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There's a difference between a data center and a POP. The former is very large. The latter is usually a rack or more in someone else's facilities. When you try

by puzzle 8y ago

There's a difference between a data center and a POP. The former is very large. The latter is usually a rack or more in someone else's facilities. When you try to reach Google or Facebook, you rarely hit their data centers directly. They're out in the boonies, where land and power are cheap. Rather, you talk to their proxies at the edge (POPs, often in large cities). From there, your data is either returned immediately (e.g. cached objects such as popular videos or the company logo...) or forwarded over their fiber to the core clusters in the data centers.

bonestamp2 8y ago
Makes sense, thanks!
oldgeezr 8y ago
Just curious, is there a good site/book/etc to learn how the modern internet actually works? As a lowly programmer, I have a good understanding of network communications, and some knowledge of things like routing protocols, but I'm completely lost when it comes to understanding how the modern internet actually functions. Thanks!
- puzzle 8y ago
  I'd normally recommend books like Google's SRE one, but at least in this case it glosses over the detail of where GFEs tend to live: https://landing.google.com/sre/book/chapters/production-environment.html#fig_production-environment_life-of-a-request https://landing.google.com/sre/book/chapters/production-envi... It used to be the case that they were mostly in POPs, but I think that with Maglev (https://research.google.com/pubs/pub44824.html https://research.google.com/pubs/pub44824.html) they can live in core clusters, too. Other Google sources go into more detail, e.g. https://medium.com/@duhroach/profiling-gcps-load-balancers-94c552f06736 https://medium.com/@duhroach/profiling-gcps-load-balancers-9... https://www.slideshare.net/MichelleHolley1/google-cloud-networking-deep-dive https://www.slideshare.net/MichelleHolley1/google-cloud-netw... Back to your question, I'm not sure there is one good place to look up these things, but presentations/papers by companies like Google and Facebook are probably still your best bet. Stuff coming straight out of GCP teams will be a little more enthusiastic in tone, but that's easy to tune out. :-) Another good example is Facebook's Ben Maurer and his Fail at Scale talk, which discusses a lot of details that are necessary for modern internet services, such as queuing, session/application-layer congestion control, canarying, advanced monitoring, etc. https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2839461 https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2839461
- Famicoman 8y ago
  Tubes by Andrew Blum does a great job at introducing how the infrastructure is layed put and operates to a certain degree, https://www.amazon.com/Tubes-Journey-Internet-Andrew-Blum/dp/0061994952/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1530023877&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65 https://www.amazon.com/Tubes-Journey-Internet-Andrew-Blum/dp... That said, I would love some more in-depth books on the topic.

by puzzle 8y ago

bonestamp2 8y ago

Makes sense, thanks!

oldgeezr 8y ago

Just curious, is there a good site/book/etc to learn how the modern internet actually works? As a lowly programmer, I have a good understanding of network communications, and some knowledge of things like routing protocols, but I'm completely lost when it comes to understanding how the modern internet actually functions. Thanks!

puzzle 8y ago
I'd normally recommend books like Google's SRE one, but at least in this case it glosses over the detail of where GFEs tend to live: https://landing.google.com/sre/book/chapters/production-environment.html#fig_production-environment_life-of-a-request https://landing.google.com/sre/book/chapters/production-envi... It used to be the case that they were mostly in POPs, but I think that with Maglev (https://research.google.com/pubs/pub44824.html https://research.google.com/pubs/pub44824.html) they can live in core clusters, too. Other Google sources go into more detail, e.g. https://medium.com/@duhroach/profiling-gcps-load-balancers-94c552f06736 https://medium.com/@duhroach/profiling-gcps-load-balancers-9... https://www.slideshare.net/MichelleHolley1/google-cloud-networking-deep-dive https://www.slideshare.net/MichelleHolley1/google-cloud-netw... Back to your question, I'm not sure there is one good place to look up these things, but presentations/papers by companies like Google and Facebook are probably still your best bet. Stuff coming straight out of GCP teams will be a little more enthusiastic in tone, but that's easy to tune out. :-) Another good example is Facebook's Ben Maurer and his Fail at Scale talk, which discusses a lot of details that are necessary for modern internet services, such as queuing, session/application-layer congestion control, canarying, advanced monitoring, etc. https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2839461 https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2839461
Famicoman 8y ago
Tubes by Andrew Blum does a great job at introducing how the infrastructure is layed put and operates to a certain degree, https://www.amazon.com/Tubes-Journey-Internet-Andrew-Blum/dp/0061994952/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1530023877&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65 https://www.amazon.com/Tubes-Journey-Internet-Andrew-Blum/dp... That said, I would love some more in-depth books on the topic.