Google Fiber

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ABSTRACT Google Fiber is Google's fiber-to-the-premises service in the United States, providing broadband internet and cable television to a small and slowly increasing number of locations. As of end of 2014, Google Fiber had 29,867 television subscribers. As of Oct 2015, up to 120,000 customers have been estimated. The service was first introduced to the Kansas City metropolitan area, including 20 Kansas City area suburbs within the first 3 years. Initially proposed as an experimental project, Google Fiber was announced as a viable business model on December 12, 2012, when Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt stated "It's actually not an experiment, we're actually running it as a business," at the New York Times' DealBook Conference. Google Fiber announced expansion to Austin, Texas and Provo, Utah in April 2013, and subsequent expansions in 2014 and 2015 to Atlanta, Charlotte, Raleigh, Durham, Nashville, Salt Lake City, and San Antonio. On August 10, 2015, Google announced its intention to restructure the company, moving less central services and products into a new umbrella corporation, Alphabet Inc. As part of this restructuring plan, Google Fiber would become a subsidiary of Alphabet, and may become part of the "Access and Energy" business unit. 1

Transcript of Google Fiber

Page 1: Google Fiber

ABSTRACT

Google Fiber is Google's fiber-to-the-premises service in the United States, providing broadband

internet and cable television to a small and slowly increasing number of locations. As of end of

2014, Google Fiber had 29,867 television subscribers. As of Oct 2015, up to 120,000 customers

have been estimated.

The service was first introduced to the Kansas City metropolitan area, including 20 Kansas City

area suburbs within the first 3 years. Initially proposed as an experimental project, Google Fiber

was announced as a viable business model on December 12, 2012, when Google executive

chairman Eric Schmidt stated "It's actually not an experiment, we're actually running it as a

business," at the New York Times' DealBook Conference.

Google Fiber announced expansion to Austin, Texas and Provo, Utah in April 2013, and

subsequent expansions in 2014 and 2015 to Atlanta, Charlotte, Raleigh, Durham, Nashville, Salt

Lake City, and San Antonio.

On August 10, 2015, Google announced its intention to restructure the company, moving less

central services and products into a new umbrella corporation, Alphabet Inc. As part of this

restructuring plan, Google Fiber would become a subsidiary of Alphabet, and may become part

of the "Access and Energy" business unit.

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Chapter-1

INTRODUCTION

Some of us are old enough to remember a time when everyone who was on the Internet accessed it through dial-up. Your computer hooked up to a modem that would noisily call the number of an ISP (Internet Service Provider) to connect you at 56 kilobits per second, if you were lucky enough to have one of the faster modems. Web pages would slowly draw themselves onto your screen. Pictures would take a long time to fully materialize, starting at the top and working their way down. Software might take hours to download. If you didn't have a dedicated phone line, you would tie up the line, and you might get knocked off if someone tried to use the phone. We dealt more in text than in other bandwidth-heavy media out of necessity.

Our Internet connection speeds have greatly increased since the advent of broadband connections through technologies like cable and DSL (Digital Subscriber Lines). According to the FCC's current standards, the new goal is for every household to have access to affordable broadband with a minimum of 4 megabits per second (Mbps) download speed and 1 Mbps upload speed. Although around 30 percent of U.S. households are reportedly still connecting at near dial-up speeds, many of us have converted to much faster broadband Internet connections [source: Wyatt]. Speeds well past the 4 Mbps minimum goal are becoming widely available and more and more affordable.

1.1 ADVANTAGES OF FASTEST INTERNET

With faster broadband speeds, we can easily stream music and videos, multiplay video games, have video chats with friends, upload pictures of ourselves to social media sites and surf all sorts of media on the web faster than ever before. There is the occasional hiccup, for instance when a video stalls and buffers for a little while or it takes you a while to get to a web page. But for the most part, those of us lucky enough to have the average broadband speeds can stream movies and surf the Internet to our heart's content.

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Chapter-2

LITERATURE SURVEY

Installers show up on time. Headquarters often tells customers when something needs to be fixed

without prompting. Unsolicited credits sometimes show up on bills to account for small service

glitches.

Talk to a sampling of the earliest Google Fiber subscribers in the nation's first neighborhood

wired to the company's service, and you find a pretty happy lot.

Yet Google Fiber's customers in this first, small group don't talk about the service as life-

changing. Even those with its fastest Internet hookups say things feel more evolutionary than

revolutionary. So far, they've not found new uses for the Internet. Rather, they say, it's just easier

to handle things they were already doing.

Those who buy their TV lineups from Google mostly talk about the delight of dumping

predecessors, cable and phone companies that have had the chance over decades to disappoint

customers.

Despite some glitches, many talk giddily about living in the first neighborhood in the country to

get industrial-strength Internet connections at consumer prices. They're regularly gleeful that

they've found a new, endearingly attentive company willing to fill their TV screens with

programming.

"The customer service is outstanding. They're very apologetic if there's a problem. They do their

best to take care of things," said Jennifer Tuttle, whose home was hooked up in November. "It's

not something you're used to with that kind of service."

Her experience rings typical of what the Kansas City Star heard from many in the Kansas City,

Kan., neighborhoods of Spring Valley and Hanover Heights. The newspaper contacted dozens by

online survey and telephone. They're the first to get Google Fiber service, the ultra-fast Internet

and TV service that could signal to the rest of the country whether home consumers can show a

demand for next-generation connection speeds.

Broadly speaking, these first-in-line customers say prices run roughly the same or less than what

they paid to Time Warner Cable or AT&T for Internet or TV packages before.

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True, TV channels can freeze for a moment or two, Wi-Fi might not reach every corner of a

house, the TV setup feels to some more attuned to Web surfers than couch surfers. None of the

problems, however, seems like a deal breaker.

Home office workers seem the most grateful for the Internet upgrade - theoretically 100 times

faster than most home broadband - even if the speedier Infobahn doesn't entirely remake life

online.

Dramatic ways to put the full 1-gigabit-per-second speeds to use could come later, and figure to

be more likely as the service spreads across the market and, next year, to Austin, Texas.

Can Google keep it up?

For now, just a few scattered neighborhoods in Kansas City, Kan., have been lit up with Google

Fiber service. Google won't say how many customers it has connected.

The early satisfied customers, analysts said, speak to the resources Google poured into a service

unlike any it's tried before.

"It looks like they're pacing their installations based on their ability to fulfill the service, to take

the time and make sure the installation goes right," said Glen Friedman, who runs the Ideas &

Solutions broadband consulting firm. "The challenge will be to maintain the consistency as they

get to a larger and larger customer base."

Another student of the industry, former cable trade group executive Steve Effros, said he fully

expected Google Fiber to please its first customers. He's less sure that the company will be able

to keep a broader customer base as satisfied.

"If I'm the new guy in town and serving a fraction of the number of people as the old guy, my

customer service damn well better be better," said Effros, a cable industry analyst. "Do we really

believe that Google is not going to have billing problems? Everybody else has security problems,

but not Google? They're human. They'll find this only gets harder."

A Google spokeswoman said in an email: "We're going to continue staffing our support team so

that our customers can always get their questions answered quickly, and aren't rushed off the

phone."

For now, customers largely say the California-based Internet colossus delivers well.

Time and again they talk of friendly installers and helpful customer service folks - Google

representatives fairly easy to reach either by email or phone. The company also responds to

problems in an online forum.

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Chapter-3

GOOGLE FIBER

There are, however, even faster Internet services becoming available that aim to bring us speeds in gigabits per second -- or at least 1 gigabit per second, which is 1,000 Mbps. One such service is Google Fiber, which first rolled out in Kansas City in 2012, and has since been expanding into other metro areas.

Google purports Google Fiber to be up to 100 times faster than the average U.S. broadband speed. At speeds like that, things that took hours or minutes to download will only take seconds and a lot of tasks may appear seemingly instantaneously.

And the super-fast speeds aren't even the whole story. Google is also offering slower speeds, comparable to the FCC broadband minimums, for free for seven years to consumers in the Google Fiber areas (after a construction fee). Free, or nearly free, high-speed Internet could be a game changer for a lot of people currently stuck at pre-broadband speeds.

Read on to find out more about this new, lightning-fast Internet service.

3.1 Google Fiber Network Infrastructure

Currently, most people get their Internet, broadband or otherwise, through their phone or cable companies. For the most part, these services transmit data into your home as electrical signals over copper cable, although the vast networks that bring us data and telephone communication incorporate lots of types of wiring, including fiber optics. Fiber optic cables transmit pulses of light through glass (or sometimes plastic) strands, and are capable of transmitting data much more quickly than copper, especially over long distances.

Fiber optics have been in use in telecommunication networks since the 1970s, but the so-called "last mile" stretches from service lines into individual homes are usually still made up of copper wiring. Phone companies tend to use twisted pair copper cable (like traditional phone lines) to deliver DSL, and cable companies use the same coaxial cable through which they deliver cable TV. Most homes in the U.S. are already wired with at least one of these, if not both, and fiber into the home is fairly rare. But Google is looking to change this by laying thousands of miles of fiber cabling to create last-mile fiber networks.

Google Fiber networks include several basic components, although the actual design will likely vary by city. A fiber ring around the city feeds fiber into a fiber hut. Here the fiber lines are

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connected to devices that receive and transmit data from users' homes to the Internet and vice versa. From the hut, lines of fiber lead in various directions to telecom cabinets in neighborhoods, where the lines are further broken out into smaller bundles that lead to groups of homes. The fiber cables will run either above-ground on new or existing utility poles, or underground in conduit tubes, through neighborhoods, where individual strands of fiber optic cable will lead directly into homes, much like phone and cable lines do now.

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Chapter-4

GOOGLE FIBER HARDWARE IN THE HOME

Once the fiber optic cable is in your home, Google will connect it to a port on the side of a fiber jack, also called an optical network terminal (ONT), which they will attach to a wall plate and mount to an interior wall. The fiber jack also has power, Ethernet ports and a status LED (light emitting diode). This jack converts the fiber optic light signals into gigabit Ethernet signals and sends them to anetwork box (also provided by Google) via Ethernet cable.

The network box is a 7.5 by 7.5 by 1.6 inch (19 by 19 by 4 centimeter) high-speed router that allows your devices to get on the Internet. It has four gigabit Ethernet ports on the back for connecting your computer and other devices via Ethernet cable, as well as the Ethernet WAN (wide area network) port for connecting to the fiber jack. A reset button and power connector are also on the back of the box. The network box has built-in 802.11 a/b/g/n WiFi and allows up to 16 devices to connect wirelessly, although having a lot of devices connected at once will decrease performance. You can connect any device to the network that supports IPv4 or IPv5 via Ethernet or WiFi. The box incorporates four LEDs; their colors and display (solid, blinking or fluttering) states can tell you various things about your network status. The network box also has a built-in gigabit firewall for protection from online intrusion.

An optional service is Google Fiber TV. If you opt for TV, you will also get a  storage box and a Google Fiber TV box. The storage box is a 7.5 by 8 by 1.7 inch (19 by 20 by 4.3 centimeter) DVR (digital video recorder) for saving shows or movies to watch later. It has a coaxial port, a USB port, an Ethernet port and a power connector, as well as a reset button. One box will work with all your TV boxes. The storage box is connected to your network box via Ethernet cable and is designed to sit underneath it. In most cases, this DVR connects to your TV Boxes over coaxial cable wiring in your walls through the Multimedia over Coax Alliance (MoCA) networking standard, although it might be connected via Ethernet in some cases. This coaxial cabling can either already exist from previous cable TV service or be newly installed by Google during Google Fiber installation.

The TV box is a set-top box measuring 6.8 by 5.3 by 1.3 inches (17.3 by 13.5 by 3.3 centimeters). You will need one for every TV you want connected to Google Fiber TV. Google includes one, but you can order extras. The TV box is connected to a coaxial cable from the wall via a coaxial port on the back of the box. This connects it to the storage box. The back of the box also includes an Ethernet port for connecting devices like gaming consoles, although connecting

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to the TV box only allows for a speed of 100 Mbps. In rare cases, the Ethernet port can also be used for connecting the box to the fiber network. Other ports on the back include S/PDIF, AV out, HDMI out, HDMI in (currently unsupported) and a power connector. An infrared (IR) extender port (in case you need to attach an IR extender so that the remote control signal can get to the box), an IR receiver and LED status lights are on the front of the TV box, along with a currently unsupported USB port. A WiFi access point is built in to each TV box and can be enabled to improve WiFi coverage all over your house.

At least in their Kansas City rollout, each household was given a Google Nexus 7 tablet (a full-featured tablet computer) to use as a remote control. As of mid-2014, however, Google Fiber comes with a standard remote control instead, but the Google Fiber app can be downloaded and used on mobile devices running the Android Jelly Bean operating system or higher, and iPads running iOS 6.0 or higher. The standard remote can be used in either IR or Bluetooth mode. With IR, you can set it to control both your TV box and your TV set.

You can view, configure and manage these devices from your My Fiber account on the web. You can also configure the network box via the Network Box Advanced interface to change the more advanced networking settings.

Per the terms of service, Google will own the network interface unit outside that connects your home to the Google Fiber network, as well as the fiber jack and network box inside your home. But any other equipment that Google gives you belongs to you. They reserve the right to automatically upgrade the software to all Google Fiber equipment. All of the hardware components are open source, and their source code can be downloaded from Google.

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Chapter-5

WHAT DOES GOOGLE FIBER TV INCLUDE?

You can get TV service along with Google Fiber, giving you another choice besides cable or satellite. Google Fiber TV includes more than 150 high-definition (HD) channels, some standard definition (SD) channels and optional premiums such as HBO, Cinemax, Showtime, STARZ and sports channels. Local broadcast channels are included as well.

The TV box is a set-top box that allows you to access your channels. You use your remote control to bring up a guide that's a lot like a typical cable TV guide. You can browse or search for content, look at information about current and upcoming programs, and pick what you want to watch. You can also access on-demand content, rent movies and set programs to record to the storage box.

Google Fiber TV also includes several built-in apps:

Netflix Vudu YouTube Weather

The Netflix and Vudu apps require subscriptions to those services. Netflix even has Super HD content that can be accessed through Google Fiber. From the Apps & More menu, you can also access your personal photos, music and video content.

At first HBO, ESPN, Comedy Central and Disney weren't included, but they have since been added (HBO and other premium services are available as optional paid extras). As of August 2014, Google Fiber subscribers who pay for HBO cannot access HBO GO, an online service that allows people to watch HBO content away from their TVs. An agreement could be struck to include it in the future.

Google Fiber does offer something called TV Everywhere (TVE) that allows you to watch shows from certain channels on a computer or mobile device when you are away from home. You can get the following TVE channels if you have Google Fiber TV and any required subscriptions:

NBC Olympics TVE

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Showtime Anytime (requires paid subscription) STARZ Play (requires paid subscription) Watch ABC Watch ABC Family Watch Disney Watch ESPN Watch Longhorn

The DVR that comes with Google Fiber can store up to 2 terabytes (TB) of data, which translates to abound 500 hours of high-definition programming. It will even record multiple shows simultaneously, up to eight at a time. Many DVRs and TV services can only record one show at a time, and their hard drives hold far less data. Google's storage box also allows you to store personal files, like photos, music and home videos, which you can view or play through any of your connected TVs via the apps menu. In the case of audio files, you can also play them through audio equipment connected to the TV box or TV, but the remote won't work to control audio devices.

If you download the Google Fiber mobile app onto a compatible mobile device, you can use that device as a remote, to search through shows and movies without interrupting what's playing, to schedule and manage DVR recordings and to share to social media, among other things.

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Chapter-6

GOOGLE FIBER ACTUAL SPEEDS

Fig-6.1

The speed of installation will probably not match the speed of your service, no matter how good your technician is.

Google purports to bring you broadband Internet, both upload and download, at speeds of up to 1 gigabit per second (Gbps). And it says its Google Fiber service is up to 100 times faster than average broadband speeds, which Internet research firm Akamai estimated to be 9.8 Mbps in the U.S. in its third quarter 2013 "State of the Internet" report [sources: Consumer Reports, Akamai]. Akamai's estimate has gone up a smidgen to 10.5 Mbps in its Q1 2014 report [source: Akamai]. One Gbps would still put Google Fiber close to that 100-times mark, but will users really get that speed?

The short answer is: not quite. But you may still get the fastest speeds available. One gigabit is the maximum rather that what you can expect on a daily basis, and a lot of factors can slow it down. OoklaSpeedtest calculated Google Fiber's average speeds for the 30 days ending on July 20, 2014 to be 235.67 Mbps download and 223.31 Mbps upload based on users' experiences with their speed test service [source: Ookla]. There are factors that might skew these numbers, such as people using WiFi (which is much slower than connecting to a network via Ethernet), or maybe

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even some users testing from the slower free service. Google created its own speed test that can apparently more accurately gauge ultra-fast fiber services [source: Google].

One user, Mike Demarais, tested and posted his speeds just after the rollout in Kansas City, Kansas. He was connecting from the "Home for Hackers," a house specifically purchased to provide temporary rent-free housing and high-speed Internet to potential start-up entrepreneurs in an area where Google Fiber was made available. Demarais reported consistently getting 600 to 700 Mbps speeds via Ethernet and 200 Mbps via WiFi [source: Chan, Farivar]. And at a Google Fiber Space showroom in Kansas City, at least one tester got speeds over 900 Mbps [source: Manjoo]. So people might not be hitting the max, but very high speeds are possible.

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Chapter-7

WHAT ELSE MIGHT SLOW DOWN GOOGLE FIBER?

There are quite a few things that can slow your connection down besides connecting via WiFi. Your computer's network interface card (NIC) also makes a difference. Fast Ethernet (or 10baseTx) cards can connect at only 100 Mbps, whereas Gigabit Ethernet (or GigE or 1000BASE-T) cards are necessary for connecting at 1 Gbps. Some newer laptops, especially some netbooks, do not come with Ethernet cards or connectors, but you might be able to connect a Gigabit Ethernet adapter via the USB port. To get gigabit speeds, it needs to be connected to a USB3 port. The Ethernet cable itself also matters. Cat5e cable can transmit at 1 Gbps and Cat6 can transmit at 10 Gbps, but Cat5 can only do 100 Mbps.

Other things that can affect your download and upload speed are the age of your computer or device and its hardware, the connecting device's configuration, the operating system, the web browser you're using, whether you have other applications running and whether another device that plays video (including your Google TV box) is running or even just connected and turned on. Video (including Google Fiber TV) takes priority over data, and data gets to use whateverbandwidth is left over. All devices on your home network will also be sharing the bandwidth, so having multiple devices running might slow down your connection a bit, especially if any of them are streaming video.

Some websites (and areas on the network between your computer and the sites you're trying to visit) won't be running at 1 Gbps, which will affect the speed at which you're able to upload and download data. Any network congestion occurring anywhere between you and your desired data will also slow you down. Some sites simply cannot serve out data as fast as Google Fiber can consume it. Netflix's servers, for instance, can only process streaming HD video at 5 Mbps [source:Talbot]. Google is working with major content providers, including Netflix, to allow them to connect directly to Google's network, and in some cases they're even letting those providers put their servers directly in Google's Fiber facilities (co-locating) to make transfer of content to users even faster.

Google doesn't impose a data cap or throttle users' speeds for how much they use like some providers do, but the company does state that it might slow down users' connections during times of extreme network congestion in a manner equitable to users.

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Even with all the possible things that might slow down your Google Fiber gigabit service speed, it should still be far faster than most of its broadband competitors. Google also offers a slower 5 Mbps download and 1 Mbps upload service, which is comparable to the basic broadband offerings of cable and phone providers.

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CONCLUSIONS

Overall, Google Fiber leaves a great impact on communication by internet because it increases the rate at which communication occurs, increases the condition of that communication, and allows users of the service to communicate developing ideas in a collaborative setting.

Google Fiber increases the rate at which communication occurs because it promises an internet upgrade that is 100 times faster than average internet speed, allowing users to receive better service for communication.

Google Fiber increases the condition of communication over internet by providing an environment for 4K videos, faster streaming, HD content, and high quality video chatting.

Google Fiber allows users to communicate developing ideas in a collaborative setting by providing speed and cloud services to support the free flow of ideas.

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REFERENCES

1. www.howstuffworks.com 2. www.google.fiber.com 3. www.youtube.com4. wikipedia

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