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Google Argues Against Net Neutrality
An anonymous reader sends this quote from an article at Wired:
"In a dramatic about-face on a key internet issue yesterday, Google told the FCC (PDF) that the network neutrality rules Google once championed don't give citizens the right to run servers on their home broadband connections, and that the Google Fiber network is perfectly within its rights to prohibit customers from attaching the legal devices of their choice to its network."
Google plans to offer its own business-class services on Fiber. Can't have people running their own servers as competition. This company tends to claim support for whatever is politically popular among techies and then quietly go back on it when it affects their bottom line.
here is what they were responding to-
http://cloudsession.com/dawg/downloads/misc/mcclendon_notice_of_informal_complaint.pdf
http://cloudsession.com/dawg/downloads/misc/kag-draft-2k121024.pdf
No they didn't. Nearly every consumer ISP has clauses that state you can't run "business servers" through the residential connections. While that term is broad and hard to enforce, ISP's don't hassle you if your traffic is light or unobtrusive. I've only been notified by Charter about my server when it got a PHP/SQL injection and hosted a virus. As soon as that was cleared up and patched they didn't care about it.
In all fairness, Google was in favor of net neutrality before they became evil. Things are different on the dark side.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
I think we can now agree they have abandoned "Don't be evil"
If I wish to water some hedges trimmed into offensive shapes or power up a TV containing offensive images, it is NOT within the rights of the respective utility companies to tell me what to do. They can only charge me per unit of consumed resources. It's none of their business what I do with it. If you promise me X amount of mbp/s, then you damn well better deliver on it and 'do no evil' as you claim to.
Where is tuppe666? He appears in every Google/MS/Apple threat to tell us how good Google is and how much they love us. Please save us tuppe!
The issue here isn't exactly net neutrality, it's that Google has to have some way of stopping users from sucking up all the bandwidth.
If the ISPs quit insisting on these fake "unlimited" bandwidth plans, there wouldn't be a need to have weird rules to stop people from running high-bandwidth servers.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Same as the old boss.
According to the Google reply, the complainer doesn't even have Google Fiber service, or live in an area where Google provides fiber services. Go complain to your own ISP, buddy. FYI, his ISP is Time Warner Cable.
Every ISP.. I mean every fucking ISP has terms of service that state what you can and cannot do on their network. It's a legal CYA to prevent people people from conducting abusive behavior. Nobody advocates a strict, absolute interpenetration of "Net Neutrality", or you could get away with ping flooding your neighbor under the guise of free and unfettered access.
And yes, they also restrict behavior based on class of service. You can't claim "Net Neutrality" if you buy a bunch of google home fiber links and decide to start up yoru own CDN or server host farm.
Clue the fuck in people.
For me, the key thrust of net nuetrality is more about the network provider not being able to block or degrade the level of service based on the content being transfered and upon the providers preferences. For me, net neutrality doesn't really come into it with regards to the the amount of traffic I'm moving through the pipe I paid for -- that seems to be the domain of the license attached to the package plan I signed up for.
In my mind, it would be evil for Google to tell me I can't serve up or consume certain kind of (legal) content or to degrade my service while I am, but its not evil for them to not want me serving up 75TB/mo on my residential-class fiber connection that costs me 39.99/mo. Granted, if they sell me a package that's billed as "unlimited" then that's on them and they can stick it, but if they offer a limited, cheaper service for the masses, and a more-expensive, less-restrictive plan for those that want to pay for it, then its reasonable for them to want to get paid for it.
Offer unlimited downstream bandwidth, and a reasonable, loosely-enforced upstream cap that won't raise a flag for normal usage. When a user consistently goes over, call them up and find out what's what, then just raise their cap because they actually are just doing a lot of something reasonable, or bump their cap for a fee if they're doing something that needs to be done under a different plan. Problem solved.
That bullshit's been going on back as far as 1996 from my experience - & still goes on, unfettered. The only unlimited thing I see is unlimited bullshit!
trusted them all this time, all I can say is 'not surprised'.
While I have an android device, it hasn't got google play/appstore, login, nor data service to it. Won't save me from the NSA's taps/recording, but it does a pretty good job of keeping out commercial tracking.
How much longer do we have for that to stay true however? Android 4.3's restrictions, google's no-server limitations, etc are all pushing the masses towards sheepitude, and (ignoring the other players for the moment) government is pinching in with legal limits and surveillance from the other side.
Corporate Pot, meet Government Kettle. People: Meet hard place in between.
It seems Google has its hands in everything: Search, social, advertising, online media, emails, cloud hosting, and now connectivity. At which point should we begin to worry?
A residential service is meant for residential purposes. Your TOS explicitly states this. If you wish to use your internet service for commercial purposes then you pay for commercial service. Implicit with your residential service is a certain expectation of consumption. To use a car analogy, you are buying a tank of gas. Your subscription dictates how much fuel you get. If you're paying for the consumption of a passenger car, why should you expect to get the fuel for a public bus? This isn't a network neutrality issue. This is attempting to freeload and crying when you aren't given what you didn't pay for.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
In my mind, it would be evil for Google to tell me I can't serve up or consume certain kind of (legal) content or to degrade my service while I am
Umm which is exactly what they are doing; literally telling their customers that they may not serve content. (And it is evil for any ISP to have a policy against "servers" of any kind. If Google doesn't want customers running servers, their only ethical alternative is to make it clear that they are selling Googlenet and absolutely, emphatically NOT Internet access.)
If you have voting shareholders, you are evil. If you do not, you are probably evil.
I think you would find a very negative reaction if you set up a Water bottling business at your house and started selling the water you get from utility company. Setting up hosting is similar in that you are using resources not intended to be used and are "selling" something that is not yours.
Setting up a Charging station and charging people to charge up their cars using electricity at your residential rates would get you the same response.
The Unlimited Data is a false promise, but I don't see how it has anything to do with Net Neutrality.
I don't know because I have not looked, but I'm sure that Google has a "Business Plan" for those that want to host just like Cox has a business hosting package.
"Servers" are technically difficult to accurately define within the context of a residential broadband connection, but you know what they are when you see them.
The only solution that would satisfy the hordes of /.ers, apparently, involves treating every customer as a business customer. After which I fully expect /. to explode with wild conspiracy theories around the rising cost of broadband.
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
The whole original IDEA was peer to peer networking that could route around damage. Somehow, we've let it become "everything gets routed through a few big players, and they can tell you what packets you can send and receive".
Sad thing is, this direction has been BLINDINGLY obvious for over a decade, easy. But nobody cared. It's only going to get worse and worse, until the internet is TV 2.0, just like the media companies wanted. And we - the internet using public - sat idly by and let them do it.
When its the other guy that gets the shaft.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
For me, the key thrust of net nuetrality is more about the network provider not being able to block or degrade the level of service based on the content being transfered and upon the providers preferences.
Which is exactly what is being done here.
There are seperate commercial water rates where I live. I only know this due to a sleazebag trying to take advantage of a family member and getting the water district guys to come out after putting a sign up indicating it was a business (Which he'd claimed it would NOT be.)
The irony of this being that Nestle worked out a deal to get local water at BELOW residential rates EN-MASS so they can sell us our drinking water right back to us at a dollar a pop as whatever brand Nestle is currently marketing water under.
Our local city/county government has been slitting it's throat, financially speaking, for big corps around here, without a commensurate increase in local employment. Makes one sick to see what it's become.
If you want high speed net access, and don't want to pay a lot, you have to play nice with others and share. You can be offered 100mbit or gig to your home, with backhaul to more or less support it, for not too much money. However you can't be offered dedicated bandwidth in that amount unless you want to pay a bunch more. Just how it works. When you start talking dedicated bandwidth, the backhaul goes up massively in requirements and thus cost.
Well that means users have to keep their usage reasonable and that means no servers that gobble up bandwidth. If everyone plays nice and uses their net as home users normally do, links can be heavily oversubscribed and thus the price can be low. However if users start hammering things, it'll either mean poor service for everyone else or a need for a large increase in cost.
You can't get everything for nothing. Fast shared networks work only when people share.
I really don't understand why ISPs don't offer high bandwidth, without quotas and caps.
What they can do is prioritize packets based on monthly usage. And that is only the simplest solution. (They could even offer QOS to the technologically inclined.) Want fast Internet during peak hours? Don't use too much bandwidth during peak hours! The concept is simple, but executives can't see beyond charging tiered usage.
(And none of this precludes selling bandwidth minimum guarantees to businesses hosting their own servers. Think outside the box, people.)
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
Net neutrality means that content is freely available to all. It does not mean that an ISP has to provide the same services to all of it's users. At best it means that everyone has the opportunity to purchase or lease said services without bias or prejudice.
I don't see Google as having shifted their stance at all. They're merely talking from a different viewpoint on the issue, and just so happen to agree with pretty much every other ISP on the planet: if you want to run servers, you pay for business class services.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
This would all be solved if they just charged for the total data sent and received. They could charge something like a $20 monthly rate and $0.01 for each GB transferred.
This would mean that someone that transferred a terabyte would have to pay $30 for the month. Still pretty reasonable. Someone who transferred 10 terabytes would have to pay $120.
These are just numbers I came up with now. I'm sure they could be tweaked to make sure Google still makes a profit on people running servers and doesn't overcharge regular customers.
Consumers demand it. People love "unlimited". Even when they don't need it, even if you can give them proof positive a metered plan will save money, they don't want that. Consumers want a flat rate to pay, period.
Google... it's all about the loss of revenues... geez.
Google really wants to fuck us, and they fuck us, then they pull out because they find out they are fucking us too hard, then they go back to fucking us again.
That's the "Google Way" -- we keep seeing this shit over and over and over again.
The internet, which once gave us a chance to raise ourselves to a level playing field, or at least a chance to start somewhere without a thousand gallons of bureaucratic bullshit, is now being used against us to, once again, enforce the class separation into lowly consumers and privileged creators.
My ISP has never balked at me for running my personal website from my web server at home. If ever they start blocking inbound port 80, you can bet I'll be raising hell and making credible legal threats.
RtMFA or the PDF. The person complaining was using a business server, not a personal server. No ISP will allow this, and Google is an ISP in this regard. Buy a business account and stop using up the pipe like you own the whole fucking thing. But the Wire hasn't been neutral in its hatred of Google since 1999 and Slashdot hasn't been able to read since Cowboy Neal left.
About five months ago I realised that Google knew more about me than my all of wives, all of my children and my parents know about me combined.
Now everyone knows that Google is going to go from good guy to bastard one day, just Microsoft did after it saved us from IBM and OS/2 (one of the best OSs ever made by the way but with zero compatibility with anything else and an interface straight from the Vogons).
After five months I finally managed to degooglocate myself with the exception of one email which has the necessary connections to run Android apps properly and which also links to my older ebooks. The process felt like being a mouse on sticky paper. This change of opinion on Google's part sounds suspiciously like the incipient bastardification of a company offering some wonderful services which are very easy to access but which are more than awkward to opt out of when you look for the door.
An ISP in Australia did this for a while. They ran into a few problems from memory. They needed to charge a rate similar to their highest fixed quota plan to remain profitable and it was a hell of a lot cheaper for the people who didn't use much quota to buy a cheaper plan with a lower fixed quota. In the end, only people who essentially wanted to download the internet bought said plan and many complained, as the bandwidth pool allocated to the users on the variable quota was never sufficient for 100% of high-quota users to be d/ling 24/7. The ISP could either continue to raise prices so that they could allocate more bandwidth, or, as ended up happening, they canned the plan and now just have high-fixed-quota plans. That said, this was probably 5-10 years ago.
The service providers own their service. They sell what they want to sell. You are not entitled to get your way in all things. Just because someone offers services that differ from what you want doesn't mean it is okay to force them through governmental action to offer what you want. If you want a gallon of milk and Costco only sells in 2 gallon increments, do you ask congress for a bill commanding them to sell single gallons? Of course not; that would be wrong. You would buy somewhere else. The same is true of internet service. You don't like what they offer, buy somewhere else. If enough people agree with you, they will get the message, or maybe your preferences aren't the same as everyone else's. Either is fine.
I've only heard one good argument about why net neutrality should be enforced by law, and that's that there are too few options in internet service, effectively making them monopolies. That argument actually makes sense. But if that's your position, then you don't want the FCC involved, you want the FTC. Having the FTC do it is fine. It follows the common precedent that it is justified to compel fairness in the behavior of a company when there is not a real open market for its services. If the FCC does it then the precedent is very broad, that it's okay to compel a company to offer a particular set of services merely because the services deal with communications.
None of this is to say that net neutrality itself is a bad thing. I want it. I would prefer if my ISP offered it, and I would pay a modest amount for it. I also think it's a good (in the being a good citizen sense) position for the providers to take. But the government is the biggest, meanest bully on the block. If they're going to be asked to wield that considerable power to force someone to do something, you want to be damn sure it's justified, and it has to be done for the right reasons.
But this article (both here and the original) are fallacious.
Net Neutrality has nothing to do with the standard US ISP residential TOS which prohibits hosting a server on a residential connection.
If you want to run a server and NOT violate the agreement with your ISP, get business service.
There are, in fact, valid reasons for this: business class servers (whether it be a web server, file server or any OTHER server providing a service to a large number of remote hosts) can consume a lot of bandwidth. Typically far more than even a heavily used residential customer.
Business class service costs more but generally comes with a few extras besides allowing servers- static IPs, faster uploads and more email addresses of some of the common ones.
While it is true that hosting a game server, for example, is not legit with a strict interpretation of the TOS, I have yet to here of anyone who has been disconnected because they hosted to many multiplayer gaming sessions...
Google is a for-profit company: they will do evil any time it enhances their margins..... but this is a frigging STANDARD PRACTICE in the United States and the article is simply ridiculous.
Google is good at spewing hippie-dippie nonsense when it suits their purposes, but they are a corporation like any other, and they will only not "be evil" when it suits their corporate goals. Otherwise evil is encouraged.
Well.. I used to be jealous of the google fiber cities...
Now I'm happy to live on with my 40mbps/20mbps connection with 16 static IPs and an ISP that happily lets me host servers in my basement...
(minecraft, git repos, a couple web servers, media server, encrypted voip server for friends and family.... ) All cranking away on a couple old dell servers from ebay...
seriously I wouldn't go near google fiber with that policy if they paid me to use it, in fact they couldn't pay me enough to use it (well... maybe if they paid me 6-700/mo so I could afford to colo my 2 servers in a cheapo datacenter)
If I can't code a server and run it out of my house?
God spoke to me
ummm ... let me get this straight ... say I'm running my own private cloud or social media instance so that google or whoever can't access or analytic my content without sending me one of those nice National Security Letters or specifically hacking my instance ... so if google et al have their way I, as a private citizen, not as a corprat or pornmeister, have absolutely no option but to have my content/intellectual property/commercial in confidences as an open book ?
"I was a devout fan of Ayn Rand and a card carrying libertarian for many years of my young adulthood."
Ahh.. the folly of youth, how I loathe thee.
-SS "Teach the ignorant, care for the dumb, and punish the stupid."
I would *love* to have google fiber in my area. It is an unbelievably fantastic deal.
And all the posters here can do is bitch, bitch, bitch about google's perfectly reasonable - and completely standard - requirements.
Nobody would get a T1 if you run a commercial enterprise from a consumer connection.
And this makes google evil? Good lord, what a bunch of spoiled pussies. I hope google leaves the areas with all you whiny little bitches.
Nobody could have predicted this.
Googles got their sweet deal, the NSA stamp of approval, and fuck you anyway.
Please, find an alternative. I've chosen startpage and it's served me well. It's supposed to be pretty anonymous and doesn't track.
I heard of some way to corrupt cookies or something so that bad, random data is sent to trackers. Does anyone know anything about this? Not for the NSA, that's a whole different fight, but I'm talking about outfits like google and others that try to monetize your browsing history. If you're aware of this technology, please let me know.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Internode attempted this in Australia with the "flatrate" plans, but they ended 2005, because enough low end users weren't attracted to the plans to balance out the top 10% of downloaders. It is well worth reading the detailed post by Simon Hackett (of Internet Toaster fame) explaining the reasons. You might be surprised that the CEO would write in such detail and openly the business.
The reality is that while it doesn't cost any more to provide 10Mbps or 1Gbps over the first piece of fibre from your home it does cost significantly more to route that data to it's end destination. People need to be prepared to pay for that, just like we pay for the amount of water and electricity consumed. Would people be complaining if the tap was left running all day?
Google's making the same mistake that so many ISPs make, except they don't have the same excuses to fall back on. DSL and cable can experience congestion at such a level as to render some nodes near-unusable. But 1Gbps fiber (with likely 10Gbps or 40Gbps backbone)? There's no excuse. You have excess network, so start acting like it.
So you're experiencing congestion. Why not sell QoS to the people who really need their VoIP trunk or Minecraft server to be zippy? Cutting to the head of the line for a few bucks a month seems like something that would fly off the virtual shelves. If your bandwidth bills are too high, start selling packages for high-bandwidth users. On-net transfer is practically free, and off-net transfer for someone of Google's size can't be more than $0.012 per GB. Charge $0.02 per GB and make a small killing selling at reasonable rates. Heck, set your month caps at 2TB (XMission does 1TB on UTOPIA) and ding both Comcast and CenturyLink for their 250GB monthly caps. ISPs often leave this kind of money on the table for what I think most of us would consider reasonable add-on services.
And for those of you saying to get commercial connections, are you daft? Google doesn't offer business connections. (They keep saying Real Soon Now(TM), but I'll believe it when I see it.) Anyway, you're saying that if the Civic isn't meeting your needs, you should go buy a Porsche. What if what I really need is a Lexus? Too bad, so sad.
It's really hard to define a server anyway. If I run CrashPlan and let friends back up to my NAS, am I running a server? If I let my mom stream media from my Plex box, am I running a server? If I choose to seed the latest Ubuntu ISO on bitTorrent for any length of time, am I running a server? We can hope that Google is kind enough to look the other way if our usage is light enough, but that's always risky business.
For how much they've sold Google Fiber as being innovative, they sure are doing a lot to clamp down on novel uses. My how the tune has changed in just three years.
There is a difference between "insightful" and "inciteful" other than spelling.
I'm not an expert with all this technology and stuff, but it seems that this does not "violate" net neutrality. I was under that the impression that net neutrality is concerned with the content of data sent/received, not with company policies that limit large amounts of traffic (or servers or whatever), regardless of the type of data being sent through.
Of course, a company could violate net neutrality by banning specific servers or censoring information that they don't like, but I don't see how splitting up your "business" and "residential" service has anything to do with freedom of information. Can someone explain to me exactly why this is a violation of net neutrality? It sounds more to me like many of you are upset because of false advertisement, or even simply because you think something should be free when it's not.
As far as evilness goes... meh. Evil, to me, is synonymous to greed. And, to varying degrees, just about everybody in our country and every other country is greedy. It comes with the territory. ;)
Yes, bash on Google for stating what they did, but pretty much NO ISP provider to home connections allow servers on them. They never have. So keep ranting about how evil google is now, even though this isn't anything new. Upgrade to a business class if you want to run a server.
Be seeing you...
You can not always depend on Google or other businesses to always go to bat for the public, especially when their own interests run the way.
Also this clause is nothing new, most home broadband providers had it for years (I know Charter does), it may not be something people like but it is not
unexpected.
Understand Google's relationship to the US government and the elite that actually rule the USA, and Google becomes oh so easy to predict. A user allowed to run his/her own server on a high-speed network shifts the balance of power in the WRONG direction. They must place their content on corporate servers instead, so that their masters can decide if that content will be allowed to survive. Sheeple must be allowed no independent functioning online.
THINK! With enough bandwidth, and fast enough connection speeds, Youtube II, for instance, could leave the video on each owner's machine, and use torrent techniques for each user that wished to access it. Only the index of the available videos would benefit from being centralised. Do any of you think that Google would countenance such a future?
Google = NSA = those that rule you. They have ZERO intention of doing anything that empowers you, or changes the balance of power. The future of the Internet (outside the USA while the US constitution still has some effect) is a massively censored service, where control of what the sheeple think or say or see or read is codified to a degree greater than at any previous time in Human history. Want a clue. Go read up on Australia's new 18+ rating for games, and the rejection of 'Saint's Row 4' under their new censorship system. Introducing an 'adult's only' rating actually made Australia's game censorship system MORE restrictive. More rules were created as to what is allowed, and a greater determination was activated to ensure these new rules are followed to the letter.
Google is in the business of social engineering on a scale infinitely greater than anything seen in a nation like Australia. Not only is Google not your friend, Google actually believes billions of you represent 'excess Humanity' that needs to be culled in the very near future. These people and organisations don't hide what they think- it is just that you are too foolish to read their papers and lectures, or you are naive enough to think they are joking.
The next obvious evolution of the Internet is massive peer-to-peer functionality in the network itself. The power of modern circuitry certainly allows this. But do you think users are going to be allowed to escape from the established model of traditional ISPs, where all user activity can be monitored and censored?
I believe that when Google was young, as a whole it really did believe in ideals such as "Don't be evil". I don't think anyone would publicly adopt such a motto which is so easy to ridicule unless they really meant to stick to it. Their actions in the early years also largely support this view.
However, as Google matured as a money-making corporation, its character gradually changed. Idealists left and more corporate hardened souls were taken on. In some ways, this is not unlike the process of growing up from an idealistic teenager living in a world of absolutes to an adult having financial commitments and facing temptations to cut corners to meet the bottom line.
I think that there is a struggle internally now within Google for its soul- whether it should stick to its ideals and risk financial loss, or take the easy way and act like every other company out there and prioritise profit.
We can, hopefully, reverse the trend by reminding Google (loudly) of its ideals and perhaps shaming them into acting better. Although Google is sliding towards the evil side of the scale, it is still way too early to give up on them. Think of Google as a wayward child verging into criminality; you can either write them off and ensure that another hardened criminal joins the world, or try to teach them what is wrong and hopefully, maybe they will change for the better.
Google has a valid interest in preventing the acts of one user from affecting the enjoyment of other users.
The basic reason for network neutrality was to prevent carriers from preventing future applications for happening.
(For example Comcast peventing OTT services from providing video alternatives.)
It seems fair to have a different level of service for a business user other than incidental working at home.
What I don't see is how a personal server can would either affect the enjoyment of others or raise the business issue.
(If someone wants to put up a web server with noticable public traffic, that seems a different matter.)
Additionally, it seems like building new peer to peer aps which require servers is a reasonable expectation for how the Internet might evolve.
For these reasons, Google might want to rethink their position to one that is more logically defendable.
The fig leaf of 'Reasonable Network Management' in the light of the Net Neutrality history seems inadequate.
The excuse the others are doing it does not make it ok for anybody.
Companies don't exist to be nice, they exist to make money for their owners and shareholders.
And this shabby excuse has been used time and again to justify the many evils companies inflict on the world in their pursuit of profit. Such as Union Carbide's poisoning of India.
There was a time before companies existed, when businesses bore the names of their founders such as Walter & Sons. Often the owners refrained from acts of outright evil because they did not want to taint their name, and their sons and grandsons similarly restrained themselves so as not to soil their grandfather's name. If that was not sufficient deterrent, the fact that they were held personally liable often did.
With the creation of companies, responsibility became diffused. Bad things were done by 'the company' -except that this was a lie. Companies do not have independent will, their actions are dictated by management who often disappear after collecting their fat bonuses.
It is too late now to argue companies should nto exist- they do, and are here to stay. But since companies enjoy the status of separate legal entities, they should be judged accordingly. If an individual behaves in an evil manner, I judge them evil, and the same with companies. If an individual commits evil to get rich, I would not excuse his behaviour if his excuse was that his sole aim in life was to get rich. We should also not accept the same excuse for companies. Do evil, be judged evil, no excuses.
GP is correct, this isn't a "net neutrality" issue. It's a class of service issue.
Bull Fucking Shit. When Google was heavily lobbying the FCC to impose "net neutrality" rules on wireless ISPs as part of the Class C spectrum for LTE they were insistent that it meant the auction winner could not impose contracts on their users requiring them to purchase a higher class of service before being allowed to run a bandwidth consuming local tethering server. It is 100% because Google lobbied for that definition of "net neutrality" that Verizon Wireless can no longer require you to pay an additional monthly service fee if they notice you running a tethering server on your LTE phone.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrydownes/2011/09/26/the-true-cost-of-net-neutrality/2/
But now that Google is the ISP, they want to claim that "net neutrality" doesn't mean exactly what they filed petitions with the FCC claiming it meant? Yeah they're a corporation and can be evil but don't be an apologist for their self-serving flip flop.
I have cookies turned on and therefore serve them up. Wouldn't that alone qualify as server activity?
You can't run anything that accepts inbound connections. Even SSH is frowned upon.
Dude, that would just be silly. Not true what-so-ever.
Pay up for their business class service and all of the objections disappear.
You're not wrong, but your bandwidth usage must've caught their eye. That's the ONLY reason they will force you up to business class.
I know its fashionable to hate on Google right now, but isn't TFA saying things Google didn't say?
For example, TFA claims:-
But if you look at Google's actual response, they say :-
'Should not' carries a very different meaning from 'Must not'. The first provides guidelines, the second is an absolute ban.
TFA fans the flames by telling users that clause stops them from using Google Fiber from doing a lot of things most people would not consider to be unfair use, such as :-
However Google did not say that any of uses were prohibited. What Google does say in its response is that :-
There are many things Google does that I dislike (give me back iGoogle!) but lets crucify them for what they do, not made-up tales/fears.
Running the web server the come with every OS is the whole reason to internet. Otherwise the whole internet is just one giant advertising fuck that. I would never log on to the internet again if that comes true. Dare the owner of any ISP to tell the world how what I just said to this is not true.
I am hoping someone can answer that, because I've seen many many different definitions, most of which favour whoever is doing the defining at that time.
Does it refer to a theoretical view of network architecture, in which every packet is treated identically regardless of its origin or the nature of its content -- data, voice, or video?
Is it a set of guarantees/rights for consumers that they will not be constrained in any way from accessing the lawful content of their choice?
Or, is it a set of protections (via FCC's rules) for content providers to ensure they are not unfairly disadvantaged by ISPs that may also offer competing content, including television programming and on-demand movies?
As they put it - Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
Generally when I think about the "Net Neutrality" issue, I tend to think more of ISP's restricting where traffic can go out to, rather than preventing one from running webservers for incoming connections.
However, if we start with webservers, then how about torrent clients (which have bi-directional traffic) or the many other services that are essentially server/client oriented?
How about hosting game servers?
Neutral is neutral. Google can charge you for the pipe, but unless I'm doing something malicious with it (note: not what they don't like, but something criminal), they can fuck right off.
Do you know what NBNCo charge for data (CVC)? $20Mbps / month. That means wholesale the cheapest plan would be 12/1Mbps @ $24 AVC + 12 * $20 CVC = $284/month to NBNCo, plus ISP's cost and profit margin. ISPs are left with three choices: expensive prices, congestion or quotas.
- Expensive prices don't work
- Congestion doesn't work well because people who only want a small amount of data leave, meaning the remaining customers are heavy downloaders, who might stay
- Quotas work because people causing the congestion pay for the upgrades to remove it
I realise this may not apply to the US because of monopoly providers, but it works well in Australia.
Google is opening up a juicy can of worms here. If they can dictate what you the customer are allowed to attach to your internet service, boy, we're headed back to the days of original phone company and only being allowed to connect approved telephony devices to them. And seems to me, if Google wins on this type of thing, its a hop-skip and a jump to saying 'You can only connect devices you purchased from Google.', and then all the internet providers are going to go WOW, what a great idea, lets all do that!
Not a good thing.
If my ISP says I get 1Mbps upstream, it shouldn't matter if those upstream packets are acks to a fast download, or data packets being sent out by a server on my network. Net neutrality says that packets are packets.
If I'm not allowed to use a connection continuously at it's peak capacity, then write the exact limit in bandwidth terms into the contract
Comcast does exactly this, wording its terms to mean roughly a 250 GB/mo CIR burstable to 12 Mbps.
My connection is described as X Mbps upstream and Y Mbps downstream (where Y > X).
It really shouldn't matter if my upstream packets are acks to downstream data, or contain data from my server being requested by the outside world. Packets are packets, and if I'm supposed to get X upstream bandwidth, I should be able to do whatever I want with it.
When did google transform into a mix of the mpaa and microsoft...
An ISP provides the ability to transfer packets between my home and the rest of the internet. As long as I'm within the speeds (and data cap) that I paid for, Net Neutrality says that it shouldn't matter what is actually in those packets.
To say that I'm not allowed to run a low-volume mail server is just a money grab, since I could use *way* more bandwidth watching netflix all day.
All my other utilities have fixed monthly costs for basic access and a variable cost based on consumption. There's really no reason why you couldn't do the same for Internet access.
Is it only me, or is it the Tron's movie plot all over again (the original movie, not that new age thingy sequel)? Only this time we're the programs begging access to the outside world?
Good GRIEF!
Some nerd (Not saying I am not, but still) had a conniption fit about a clause in Google's TOS that is in LITERALLY 90% of all US Residential Internet Service Providers TOS.
This isn't some giant Google conspiracy people!
Mediacom
ATT
COX
RoadRunner
Comcast
The list goes on...
ALL have similar clauses. And several even out and out block ports used by common services (which IMHO is MUCH worse)
More ridiculous is that Google never even said a word about the usage! They never would have! It is a classic CYA clause designed to prevent business users from signing up for residential service and then complaining about the service quality.
Come post here when they tell you to shut your non commercial server off, and we can talk.
Until then this is blatant trolling and Google bashing that is completely without merit.
Heck, he even admitted he doesn't even live in the Google service area anymore. He doesn't subscribe to the service he is whining about!
Worse yet, if you read the complaint it reads like an idiot wrote it. Clearly trying to impress with his terms he goes off on tangents about what random people said about net neutrality and his "manifesto" (seriously, manifesto?)
"Note: A Navy Information Warfare Officer recently publicly said that the October 1st draft of this manifesto was “very good” and agreed with what I had written on Network Neutrality here."
A Software Development Professional just publicly said stop trying to get attention.
He goes on to say he debated this with "Important People" and then goes on other tangents about
"Personally I would like to see a long term solution that involves a fully user controllable firewall as part of all
standard broadband internet service"
Seriously... WTF does that have to do with the issue at hand?
That the residential service TOS only allows you to do residential things, just like every other residential TOS.
tl;dr The submitter and coincidentally the author of the complaint is a self-important individual that is only seeking attention. Quit giving him it.
interesting. Maybe you are right. I look forward to hearing something as clear as your point about the legal differentiation between consumers and producers wrt network neutrality. Honestly I would have hoped if the answer was that simple, the FCC would have just said as much to me 10 months ago. (posting anonymously just because I don't yet believe you are correct, but I'll keep an open mind and open ears)
We have always been against Net Neutrality.
Google, your Friendly (TM) Neighborhood (TM) Big Bro (TM)
Sponsored by FairSearch?
this is not a netneutrality issue, it's clearly a clarification of what the offered service is - and the message is 'non-commercial'. Want commercial grade connection? pay for it. And that has been the case for ages, here (not america) isp:s disallowed servers on home connections while we most were still on dial-up due to (or at least, that was what they *said*) adsl owners unwittingly serving spam. And I've been told Comcast et al. do exactly the same thing. Why is this a problem only when Google do it?
When looking at how fast this has spread and how it's being mischaracterized as a net-neutrality issue it seems like a sponsored message and a lot of you are being played. please at least have the good sense to get paid if you're going to act like good astroturf.
If you read that pdf more carefully, you'l get that Google is saying that they will not allow commercial use within their free, noncomercial package.
They are basing that on the claim that those user are not customers in contractual meaning of the word - they were given something for free and they don't get to demand that that something must be full, unfiltered and unimpeeded access without any limitations.
If they don't like the terms and conditions,they can always opt for commercial package, especially for their business needs...
Data volume and net neutrality are separate issues. If home servers serve up tons, then we're back to the "unlimited" plan issue with peer-to, wait, peer2peer.
But some small business or hobby server that otherwise doesn't stress the system as much as 30s of YouTube does, screw that.
Don't Be Evil*
*Disclaimer: This trademark does not give specific, reliable assurance of the status of any Google activities on the Dungeons & Dragons alignment space.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
This situation reminds me of the time I worked for a Telco; the first Telco to offer consumer ADSL in the UK (Not BT).
The majority of the early adopters were computer buffs that wanted to run web servers on the line and we did nothing to prevent them in practice or the contract.
However we still got a myriad of complaints they simply could not grasp the point the ADSL was asymmetric and the entire business model was built on that fact. ADSL was designed to be a consumer service for fast internet access, not hosting.
This situation still applies today, even with fibre services to the home that are symmetric. The providers infrastructure is tailored/profiled to be asymmetric. It is optimised to provide the optimum service the the majority of customers, who are mostly consuming content.
Well, I guess that all of the WoW players won't be able to update their game installations! (Assuming that Blizzard still uses BT to distribute updates)
Fibre to the Home is a fundamentally different 'product' to that needed to host web servers.
A fibre to the home service is still basically an asymmetric download service (even when the final hop is sold as symmetric), because that is how the provides infrastructure is manage to provide the optimum service.
The fibre used for hosting provides may be asymmetric but that will be outboard traffic, symmetric, or even more expensively actively managed symmetry.
Most definitions of a server, propose that it supports a number of clients.
Therefore most of the edge case used by Wired are not servers and IMHO fall into the category of either peers or perhaps (private) proxies.
If you don't like it don't use it. Google has a right to dictate how it wants to run its business. I fail to see where the problem lies, they own all of the equipment, they do all the management, they pay all the costs, why should anyone be allowed to tell them how to do it when they utilize their product. At my place of employment we lease equipment of various sorts some running proprietary processes, if I alter it or use it for anything other than intended purpose or outside of the agreement I violate the contract, no different. You don't own it, you simply lease the use of it, in many cases for free. I see it just the same as the local magistrate providing city water with the stipulation in my area that you will/can be penalized or have it shut off if you attempt to fill a pool with it, are simply wasting it with a hose running down the sidewalk etc...Google is providing a service at their discretion if you violate it why wouldn't they have the right to stop providing that service. It isn't evil, it may be a bad PR move but its their prerogative.
it will prolly turn into a peering problem if data starts to flow OUT of the google ISP network. after all one can expect ALOT of data to flow with a gigabit connection. ... that's okay. but if google isp customers want to SEND(out) to other people on other networks, these networks will prolly want something in return? ... having gigabit connection with a global routable ip address and NOT being allowed to send data. ... like the mobile phone operators do it?
if it's a one way road, google isp customers leeching away and mostly from google servers
'tis is really a j0ke then
simple solution: NAT all google ISP customers behind NON global routable ip addresses
that mega-gigabit NAT gateway should be fun to behold : ))
Ooh free shiny stuff! Whew, I almost lost my erection for a moment there!
Your reasoning fails on the grounds that mobile devices have become common, giving people, even non-commercially, the legitimate and perfectly reasonable desire to connect their mobile devices and their home systems from anywhere. Plenty of private functions operate as services and can be made available via the internet from even the most basic of home computers.
Running your own tinytiny-rss server from your desktop would be something that reasonably would appeal to a mobile device user without being commercial or even allowing more users than yourself. Playing Team Fortress 2 with friends on your "server" is certainly noncommercial. And to be sure, many blogs are entirely noncommercial and could reasonably be hosted noncommercially from one's home system.
Trying to pretend all "servers" are commercial is pure nonsense.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
Can I hate google from now? Or maybe, I most wait a little bit longer?
There have been "home" servers since the very beginning, this in fact, built the internet. Google must be new to the INTERNET.
now they can say you support their opinion on this Net Neutrality matter, as well.
I have had 3 different home ISPs in the last 10 years. None of them disallowed servers. I made sure of that before I bought the service.
It's a lie, probably put here by The Cable Guys. NN says I will not charge your packets differentially according to how deep your pocketbooks are. Google Fiber ToS says that we're not going to give you unlimited data for unlimited people who piggyback off your account. These are two completely different issues. Completely. Different.
Most of the conflict between "personal" and "business" comes when a service is provisioned for a relatively light load (residential) and then someone runs a business on it. The service just isn't designed to carry that much traffic, that incurs additional expenses which aren't within the residential fee structure.
If the service is metered, as you link to here, then they don't care how much traffic you run, they'll get paid more if you run a server and that'll provide the revenue needed to provision the line up for the higher traffic.
If American ISP service was metered, there wouldn't be much of an issue either. If you use it like a business, you'd pay like a business.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
ATT and Verizon's anti-server policies are nowhere near as bad as Google's. Neither of them block you from SSHing into your home computer.
What exactly does Google expect people to do with the huge upload streams they are providing? You do not need 1gb bandwidth to upload some pictures to the web.
What are people supposed to do with it if not host a server of some kind?
I hate to post as an AC, but I can't for the life of me remember my username and password.. so until I can get home this will have to do.
Google is getting lots of heat over this, and some of it is absolutely justified, but at the same time I don't really think this is a net neutrality issue. The issue here is that Google (like every other residential ISP) doesn't want users running servers on their connections. Most ISPs I have dealt with block outgoing mail on port 25 (except to their own mail servers) to guard against this, and if users are in fact running servers and degrading the performance of other users this policy gives them some leeway in dealing with those users. They don't actively hunt down people running a home vpn, or ssh box on their network. Considering that the person this article is referring to isn't even a Google Fiber customer yet, I think it's a little ridiculous to be getting out the pitchforks and torches at this stage.
Network neutrality is essentially the concept that all data should be treated equal, and that the carriers should not be able to prioritize certain traffic while de-prioritizing others. This isn't what we are talking about here at all. This is about the Acceptable Use Policy of the ISP, and whether it is reasonable and appropriate. Unless Google is purposefully shaping traffic and/or blocking traffic this can't be considered a network neutrality issue.
Unless ISPs provide some form of AUP, some jackass will abuse the system and ruin it for everyone else. It would be wonderful if this wasn't the case, but sadly there is always one person that has to ruin something. Isn't it better that Google be up front about what they consider acceptable use before someone gets their service? I think what we really should be discussing here is where should ISPs draw the line in dealing with situations like this? Is Google's AUP too heavy handed? If so, what should they do differently?
Worse, in this era of IPv4 address exhaustion, some ISPs offer what amounts to a /40. The IP address your CPE sees is in one of the ranges reserved for private internets, and your external IP is shared with a couple hundred other users behind a carrier-grade NAT. Pings, UDP datagrams, and incoming TCP connections just don't make it to your machine. This is more common in some countries than in others.
BTW, that is not from Google Translate ;)
(Emphasis by me). This sounds more like a "it would be nice if you don't" to me. Heck, even RFC 2119 agrees:
"Consumer" access is not access to the Internet. It's access to some of the Internet. If an ISP wants to advertise Internet access, the contract needs to offer Internet access.
Good luck defining typical geek server usage without an enforceable TOS.
Including both the upstream and the downstream in the quoted monthly cap would suffice.
I've only heard one good argument about why net neutrality should be enforced by law, and that's [last mile] monopolies. That argument actually makes sense. But if that's your position, then you don't want the FCC involved, you want the FTC.
So your complaint is that the FTC has chosen to delegate enforcement of competition law on communications providers to the Federal Communications Commission.
CronoCloud told me you're supposed to move, get a job with an established developer, work at it for a few years, and then start your own company that can afford to lease a dedicated server.
Or in the real world, just lease a VPS to run your game server. Or make your game single-player. Or make your game use same-screen multiplayer with multiple gamepads plugged into one PC or one OUYA console.
Thanks for the heads up.
You know, it took a while before Mr. Ford figured out just what the automobile industry needed to progress. I still hold that usage-based prioritization is the way to go, but it is sadly comforting to know that there are pioneers out there trying to make it work. (or were... Hopefully there still are.)
100GB and 101GB are not significantly different in terms of what the ISP pays, but is significantly different in how they charge. That's abusive. I know that you're right in the point that you're making, but the way that argument is usually used is a very bad excuse to penalize legitimate usage.
Even assuming the upstream problem is intractable (I have my doubts), they ought to charge upstream cost + <2% for going over quota. I can't figure out how they can rationalize otherwise. These punitive fees are not excusable.
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
You guys expect so much for your money, We in India consider ourselves lucky if we could get the service.
Do Know Evil.
QoS is more expensive to implement than adding bandwidth in most cases. If you're going to offer artificially limited services, data-caps are the way to go.
Anything's more expensive than offering good service. Your point is?
Most carrier grade equipment already does some form of QoS. Yeah, they'll need to insert custom code somewhere and that will cost R&D, but chances are most large ISPs won't need new hardware.
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
Addendum: if a large ISP needs to replace equipment to gain packet prioritization, chances are they already need to replace their ancient equipment!
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.