At Google, we’ve been investing in networking for over a decade to ensure that our customers always get the best experience. With Google Cloud Platform, we’re focused on bringing our customers that same scale, performance and capability.
Yesterday we announced that we’re making it easier for you to connect your network to us, with Google Cloud Interconnect. We’ve also doubled the TCP throughput performance of our network with Andromedia 1.5, and we’re substantially lowering egress prices to most Asia-Pacific countries.
Announcing Google Cloud Interconnect
Google Cloud Interconnect is a suite of connectivity options, enabling Cloud Platform customers to connect their network to Google. Today, we are announcing three options:
Carrier Interconnect
Carrier Interconnect enables you to connect your network to a service provider with a direct connection to Google. This connection helps provide higher availability and lower latency for your traffic as it travels from your systems to Google.
Our initial launch service providers are Equinix, IX Reach, Level 3, TATA Communications, Telx, Verizon, and Zayo.
This diverse set of service providers, along with our globally distributed network edge, will allow you to tailor your connectivity to your business needs. Learn more about carrier interconnect.
Direct Peering
If you meet certain requirements, you can establish a direct peering connection between your business network and Google. Visit our peering site to find out how to establish a direct connection and exchange Internet traffic at any of our 70 points of presence across 30 countries.
Carrier Interconnect and Direct Peering customers receive special pricing for local Internet egress in regions that include cloud connections, at up to 50% discount off regular egress rates and with no additional per-port fees:
VPN (alpha coming soon): We’re also excited to announce that our VPN service will be available in alpha next month. VPN seamlessly bridges the gap between your on-premises networks and Cloud Platform, providing encrypted tunnels directly into your virtual network, without being bound by the limitations of a single virtual machine or hardware appliance. Whichever way you choose to connect to Cloud Platform, you’ll be able to encrypt your traffic if you choose to do so. VPN will become generally available in Q1 2015.
Andromeda 1.5 Dramatically Improves Performance
In April 2014, we introduced Andromeda — Google’s network virtualization stack. Now we are rolling out Andromeda 1.5 across Cloud Platform, substantially increasing TCP throughput and connections per second limits. With Andromedia, we will continue to innovate and bring you improvements in throughput and latency without the need for new hardware.
TCP Throughput
Lower APAC Prices
We’re continuing to evolve our pricing structure, reducing Internet egress for APAC, excluding China and Australia, by up to 47%. Due to their particular costs, egress to China and Australia will now be priced separately from APAC. Australia Internet egress is dropping by 10% in the 0-1TB volume tier. China egress rates are staying at their current levels until March 1st, 2015, when new rates will go into effect to reflect higher costs in that region.
Envisioning a world of choice
This year you saw us launch advanced routing capabilities, load balancing, DNS, and other core networking infrastructure. But that was just the beginning.
In addition to expanding the breadth of options we offer, we want to enable our partners to offer better service to their customers. Yesterday, Fastly announced a new offering, Cloud Accelerator, that interconnects with Cloud Platform. Fastly reported that in most use cases, Fastly’s Cloud Accelerator customers on Cloud Platform (vs. other cloud providers) benefit from a more than 4x increase in speed of response times for content requests.
We want to continue working to drive innovation in networking and bring you increased flexibility, features, and performance.
-Posted by Morgan Dollard, Product Manager
The post Cloud Networking: More connectivity choices, better performance, and lower prices appeared first on Platform as a Service Magazine.