http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1980605,00.asp





Google and Its Continuing Dark Fiber Mystery
By David Morgenstern
June 23, 2006

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The market is still guessing about Google's continued purchases of
"dark fiber" and what that will mean to the Internet. Yet another
explanation was floated at a recent IT conference: IPv6, the
next-generation Internet standard.

During a debate on the adoption of Internet Protocol Version 6 at the
Burton Group's annual Catalyst conference in San Francisco, Alex
Lightman, CEO of IP telephony vendor Innofone.com, offered a new reason
for Google's expenditures on dark fiber. ADVERTISEMENT

His observation came during a dialogue on Internet addressing and the
lack of support by service providers for IPv6. He is worried that the
United States is focused on the present and is not addressing future
needs.

Will IPv6 gain some respect from U.S. IT managers? Click here to read a
report from the debate.

According to Lightman, some service providers are preparing for IPv6.
He ran down a list of companies with "slash 20" addresses.

"You know who else has a big pot of slash 20? Google," Lightman said.
"Yahoo does too. It's not that service providers aren't doing it-it's
the savvy service providers, with the high multiples and visionary
management, that are getting ready to go into it.

"This is why Google bought mobile dark fiber. It's to go out and go:
'All these bozos in America aren't rolling out IPv6, so we'll do it if
they aren't going to,'" he said.

Lightman said that Google hired Vint Cerf in September 2005 as vice
president and chief Internet evangelist in order to lead the company's
IPv6 strategy.


Cerf and other IPv6 proponents point to the increasing demand for IP
addresses from mobile devices, such as phones and handhelds, but also
automobiles. Support for the growing number of static and mobile
devices in the world with IPv4 and NAT routers will become problematic
some time over the next five to 10 years, analysts said at the Burton
conference, disagreeing on whether demand for addresses will become
critical sooner.

With IPv6, the Internet will be able to handle trillions of individual
addresses.

According to telecom industry reports, Google said its capital
expenditures will exceed the $800 million in 2005. Analysts suggest
that the actual amount may be in the $1.25 billion range. Some suggest
that a portion of this investment is going into purchases of dark
fiber, or unused fiber-optic telecommunications infrastructure built in
the late 1990s.

In an exclusive interview, Google VP and GM David Girouard talks about
the company's plans for enterprise search, enterprise e-mail and
productivity applications. Click here to download the podcast.

What Google is doing now with the global infrastructure-or, more to
the point, what it plans to do in the future-has sparked plenty of
speculation in the telecommunications and computer industry. Aside from
the IPv6 applications and services theory proposed by Lightman, other
candidates have included the following:


* Google Video. Google launched its video download store in January to
much fanfare. While the jury is still out, Internet video is a growing
market and Google wants to be a big part of that story.
* Google Wi-Fi. Google is moving forward with municipal Wi-Fi
networking plans for Mountain View, Calif., near its headquarters as
well as San Francisco, being built by Internet provider EarthLink, and
possibly one in New Orleans. The dark fiber backbone could give the
company leverage for expansion to other cities and states, even
allowing the company to take over as a provider.

* Grid computing. Google will build out distributed data centers near
access points to improve performance for search results and its ad
serving business, as well as create a grid computing services
operation.

* SAAS (software as a service). Google will expand its services to
consumers and businesses, requiring expanded network bandwidth. The
dark fiber purchases are a Web 2.0 content and application services
play.

Check out eWEEK.com's Infrastructure Center for the latest news, views
and analysis on the Internet, servers, switches and networking
protocols for the enterprise and small businesses








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