Google Fiber agrees to acquire Webpass • Hacker News Board

Re: Google Fiber agrees to acquire Webpass

#71

Post by MonkeyDan » Thu, Jun 23, 2016, 5:53 AM UTC

tbrock wrote: post #60

I hope this reduces the cost of their business offerings. I love the service, and the home offering is the deal of the century, but $500/month for 50Mb/sec symmetric or $250/month for 20Mb/sec symmetric is hard to swallow for our business (or any other). They offer faster service (gigabit and probably more) but what startup can pay 10k/month for their business internet? What's worse is monkeybrains and webpass should…

In some buildings, our (MonkeyBrains') pricing is less. Higher density = lower rates. The base rate covers hardware, wages, 100% employee health care, other infrastructure, and support. I imagine the costs between the two companies are similar.

Re: Google Fiber agrees to acquire Webpass

#72

Post by mholt » Thu, Jun 23, 2016, 6:13 AM UTC

jrockway wrote: post #61

codemac wrote: post #31

God, I hope the support doesn't end up like most other Google product's support. I have webpass and my heart dropped. My project fi experience has been bad enough already.

I work on Google Fiber. We have pretty good customer support; call us 24/7, someone in the US will help you with pretty much anything you want that's Fiber-related (WiFi too slow? TV remote not working? That sort of thing.)

Yeah we have you in Provo. Awesome service!

Re: Google Fiber agrees to acquire Webpass

#73

Post by tacticus » Thu, Jun 23, 2016, 6:20 AM UTC

pbarnes_1 wrote: post #27

rosege wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone will probably roll something like this out in the metro areas and it will eat the NBN

Webpass only serves multiple dwelling units AFAIK. You can already order microwave and fixed fiber links in Sydney CBD, Pyrmont, etc but they cost a lot more than $60/m. The NBN was a solid idea. Execution is always kind of the issue though.

> was

:( such a sad truth.

Re: Google Fiber agrees to acquire Webpass

#74

Post by jauer » Thu, Jun 23, 2016, 6:24 AM UTC

gkop wrote: post #45

jauer wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right now you can get away with a lot of "oversubscription" in MDU situations when you have 1-2Gbps to the building (typical millimeter-wave radio speeds). I wouldn't be surprised if they have buildings fed with 1x1Gbps going to 40x1Gbps clients. (hand waving about Erlangs and queuing theory here) E.g. if you assume everyone is downloading a DVD image from a fast mirror (CentOS install DVD or something), they probabl…

Are you preparing for popular streaming video products pushing 4K content?

A popular model is to use wireless until enough you have enough customers in a building to justify building out fiber so you can supply more bandwidth. Even without fiber you could have a 50 unit building with half the units streaming 4K@30Mbps simultaneously and have enough bandwidth left over for typical web use.

Re: Google Fiber agrees to acquire Webpass

#75

Post by boulos » Thu, Jun 23, 2016, 6:34 AM UTC

baddox wrote: post #55

nurblieh wrote: post #51

Huge fan of Webpass. 1 Gbps of IPv4/6 with great customer service for $55 a month. It can't be beat, if it's available to you. I hope this is a win for the Webpass employees, in the short and long term. Thanks for all the bits!

My only complaint is that for home service there is no way to get a public IP address, so you've got to get an external server if you want to access your home computers from elsewhere on the Internet.

Yeah they ran out of v4 addresses a little while back, but you can always get an IPv6 address from them. To avoid having most people get confused by IPv6 though they seem to have some form of layered IPv4 NAT (one IP per building or something, and then your "own" IP), which in a different building I discovered and found more confusing than "oh look, just straightforward v6 only".

Re: Google Fiber agrees to acquire Webpass

#76

Post by tlrobinson » Thu, Jun 23, 2016, 6:58 AM UTC

Dear Google: If you fuck up Webpass, you're dead to me.

p.s. I'm watching you: http://i.imgur.com/rS9LGZ6.png

Re: Google Fiber agrees to acquire Webpass

#77

Post by dsk139 » Thu, Jun 23, 2016, 7:37 AM UTC

Former Webpass employee here. Was one of the first software eng. hires. This is a great example of a bootstrapped business focused on customer experience that built up with no outside funding (that I know of). Congrats Charles & team.

Re: Google Fiber agrees to acquire Webpass

#78

Post by gruez » Thu, Jun 23, 2016, 8:07 AM UTC

Tinyyy wrote: post #66

tbrock wrote: post #60

I hope this reduces the cost of their business offerings. I love the service, and the home offering is the deal of the century, but $500/month for 50Mb/sec symmetric or $250/month for 20Mb/sec symmetric is hard to swallow for our business (or any other). They offer faster service (gigabit and probably more) but what startup can pay 10k/month for their business internet? What's worse is monkeybrains and webpass should…

I'm curious, why is it that business plans are so much more expensive than residential ones?

Price discrimination. Businesses tend to be more able to pay than home users.

Re: Google Fiber agrees to acquire Webpass

#79

Post by xyzzy123 » Thu, Jun 23, 2016, 8:27 AM UTC

gruez wrote: post #78

Tinyyy wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious, why is it that business plans are so much more expensive than residential ones?

Price discrimination. Businesses tend to be more able to pay than home users.

That plus one or more of: SLAs, guaranteed minimum bandwidth, much higher upstream, better tech support, etc.

Re: Google Fiber agrees to acquire Webpass

#80

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jun 23, 2016, 8:45 AM UTC

dsl wrote: post #54

walrus01 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might look like a mesh on a topology diagram but believe me, it has nothing in common with wireless "mesh" networking... I don't have insight into the exact configuration of webpass' routers but they're undoubtedly using fairly ordinary BGP and OSPF between nodes. The wireless links are exclusively high capacity point-to-point trunks.

It is not "mesh wireless" gear, but it is a mesh at the routing layer (ECMP). My old building had PtP wireless to multiple other buildings. Edit: I always speculated the difference between 100Mbps and 200Mbps on-net buildings was if that particular location was multihomed.

[deleted]