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Seems that Google was very premature about announcing these peninsula cities as rollout targets. Wireless is better than nothing, but it will never compete wit

Seems that Google was very premature about announcing these peninsula cities as rollout targets. Wireless is better than nothing, but it will never compete with wired connection to the premises. As an aside, I've always wondered if 5G or some other pending wireless tech could be used to one day replace Comcast...

xchaotic 10y ago
5G is still a shared-medium carrier so it will get congested no matter how fast the total is - all it takes is a few bad or uneducated players spamming the wireless spectrum. Or just bad weather.
Cshelton 10y ago
This is not wireless like 4g/5g or any cellular company you think of. This is point to point wireless they are talking about. Which can transmit incredibly high speeds and bandwidth. Here's the idea, and is actually the current setup I have with a private company: A p2p transmitter can broadcast to a lower tower that sits next to multiple neighborhoods. Then from that tower, lines can be run to individual houses and/or other small receivers like on people's rooftops. With this system, they can literally cover vast areas, with just as fast speeds, in a fraction of the costs and time. I have this setup right now, pointing my p2p device right at the top of a building downtown (not in San Jose.). It is crazy fast and even during heavy storms, there is no disruption. San Jose, I wouldn't complain just yet, you might actually get your 1 Gbps + speeds faster than you thought despite this "construction delay".
- sn0v 10y ago
  How does the latency compare to a wired connection? Is it viable for gaming and the like?
  - jauer 10y ago
    Often very low. Urban 24Ghz/60Ghz point to point connections are usually 2ms or less per hop. My house (rural small town) is 4x5Ghz & 1x11Ghz hops away from my datacenter and I get ~15-20ms ping times to Google, League of Legends, etc). At various times I've had Frontier VDSL2 and Charter DOCSIS and both had higher latency.
  - Cshelton 10y ago
    My connection point is about 1.5 miles away. I get about 4-6ms latency on my end device. That's going through my router, wireless access point, to my device. and it's also very consistent. It's not dealing with the million redirects and other traffic that going through the phone line or cable line will have. In very heavy rain and hind wind, my direct TV dish was out at the start of the storm, my internet p2p connection never lost signal, didn't even slow down.
    - sn0v 10y ago
      Oh wow, this is extremely interesting. Hopefully Google rolls their connections out soon.
  - seanp2k2 10y ago
    Yeah, wireless is super fast, satellite is the one with latency (and usually then due to dial-up uplink and just the distance of the sats). Most p2p links are under 50 miles, and in this case probably under 5 miles. The latency from the wireless link will be a negligible (for those not in HFT) overhead on the order of a few ms.
- tylerlh 10y ago
  SJ, sure -- though for other peninsula cities (Mountain View, Palo Alto) I'm curious as to how well this type of solution would fare considering the lack of high rooftops and the lack of space/pervasive NIMBY attitude that happens when someone wants to build something like a tower for p2p transmission. I was really stoked to see Fiber coming to my house in the near future, but this doesn't look good for places like MV/PA.
- DavidWanjiru 10y ago
  I'd love to hear more about how this is done. Care to share links, websites, etc? Or to write me, dwanjiru at Google's email service about it?
  - iheart2code 10y ago
    WiLine (http://www.wiline.com/ http://www.wiline.com/) in San Francisco is one such high-speed, point-to-point wireless provider. Up to 10 Gbps symmetrical bandwidth and sub-10ms latency.
cbhl 10y ago
Google Fiber just acquired WebPass, which is an ISP in San Francisco and Oakland that already uses point-to-point wireless in a bunch of high-rises there. Having fiber optic to the building (ala AT&T Gigapower) isn't all that useful if the entire neighborhood is oversubscribed 50:1 -- during PM rush, whether you use FTTH or point-to-point wireless, you're going to see speeds top out at ~20-200 Mbps on a "gigabit" link no matter what.
jdavis703 10y ago
As a Webpass customer it definitely competes. I frequently get 500Mbs during prime time hours. Webpass is microwave wireless to the building, then the "last yards" to the unit is gigabit ethernet.

xchaotic 10y ago

5G is still a shared-medium carrier so it will get congested no matter how fast the total is - all it takes is a few bad or uneducated players spamming the wireless spectrum. Or just bad weather.

Cshelton 10y ago

This is not wireless like 4g/5g or any cellular company you think of. This is point to point wireless they are talking about. Which can transmit incredibly high speeds and bandwidth. Here's the idea, and is actually the current setup I have with a private company: A p2p transmitter can broadcast to a lower tower that sits next to multiple neighborhoods. Then from that tower, lines can be run to individual houses and/or other small receivers like on people's rooftops. With this system, they can literally cover vast areas, with just as fast speeds, in a fraction of the costs and time. I have this setup right now, pointing my p2p device right at the top of a building downtown (not in San Jose.). It is crazy fast and even during heavy storms, there is no disruption. San Jose, I wouldn't complain just yet, you might actually get your 1 Gbps + speeds faster than you thought despite this "construction delay".

sn0v 10y ago
How does the latency compare to a wired connection? Is it viable for gaming and the like?
- jauer 10y ago
  Often very low. Urban 24Ghz/60Ghz point to point connections are usually 2ms or less per hop. My house (rural small town) is 4x5Ghz & 1x11Ghz hops away from my datacenter and I get ~15-20ms ping times to Google, League of Legends, etc). At various times I've had Frontier VDSL2 and Charter DOCSIS and both had higher latency.
- Cshelton 10y ago
  My connection point is about 1.5 miles away. I get about 4-6ms latency on my end device. That's going through my router, wireless access point, to my device. and it's also very consistent. It's not dealing with the million redirects and other traffic that going through the phone line or cable line will have. In very heavy rain and hind wind, my direct TV dish was out at the start of the storm, my internet p2p connection never lost signal, didn't even slow down.
  - sn0v 10y ago
    Oh wow, this is extremely interesting. Hopefully Google rolls their connections out soon.
- seanp2k2 10y ago
  Yeah, wireless is super fast, satellite is the one with latency (and usually then due to dial-up uplink and just the distance of the sats). Most p2p links are under 50 miles, and in this case probably under 5 miles. The latency from the wireless link will be a negligible (for those not in HFT) overhead on the order of a few ms.
tylerlh 10y ago
SJ, sure -- though for other peninsula cities (Mountain View, Palo Alto) I'm curious as to how well this type of solution would fare considering the lack of high rooftops and the lack of space/pervasive NIMBY attitude that happens when someone wants to build something like a tower for p2p transmission. I was really stoked to see Fiber coming to my house in the near future, but this doesn't look good for places like MV/PA.
DavidWanjiru 10y ago
I'd love to hear more about how this is done. Care to share links, websites, etc? Or to write me, dwanjiru at Google's email service about it?
- iheart2code 10y ago
  WiLine (http://www.wiline.com/ http://www.wiline.com/) in San Francisco is one such high-speed, point-to-point wireless provider. Up to 10 Gbps symmetrical bandwidth and sub-10ms latency.

cbhl 10y ago

Google Fiber just acquired WebPass, which is an ISP in San Francisco and Oakland that already uses point-to-point wireless in a bunch of high-rises there. Having fiber optic to the building (ala AT&T Gigapower) isn't all that useful if the entire neighborhood is oversubscribed 50:1 -- during PM rush, whether you use FTTH or point-to-point wireless, you're going to see speeds top out at ~20-200 Mbps on a "gigabit" link no matter what.

jdavis703 10y ago

As a Webpass customer it definitely competes. I frequently get 500Mbs during prime time hours. Webpass is microwave wireless to the building, then the "last yards" to the unit is gigabit ethernet.