does Sonic's Bay Area network have multiple connections to the Internet?

[coyote2]

I love my Sonic gigabit fibre in Berkeley, California.

I'm curious if Sonic's Bay Area network has multiple connections to the Internet, or just one? My curiosity got piqued when I saw speedtest default me to a San Jose server.

Long story short I'm trying to optimize some stuff.

[dane]

Of course, many connections to other carriers at diverse points. We also peer with most major sources of content directly such as Microsoft (Xbox gaming latency matters!), Apple, Google etc, plus we host cache equipment for major sources such an Netflix, the GGC (YouTube/Google), Akamai etc. Sonic is very well connected.

[ngufra]

Thanks Dane for the detailed answer.

If there is a major earthquake (or rather WHEN there is a major earthquake) what kind of service disruption should we expect?
The network being mostly passive fiber, no power is needed between the co and user premise but how relient are the co and interconnections?

(My fallback is AREDN, hoping that some nodes that will still be routable on the mesh will be connected to the internet)

[dane]

All of the fiber COs are physically diversely connected, in multiple directions.

The most common cause of failures is equipment issues, or human error. We build in a lot of redundancy and physical diversity in order to create and manage the most reliable network that we can.

And as you note, fiber itself is far more reliable than old copper bas d services. Because it’s glass it’s not subject to corrosion or interference, and because it’s a passive network, there are generally no outside cabinets, so fiber is generally not affected by power outages.

This is an Achilles heel for cable, the thousands of cabinets on poles that have batteries in them only last a little while. They try to put their best foot forward in this filing, but they opposed a requirement for 72 hours of battery backup. Good reading about why cable can’t be made reliable when power isn’t always reliably available: https://docs.cpuc.ca.gov/PublishedDocs/ ... 045570.PDF

With the PG&E public safety power shutoff (PSPS) regime today, I anticipate the Cable will continue to frustrate people.

[coyote2]

Fascinating, thank you very much!