global network.
    Best luck, Google! I hope you will succeed!

    • Re:I know! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by AlgaeEater ( 838019 ) on Monday January 17, 2005 @11:45AM (#11386173) Homepage
      Either that or they want to be able to sync their world-wide collection of data-servers in an 'accpetable' length of time.
      • I remember Google dance used to take place every three months which indeed is too long an interval between syncs. And the whole sync procedure is a bit messed up (search for "google dance" - you'll see how you can get different search results depending on which Google data center you query).

        As to the speed of synchronization - I don't agree. I think they need fiber to _eliminate_ need to synchronize. They want to work with a single (apart from online backup) copy of their data.

      • Re:I know! (Score:2, Funny)

        by Ingolfke ( 515826 )
        The two factors Google is considering right now are time for complete transmission of a dataset (they measure it in petabytes) and cost. With the high cost of fuel and the increased maintenance costs, they've decided it is cheaper to purchase a dark fiber network and light it, then to maintain their fleet of 1985 Chevy Station Wagons, the ones with the sweet fake wood trim.
    • they have a 'don't be evil' motto, we have nothing to worry about until they get new CEOs
      • Hey, they don't have to mean evil! Think of it: Current structures behind the backbone are something from a different era. Like, Before Christ. Getting any progress with them is impossible and the only power to force them to do something are the most evil of corporations. Just think of all that's wrong about the central domain management system. Or "political" issues that make packets routed from one university to another in the same town through a continent on the opposite side of the globe.
        Google would be
    • I for one welcome our new backbone replacing internet overlords!

    • Google could easily provide a much richer DNS service.

      -S
      • Wow, interesting idea.
        Maybe they've thought up something beyond WWW?
        I admit I haven't RTFA but if they mesh up their datacenters like that it might be more than just improving the google service.

        I seem to lack the fantasy to imagine what it could be but I somehow think that if there is a company to set up the "next big thing" then it will be google (from todays point of view).

        DNS sounds like an interesting starting point, but how would you make it "richer"?

  • Not surprising... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Tancred ( 3904 ) on Monday January 17, 2005 @11:42AM (#11386140)
    They've got several (lots of?) datacenters that have to sync up lots of data. Anyone with enough data to transfer around can save money just buying the strands of fiber or wavelengths on lit fiber instead of paying a provider to light it. It's not surprising that Google has enough of this work to do that they want to hire someone with experience in it.
    • Ok, this sounds like a promising reason since it's directly linked to the product that makes them money. I wonder though if Google has the volume to make it work. Seriously. Either they could make a specialized network that only handles Google traffic or a generic one that competes with other backbone providers with a little edge from the cost savings that Google gets.

      Hmmm, maybe Google can make the specialized network work for them. This syncing doesn't sound like a real time issue so speed of performanc

    • Re:Not surprising... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by tristan-jt2 ( 820528 ) on Monday January 17, 2005 @12:58PM (#11387041) Homepage
      Based on stuff I heard in another life, Google used to get transit contracts with the fastest connection they could get, but the lowest commited rate. The syncs used to take place in the proverbial top 5% of the 95th percentile.

      As in: they used provider A for 36 hours, provider B for the next 36h, provider C for the next 36h, etc... (bear in mind it was not surfer facing transit, just used to sync up the DCs.)

      They've probably reached the level where they've got too much data to get away with that scheme. So they've got a pretty simple choice:
      - Pay for the commited rate they really need.
      - Link the 2 Data Centers with dark fiber lit with 10GigE.

      Based on the over provisionning most fiber companies did when they built their networks, there's a lot of room for negociation when you're shopping for fiber, especially when you can hang the promise of a huge internationnal network in the balance.

      The second option is pretty much guaranted to turn out to be much more affordable.
      • Adding products like Gmail on top of their infrastructure changes the sychronization schedules... e-mail is far more time-sensitive than bulk updates sychronizing their web search index. It could simply be due to a change in their needs.
    • Mayhap thou hast hitteth ye naile en ye head:

      A bunch of companies during the dot-boom were laying fiber like mad worldwide.
      It looked impressive on the press releases "We have laid 72-fiber bundles over a 5000 km ring yadda yadda yadda".
      Problem is, the equipment needed to "light-up" the fibres is fiendishly expensive - By the time the fiber rings were complete, there was no money left and the companies went bankrupt.
      Result? In Europe, about 90% of fiber in the ground is unused (*) and being sold off really
      • You knock dark fiber as if overcapacity is just a big mistake. But how expensive is the fiber itself, anyways? I would think the cost is small compared to digging a hole to put it in (and getting right of way, and repairing damage caused by digging...) It would seem foolish to go through all that trouble just to lay enough fiber for present needs.

  • Unlit fibre (Score:2, Interesting)

    by 0x000000 ( 841725 )
    if google were to go into the telecommunications business they could make a killing if they did it properly.

    What i am thinking though, they want to build their own private network which links their many datacenters around the US, so that we can get our search results even faster, or any of the other things like gmail.

    Storing mail in two seperate locations is possible, but it would make for a pain in the ass if it takes to long to sync the changes between the servers in different datacenters to get people
    • This would only be the case if the "backbone" of the internet would be the bottleneck, but this isn't the case.
    • if google were to go into the telecommunications business they could make a killing if they did it properly.

      So though Global Crossing, MediaOne, RSN blah blah blah. I highly doubt Google has the hubris to think it can succeed where so many before (with access to so much venture/stock cash) have failed.

      • > > if google were to go into the telecommunications business they could make a killing if they did it properly.
        >
        > So though Global Crossing, MediaOne, RSN blah blah blah. I highly doubt Google has the hubris to think it can succeed where so many before (with access to so much venture/stock cash) have failed.

        An proverb about being first-to-market:

        The early bird gets the worm.
        The second mouse gets the cheese.

    • My guess is that they are going to try and replace the phone companies.
      Think about it how far from the search business is it? Not at all. Google is quickly becoming the new yellow pages. Soon we will have our Google phones and Google Cell phones. Next will come Google TV. Then Google will buy Apple :) Then BSD will rule the world...
      Okay forget that last part but the rest makes a lot of sense. Google is the king of servers, search, and data warehousing.
    • They would be on of the only companies that would know how to do VOIP the right way.

      And why would Google know how to do VoIP? Would it be because of their excellent VoIP track record? Would it be because of all their experience as a VAR configuring, installing, and supporting 3rd party VoIP equipment? Or would it be because any company that manages to figure out how to write a good search engine is able to do anything from VoIP to curing cancer?

      Seriously, this article seems to be filled with "Google w

  • quick grammar question (Score:5, Funny)

    by revery ( 456516 ) <`charles' `at' `cac2.net'> on Monday January 17, 2005 @11:47AM (#11386200) Homepage
    Which word is "dark" modifying, "plans" or "fibre"?

    --
    so dark, you'll forget the fibre

  • "Glut of fiber assets" (Score:5, Insightful)

    by grumling ( 94709 ) on Monday January 17, 2005 @11:49AM (#11386222) Homepage
    I'm getting really tired of all these "experts" talking about the glut of fiber in this country. The press makes it sound like there's dozens of dark fibers just a few inches from your house, and those darn telcos/cable companies just don't want you to have access to them. The reality is that most of the cash cow areas (such as Boston, NYC, LA and the bay area) have over capicity. Most of the rest of the country, where the payback is greater than 5 years, is very underserved.

    And even where there is overcapicity, it is mostly in the urban areas, put in place for business, not single family homes. Good luck getting dark fiber in the 'burbs, let alone the sticks

    • I'm getting really tired of all these "experts" talking about the glut of fiber in this country.

      Well, they are right. There is a glut of fiber.

      The press makes it sound like there's dozens of dark fibers just a few inches from your house, and those darn telcos/cable companies just don't want you to have access to them.

      I've never gotten that impression. Never in the talks about fiber gluts and dark fiber have I heard about it being related to last-mile fiber. It is always about things like this, a c
  • you know it might just be me, or my google desktop search tool, but if google does it, it must be good.
  • It could just be an option play - the option in the future to improve pae performance by shuttling most traffic through a Google-only backbone.

    I think people may be reading too much into this. They're talking about hiring out a small number of positions. Going from that to wanting their own national fiber network is a huge leap, but I suppose its fun to speculate...

  • I watched this video (flash) just a few days ago EPIC [broom.org] and now this?...hmmm

  • than (Score:4, Funny)

    by MarkoNo5 ( 139955 ) <MarkovanDooren@gma i l .com> on Monday January 17, 2005 @11:56AM (#11386315)
    It is "cheaper than", not "cheaper then". Only on slashdot does a Belgian reader teach English grammar to an American editor.

  • Am I the only one.... (Score:4, Funny)

    by B5_geek ( 638928 ) on Monday January 17, 2005 @11:58AM (#11386337)

    Am I the only one who thought of a few laxitive jokes when they read this?

  • I for one would like to welcome our new dark Google overlords...

  • two tier google (Score:1, Interesting)

    by zogger ( 617870 )
    OK, here's my WAG. Google needs to up revenue soon, beyond what they are doing now. They provide a ton of services, quite a few of which are really free, as ads are easily ignored.

    *Maybe* they will keep the freebie version of google for the peons, then offer a "corporate enterprise class scalable google data searching and management solution" whatever buzzspeak over this new controlled-by-them backbone setup. Say one of the features might be much better content filtering, spam control, antivirus scannin
  • >>"...that they can get for cheaper then from..."

    At last, proof that /. really doesn't use editors.
  • Or maybe after grabbing a significant amount of backbone, they will sniff it, and start attaching targeted advertising to each packet... But seriously, they could acquire quite a bit of data by mining the traffic on a backbone.

  • This isn't about what you think (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mbpark ( 43131 ) <mbpark@NoSpAm.diginexus.com> on Monday January 17, 2005 @12:33PM (#11386725) Homepage
    Hello,

    Considering what Google has built internally for server management and redundancy, I would hypothesize based upon available data (i.e. GFS) that they're looking to light up fiber between their data centers, while running either TCP/IP or IPv6 (with modifications of existing IGP and routing protocols, more than likely BGP or OSPF) between them.

    This is a very smart move on their part, if this is true. This would allow them to do their own internal traffic control and shaping over a private network, and develop/modify algorithms for efficient transfer of data over said network, without having to "play" by Telco/ISP rules.

    In other words, they're more than likely building their own global network to more efficiently transfer data over the Internet by completely bypassing it for their inter-server traffic. This is a very smart move, if true.
    • I would hypothesize based upon available data (i.e. GFS) that they're looking to light up fiber between their data centers, while running either TCP/IP or IPv6 (with modifications of existing IGP and routing protocols, more than likely BGP or OSPF) between them.

      If the fiber is dark, why play with layer 3 at all?

      A redundant network of dark fiber would allow them to turn everything into one big data center. All they'd have to do is just run 802.1q Ethernet trunking over the fiber. Suddenly, every VLAN is
      • I have one simple response to that.

        It does not appear to be about just using trunking and turning everything into one big WAN. If you can deploy a modified layer 3 protocol, you can use it, in conjunction with applications, to intelligently route from server group to server group. Take a look at the Kentucky Linux Athlon Testbed (http://aggregate.org/FNN/) to see how you could deploy custom routing tables in a scenario where you assume that machines are not redundant, and in a scenario much like the one
    • Why the hell don't Google (and Slashdot for that matter) go IPv6? It's a fairly simple transition, and it (Google anyway) would drive IPv6 forward.

  • Nice business idea (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 17, 2005 @12:39PM (#11386798)
    They're going to create a global super computer. Local servers gives higher performance. What do you think the Google bar is for? Coming versions will ask you if you want to donate your free CPU cycles to Google. Google in turn will sell these to corporations that needs CPU power.

  • Seeking assets (Score:4, Interesting)

    by michael_cain ( 66650 ) on Monday January 17, 2005 @01:42PM (#11387503) Journal
    One possible explanation is that Google is looking for something to do with their current $55B stock valuation [yahoo.com]. Other than making the founders incredibly wealthy, the high stock price by itself isn't particularly useful to the company. But it can be used as collateral for loans to acquire assets that could be useful both now and in the future. Given the massive storage and computing resources that Google already manages, I suspect that they can manage their own fiber network for very little incremental expense (I'm less sure about the physical care of the fiber -- who fixes your dark fiber when someone cuts it?). As they attempt to provide more and more services, they may simply want more control over the underlying transport.
  • Google will create a massive distributed infrastrucutre for processing all electronic communications using their existing search technology and their keyhole mapping technology. The system will be complemented by a series of satellites launched by Google to monitor all activity on the planet. Google will purchase North Dakota and set themselves up as an independant state, and will then sell the results of their new search system to governments for a nominal fee. Governments will flock to the new service

  • ISP - transit vs peer (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    A more likely reason they would want to build a backbone network in the US is to attempt to get peer relationships with the large backbone ISP's rather than just being a customer buying transit service.

    Traditionally, peering was free, buying transit service was not. Now such relationships are done by secret contract so the exact economics vary contract by contract, but it is a safe guess that peering is dramatically cheaper than transit. Google is likely getting to the scale (both from their web crawlin

  • A simple Google search (Score:3, Interesting)

    by amichalo ( 132545 ) on Monday January 17, 2005 @02:47PM (#11388097)
    returned 75 hits [google.com].

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