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Why Dropbox decided to build its own infrastructure and network

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Re: Why Dropbox decided to build its own infrastructure and network

#71

Post by yeukhon »

andyfleming wrote: post #8
rizjoj wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and Netflix?

To be fair, Netflix only runs some of their infrastructure on AWS. Basically, if I understand correctly, their applications run on AWS and their delivery is through their own CDN built on top of various ISPs[1]. [1] https://media.netflix.com/en/company-blog/how-netflix-works-...

Correct, but some is probably an understatment. They are pretty much run everyting on AWS except what you cited (e.g video processing and content delivery). Netflix is the biggest AWS user.

Re: Why Dropbox decided to build its own infrastructure and network

#72

Post by walterbell »

lwf wrote: post #70
codehusker wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the last link, in 2016 "Proxy-Stack deployed at our edge PoPs to terminate SSL connections closer to our users". Reminds me of the infamous "SSL added and removed here! :^)". Does anyone know if there are any additional protections from snooping on their internal network? edit: phrasing

Early SSL/TLS termination is to reduce latency; the longer-lived connections from PoPs to Dropbox datacenters is over a TLS 1.2 connection with PFS. See an earlier blog post[1]: > We use TLS 1.2 and a PFS cipher suite at both our origin data centers and proxies. Additionally, we’ve enabled upstream certificate validation and certificate pinning on our proxy servers. This helps ensure that the edge proxy server knows…

Does this change the legal/geo jurisdiction of the SSL/TLS handshake?

Re: Why Dropbox decided to build its own infrastructure and network

#73

Post by codehusker »

lwf wrote: post #70
codehusker wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the last link, in 2016 "Proxy-Stack deployed at our edge PoPs to terminate SSL connections closer to our users". Reminds me of the infamous "SSL added and removed here! :^)". Does anyone know if there are any additional protections from snooping on their internal network? edit: phrasing

Early SSL/TLS termination is to reduce latency; the longer-lived connections from PoPs to Dropbox datacenters is over a TLS 1.2 connection with PFS. See an earlier blog post[1]: > We use TLS 1.2 and a PFS cipher suite at both our origin data centers and proxies. Additionally, we’ve enabled upstream certificate validation and certificate pinning on our proxy servers. This helps ensure that the edge proxy server knows…

Much appreciated. Lots of great, technical blog posts I need to catch up on.

I have to admit, part of the reason I use Dropbox is that I know I can get answers directly from employees on HN.

Re: Why Dropbox decided to build its own infrastructure and network

#74

Post by hcurtiss »

uiri wrote: post #25

Can we remove /amp/ from the end of the URL? Some people still use HN on a laptop or a desktop. Also, as mentioned elsewhere in the comments here, it should be retitled to "Why Dropbox decided to drop AWS"

Why is there always so much hate for amp on HN? I'm on a PC and I vastly prefer these pages to the huge/bloated default pages offered by so many publishers. Using the TC page linked in the original post as an example, if I turn on Ghostery it blocks 22 trackers! https://imgur.com/a/iTnlT

On the Amp page, it only catches one: https://imgur.com/a/P7mww

Re: Why Dropbox decided to build its own infrastructure and network

#75

Post by NightlyDev »

jimktrains2 wrote: post #20
kyledrake wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They run BGP and do an enormous amount of IX peering. https://www.peeringdb.com/asn/2906 AWS doesn't even let you do BGP. If you want to use them for a CDN, you're monopolized into their network and their blend of ridiculously overpriced bandwidth. They might be using AWS for the canonical store of data, but the sanity of using "the cloud" goes out the window the second you need to ship a lot of traffic to the public…

> heir blend of ridiculously overpriced bandwidth. For someone not at netflix's level, can you recommend somewhere with significantly cheaper bandwidth.

While I don't know what pricing AWS has for high bandwidth customers since it's not public, I do know that the public prices are really high.

The thing is, even for smaller companies it's easy to get way better deals on bandwidth. I'm currently using a provider that runs openstack and I'm paying less than $0.009/GB, from the first byte(no commitment). I'd say that is very cheap compared to AWS pricing at $0.05/GB above 350 TB.

With colocation or renting dedicated servers and IP-transit you can get way lower prices. A dedicated 1 Gbps is about 300 USD/month with my provider, and the prices drops hard for dedicated 10, 40 and 100 Gbps uplinks.

Never used OVH myself, but they are providing 2 Gbps at £340/month for their highest quality bandwidth, and £64/month for bandwidth they think would be good for downloads.

I think using cloud providers for somewhat high bandwidth services are basically throwing money out the window. Until prices really drops(if they ever will) I'll continue thinking that clouds are for temporary workloads or prototyping with the ability to easily scale at a high cost.

Re: Why Dropbox decided to build its own infrastructure and network

#76

Post by crisnoble »

uiri wrote: post #25

Can we remove /amp/ from the end of the URL? Some people still use HN on a laptop or a desktop. Also, as mentioned elsewhere in the comments here, it should be retitled to "Why Dropbox decided to drop AWS"

I am reading it from a desktop and I had to do a double take when I instantly noticed how it was techcruch but didn't have the epically annoying fixed sidebars and delayed loading ads messing with my scroll bar. I came here to suggest we add /amp to the end of all techcrunch submissions. Title, content and a single static ad at the end, if all news sites were like this I would not complain.

Re: Why Dropbox decided to build its own infrastructure and network

#78

Post by qaq »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #48
qaq wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and that someone can be their own subsidiary in a jurisdiction with dif. tax treatment

Can be within the same taxing authority. I've facilitated facility transfers and leaseback agreements in the US. Edit: Yes, you can't seize what isn't owned.

I would also guess you could also shield assets this way from lawsuits etc

Re: Why Dropbox decided to build its own infrastructure and network

#79

Post by mc32 »

What does AWS do when someone moves 500PB of storage off of their systems? Do they sit idle till some other big customer comes along or is their growth so phenomenal that a 500PB move off doesn't even slow new (storage) deployments at all and just keep up their pace?

Re: Why Dropbox decided to build its own infrastructure and network

#80

Post by zaroth »

vacri wrote: post #59
goptimize wrote: post #51

"We’re talking about a company that had 1500 employees, with just around a dozen on the infrastructure team" - what the rest 99% of the company is doing, marketing?

I was also thinking that those numbers are really weird, for a company which does infrastructure(fileservers)-in-the-cloud. Obviously some devs doing software for various platforms, business-side folks and so forth. But 1500:12 is a really weird ratio, given the core function of the business. If they're not spending on infra staff... what staff are they spending on?

Seriously, 12 people controlling all of that sounds like a liability. Are they allowed to meet all together?
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