Google Fiber goes big with 20-gig plan

Maybe they should be expanding their physical network first. I waited seven years after they supposedly came to my hometown, and their coverage area barely moved. Most of that is absolutely the fault of AT&T and Comcast stonewalling pole installations but they have the money to put up their own damn poles made of gold after that 77 billion profit report.

Now I moved elsewhere after covid and of course the only two real options still suck uncontrollably with no hope of any other big mover creating actual competition.

i am also incredibly disappointed in their lack of achievement here. they have a metric shit-tonne of liquid cash, lawyers and tech out the butthole.. but no.. were back to ma' bell still coagulating ala T2.

so much for being different
- I suspect lawyers are stonewalling expansion for fear of making their monopoly cases worse
Google fiber has been supposed to be coming to the west side of Atlanta for like 10 plus years. Hasnt an expanded at all . Yet they still keep that message coming soon to your neighborhood up. And somehow where I am only one option available. Fucking shitty Comcast
- There's vaults labeled "GFBR" 200 yards from my house on the east side, and it's still "coming soon." Meanwhile, AT&T is out here digging every 2 years.
Something something ISPs forcing municipalities to create service monopolies?
- Yep, somethingsomethingsomething regulatory capture.
Dude I feel bad you’re relying on Google of all people to save you 😬
- you should feel bad for everyone in the u.s. that have to suffer the government(s) that allow this bullshit to even be a problem.

I wouldn't want to calculate what it'd cost to replace all my switches with 25G capable ones.. then all the network cards.. You'd have to have a really specific application to justify it.

Just cost me 1K to replace 3 NICs, 1 router, and 2 switches to freaking 2.5Gb.
- I got one of the 2.5 x 8 + 10 switches StH reviewed for like $80, and x520 nics are $20. I'm happy with it for homelab stuff!
- 10Gbps used enterprise equipment is pretty cheap on eBay. Biggest problem I've had is getting compatible SFP+ adapters for the NICs.
You won't but I will

Switch: mikrotik CRS504-4XQ-IN ($799.99) Cabling: QSFP28 to 4 x 25G SFP28 DAC ($63.00 per cable) NICs: Intel XXV710 25GB ($349.0)

I don't know how many machines you have so for two machine it's cost you $1562.97 and maxing out the switch would cost you $6651.83 but do you really have sixteen machines that need or can even physically saturate a 25GB line?

I think it's more reasonable to get something similar to ubiquiti's USW-Pro-Aggregation and have three machines capable of the full speed and 28 machines capable of half rate speeds (at a much lower cost per machine)
- What about a router?
That's the early adopter tax. Same as it ever was.
Buy a media converter and do 25G -> 40G and run a 40GbE home net. Retired 40Gb gear is ludicrously cheap.

Edit. Or just stick a two port 100GbE card in your router, use an adapter to step one port down to 25Gb and run 40Gb off the other to the rest of the network.

I just want an internet provider that isn't Spectrum or single-digit download speeds. Not having any real choice fucking sucks, especially since Spectrum is horrible.

Had AT&T fiber at my old place and god damn that shit went down one time for an hour the whole 3 and a half years I was there

Have you looked at mobile broadband from T-Mobile or Verizon? I haven't tried either personally but I know if I were in a broadband desert or an oligopoly market like most Americans I would definitely give it a try and see how performance is. Prices weren't great when released, maybe $50+/mo. for home internet, you can get $ 30-40/mo around here from fixed line providers CenturyLink, FiOS/ziply, or comcrap; feel like the mobile Carriers really missed an opportunity at not pricing it cheaper to add a ton of subs or at least get people to try.

I was involved in one of these Google fiber roll outs several years ago, Google simply doesn't know what the fuck they want or what they are doing as far as installing outside plant goes.

EDIT: To clarify, they simultaneously had no fucking clue what they were doing & also wanted to micromanage all of their contractors.

Google really doesn’t know what it wants in general besides more profit. Like the killed by google is impressive.

If you're struggling to think of a use-case, consider the internet-based services that are commonplace now that weren't created until infrastructure advanced to the point they were possible, if not "obvious" in retrospect.

multimedia websites
real-time gaming
buffered audio -- and later video -- streaming
real-time video calling (now even wirelessly, like Star Trek!)
nearly every office worker suddenly working remotely at the same time

My personal hope is that abundant, bidirectional bandwidth and IPv6 adoption, along with cheap SBC appliances and free software like Nextcloud, will usher in an era where the average Joe can feel comfortable self-hosting their family's digital content, knowing they can access it from anywhere in the world and that it's safely backed up at each member's home server.

Video calls were all over 1950s futurism articles. These things do get anticipated far ahead of time.

4K Blu-ray discs have a maximum bitrate of 128 Mbps. Most streaming services compress more heavily than that; they're closer to 30 to 50 Mbps. A 1Gbps feed can easily handle several people streaming 4K video on the same connection provided there's some quality of service guarantees.

If other tech were there, we could likely stream a fully immersive live VR environment to nearly holodeck-level realism on 1Gbps.

IPv6 is the real blocker. As you say, self-hosting is what could really bring bandwidth usage up. I think some kind of distributed system (something like BitTorrent) is more likely than files hosted on one specific server, at least for publicly available files.
Also going big bandwidth ahead of the requirement curve means most people won't use it to its full extent for a while. It's much easier to implement and maintain such network than one trying to catch up with need.
I doubt a home server centered around software like nextcloud would ever become commonplace. I think a more probable solution involves integrating new use cases with devices people already have, or at least familiar form factors. For example, streaming from your smart TV device (chromecast, Roku, Apple TV, the actual TV itself) instead of from the cloud, or file sync using one of these devices as an always-on server. But, in both of these cases, there is in inherit benefit from using a centralized cloud operator. What are the odds that you have already downloaded the episode to stream to your TV box, but not your phone if that was where you intended to watch it anyways? And for generic storage, cloud providers replicate that data for you in various locations to ensure higher redundancy and availability than what could be guaranteed simply from a home server or similar device. I presume new use cases will need to be more creative.

I couldn't care less tbh. Gigabit is more than enough.

And we're still stuck on IPv4. Going to IPv6 would do a lot more than 1Gbps connections would.
- And what do you think it would do for you?

I have 10 gig at home, and powerful enough networking hardware that can take advantage of it (Ubiquiti stuff)

Nothing can ever saturate the line. So it's great for aggregate, but that's it

It's not often that I can saturate a 1Gbps line, unless you have a large household I don't see much point in going over 1Gbps right now. Though I'm sure there are some exceptions.
- That’s what I was gonna say: it’s not that i use sufficient bandwidth to really need 1gbps but the line is never even temporarily saturated. Just rock solid
- Having a connection that's not even close to saturated (or backbone for that matter) means lower latency in general. But it also means future proofing and timely issues resolution as you catch problems early on.
Man, I'd love to sit on that. Growing up with 56k and living with 100Mb/s now is already a big difference, but it shows when I push and pull docker images or when family accesses the homeserver. 1Gb/s would be better, but probably I'll somehow use up the bandwidth with a new toy. 10Gb would keep me busy for a long time. 20Gb would allow me try out ridiculous stuff I haven't thought of yet.
Same, I got 10gbit because there was some competition early with fiber getting wider. Now my same provider has slower offers at lower prices but I don't mind the extra bandwidth in the case I would need it and I have a grandfathered offer so pay the same as 1gbit.
- Paying the same rate is certainly an instance where it makes since. Plus, you can show off to friends!

This is still a thing? I thought they crushed it like 10 years ago

No, they severely underestimated how hard it would be to overcome the telcos and their lobbying.
- They may mean crushed it like Google killed Fiber. :D

how long until google kill it?

I thought they already did, so this is unexpected.
Fiber infrastructure? More likely they’d sell it if they wanted out.
- That's what they're counting as killing based on the killed by Google website

I have their 1gbps plan, but I don't see how I could utilize anything faster.

My provider recently started offering a 2gbps plan for $30 more a month. I was tempted until I thought about the money I'd need to spend on new equipment to take advantage of it. 1gbps fiber is plenty for now.
- Tbf, a lot of these multi gig plans are geared to families, where more than one person could be doing high bandwidth activities. Or even just one person doing high bandwidth things doesn’t cause the other persons zoom call to stutter.
  
  That being said, ain’t no one NEED 20gbits but by god I would enjoy it.
- Ya, mine is slow rolling 2gig but it kind of fucked me up because now I want 6E mesh APs and it's going to cost me like $500. I know I don't need it, but the fact that I could have it is tempting. Plus I need 6E for the VR headset I also don't have.
Things that take seconds now take even fewer seconds!
- You can hit your data cap in half the time!
- if it's taking seconds, then there's already a problem
I've yet to see a remote website that'll send me 1gbps continuously except a speed test.. and whilst it's nice to see big numbers on those, it isn't really justifying the cost.

Even things like microsoft and steam stuff throttle far lower than that (presumably because they don't want a million people trying to hit them for 1gbps constantly).

Once my minimum term is up on this link I can get a 1.6Gpbs one, but probably won't bother.

I'll never understand how you guys in the US are fine with having bandwidth limits on your broadband connections. I'd be pissed. I even have unlimited on my phone. Like wth?

What makes you think people are fine with it? ISPs have monopolies over service areas and can do whatever the fuck they want. They have monopolies because of corporate lobbying. No amount of voting gets these corrupt fucks out of office bc votes literally do not matter and there's only two parties, they're both to the right of center, and they're both bought and sold. Just to really make sure, we're all taught from birth that the US is peak civilization and all other countries are backwater shitholes.
I think you are mistaking bandwidth limits with data caps?

At some point all devices have a bandwidth limit. Even if you somehow had a 10gb/sec phone data connection (which is absolutely not possible) your phone device literally cannot transfer data that fast.
Where in the world do you not have bandwidth limits? If there were no bandwidth limits I could just DOS my entire ISP by downloading petabytes between two of my own computers.

Would be more exciting and worth paying attention to if Google Fiber wasn't basically living in an iron lung over at Alphabet these days since they halted major expansion.

You could start your own VPC data center with this lmao

Always wanted to be my own datacenter 😄

Why are people doubting this? This opens up massive possibilities for people, especially those who want to start businesses outside of city centers.

You could:

host your own home-servers and never be worried about bandwidth
get 8k streams and not stutter (a low-end 8k stream requirs 50Mb/s, a family of 4 would need minimum 200 Mb/s just for videos)
send 8k streams and not stutter
offload most of your data to a datacenter on the other side of the planet and not worry about access speeds
- boot into a browser or a minimal frontend with a low powered device and mount your home directory
offload computing to the cloud (no need for a gaming PC if you can just play them online)

The biggest thing would be 8k streams. 360 8k streams would be even crazier. 360 videos are filmed using 3-6 cameras depending on how much fish-eye you want. True 360 requires at least 6. If each is filmed at 1080p that's ~6k total resolution, but since you're only watching one section of the video at a time, you're really seeing 1080p.

Those "8k 360 videos" up on youtube are a lie! They aren't 6x8k, but most likely 8k / number of cameras. True 360 8k video would be 6x8k cameras.

A single 8k stream at minimum requires ~50Mb/s. Multiply that by 6 and you're at 300Mb/s just for a single 360 8k stream. Family of 4 --> 1.2Gb/s just for everybody to watch that content - and that's the minimum. If you have a higher bit rate and aren't streaming a 30 fps, you can quite easily double or quadruple that. Family of 4 again means 5Gb/s if everybody's watching that kind of content in parallel.

But this is just the beginning. Why stop at "video". These kinds of transfer speeds upon you up to interactive technologies.

It would still not be enough to stream 8k without any compression whatsover to reach lowest latency.

8k = 7680 × 4320 = 33,177,600 pixels. Each pixel can have 3 values: Red Green Blue. Each take 256 (0-255) values, which is 1 byte, which means 3 bytes just for color.
3 * 33,177,600 = 99,532,800 bytes per frame
99,532,800 bytes / 1,024 = 97,200 kilobytes
97,200 kilobytes / 1024 = ~95 megabytes

So 95MB/frame. Let's say you're streaming your screen with no compression at 60Hz or about 60 fps (minimum). That's 60*95MB/s = 5,695GB/s . Multiply that by 8 to get the bits and you're at 45,562Gb/s which is way above 25Gb/s. Hell, you wouldn't even be able to stream uncompressed 4k on that line. 2k would be possible though. I for one would like to see what an uncompressed 2k stream would look like. In the future, you could have your gaming PC at home hooked up to the internet, go anywhere with a 25Gb/s line, plop down a screen, connect it to the internet and control your computer at a distance with minimal lag as if you're right at home.

In conclusion, 25Gb wouldn't allow you to do whatever you like. You could do a lot, but there's still room. We're not at the end of the road yet.

Yeah, man. Thank God someone is finally thinking about the family of 4 simultaneously watching 8K 120Hz 360 degree streams.

Also,

bandwidth isn't the same as latency. This would not let you remote control "with minimal latency," it would be exactly the same as it is with say 20Mbps download.

lossless and visually lossless compression dramatically reduces the amount of bandwidth required to stream video. Nobody will ever stream uncompressed video, it makes no sense.

If you want to know what an uncompressed 2K stream looks like, look at a 2K monitor.
- Again, just because it isn't being done yet, doesn't mean it won't be. Every time technology progresses, we find new and interesting ways to fill the new space created by it.
  
  Nobody will ever stream uncompressed video, it makes no sense
  
  Nobody thought it would ever make sense stream games over the internet with Nvidia Go (or whatever it's called), but it's being done. Nobody thought it would make sense to turn a browser into a nearly full operating system, but that's about done.
  
  If you want to know what an uncompressed 2K stream looks like, look at a 2K monitor.
  
  Genius, why didn't I think of that. Thanks for pointing that out.
  
  bandwidth isn’t the same as latency
  
  Wow, I had no idea! I bet a 20Gb line won't get under 1s of ping. There's absolutely no way.
20 gig networking — even just a switch — is so expensive. 10 gig is already out of reach for 99% of the population, even network nerds. We’re just now in the past couple years seeing a standard of motherboards with 2.5gbps rj45. A lot of brand new nvme ssds can’t saturate 25gbps. There are just so many bottlenecks. I’m not saying I wish dearly those didn’t exist, but I know from my experience upgrading to 10 gig just how many there are.

https://store.ui.com/us/en/pro/category/all-switching/products/usw-pro-aggregation

Personally I am more excited for high speed networking for homelabs to come down in price. At this point in my life I don’t feel the need to access my network outside of my house at super high speeds. My 100mbps up is fine for when I’m out of the house, and 10gbps is more than I need when I’m home.
- Wouldn't they provide you with a 20Gb compatible router? I was curious and cat8 LAN cables support 40Gb/s. They are 3x as expensive as Cat7, but with I'm just a few meters away from the router, so about 10-15€ and that's the cables done.
  
  Ah... the PCI-e ethernet card is where it gets pricey 😮 250€ for 10Gb card.
  
  Damn...
  
  Although, I'd be future proof for sure. That kind of speed will probably be enough for 20 years or so.
- Indeed. I'm getting much less than 1/10th of my provisioned 10Gbps for being cheap like that. It's still plenty fast, though.
  
  10Gbps is great for feeding a building
  
  At this point I just want affordable 2.5Gb gear
offload computing to the cloud (no need for a gaming PC if you can just play them online)

Unless you can live very close to one of the data centers doing the computing to minimize the number of hops, that just isn't even remotely doable with modern networking equipment

Google tried it with stadia and gifs like this show why it doesn't work for most people
- There are people on the internet with about 2-3 ms of ping. I'm not a network engineer to tell you how that's even possible, but I've seen it. I'm on 15ms to most game servers right now on a copper line.
  
  Google Stadia failed for different reasons. Nvidia Go (or whatever it's called) still exists. Just because I have a shitty copper line doesn't mean fibre will be as shitty.
Am thinking that in somewhat near future network boot will become a lot more dominant than it use to be. Infrastructure speeds are becoming sufficient to do somewhat longer boot but at the cost of significantly simpler administration and issue troubleshooting.
I'm just doubting Google will actually get it done. They've already abandoned fibre expansion once, no reason to think they'll stick to it this time around.

I’m all about thinking ahead but this seems insane. Really struggling to think of a home use need this these speeds.

I run a relatively small server for family and friends and I haven’t moved to 2gig plan because even that seems like overkill.

No one needs these speeds unless you have home office and even then it's a stretch. For residential buildings it might make sense, but USA doesn't have those or at least not as many. However it's far easier to iron out the kinks and issues with early adoption and aggregation is a breeze then.
- I’m all for insane early adopters to iron out kinks I’d stuff like this. I’m sure we’ll need these speeds at some point but I can’t imagine the average people will in the 15-20 years.
  
  I’d say this is more bandwidth then my entire road would need in total.

Wait is fiber rollout back? …

Ew it's PON based

Why would you care that's it's passive (pon: passive optical network)? As I understand it the limitations of passive vs active wouldn't have any impact on the end-user. It's not something I know a lot about, though.
- Because PONs are just fundamentally worse. Why would anyone turn fiber of all things into a shared medium. Just lay fibers from the dwelling up to the central office. It's barely any costlier since the real expense is the digging, not the fiber. And it's basically guaranteed to scale forever by simply replacing the optics on the ends. That kind of infrastructure can also be leased out to other providers on an individual dwelling granularity. With PONs competitors are forced into reselling bandwidth, at best, or the infrastructure can be monopolised fully.
As opposed to what? Active? That's not necessary in local networks
- As opposed to a normal fiber link to the switch in the central office. No oversubscription or shared media.