Fiber

While visiting Kansas City recently, I decided to investigate Google Fiber, Google's ambitious new residential gigabit Internet service they are building in Kansas City, Kansas, and central Kansas City, Missouri. While they haven't connected residential customers to the network yet, they have provisioned service at several local businesses. They also opened a showroom called "Fiber Space" to demonstrate the service to potential customers.

My first stop was the Mud Pie Vegan Bakery and Coffeehouse, a neat coffee house in a historic area of Midtown Kansas City. Mud Pie has the Google Fiber hookup, which customers can use via Wi-Fi or the ethernet-attached Chromebooks which Google has provided. I tried to convince the barista to let me borrow the ethernet connection from a Chromebook so I could test the fast path, but he declined due to Google not wanting people to interfere with their hardware in such a way. However, I found I was able to accomplish most of my investigation goals using a combination of my laptop on Wi-Fi and the wired Chromebooks. I ended up hanging out at Mud Pie for several hours, running tests and chatting with the barista and customers.