Google Spends $1 Million For Throttling Detection
foamrat writes "Google has awarded $1 million to Georgia Tech researchers so that they can develop simple tools to detect Internet throttling, government censorship, and other 'transparency' problems."
"Did your phone call end without a complete sentence? Please post the sentence fragment."
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Say what you like about them, but I'm hoping they'll bring this idealistic side out to play more now Eric has been given the elbow. Eric openly admitted that he was the most gung-ho on China of the leadership team, and I have to say I trust Sergey rather more and am a bit happier that he's 50% of the decision-making again.
"To any truly impartial person, it would be obvious that I am right."
a suite of Web-based, Internet-scale measurement tools that any user around the world could access for free
So, what happens if the Web-based suite is throttled or censored?
The easier to detect, the harder it is for ISP's to keep such practices out of the spotlight.
Unfortunately I am only half joking with.
Time to offend someone
Really appreciate that google consistently places them in the proper position of an infrastructure provider, setting up their monetization to be supported by open, fair access.
I don't trust "intent," but I do trust a business that is set up to maximize profit when things are best for the "little guy."
Their APIs are a joy to work with, too.
If Country = "Canada"
Then Print "Yes, you're are being throttled!"
Elseif Country = "China"
Then Print "Yes, you're being censored, I hope you can read English or this will be really confusing!"
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PROFIT!
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End
Apps for that hould have been out long ago.
Read radical news here
DAMN! Throttled again... That's Google's project right there. Hiring 1000's of first posters and measuring the delay!
Wasn't there a page/site that did this awhile back? I seem to recall that there was. I can't remember if it was related to a university or not.
1, 2 and 3.
HTH.
The ulterior motive is that Google's interests are different than ISP's interests, and that ISPs may end up bullying Google to give preferences to their customers in return for Google's traffic not being "slowed down".
If people knew that an ISP was throttling, Google can point that it is the ISP's doings, not Google. Right now, a slow website is usually the website owner's problem, and the ISP would likely never get blamed, especially if traffic to other places was not affected.
Some are not going to be happy if this gets through. I know mine (Rogers, ON, CA) is keep saying they do not throttle any traffic despite very frequent user complaints. Yes they happen to be one of the biggest Cable TV providers in Ontario as well and also to have the full support of CRTC in whatever they do. It's not going to have any effect but at least they'll be forced to admit it.
OK, maybe just a bit more than these ancient tools, but _really_? GOOG have some of the phattest pipes around and ought to be monitoring RTT and bandwidth variations all on their own.
Or rather, I'm severely disappointed they're not already monitoring. Or maybe they are, and this is just dezinformatzia.
Just imagine if google's cloud-based tablet (http://www.infopackets.com/news/business/google/2010/20100420_google_tablet_rivals_ipad_with_cloud_open_source.htm) had to go up against the iPad4 on an ATT-dominated wireless infrastructure. With ATT's selective bandwidth throttling and caps, you'd effectively be pitting glorified notepad.exe vs. technological opium.
It's pretty clear that the ATT bandwidth cap and purchasing of T-mobile is getting on the nerves of the corporations that have invested so much infrastructure on a cloud-based future that practically necessitates cheaply available bandwidth.
With so much control in the hands of telecom, pushing for net-neutrality is probably the best bet companies like google will have. Impressive how capitalism and "Don't be evil" can align like celestial bodies every now and then.
Keep fighting the good fight, Three-Goog!
A lot of what looks like throttling (especially of latency sensitive applications like VOIP) may actually be buffer bloat - http://www.bufferbloat.net/, so while not malicious the end effect is the same (stuff that should work, doesn't).
Comcast must be shitting their pants right about now.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
http://netalyzr.icsi.berkeley.edu/, requires Java. I personally used this tool to benchmark some consumer router/firewall gear, to find most of it takes 100-300ms to make DNS lookups (which explained why web surfing felt so slow through these things, all the DNS requests were taking about 6x longer than they should).
The full press release with more information (including attribution to Nick Feamster on this project, who has past work in both anti-censorship and developing network neutrality tools) is here:
http://www.cc.gatech.edu/news/georgia-tech-pursue-transparent-internet-1m-google-focused-research-award
#1) Google caved to Verison in an effort to break the logjam that is stopping network neutrality legislation. Yeah, I'm not happy they're willing to compromise over something so important. But I'm not seeing how spotlighting network neutrality breakage helps Google with some ulterior motive. It'll probably help them put Verizon over a barrel and force them to accept NN.
#2) Nifty. Got anything juicy to put in the comparator? Cause aside from some sites being re-ordered and some ads being different, I'm not seeing how letting people detect throttling is at odds with taking into account regional differences.
#3) Ah yes, Google's cash cow, that whole "Search" thing that they do. I hear it's kind of important to them. Like a proprietary secret of sorts. Alright, alright, the world be more knowledgeable and probably better off in the long run if this was public, open and free. But as far as corporations go, not giving away their main product is hardly evil. And it still has nothing to do with throttling detection.
Here's a vital bit of info that'll help you get over your fear of Google: A free and open Internet, where everyone uses it to... do whatever, makes Google money. If everyone used ONLY the services in their ISP's walled garden, or only ever went to facebook, then the Internet is diminished. And Google along with it. It is in Google's financial interests to make the Internet a good place to do things. Because finding stuff on the Internet is still the primary thing they do.
on google maps http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/03/google-maps-300tb-of-real-world-internet-speeds.ars
It's very easy to be cynical about Google given their stance on privacy, but at this point there is no indication that there will be an attempt to monetize this technology. Moreover, George Tech will be providing the tool, not Google. Google just said, here's a million dollars to make the tool. Five years from now we'll have a better idea of the real purpose of this initiative but given they did not purchase a company, and as to yet the lead researcher on the topic is not a senior Google person so I'm willing to suspend any disbelief and hope that this is really Google saying "Fuck You" to the US Senate.
Seeing as the US Senate just overturned the FCC's ruling on net neutrality, this seems like a rather bold response by Google but maybe I'm being idealistic.
I wish Slashdot would just block the substring "MichaelKristopeit" from all user registrations. (and block his IP address) I mean people with mod points are doing a good job keeping him in the -1, but for those of us who browse at -1 when moderating, we're sicking of seeing this crap.
"You WILL see our advertising!"
To quote WoW Users: ^
Ah, 3. That old chestnut.
What would the results be like if the most popular search algorithm could be trivially gamed?
Look in your spam folder to find out.
HTH.
Information wants to be beer.
While Google is making nice press with their "good" things, they're still running their recently introduced service where they report China based VPN users to the Chinese government, incl. what they search for. No other search engine does this. Google has gone form great to most evil in my book, just because of this. I've posted this to a number of places, but nobody seems to care about the lives of people who use VPN's in China and the risk of the Chinese government being made aware of the controversial things these people Google for. But low and behold and when Gmail feels "slow" for a few days in China, then it's front page news.
Ah yes. Resilience through obscurity.
Google can be and is already trivially gamed. The market for doing so is huge and effective.
It will only cost you 5$ and i can tell you who already throttles right now.....the UK,
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/03/22/2237225/UK-ISPs-Hatch-Plan-To-Block-the-Pirate-Bay-and-Other-File-Sharing-Sites
wow putting 2 and 2 together is a great payday.