In a blog post, the technology giant revealed it recently conducted a successful demonstration of the home slicing capabilities at one of its labs, allowing operators to create distinct, isolated segments within their broader networks, each of which can be configured differently.
However, for GFiber, this gives it the “ability to carve up a customer’s home network into different ‘lanes,’ each optimised for a specific use.”
As part of the demonstration at GFiber Labs, the company used gaming as a testing scenario, placing two gaming consoles side by side and introducing congestion using a traffic generator in the lab.
While Google didn’t provide specifics about the Nokia technology involved in the trial, it explained that initial network congestion caused noticeable lag. To resolve this, a dedicated slice was created within the network to allocate bandwidth specifically for gaming traffic.
According to GFiber’s, head of product, Nick Saporito, who wrote the blog post: “The result: the driving game demo went from jittery and glitchy to smooth and responsive. This was a foundational test. And it worked.”
Meanwhile,Google revealed this trial lays the groundwork for offering customers more customised internet connectivity options.
“It’s not about prioritising traffic behind the scenes, it’s about giving you more control, more flexibility and more ways to get the performance you need, when you need it.
“With GFiber, it will always be in service of giving customers more control, without compromising our commitment to an open, unrestricted internet.”
“There’s also potential for something called “transactional slices.” These would spin up automatically, just for a few seconds, to keep things like financial logins secure. For example, connecting you directly to a service like your bank without routing traffic across the broader internet. You wouldn’t even notice it happening, but it could add meaningful peace of mind.”
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