Google, Amazon, Microsoft Go East For Network Gear 88
theodp writes "Wired's Cade Metz has the scoop on the move away from U.S. network equipment stalwarts, calling it of the best-kept secrets in Silicon Valley. 'Cloud computing is an arms race,' writes Metz. 'The biggest web companies on earth are competing to see who can deliver their services to the most people in the shortest amount of time at the lowest cost. And the cheapest arms come straight from Asia.' Or, as Joyent's Howard Wu puts it, 'It's kind of like buying couches. If you buy one, you go to a retail store. If you buy 10,000 couches, you go straight to the factory.'"
wow.. really? (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow.. really? Huge multinational companies are buying equipment from developing countries because it's cheaper?! What is the world coming to?
Re:wow.. really? (Score:5, Interesting)
As opposed to the networking gear that comes from the US, that has a NSA-approved sticker attached to it.
Pot, this is the kettle. You're black.
Re:wow.. really? (Score:4, Funny)
Whoosh
He even made a point of writing "chinar" and "gubbmint" to make it obvious he was taking the piss.
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Oh, I got that on the first read. ;-)
Still, on the off-chance he was playing the fool to undermine the argument, I added a comment.
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Last time anyone cared, the US didn't need anybody to "steal our freedoms from the inside". The US is doing to itself just fine.
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What cant THIS be an April Fools joke... (Score:2)
I quickly read the Wired article hoping to find a joke but didn't find the punchline...
Dan
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Not Eastern, just China. They've been known to do it, and they'll do it again. You think Australia refused to let Huawei bid because they found the company's logo unpleasant?
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australia had specific and credible evidence (Score:2)
look to be honest I have seen the "lawyers" and to be honest I would not let anyone from Huawei bid on my contracts either and thats nothing to do with china but to do with quality
the fact that your going to be passing defence department data over those links and you think for one moment someone won't tap that data ?
your very deluded, what you can do is make it harder and one of the first places to look is at the network layer and how to secure that
for example a known problem from years back...
most phone ca
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you think for one moment someone won't tap that data ?
That data is already being tapped by hostile trading partners such as the USA, and will continue to be tapped into the distant future, no matter who supplies the hardware.
Re:I expect to see some typical comment about the (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it is not possible to inspect hardware at that level sufficiently thoroughly and it is certain that the entities will be coerced into doing exactly what you wrote.
This threat is not theoretical. The details are classified but what's been leaked is pretty indicative, if you know government bureaucracy, that things have happened for real. Actual chip-gate-level "flaws" and backdoors of very high sophistication have been inserted into the physical manufacturing chain.
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All true.
But what makes people think the USA is any different in this sense? The "good ol' US of A" is also known for demanding backdoors everywhere... Or are you saying that bad things are only bad when it's not you doing them?
(Captcha: "benign")
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The US is absolutely doing the same things. But if I have to have a backdoor in national infrastructure, I'd rather it be placed there by our government than someone else's. Just like I'm not thrilled with the armed VIPR squads hanging out around subways and bus stations (could they have picked a more sinister name?), but I'd be even more upset if there Chinese soldiers stationed there.
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I always wondered why USB connecting my mobile phone to my laptop wpuld well and truly mess up the wi-fi connection for 24 hours. Even rebooting wouldn't fix the problem. Hint: the mobile phone would appear to the PC as a file system with auto-run. The most annoying thing was that on a Windows PC, the auto-run would reroute the network settings through the mobile phone network.
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Anyways why does everyone paint eastern governments as entirely evil.
Because like all large governments they are self-serving and to outsiders that makes them effectively evil. Go look at what the US did during the Cold War. Same thing, except this time the US is on the receiving end. Actually, look at ACTA for a current example of how much the US fucks with other countries for it's own perceived gain.
The difference is that China has no desire to hide such actions too much and as such is able to take them to whole new levels. They want their economy and their companies to su
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If you think every American not being able to buy three Starbucks Latte's a day more of a sin than having hundreds of kids starve to death, maybe you should look long and hard in the mirror before deciding what is evil and what is not.
Before we go any further, are you seriously going to pull a "think of the children" argument on /.? What does the above quoted text mean exactly? Are you saying we should do all we can to save China's population from itself by buying as many Chinese goods we can while sacrific
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So starting provoked wars, invading nations, murdering and torturing tens of millions of people is the right (tm) way to be a first world nation but what China is doing isn't?
Glad I'm not your psychiatrist.
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Never said that it was the right way, you just made that assumption and put words in my mouth.
Its the history of the world, shit happened and we moved on. We had to endure those hardships but with them they bought about a lot of technical advancements and massively stimulated industry. WW2 alone stimulated the growth of aviation, space travel, computers, communications and medicine. It was a terrible time in history but it was part of western technical and industrial growth. And before WW2, WW1 and earlier
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I don't think I am evil when I say I will not keep me up at night if millions starve in China, they bought it upon themselves. If you outpace your ability to sustain a civilization then you fucked up, its not the fault of someone in another country who wanted cheaper goods and 3 lattes, they didn't make the rules. China is trying to become a successful global economy via short-cuts and cheating. Nations like Germany, Japan and the USA spent a century or two and a few major wars getting where they are. If Ch
Re:I'll Never Buy 10,000 Switches (Score:5, Informative)
Buy Huawei? How does that work exactly?
1) Foreign companies cannot own more than 49% of a Chinese company. All of those American companies in China? They own 49% of those facilities.. a Chinese 'partner' is required to operate in China.
2) Huawei is a government controlled corporation.
3) Huawei had 28 billion USD in revenue in 2010. Which means (by revenue) it is larger than Facebook, Google, and Amazon. It is 2/3rd the size of Cisco (and has 2x the number of employees). It is 40% the size of Microsoft.
No foreign company is buying Huawei anytime soon.
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2) Huawei is a government controlled corporation.
There is no evidence of that. Naturally, the company itself states it is not but there is no way to confirm or deny it one way or the other. I agree with your basic point but you don't help your credibility by posting rumours as fact.
Re:I'll Never Buy 10,000 Switches (Score:4, Informative)
There is no evidence of that.
"No" is a strong word. Huawei was founded in 1988 by Ren Zhengfei (he's still the CEO of the company). Right out of University, he joined the People's Liberation Army (PLA) working on military technology. He joined the Communist Part of China in 1978, and retired from the PLA in 1982. He was an elected member of the 12th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (1980's).
Sun Yafang, the chairman of the board, worked at the Ministry of State Security (MSS) Communications Department before joining Huawei [washingtontimes.com].
In China, companies are not directly owned by the government, but they are controlled by Communist Party members... When people say X is a Chinese government subsidiary, this is what they are referring to (the close ties of the company to the Communist Party).
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If that is the standard you measure to, then certainly many American companies are 'state controlled companies' too?
ex-politicians being in high positions is... pretty bloody common.
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If that is the standard you measure to, then certainly many American companies are 'state controlled companies' too?
ex-politicians being in high positions is... pretty bloody common.
No, the state is a subsidiary of many American companies
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I meant; buy Huawei equipment, not the company itself.
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Huawei had 28 billion USD in revenue in 2010. Which means (by revenue) it is larger than Facebook, Google, and Amazon
s/revenue/profit/. Google and Amazon both had revenues well in excess of $28B in 2010, but Huawei's 2010 profits were $28B, on $185B in revenues.
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No.. you obviously skipped the conversion from yuan to USD.
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-04-17/huawei-2010-profit-gains-30-on-higher-international-sales.html [businessweek.com]
Although, you are right about Google and Amazon: Google $1B in sales more than Huawei in 2010, and Amazon had $6 billion more than Huawei.
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No.. you obviously skipped the conversion from yuan to USD.
Ah, so I did. Thanks for the correction. I was really floored that Huawei had revenues far in excess of IBM.
Not a huge surprise... (Score:2)
This would be news if the existing 'manufacturers' hadn't already done much of the work of hollowing them selv
If you need a cargo container of routers (Score:1)
Then you're doing it wrong. Cloud is not about who can stuff the most servers in the most racks in the biggest building. That's what everyone is ALREADY doing. Cloud is about the SERVICE - which can in many cases be hosted on big iron.
Meanwhile, we can be sure Azure or whatever it is will come with a nice OOB "management" feature accessible only to certain key groups in China.
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>That's what everyone is ALREADY doing.
Well, yeah, if "everybody" is doing it, this article is about just those "everybodies".
I mean, not everybody can wear a turtleneck and talk about synergies and sell expensive coffee or phones. Some people have to actually buy and run the ships that bring over those phones and coffee.
Joyent a big guy? (Score:2)
Joyent is being quoted in an article on big cloud players?
I thought they were a niche, expensive virtual/dedicated server provider -- the Starbucks of cloud with the unique selling point being hip graphics/cartoons, all of whom you could imagine going to Starbucks.
(Oops, I just checked, and they moved away from their cool, "CEO is a she" cartoon graphics.)
10,000 couches (Score:5, Insightful)
Or, as Joyent's Howard Wu puts it, 'It's kind of like buying couches. If you buy one, you go to a retail store. If you buy 10,000 couches, you go straight to the factory
Of course what Mr. Wu leaves out is that they are going straight to a factory in Asia instead of the American manufacturers (stalwarts, I beleive the summary called them).
Googe, Amazon, Microsoft are all mega-companies and strive to maximize their profits. However, at record unemployment levels in the tech industry, they claim they can't find US workers and have to bring in foreign workers. Now, it appears that US equipment manufactures can't produce enough equipment and they have to again go offshore.
Again, they can do business wherever they want, but the time has come to for them and their shareholders to either decide they want to be an American company with a world wide presence or a foreign company with a US operation.
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I believe that Adam Smith's "invisible hand" originally referred to the tendency of companies based in a particular country to favor doing business in that country thus strengthening their home country. Of course, now companies have no loyalty to any country so they will roam anywhere to get the cheapest prices to maximize their profits. There is no more "invisible hand". It's all an open race to the bottom.
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"I believe that Adam Smith's "invisible hand" originally referred to the tendency of companies based in a particular country to favor doing business in that country thus strengthening their home country."
Yes. And that tendency was a direct effect that they got better profits that way.
"Of course, now companies have no loyalty to any country"
Nor they did back in Adam Smith times (he also studies the import/export and the export/export cases). It's only the world changed and now companies get higher profits
Re:10,000 couches (Score:5, Informative)
I think you missed my point.
Try reading this Wikipedia section slowly:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_hand#Abusing_Smith.E2.80.99s_statement_of_an_invisible_hand [wikipedia.org]
Smiths invisible hand has been appropriated by others (abused) and expanded (to your meaning above). My point was that his original description and meaning has been lost.
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"Smiths invisible hand has been appropriated by others (abused) and expanded (to your meaning above)."
It is curious that the cite you propose makes exactly my point: the "invisible hand" is well and good and works exactly the way Smith proposed.
As your cite demonstrates -and that's the abuse referred, Smith never gave "magical powers" to the "invisible hand" that made it work but to the benefit of society but that, *given some circumnstances* Smith carefully analize, the "invisible hand" tended to work for
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Q) How many free market economists does it take to change a light bulb?
A) Free market economists don't change lightbulbs, they write their papers in the darkness while waiting for the Invisible Hand to do it.
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How the fuck is this insightful? The key here is whether Facebook buys from Cisco who buys from a factory in China, or Facebook buys from the same damned factory in China.
It's the same company in China doing the design and manufacturing.
Record unemployment. You seem to think each worker is the same as another. Competent workers are hard to find. Extremely hard to find. You think Billy Bob who took a class in html will be able to cut it at Google?
No wonder the US is losing its edge.
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Competent workers are hard to find. Extremely hard to find.
If you can't find them, may be you should move that decimal point in your $7.50/hour salary offer.
Competent workers are easy to find if you are willing to pay market price for them.
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if something seems too good to be true, it usually is
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This lack of ability to read and understand is why America is on the decline. But these damned idiots are loud. And obnoxious.
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Like Australia doesn't suck at America's teats.
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we don't need to butt-fuck america cos its doing a fine job of butt-fucking itself
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Touché :)
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Yet another idiot. I was a H1B, and I guarantee you that I was the highest paid person on the team, beating out all the Americans.
At my current place, I pay for performance, and gave one guy a 60% bump over his last place, and another guy over 100% bump (both Americans).
However, I have had to fire people too, for non-performance.
Stop talking using some lame bullet points.
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Or, as Joyent's Howard Wu puts it, 'It's kind of like buying couches. If you buy one, you go to a retail store. If you buy 10,000 couches, you go straight to the factory
Of course what Mr. Wu leaves out is that they are going straight to a factory in Asia instead of the American manufacturers (stalwarts, I beleive the summary called them).
What did get mentioned, but seems to be overlooked by everyone here, is that one of Google's primary motivations was because they needed a more open and flexible platform than the 'stalwarts' were willing to give them.
The only thing that distinguishes Cisco from the others is their 'secret sauce' - the proprietary elements that make high volume network management easier (and in some cases possible). But that's no longer sufficient to keep some of their biggest customers happy; they want lower-level access t
Go East? (Score:2)
Newsflash! The world is round. Asia is to the West of the continental USA
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... and to the East.
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And east of the prime meridian.
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Wait, wait... are you saying that Valinor was the USSR all along, and Mordor was Florida??
60 percent of these ports 10Gigabit Ethernet (Score:2)
Well then it makes a lot of sense to standardize on cheap, largely the same hardware. As the article points out:
The switches Google was building typically sat at the top of a rack of servers in the data center, connecting the servers to the rest of the network. As Juniper points out, this is only part of the networking hardware used in the data, but it’s a large part.
So the low level, short haul connections use cheap switches. Makes perfect sense. I'm sure they still need the Ciscos and Junipers to in
own damn fault (Score:1)
1) Americans want freedom, liberty
2) Americans adopt capitalism as epitome of freedom and liberty
3) Capitalsm leads to stock markets
4) Stock markets lead to shareholders
5) Shareholders have profit motive
6) Profit motive leads to public companies to maximize margins
7) to maximize margins, you lower costs
8) the east delivers lower cost
9) jobs go overseas
10) Americans bitch about employment flight
Lesson: you did it to yourself by equating capitalism with freedom and liberty
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- Lessen costs by investing in technology. A single robot is more efficient than a thousand underpaid workers.
- Improve quality by investing in research. Your business is less profitable because of Huwawei? No problem, just build a better router and bundle it with quality support.
- Protect your job by investing in education. Indians can easily steal your PHP job, but they will have a hard time stealing your kernel programming job.
How to make companies do the right investment:
- Stop protecti
Thanks, article (Score:3)
Thanks, for telling me exactly how Cisco and Juniper aren't scaling to meet the needs of Google. By "scaling", and without further details, I assume they mean "selling cheaply enough".
Cisco is not a hardware company... (Score:3)
Just take a look at their patents - very few of them are for hardware. Also consider the move to the v15 IOS Universal images.
Cisco have known for a long time that hardware suffer from Moore's Law (loses it's margin quickly) and is easily replicated via ODMs. Lifted software features are a lot easier to litigate against.
The real news (Score:2)
The real news for me here, was that they were using US network equipment, instead of cheaper equipment from elsewhere. I'm honestly surprised!
Thing had seems to be missed (Score:2)
What seems to be missed in most of these discussions is that this network gear that the companies are buying are coming without software. One of the ODMs selling the gear appears to be moving to providing some software that can be put together to provide the necessary OS to do the networking but it sounds like it's still an effort to get it working.
If you're google, amazon, microsoft, etc., it's probably not too much of a problem to get a group of developers together to put together and maintain an OS to r
Thanks People (Score:2)
Thanks Google, Amazon and Microsoft for depriving more Americans of jobs. Maybe the next time I buy a technology product I will return the favor. Why should I put money in your pocket when you aren't willing to do the same for people like me.
Not an Objective Story (Score:2)
My experience is that while large companies will use Asian companies for some portion of their network, it's never any of the important parts. Let's break this article down a bit.
"Rivers says. “With the traditional enterprise networking vendors, they just couldn’t get there. The cost was too high, and the systems were too closed to be manageable on a network of that size.”"
Note that the first and only real point is 'cost'. The rest is bullshit.
"The Ciscos and the Force10s build their gea