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Google Networking Device Appears in Small-Town Iowa
- ceautery 14y agoThe Wireshark capture showing BOOTP was interesting. I don't live in the networking world anymore, but I thought BOOTP had gone the way of Gopher by now.
- jof 14y agoBOOTP and DHCP use the same ports and general packet structure, so Wireshark has the dissectors grouped. I was humored by that Wireshark screenshot. ARPs and DHCP/BOOTP requests from a freshly-booted device are not al that unusual.
- noselasd 14y agoThat's just a peculiarity of wireshark, it displays both DHCP and BOOTP as BOOTP in the oneline view. The packets are likely DHCP
- scoopr 14y agoHeh, I'm completely baffled why it has Finnish text on it. From the blurrypic I can make out "Laite on liitettävä suojamaadoituskoskettimella varustettuun pistorasiaan", which basically means "Device must be connected to grounded outlet"
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- itcmcgrath 14y agoDoes Google have a data-center in Finland?
- patdennis 14y agohttp://www.google.com/about/datacenters/locations/hamina/ http://www.google.com/about/datacenters/locations/hamina/
- itcmcgrath 14y agoEarly 2009. Date lines up with how old the ex-engineer thinks the device might be (3ish years old). So perhaps the Finnish text is explained by this being a piece of Hamina Data Center's original networking gear. "Ex-Google engineer J.R. Rivers — who now runs a networking outfit called Cumulus Networks — says this appears to be an older switch, something that has been used for about three years or so"
- goatforce5 14y agoA friend who used to do networking stuff for a global bank had good things to say about Nokia networking gear. So I guess there are good networking hardware engineers in Finland, and it's not a stretch to imagine Google might have bought some of them up somewhere along the way.
- otoburb 14y agoNokia has been hammered in the past couple of years and has shed[1] and will be shedding more[2] jobs over the next several quarters. Google and other technology companies have probably been circling Finland for a number of months now trying to identify and intake the best talent they can find. [1]http://www.bgr.com/2012/03/22/nokia-to-cut-1000-jobs-from-finnish-phone-plant/ http://www.bgr.com/2012/03/22/nokia-to-cut-1000-jobs-from-fi... [2]http://www.bgr.com/2012/06/14/nokia-layoffs-2012-vertu-restructuring/ http://www.bgr.com/2012/06/14/nokia-layoffs-2012-vertu-restr...
- eitally 14y agoIndeed. It could also have been manufactured for them by Elcoteq (Finnish EMS company).
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- itcmcgrath 14y agoI often hear about Google's custom hardware. Are there any other large tech companies (who are not hardware companies) that build/design their own hardware to run internally?
- jamessb 14y agoFacebook's Open Compute Project released plans for their custom hardware: http://opencompute.org/ http://opencompute.org/ Back Blaze open sourced their storage server designs (commodity parts in custom cases): http://blog.backblaze.com/2011/07/20/petabytes-on-a-budget-v2-0revealing-more-secrets/ http://blog.backblaze.com/2011/07/20/petabytes-on-a-budget-v...
- prostoalex 14y agoYeah, most major ones http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2011/11/server-world-bermuda-triangle/ http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2011/11/server-world-be...
- apaprocki 14y agoAt Bloomberg, we design almost all of our branded hardware in-house, from the terminals (monitors/keyboards)[1] to the B-UNIT authentication devices[2]. There are also other internal datacenter hardware projects. [1]: http://i171.photobucket.com/albums/u298/winstontj/Trading/Hardware/100_2826.jpg http://i171.photobucket.com/albums/u298/winstontj/Trading/Ha... [2]: http://lh6.ggpht.com/_iHYDAo93tQY/S3m5Jd5nHOI/AAAAAAAAGY8/oBpYLgEbYrw/b_unit3.jpg http://lh6.ggpht.com/_iHYDAo93tQY/S3m5Jd5nHOI/AAAAAAAAGY8/oB...
- kanwisher 14y agoWhite bunit ;( makes me miss my days there. Always surprised they never sold them, its the best authentication device I've seen.
- jpdus 14y agoBTW, do you know, why Bloomberg switched from the old, more comfortable B-Units (as pictured above) to the new black ones, which dont feature a full fingerprint reader any more (instead you have to slide your finger over a smaller sensor)? The old design was way more comfortable, faster and produced less errors in my experience...
- incision 14y agoAs I recall, Google has been producing switches [1] for some time now. 1: http://gigaom.com/2007/11/18/google-making-its-own-10gig-switches/ http://gigaom.com/2007/11/18/google-making-its-own-10gig-swi...
- hastur 14y agoIf the big Goo asks the forum admin to take down the thread, let me know, I've made a copy.
- niklas 14y agoThis is a bit of a longshot. But I am looking for switch hardware that have gigabit fiber and speaks OpenFlow for a FTTH project.
- ChuckMcM 14y agoNetworks are a fundamental part of the Google infrastructure. Ask yourself a couple of questions and then you can answer the questions about Googles motivations. 1) Is there any switch that does only what you want? Have any of the features you didn't need interfered with your uptime? 2) In a 48 port high performance switch which is more expensive? The switch or the cables? Why? So if you 'do the math' the obvious answer sort of pops out. Disclaimer: I worked there and agreed not to discuss any platform technologies until such time as either Google talked about them publicly or they were disclosed by other means not related to me.
- noselasd 14y agoHasn't google already talked a bit about this ? They build (and possibly buy some) switches that's OpenFlow enabled, so they can among other things control the forwarding of many switches from a central control plane. e.g. http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/04/going-with-the-flow-google/all/ http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/04/going-with-the-...
- ChuckMcM 14y agoYes they have talked about things from a software perspective but very little from a hardware/systems perspective. I keep hoping the Open Compute project comes out with a switch design.
- dholowiski 14y agoIs that agreement forever, or does it expire after x years? (or can you even say?)
- ChuckMcM 14y agoTo be honest I don't know. I do know that Google has a tendency to brag about things after they remove them from service so from a practical standpoint its not 'forever' but when I get home I'll check the language.
- wethesheeple 14y agoI love the "Who's online" section at the bottom of the "obscure" networking forum. About 5 members and over 11,000 guests. It doesn't seem very "obscure" at the moment. It's too bad PT Barnum is not alive today to see the thundering herds of the world wide web.