[e2e] google-to-google

[Joe Touch]

Jon Crowcroft wrote:
> So google are buying dark fiber. why?
> 
> There can only be one reason:
> google will stop searching the web, and then indexing it. They will
> host all the web on their machines (plenty of space).
> (see article in the excellent technical trade press journal the
> onion).
> 
> So whats the dark fiber for?
> Well you link up all the google clusters directly - no routers, just a
> full mesh between google.countrycode
> 
> Now, if it was me, I would go one step further. A well known result
> from Physics #101 is that if you drop a ball down
> a frictionless straightline tunnel between any two points
> on the surface of a ball, it will take the same time to traverse and
> just come to a stop at the other side.

Nit - minimum paths on the suface of a ball are geodesics. The curve
you're looking for is a hyperbolic cosine, a.k.a. a catenary. But...

> For an object of the radius and
> mass of Earth, this is around 56 minutes. So we connect all the
> google clusters on the earth by straightline tunnels and provide a
> _transport_ service  between these points (both undermining airlines,
> trains, but not short hall journeys, but certainyl solving global
> warming largely). You then run fiber, or even line of sight laser
> links down these tunnels too, giving minium RTT (and still no routers,
> no DWDM switches, multiplexors or whatever).  

Catenaries are paths of least time only for masses under a force (e.g.,
gravity, centrifuge). Straight lines (at least straight in space-time)
are minimums for light.

;-)

Joe
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