Google tuning

Even though Google's new Cape Town nodes are in limited production / test mode, users have been connecting to both the local data-centre, as well as to overseas datacentres [e.g. London?].

Presumably Google is still tuning the DNS based on usage while simultaneously expanding the datacentre capacity.

Interestingly it is only mail.google.com that returns a non-local host. So apparently mail is not amenable to normal caching modes or it would have been done through either the [presumed] GGCs or even transparently cached within the Cape Town datacentre.

Let's hope that Google get some cheap capacity on SEACOM even though is has higher latency than SAT-3 (~215 ms vs ~150 ms). Since most of the front-end logic (e.g. client javascript) would be served by local machines, interactivity should not be compromised too much.

Google local peering starting (slowly)

Google now serves [almost] all traffic to TENET sites directly from either:

• peering connection, or
• some sort of GGC-like nodes [Google Maps, YouTube videos]
  

Name resolution and tracerouting from UCT hosts confirms that all Google services are being served from local [South African] servers. This has huge implications in bandwidth savings, and quality of user interaction because of lower latency for content that is already available on the local datacenter and caches.

Issues
Strangely, while www.youtube.com resolves to a locally-hosted server (64.233.179.100 currently), youtube.com (with no leading www.) resolves to a 208.65.153.xxx address, seemingly in Richmond, VA.

Clarification
The caching nodes [presumably GGC nodes] currently serve only certain services (map tiles, YouTube videos) and are generally co-located within a client network. The other Google services are served from machines located in Cape Town (based on ping times) and that are administratively within a Google-owned IP block.

Further clarification
Assume this is a "small" trial run (limited number of users on TENET, maximum goodwill from helping the poor academics) before a full roll-out. The caching nodes already save TENET up to 45 Mbps international transport! There is no local visibility to Google's ZA IP block from IS's route server.