Kid_Thunder

Google Cloud definitely backs up data. Specifically I said

after an account is deleted.

The surprise here being that those backups are gone (or unrecoverable) immediately after the account is deleted.

Actually, it highlights the importance of a proper distributed backup strategy and disaster recovery plan.

Uh, yeah, that’s why I said

it is good practice and frankly refreshing to hear that a company actually backed up away from their primary cloud infrastructure

The same can probably happen on AWS, Azure, any data center really

Sure, if you colocate in another datacenter and it isn’t your own, they aren’t backing your data up without some sort of other agreement and configuration. I’m not sure about AWS but Azure actually has offline geographically separate backup options.

And the crazy part is that it sounds like Google didn’t have backups of this data after the account was deleted. The only reason they were able to restore the data was because UniSuper had a backup on another provider.

This should make anyone really think hard about the situation before using Google’s cloud. Sure, it is good practice and frankly refreshing to hear that a company actually backed up away from their primary cloud infrastructure but I’m surprised Google themselves do not keep backups for awhile after an account is deleted.

I was trying to find the old Level 3 blog post but didn’t because I believe they basically said that Comcast needed to upgrade its infrastructure and never did. Netflix was the cashcow they saw to essentially make them pay for it. As a Comcast customer, I see it as charging the customer twice – first for the Internet service for the content and again because Netflix is going to pass that extra cost onto you (and everyone else who isn’t a Comcast customer).

You’re right on about CDNs and edge / egress/ingress PoPs. It also keeps it cheaper for the likes of Netflix/Amazon/etc. in the long run with the benefits of adding more availability.

The problem historically isn’t that streaming services are paying for fast lanes but that they have to pay not to be throttled below normal traffic. In other words, they have to pay more to be treated like other traffic.

Even crazier is remember that there are actual peering agreements between folks like cogentco, Level 3, comcast, Hurricane Electric, AT&T, etc. What comcast did that caused the spotlight was to bypass their peering agreement with Level 3 and went direct to their end customer (netflix) and told them they’d specifically throttle them if they didn’t pay a premium which also undermined Level3’s peering agreement with Comcast.

Peering agreements are basically like “I’ll route your traffic, if you route my traffic” and that’s how the Internet works.