Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How Google Wants to Rewire the Internet

nextplatform.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 107 posts

Re: How Google Wants to Rewire the Internet

#91

Post by arpa »

runeks wrote: post #74
Animats wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Central server" for routing. Uh oh. AT&T used to try to avoid centralization, but ended up with routing controlled from Bedminster, NJ.[1] An interesting comment from AT&T's NOC tour guide is that load doesn't vary much any more. AT&T used to have holiday calling surges and such, but now, in an always-on world, overall load is relatively steady. [1] http://fortune.com/att-global-network-operations-center/

You can easily employ redundancy for core services. Core functionality doesn't need to be synonymous with central point of failure. For example, you have three healthy copies of the core service running at all times, combined with failover. All software systems have a core function that must work or else the system fails, but that doesn't mean all software systems are centralized in any useful sense of the word.

The problem i would see with centralization of routing is not reliability, but rather susceptibility to censorship; as the old saying goes "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it" - while one could argue that root dns servers are central-ish, they are hosted all over the world, so a single actor can hardly impose worldwide censorship. It is a known fact that malicious actors can manipulate BGP (see Hacking Team), but it is still better than putting all of our collective eggs in Google's basket...

Distributed things though, mesh networks, IPFS - that's what's giving me hope.

Re: How Google Wants to Rewire the Internet

#92

Post by kbenson »

drewg123 wrote: post #81
kbenson wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but my understanding is that quite a bit of it is still served through partner CDN services, is it not? I was aware that Netflix served at least some of the content themselves (and growing, I assume), so was attempting to imply that the 37% noted for content access for Netflix may not equate exactly to 37% network delivery for Netflix, as they measure different things. I didn't mean to imply none of that should…

No, we serve 100% of video traffic from our CDN.

Ah, that seems to be fairly new. I found info that it was over 90% a little over a year ago[1], but I wasn't aware it was that high at that time either. Congratulations on getting everything self served!

1: https://media.netflix.com/en/company-blog/how-netflix-works-...

Re: How Google Wants to Rewire the Internet

#93

Post by manigandham »

lucb1e wrote: post #69
manigandham wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Azure ExpressRoute = AWS Direct Connect = Google Cloud Interconnect All 3 are ways to connect your private datacenter or on-premise location (maybe your corporate office) directly to the cloud provider's network over a fast private link, like an industrial-sized VPN. This way you can access your cloud servers/services over this private connection rather than the public internet. Lots of companies do this if they have…

Thanks for explaining. Do you know if such a VPN is fundamentally different from something like OpenVPN, which can also be used site-to-site?

Functionally it's the same outcome, however these are managed solutions that the cloud provider (usually along with a networking partner) setup and maintain. This leads to much better reliability and speed and it's also not running over the public internet like a typical VPN so it's better for handling sensitive data access.

Re: How Google Wants to Rewire the Internet

#94

Post by Decade »

diegoperini wrote: post #90
Dylan16807 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Windows Subsystem ___ Linux" could be fine, but "for" is not the correct word to put in that blank.

Why not "Linux Accompanied Windows"? Or "Still Windows but also some Linux"?

But Linux is the one part that is not present. It’s GNU software running in a Windows subsystem. GNU/Windows?

Re: How Google Wants to Rewire the Internet

#95

Post by linkregister »

VonGallifrey wrote: post #78
linkregister wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree the parent poster was being dramatic. Soap operas, however, make you wait until the following day to see what happened.

How is this different to a YouTuber? They (at least the ones I have seen) release their Videos daily (or less often) as well and sometimes with different Content on different days. So you might even have to wait 2 Days or even a week to get the new episode of the Series you where watching. It's true that you can binge on a series if you are new to the series (youtube or otherwise) but if you are up to date that is no…

That's a good point. I find that there is an almost limitless supply of entertainment online these days, as opposed to 5 channels and 6 Disney VHS tapes in my youth.

I don't think I could have resisted the compulsion to be on YouTube for all of my free time. I am lucky that there is a ton of social pressure on me to spend my time doing other activities.

It could be a personal problem, unique to me and a small amount of other people.

Re: How Google Wants to Rewire the Internet

#97

Post by konpikwastaken »

manigandham wrote: post #37
konpikwastaken wrote: post #3

Can someone ELI5 the difference between this and https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/expressroute/ ? Is the technology principle the same?

Azure ExpressRoute = AWS Direct Connect = Google Cloud Interconnect All 3 are ways to connect your private datacenter or on-premise location (maybe your corporate office) directly to the cloud provider's network over a fast private link, like an industrial-sized VPN. This way you can access your cloud servers/services over this private connection rather than the public internet. Lots of companies do this if they have…

Very cool, thank you for explaining. Is VPN the primary purpose or could it in theory be extended to work as software routers (as opposed to physical switches your traffic goes through) for all internet traffic once connect?

Let me know if I'm way off base in my understanding.

Re: How Google Wants to Rewire the Internet

#98

Post by konpikwastaken »

peterwwillis wrote: post #16
konpikwastaken wrote: post #3

Can someone ELI5 the difference between this and https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/expressroute/ ? Is the technology principle the same?

ExpressRoute is just Azure's version of AWS VPC. They're complicated VPNs for cloud services. Espresso is a system for controlling BGP peering using application-fed metrics. It's basically complicated source routing.

Thanks for the response.

Couldn't ExpressRoute (and not familiar with AWS VPC) in theory be configured at multiple global locations to handle internet traffic?

Re: How Google Wants to Rewire the Internet

#99

Post by Animats »

mandarg wrote: post #80
Animats wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Central server" for routing. Uh oh. AT&T used to try to avoid centralization, but ended up with routing controlled from Bedminster, NJ.[1] An interesting comment from AT&T's NOC tour guide is that load doesn't vary much any more. AT&T used to have holiday calling surges and such, but now, in an always-on world, overall load is relatively steady. [1] http://fortune.com/att-global-network-operations-center/

It's interesting to know that a traditional ISP like AT&T is heading the same way. I think Google gets more freedom to try out some of these techniques because people still fundamentally think of them as a website (apart from Google Fiber, they don't serve end-users directly); whereas AT&T, being an ISP, is treated more like a water / power service, in that people expect them to be working by default, and going down…

AT&T, pre-Internet, had 10 major regions in the US, and switches had a fixed list of primary, secondary, and tertiary routes. The first "centralization" was simply that the priorities in the routing tables were changed every few minutes based on load. But if the central routing planner went down or was unreachable, everything still worked, just not as optimally.

What you don't want is software-defined networking where every new flow goes to Master Control for validation and routing. Some SDN systems do that, and they have a central point of failure and censorship.

Re: How Google Wants to Rewire the Internet

#100

Post by Dylan16807 »

Decade wrote: post #94
diegoperini wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not "Linux Accompanied Windows"? Or "Still Windows but also some Linux"?

But Linux is the one part that is not present. It’s GNU software running in a Windows subsystem. GNU/Windows?

The whole point is having the Linux ABI. There are half a dozen ways to run GNU on Windows.
Post reply on HN