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I make 340Tbit/sec about 1.1x10^11 GiByte/month. GCP premium tier networking is priced at $0.08/GB, so at 80% load that cable would, very naively, have the pote

I make 340Tbit/sec about 1.1x10^11 GiByte/month. GCP premium tier networking is priced at $0.08/GB, so at 80% load that cable would, very naively, have the potential to bring in $7B/month in revenue. I'm sure they only take in a fraction of that, and their costs are substantial. But even so... cloud bandwidth is overpriced.

dilyevsky 4y ago
8c is for transit to outside of their network. For inter-region it’s like 1-15c depending on regions. 1-2c for us/europe which is probably overwhelming majority
dilyevsky 4y ago
Also 80% utilization seems just ridiculously high to me but maybe at goog volume it’s doable
- klysm 4y ago
  I remember seeing a cloudflare post about AWS bandwidth pricing where they estimated something like 20% utilization? I don’t remember where though but I think they can approximate pretty well.
- jeffbee 4y ago
  Google regularly runs these at 100%. According to the B4 paper: """These features allow many B4 links to run at near 100% utilization and all links to average 70% utilization over long time periods, corresponding to 2-3x efficiency improvements relative to standard practice"""
  - fomine3 4y ago
    How they increase efficiency by using it at 100%? They would stop some lines at night?
    - dilyevsky 4y ago
      Haven’t read the paper yet but guessing just start egressing from random pops on the way when the pipes are full
- throw0101a 4y ago
  Well, you wouldn't want to hit 80% on Day 1, as you would have no room for growth. Perhaps 50% and after a few years† you'll hit 80% and start planning for a new cable. † The video said this started five years ago, so there appears to be a lot of lead time that is needed.
klysm 4y ago
Yup, but it will continue to be absurdly overpriced because the CapEx is massive and governments are totally okay with oligopoly.
stingraycharles 4y ago
You’re thinking about average throughput, while these cables need to be provisioned for max throughput, which can be completely different. Having said that, cloud bandwidth is indeed overpriced; but at the same time, given that Google Cloud is still burning money, can it perhaps be argued that bandwidth is one of the money makers that allow for other services to be free? I recall that from the old webhosting days, this was already a common tactic of the providers: lure people in with cheap servers, sometimes even at a loss, and earn money back with bandwidth.
- closedloop129 4y ago
  Is it good for the economy though? Resources are used depending on prices. If the costs for providing bandwidth are low and everything else is expensive, but the prices are the other way round, then the economy optimizes to waste resources. That's not sustainable.
- cypress66 4y ago
  Overpriced is an understatement. It's like 20x as expensive compared to things like colocation.
samtho 4y ago
With the exception of high-storage/bandwidth websites like video hosting platforms, bandwidth scales linear relative to audience/reach so the high cost is a justifiable expense. We haven’t seen a race to the bottom with bandwidth like we have with storage because the usage of bandwidth implies the product is being used. Furthermore, software (as a product/service) has the lowest marginal cost of nearly any product. Given the cost it takes to have one more customer on your platform is some nominally small amount of bandwidth (which depending on the product, can be sub 1 gigabyte per month) the additional expense is easily justified.
deleted 4y ago
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dilyevsky 4y ago

8c is for transit to outside of their network. For inter-region it’s like 1-15c depending on regions. 1-2c for us/europe which is probably overwhelming majority

dilyevsky 4y ago

Also 80% utilization seems just ridiculously high to me but maybe at goog volume it’s doable

klysm 4y ago
I remember seeing a cloudflare post about AWS bandwidth pricing where they estimated something like 20% utilization? I don’t remember where though but I think they can approximate pretty well.
jeffbee 4y ago
Google regularly runs these at 100%. According to the B4 paper: """These features allow many B4 links to run at near 100% utilization and all links to average 70% utilization over long time periods, corresponding to 2-3x efficiency improvements relative to standard practice"""
- fomine3 4y ago
  How they increase efficiency by using it at 100%? They would stop some lines at night?
  - dilyevsky 4y ago
    Haven’t read the paper yet but guessing just start egressing from random pops on the way when the pipes are full
throw0101a 4y ago
Well, you wouldn't want to hit 80% on Day 1, as you would have no room for growth. Perhaps 50% and after a few years† you'll hit 80% and start planning for a new cable. † The video said this started five years ago, so there appears to be a lot of lead time that is needed.

klysm 4y ago

Yup, but it will continue to be absurdly overpriced because the CapEx is massive and governments are totally okay with oligopoly.

stingraycharles 4y ago

You’re thinking about average throughput, while these cables need to be provisioned for max throughput, which can be completely different. Having said that, cloud bandwidth is indeed overpriced; but at the same time, given that Google Cloud is still burning money, can it perhaps be argued that bandwidth is one of the money makers that allow for other services to be free? I recall that from the old webhosting days, this was already a common tactic of the providers: lure people in with cheap servers, sometimes even at a loss, and earn money back with bandwidth.

closedloop129 4y ago
Is it good for the economy though? Resources are used depending on prices. If the costs for providing bandwidth are low and everything else is expensive, but the prices are the other way round, then the economy optimizes to waste resources. That's not sustainable.
cypress66 4y ago
Overpriced is an understatement. It's like 20x as expensive compared to things like colocation.

samtho 4y ago

With the exception of high-storage/bandwidth websites like video hosting platforms, bandwidth scales linear relative to audience/reach so the high cost is a justifiable expense. We haven’t seen a race to the bottom with bandwidth like we have with storage because the usage of bandwidth implies the product is being used. Furthermore, software (as a product/service) has the lowest marginal cost of nearly any product. Given the cost it takes to have one more customer on your platform is some nominally small amount of bandwidth (which depending on the product, can be sub 1 gigabyte per month) the additional expense is easily justified.

deleted 4y ago

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