Networking

Networking is central to modern computing, from WANs connecting cell phones to massive data stores, to the data-center interconnects that deliver seamless storage and fine-grained distributed computing. Because our distributed computing infrastructure is a key differentiator for the company, Google has long focused on building network infrastructure to support our scale, availability, and performance needs, and to apply our expertise and infrastructure to solve similar problems for Cloud customers. Our research combines building and deploying novel networking systems at unprecedented scale, with recent work focusing on fundamental questions around data center architecture, cloud virtual networking, and wide-area network interconnects. We helped pioneer the use of Software Defined Networking, the application of ML to networking, and the development of large-scale management infrastructure including telemetry systems. We are also addressing congestion control and bandwidth management, capacity planning, and designing networks to meet traffic demands. We build cross-layer systems to ensure high network availability and reliability. By publishing our findings at premier research venues, we continue to engage both academic and industrial partners to further the state of the art in networked systems.