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Networking Education Google The Internet IT News Technology

Google Testing High-Speed Fiber Network At Stanford Res Halls 107

Posted by timothy from the should-be-cosponsored-by-seagate dept.
GovTechGuy writes with this news from "Google has reached an agreement to build its first ultra-high speed broadband network near Stanford University, the search giant announced on Thursday. The agreement with Stanford means the university's residential subdivision will be the first place to test Internet speeds up to one gigabit per second, more than 100 times faster than the typical broadband connection in the US. The plan is to break ground early next year." That might just be worth $50,576 per year to have.
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Google Testing High-Speed Fiber Network At Stanford Res Halls More

Google Testing High-Speed Fiber Network At Stanford Res Halls

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  • Fiber (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MrEricSir ( 398214 ) on Thursday October 21, 2010 @05:21PM (#33979852) Homepage

    ~10 years ago, Palo Alto installed a fiber network [cityofpaloalto.org] at a great expense.

    I wonder if they're leveraging this existing network, or laying new fiber?

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Demoknight ( 66150 )

      The first post is never informative. I feel like you're doing it wrong.

      Whereas the second post should probably at least entertaining so a pre-touche on that one.

    • I imagine they're laying new fiber since the summary says they're going to "break ground early next year".

    • Shaw is already offering gigabit FTTH Internet in Calgary and Vancouver (http://www.shaw.ca/en-ca/ProductsServices/Internet/The+Fasternet/).

      They call it the Fasternet and it's free for 6 months. I already have 100mbps from shaw in Victoria and can't wait for gigabit. Google doesn't seem very cutting edge to me.

  • That might be worth ... (Score:5, Funny)

    by damn_registrars ( 1103043 ) <damn.registrars@gmail.com> on Thursday October 21, 2010 @05:24PM (#33979896) Homepage Journal
    To some students, it might be. Sadly enough I know someone who chose their undergraduate institution based on the ping times they got to their favorite gaming servers; he actually carried a notebook with him to each school he considered, and wrote down the ping times from each school to his favorite servers.

    I'm sure you'll be shocked to know he graduated with less-than-stellar grades, and then took a rather mediocre job afterwards.

    • What's his PVP ranking?

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I'm sure you'll be shocked to know he graduated with less-than-stellar grades, and then took a rather mediocre job afterwards.

      ...so, like, what? A slashdot editor?

    • lol i srsly googled their name to see if i can get in since this is my last year in highschool

      • lol i srsly googled their name to see if i can get in since this is my last year in highschool

        If you haven't heard of them before now, then you probably aren't Stanford material. And I'm quite sure if you wrote your application essay (especially this late) like that, you would be laughed out of the admissions process.

    • To some students, it might be. Sadly enough I know someone who chose their undergraduate institution based on the ping times they got to their favorite gaming servers; he actually carried a notebook with him to each school he considered, and wrote down the ping times from each school to his favorite servers.

      It's absurd to use it as the only criterion, but quality of internet connection is a perfectly reasonable thing to consider if you're going to be locked in to campus housing.

  • After all the hubbub, they put their fiber network in their own back yard. Real surprising, guys.

    • I can understand Google keeping it close and in an academic research environment. In a few years they might start investigating more mainstream uses, and in 5 to 10 years some of this may trickle out to the average Joe. I expect in that time frame other commercial interests will do the same.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by BJ_Covert_Action ( 1499847 )
      Well look at it from a testing point of view. No community can saturate an internet line quite as quickly or effectively as a bunch of horned up, tech-savvy college kids spending hours a day torrenting, playing facebook games, and streaming music, video, and porn 24/7.
      • Who said you need to be in college to continue doing this?

        • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

          by BJ_Covert_Action ( 1499847 )
          Colleges just exist as a nice aggregator of folks who do this, thus leading to a higher concentration of porn streaming per capita.

          • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

            by Hooya ( 518216 )

            PornPerCapita (PPC) might just be the new meme to replace LoC...

          • >>>Colleges just exist as a nice aggregator of folks who do this, thus leading to a higher concentration of porn streaming per capita.

            But college boys have college girls to play with.
            What do they need porn for?
            ;-)
            I can see how this situation might not be realistic though, considering colleges ban torrenting. Just imagine: A 1 million K line and you can't use it for its main purpose. Disappointing.

            • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

              by timeOday ( 582209 )

              I can see how this situation might not be realistic though, considering colleges ban torrenting. Just imagine: A 1 million K line and you can't use it for its main purpose. Disappointing.

              Actually the main purpose for bittorrent vanishes with 1gbit symmetric Internet. Why bother pooling upstream when it isn't scarce any more? You'd still want lots of peer-to-peer servers (so 10,000 clients weren't all hitting the same server), but there would be no reason for a single client to connect to more than 1 ser

            • But college boys have college girls to play with.
              What do they need porn for? ;-)

              They can't all get laid, as can be seen in this soul-crushingly depressing Win7 ad:

              http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upXD78-owwQ [youtube.com] :(

    • Re:How convenient... (Score:4, Informative)

      by Caspin ( 964414 ) on Thursday October 21, 2010 @06:56PM (#33980916) Homepage
      umm... RTFA?

      There are only 850 homes that are being serviced at Stanford, mostly faculty (no dorms). Google has plans to scale they're broadband experiment up to 50,000-500,000 homes before their done.

      Stanford was selected to be the first because it was small and close to Google's campus. It is essentially the trial run before the really big deployments.

      The rest of the communities will be selected before the end of the year.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by L7_ ( 645377 )

        are you purposefully being obtuse to the there/their/they're usage?

        • Re: (Score:1, Offtopic)

          by frozentier ( 1542099 )
          Keep it up and you're posts are going to get modded down.

  • They'll have gigabit to their curb but I can't imagine they'll be piped directly into a backbone or anything..

    or will they? Does Stanford have a beefy link to the internet?

  • One gigabit per second (Score:3, Funny)

    by holywarrior21c ( 933929 ) on Thursday October 21, 2010 @05:26PM (#33979928)
    My university has 4GB/day cap on the internet. hypothetically speaking, if we had this 1gigabits connection, it can become useless in 32 seconds.

    • My uni a couple of years ago had a whopping 300mb/month cap. 2.3 seconds.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by afidel ( 530433 )
        LOL, we had an OC3 connection just for the dorms in 1997. Unfortunately since then they've only upgraded to a 400Mbps connection on the resnet side since so it's way less impressive now relative to home connections =)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Kjella ( 173770 )

      I think a certain university network I know has (had?) 10 GB/day. However, that did not apply to intra-campus bandwidth so it only encouraged people to access the ridiculous amounts available locally.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Facegarden ( 967477 )

        I think a certain university network I know has (had?) 10 GB/day. However, that did not apply to intra-campus bandwidth so it only encouraged people to access the ridiculous amounts available locally.

        Aww man, that just reminded me of the private P2P network my buddies setup in college a few years ago. It was totally local and private, and it was invite only, so there was basically no risk of getting caught. Very much content was shared over that link.

        Ahh, the good ol days.
        -Taylor

    • Penn State upgraded about a year ago from 4GB/week to 10GB/week. Man, that was rough. Have to set up downloading linux ISOs on Sunday night - if they were DVD images, one download could eat your entire cap. That or use the wifi - but there's no wifi in the dorms, so you'd have to go elsewhere for that. I used to leave my laptop running in it's bag so it could hop between wifi nodes and download while I walked from class to class.

  • This is not for students (Score:5, Informative)

    by Wesley Felter ( 138342 ) <wesley@felter.org> on Thursday October 21, 2010 @05:26PM (#33979932) Homepage

    This network is for houses on Stanford's campus where faculty and staff live. The students will have to be content with only 100 Mbps in the dorms.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by toastar ( 573882 )
      only 100mbps.... I only have like 10 o.o

      • yeah, well I'm stuck with a nice and crappy plan from Verizon, but now its switched over to "Frontier" and things have only gotten worse. I have a 1Mbit connection :/

    • i assume there is still a sizable population of students who live off campus...
      • Your assumption is for the most part incorrect. 95% of Stanford undergraduates live on campus, as well as 56% of graduate students. Housing in the area is extremely expensive, and many faculty members live in university subsidized housing, which is necessary for the university to maintain a competitive compensation package for their professors.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by godunc ( 1836034 )
      ...because google doesn't want to stress their experiment that hard. Imagine how many torrents those kiddies would have going with a 1gbps connection. At least fu@!book doesn't require a fast connection...yet.
  • So when is google going to roll out their ISP service? I want 1GBps, screw comcast.

    • Re:so when will we be getting this? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by choongiri ( 840652 ) on Thursday October 21, 2010 @05:45PM (#33980150) Homepage Journal

      Are you sure that's what you want? At least streetview stops outside your house. Sometimes. [streetviewfun.com]

      With a Google ISP, you know they'd be cataloging every non-ssl page you visit, inferring things about ssl encrypted sites you visit (as your ISP they would know the IP address of the server you connected to, remember), and using every last bit of your data to target advertising and profit from you in any way possible.

      • I'm sure they will.
        Would that bother you?

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by TideX ( 1908876 )
        You make the assumption that Google cares about my data. Google has catalogued and indexed the internet itself I don't think they give a shit about what one person does on their computer. I trust Google and they have yet to disappoint me. I'd trust them with my information more than Comcast. Besides I already use SSL and TOR whenever possible. Before you start attacking Google consider what OS and programs you're using to type replies. Stop being so paranoid.
      • Hyperbole. What they're trying to leverage is the self-reliance on distribution channels, not leeching everyone's data.

  • $50k? Uh, it's already available elsewhere (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    In Japan they get gigabit for $90/mo and it has been available for 5 years or so. $50k seems kind of steep.

    We here in the US seem to have a warped view of things due to our crapper Internet infrastructure.

  • What about Peter Lothberg's Mom ? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by mbone ( 558574 ) on Thursday October 21, 2010 @06:03PM (#33980378)

    ...the first place to test Internet speeds up to one gigabit per second

    I think not. Peter Lothberg's Mom has had 40 Gbps [thelocal.se] for over 3 years now.

  • Drexel University has had this for years! (Score:3, Informative)

    by GerbilSoft ( 761537 ) on Thursday October 21, 2010 @06:03PM (#33980380)
    I'm currently a student at Drexel University, and they've had gigabit Internet links for several years. It was initially implemented in the main buildings, but then extended to dorms around two years ago. I regularly download files from public Internet servers at over 20 MB/s, and the connection's mostly limited by my laptop's hard drive.

    • Over here at UPenn, they've rolled out 802.11n campus-wide, and I've hit the max at 300Mbps or so. They'll be rolling out gigabit in the next year or two...

  • Just over a month ago, Slashdot reported [slashdot.org] 1000Mb connections (up and down) to the home for $349.99 per month covering all of Chattanooga, TN.

    I can order it where I live...and, no contract for this fiber to the home connection either. If you want to hear it from the horses mouth, read it here [epbfi.com].

    Also, I discovered that by adding a home phone (delivered via the same fiber) to that quote, the total price actually drops to $317.03 per month.

    I have no personal affiliation with EPB, but I do think it is uber-cool th

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by GezusK ( 449864 )

      Exactly what I'm thinking...if you're going to post this news...at least don't forget about a fairly recent post that refutes it's "first" status.

      I think its too bad that they picked an area that has the financial means to do this themselves, instead of helping an area that doesn't.

    • If we all had gigabit network, there might not be any real need to "download" anything to local storage in the first place - or even to own a PC (or game console). Just move all apps to the cloud and display them on your internet-connected TV or monitor. Even 3d games could be run that way with a gigabit to play with.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by afidel ( 530433 )
        Nah, 1080p30 takes a bit over 3Gbps and I know most gamers whine about 30fps.
      • You can't reliably encode, compress and stream realtime while maintaining perfect HD clarity. All of those little ms add up.

  • Gigabit since 2004 in dorms at U of Minnesota (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Paktu ( 1103861 ) on Thursday October 21, 2010 @09:42PM (#33982106)
    When I was a freshman there, they installed gigabit ethernet in all of the dorms. This was way back in 2004. I can't find anything that old, but here's a source from 2006 to confirm it: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2075070,00.asp [pcmag.com]
    • The gigabit ethernet is nice, but that's just the internal network. The connection to the Internet is what Google is working on.
  • The summary is wrong. Stanford provides discounted faculty housing. The article doesn't talk about their dorms.
  • I had a GigE connection in my dorm at the University of Florida in 2003. Granted, all we did with it was stream music over iTunes and LAN Starcraft, but it was great for geek cred.
  • They installed gigabit fiber in the dorms my freshman year. I guess we were spoiled.

  • I sometimes hate hearing about what's coming because it gets my hopes up NOW, instead of later, I know it is a catch 22, as we need more interest for things to advance, and you can't have interest by the masses without informing them in advance of what is coming, but MY GOD, how long before we get the cheap solar panels everyone keeps taking about.

    Will this be another one of those stories that only 15 years later will we see our ISPs upgrade to this type of fiber???

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