YouTube's Bandwidth Bill May be Zero 188
MrShaggy writes "Credit Suisse made headlines this summer when it estimated that YouTube was costing Google a half a billion dollars in 2009 as it streamed 75 billion videos. But a new report from Arbor Networks suggests that even though Google is approaching 10 percent of the net's traffic, it's got so much fiber optic cable it is simply trading traffic, with no payment involved, with the net's largest ISPs. 'I think Google's transit costs are close to zero,' said Craig Labovitz, the chief scientist for Arbor Networks and a longtime internet researcher. Arbor Networks, which sells network monitoring equipment used by about 70 percent of the net's ISPs, likely knows more about the net's ebbs and flows than anyone outside of the National Security Agency."
So it's like when I got my Brother a new PC (Score:3, Informative)
"This Win7 PC cost $300. On the other hand I still owe you $299 for that RTF model airplane you gave me last month. How about we just call it even?" - me
"Deal." - brother
It sounds like Google and the ISPs have the same arrangement.
Check out the Peering Chart from Arbor (Score:5, Informative)
Re:This was shocking to me (Score:4, Informative)
They probably did purchase stuff which is already on the market in bulk. They just asked for it to be labelled Google, so people would be less likely to steal it. Although it's rare to double-sided double height sticks these days -- they must have an awful lot of RAM in each server. Perhaps the modules are actually specially made for Google. I bet the chips themselves are bog standard apart from the label though.
Re:This was shocking to me (Score:4, Informative)
If you're willing to buy a LOT of stuff, parts manufacturers are willing ot customize. (The threshold for "lots" varies).
Intel will sell you a custom spec'd chip if you wanted - only restrictions are it has to be based on a current production model. So if you want an i7 without 64-bit and VT, buy enough chips and Intel will provide it. Hell, if you're Google, they'll probably laser etch Google on it, too.
Power supplies - ditto. Google uses a special arrangement too, so they're probably custom-made. Which is trivial for a power supply company (as they already have lines set up to do custom builds, since 99% of their business is custom power supplies for all sorts of devices).
RAM - buy enough, and the manufacturer can do anything. Laptops often come with "custom" RAM from the OEM (usually just a label slapped on the stick). Given Google's order size, I'm sure the assembler can put GOogle on them. Heck, Apple got custom-manufactured RAM too (Mac Pro FB-DIMMs are custom made to have larger heatsinks).
And yes, Google can order in bulk, but since few can supply the order directly, Google just buys direct - cut out some middlemen, and get customization ability.
Heck, Google might get a custom motherboard too - sure it's based on an existing design, but configured to Google's specs.
Re:Yes, because Google's fiber costs nothing to ru (Score:4, Informative)
Once again, the Slashdot title has got it wrong. TFA doesn't say that Google's overall cost for bandwidth is zero, simply that their transit [wikipedia.org] costs are near zero, which specifically refers money paid to a network provider to carry your traffic.
I don't get it (Score:3, Informative)
More accurately, this is like saying "I don't own a car, so my petrol costs are zero"
how was this modded up? it's because he makes fun of the parent isn't it. but that metaphor doesn't work at all.
neither the parent do anything to illuminate the article, both seem to be confused.
and they're both modded +5 Insightful.
Luckily (Score:3, Informative)
Luckily, Google's fiber infrastructure is "free" - they don't pay for right of way, to maintain the connections,oversee the network, etc...
These really silly interpretations of "analysis" by financial folks is pretty amusing, actually - I suspect the report actually said something like "ignoring the deployment and on-going costs of their infrastructure Google has essentially free internet access"...
Do they think fiber, routers, switches, networking professionals, and right-of-ways are "free"?
Re:It is NOT zero (Score:4, Informative)
They didn't lay the fiber--they bought it. Before YouTube came into existence.
And they bought them with pennies on the dollar as well.
Re:Yes, because Google's fiber costs nothing to ru (Score:3, Informative)
Carefully read the TITLE of article... Staring at you from the browser toolbar right now. Take note that it DOESN'T say Google's Bandwidth Bill May be Zero. "Google" isn't in there at all.
But you might just see YouTube in there...
Re:It's obvious (Score:2, Informative)
Re:This was shocking to me (Score:3, Informative)
Power supply chassis delivers 13.65VDC. It charges the lead acid batteries you see off to the side. Motherboard has switching converters that go straight from battery voltage to 3.3V/5V/12V, and whatever volts the CPU takes (1.65V?).
The motherboard in the system you picture is a variant of a Gigabyte GA-9IVDP. I think that system design is at least a few years old now, it wouldn't surprise me if some Google plants still have a buttload of them, but the design is continually evolving to use whatever commodity parts can be found cheap enough or in higher performance.
Think about the above: you don't need no stinkin UPS. Everything is about performance per dollar (where dollar includes power and physical plant costs too).
General opinion of the hardware hackers is that the power supply is expected to outlast several generations of server hardware, it might look like the power supply was kinda strapped to the motherboard plate, but really the motherboard plate is strapped onto the power supply!
Tim.
Re:This was shocking to me (Score:2, Informative)
Re:It's obvious (Score:3, Informative)
Agreed.. even the place I work with peers directly with Google (and thus by extension YouTube).. it saves us from having to spend commodity-internet dollars on traffic to Google, improves the customer experience since it's fewer hops, and we can leverage more direct control (which means less finger pointing when/if something breaks.. either its us or google.. we don't have to worry about if our upstream peers are broken); and of course it works the other way around too.
As for the cost of fiber and routers.. ya that's expensive.. but it's not the cost of bandwidth.. those are sunk costs or O&M generally.. I guess you could meter a per-bit charge for cooling and electricity, but there's only so many places to the right of the decimal point you can actually bill for.