[CAnet - news] More speculation on Google's plans

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[Speculation about Google's plans whether they become reality or not, point
to a number of fundamental issues for those who are thinking of next
generation networks:

(a) Increasingly content and application providers are building out their
own wide area networks to carrier neutral facilities in major cities in
order to avoid high Internet transit costs from carriers e.g. Google, Yahoo,
Broadcast.com, etc etc.  This reflects a trend that started with
university/research community such as the NLR and CA*net 4 where many
different communities of interest are building out their own dedicated
wavelength IP networks on a shared condominium wavelength network 

(b) Carrier neutral exchange points are a critical aspect of any future last
mile network architecture. Increasingly customers want to peer or connect to
many providers either at the application level (VoIP or Google) or at the
TCP layer (traditional ISP peering). While carrier neutral facilities are
common in major cities, to date there has been little business justification
in smaller centers.  Again this is where university research and education
network can play a critical catalyst role by working with private sector and
municipality in being the anchor tenant for a carrier neural facility. BCnet
is a good example of this type of leadership which has worked with several
communities to build carrier neutral Internet transit facilities. See
http://www.bc.net/advanced_networks/network_services/for_others.htm

(c) The biggest challenge, continues and remains to be in the last mile.
Given this growing trend of many alternate content providers and neutrality
in the wide area, can the same principles be adopted in the last mile? There
are unlikely to very many facilities based service providers in the last
mile, so one solution is to make the end customer as facilities based
provider by giving them title/ownership of the last mile.  Again this model
has already been adopted by our larger institutions such as universities,
hospitals, schools and business.  Will it translate successfully to the
un-sophisticated consumer home market?


Thanks to Dirk van der Woude for this pointer. Some excerpts -- BSA]


http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20051124.html

The Google Box:
Taking over the digital world four ounces at a time.
By Robert X. Cringely


In last week's column I told how Google has been experimenting with portable
data centers built in standard 40-foot shipping containers. The idea isn't
new and it isn't even Google's. 

Getting back to Paul Tuckfield, he points out, too, that this whole idea of
a network in a box (a very BIG box) is just the logical extrapolation of a
trend. "I think the trend is there too, to package entire networks as a
single system," he said. "It makes sense because many applications do this
already -- websites and supercomputers being easy examples. The same trends
of miniaturization that caused microprocessors to emerge from a background
where supercomputers CPUs were built with discreet logic back in the 80's
will cause networks in a box to emerge in this decade."

The big question is what Google will get for its $3 billion bet? Last week
we covered the idea of doing massive video streaming or downloading through
parallel peering arrangements. We also covered the basics of reducing
latency for network-based AJAX applications to compete with Microsoft. But
there is a LOT more.

Once you have a data center at every Internet peering point, you also have a
data center in or near every major city in the developed world. That
suggests Google might be interested in using the portable data centers for
Voice-Over-IP telephony. Sitting 2-3 hops from every telephone and having
available Google's own fiber network and traffic shaping to give priority to
its VoIP packets, Google could offer world-beating telephony performance,
all for less than eBay is paying for Skype.

Another possible use for this parallel Internet is, if anything, more
political than technical. The players in broadband Internet service - the
telephone and cable companies for the most part - have as much to lose as
they do to gain from the Internet. The telephone companies have at risk
their voice service, which is already being undermined by VoIP. The cable TV
companies are risking their video service as telcos get set to offer various
DSL video channels. Each group realizes they can't stop the progress of
technology yet on some level each group would like to try. By grabbing a big
fistful of optical fiber and having data centers at very peering point,
though, Google offers an alternative in case one party or another is tempted
to undermine the system through technical tricks like altering the packet
interleaving to mess with VoIP as I have written before. Google's success
requires an open Internet and their presence and deep pockets guarantees
that will be the case.

But the most important reason for Google to distribute its data centers in
this way is to work most efficiently with a hardware device the company is
thinking of providing to customers. This embedded device, for which I am
afraid I have no name, is a small box covered with many types of ports -
USB, RJ-45, RJ-11, analog and digital video, S-video, analog and optical
sound, etc. Additional I/O that can't be seen is WiFi and Bluetooth. This
little box is Google's interface to every computer, TV, and stereo system in
your home, as well as linking to home automation and climate control. The
cubes are networked together wirelessly in a mesh network, so only one need
be attached to your broadband modem or router. Like VoIP adapters (it does
that too, through the RJ-11 connector) the little cubes will come in the
mail and when plugged in will just plain work.

Think about the businesses these little gizmos will enable. The trouble with
VoIP in the home has been getting the service easily onto your home phone.
Then get a box for each phone. The main hurdle of IP TV is getting it from
your computer to your big screen TV. Just attach a box to every TV and it is
done, with no PC even required. Sounds like Apple's Video Express, eh? On
top of entertainment and communication the cubes will support home alarm and
automation systems - two businesses that are huge and also not generally on
the radar screens of any Google competitors.

Throw a panic button atop every cube.

But for all this to work, especially with end-to-end elliptical encryption,
you need a tight connection between the box client and a server, which is
why those shipping containers need to be so broadly distributed and why
Google will need so many of them, eventually numbering in the thousands to
support hundreds of millions of cubes.

Now imagine a world where Google Cubes were distributed as widely as AOL
CD's. It will be in Google's interest to provide them in volume to every
Google users, which is to say every broadband user everywhere. As a result,
Google becomes overnight a major phone company, a major video entertainment
provider, a major player in home automation and even medical telemetry.

The Google Box mesh network can reach out to nearby neighbors, too, bringing
them onto the Internet in a way that would be difficult to stop or control
even if the broadband ISPs wanted to, which they won't, because Google will
find a way to share the wealth with them.

It is not in Google's interest to put out of business any ISPs, so they'll
try hard not to. But it IS in Google's interest for there to be universal
broadband coverage, which the Google Cubes will, for the most part, enable.






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These news items and comments are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect
those  of the CANARIE board or management.


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