Google Fiber Partially Reverses Server Ban

Lirodon writes "After being called out by the Electronic Frontier Foundation for banning the loosely-defined use of "servers" on its Fiber service, Google appears to have changed its tune, and now allows 'personal, non-commercial use of servers that complies with this AUP is acceptable, including using virtual private networks (VPN) to access services in your home and using hardware or applications that include server capabilities for uses like multi-player gaming, video-conferencing, and home security.'"

Comments

server ban?

[KraxxxZ01]

There was a server ban? What for?

Re:server ban?

[Anonymous Coward]

Same as most ISPs have and for the same reason. The big difference was google did a lot of fighting specifically against that kinda thing.

Haven't actually read the new TOS, but from summary this sounds reasonable enough.

Realistically this is usually how this ends up actually working with most ISPs anyway. I've yet to hear of an ISP cutting off someones connection for running a minecraft server.

It still contrasts the "bit are bits" argument, but my pragmatic side is willing to accept that we may need an artificial tier in there to keep prices low for non-business users.

Re:server ban?

[gl4ss]

so they can sell business access at more expensive price. you didn't seriously think that they were just acting as a dumb pipe providing you bandwidth to use as you see fit?

though nowadays when actual definitions between server and client can be a bit murky it's a bit finicky. playing certain games online? well, you may or you may not be a server..

another reason is that they can cut off people who actually use the bandwidth, just because they advertise xx MB/s doesn't really mean they're prepared to provide it. if they had a hard limit on transfers they would need to divulge you with that information and then you would know what you're buying. much better when it's all murky and the customers have to keep second guessing.

Re:server ban?

[Mr D from 63]

I think server bans started back when everyone and his brother starting hosting porn sites and killing what used to be very limited bandwidth. Not as big a problem these days, but I can see why there needs to be some limitation. Otherwise they might need to start charging for usage.

OTOH, if you do host a web page, I bet Google will have no problem indexing i, and showing Ads along side search result hits......

Re:server ban?

[SirGarlon]

I've yet to hear of an ISP cutting off someones connection for running a minecraft server.

Maybe so, but Comcast cut off my friend for running a low-volume mail server. The definition of "server" is intentionally left vague in the TOS. That allows the ISPs to single out users for any reason they want, without having to be specific or consistent.

Re:server ban?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

It still contrasts the "bit are bits" argument, but my pragmatic side is willing to accept that we may need an artificial tier in there to keep prices low for non-business users.

I don't. Google's wholesale cost for ip transit is probably around $6 per terabyte - wholesale cost was about $12 a year ago and its been falling by 50% for the last 4-5 years.

If they are worried about losing money, then set a threshold like 5TB/month and then start charging wholesale plus minimum necessary mark-up for anything over that.

Re:server ban?

[Vanderhoth]

It was probably thrown in by lawyers that don't know the difference between a web server and a file server. My ISP has a similar clause, that I mostly ignore. My wife and I don't generate enough traffic to my home servers to even make a blip. What the ISPs are concerned with are people having commercial servers generating massive amounts of traffic and money, but the people running the servers are paying the residential rate instead of the much more expensive commercial rates. Essentially the ISP wants a cut of any money someone could be generating from a home server for the use of the extra bandwidth (that wouldn't be allocated otherwise).

Re:server ban?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is actually fairly standard for ISPs. There are several reasons why an ISP would want to do this, off the top of my head:

* Commercial service - They want to force people to pay for the use of the line to host servers. Just what is a "server" under this would vary, especially since many programs we would think of as "clients" have some server functionality (e.g. listening for incoming TCP/IP connections).
* Bandwidth control - This goes under the assumption that any server will be problematic for bandwidth. This is worse on most consumer-grade networks which are optimized for download, and not upload, as servers inherently tend to upload a lot. I don't know if this would apply to Google's network, though, at least not in the same way it would as, say, a cable or DSL broadband setup.
* Security - Google may not want to have to deal with people screaming how their life savings were hacked because they stuck all their passwords on a half-assed Linux box with no password that was on their home network in the DMZ. This also has some implications for network bandwidth and resources, e.g. computers being turned into botnet nodes (which is bad enough without people having their own servers up).
* Liability - This one is more iffy because of things like the DMCA safe harbor provision, but the prospect that they might get sued or have to deal with criminal proceedings due to somebody running illegal services off of their network resources (e.g. someone decides to build the next Silk Road and does it off of Google's network). While they would likely be absolved if they complied with the law, such as shutting off access when legally compelled to, they might not want to have to deal with the legal hassles and costs that would come with it.

Now, I can't speak to Google's motives as I haven't been paying much attention to their fiber service, nor have I heard about this before. However, it's conceivable that any or all of these reasons may well apply. However, one of the advantages of having such ridiculously high bandwidth is the ability to put up your own server for just about anything - web server, FTP, MUD, game server, IRC, VPN - you name it. Since the ISP would rather everyone just use their connection for downloading, they get uppity when people try to take full advantage of the service. This is, however, getting harder over time, as more people learn the utility of having their own server functionality available, and are promptly pissed off that they can't do it and also refuse to pay extra.

For my own opinion, I think so long as you're not messing up the network for others and you don't blame Google if the cows get stolen because you left the barn door open, you should be able to run a server if you'd like.

Feel free to correct me on this as my CS degrees have gathered quite a bit of dust.

Re:server ban?

[CastrTroy]

I often wonder why anybody would want to run a commercial business venture off a home connection. With all the other options out there, like shared hosting, VPS, cloud servers, rented private servers, and renting racks in a proper datacenter, I wonder if there is even a point where somebody thinks it would be a good idea to host a commercial server out of their house. Sure people used to do it back in the earlier days of the internet, but currently I can't see any reason why somebody would want to do this.

Re:server ban?

[Anonymous Coward]

You sound like you don't know what you are talking about because wholesale suppliers typically charge per the amount of bandwidth available, not the amount actually downloaded. For example a 1Mbps link of UNCONTENDED bandwidth might cost $400 per month, regardless of whether it is utilised or not. It is then up to the ISP to share it among all their customers at a ratio that is not noticeable slow. To Limit the link from being saturated by all customers using it at once they put in certain restrictions designed to reduce usage such as download and/or upload quotas, P2P throttling or business server use, unless they pay more to reflect that more usage would cost them more in backhaul so that other users are not bought down.

The technology they provide could very easily support a high-bandwidth server that pulls a constant 1Mbps+ in network utilisation, and Google would need to increase their backhaul by that 1Mbps+ so that other users are not affected, because nobody else can use that 1Mbps while that connection is being sustained.

Re:server ban?

[w1zz4]

As a Network Security architect in a big ISP, I can tell you that one of the biggest threat to network security is all those compromised servers installed by anyone who can read a random howto on the internet...

Re:server ban?

[Anonymous Coward]

ISP peering agreements meant that you make money on data that ends up on your network and pay up for data going to another network

having users run a server when they bought a service sold as downloading data meant that you would pay too much to other network operators to send data to them

Re:server ban?

[afidel]

Why would you host a server at home? It's much cheaper to go colo as you'll pay significantly less per Mbps (Google fiber is an exception to this, every other home broadband option is several times more per Mbps). No it's so they can charge you "business" rates if you're doing anything but being a consumption bot.

Re:server ban?

[MozeeToby]

It's just boilerplate legal speak put into the contracts. It was never meant to ban what they are explicitly excluding now, it was just put in to differentiated between commercial and residential service. They wanted a line in the contract to throw at you if you abused to the service for commercial use, so far as I know no one was ever booted by their ISP for running a VPN or hosting a multi-player game (though occasionally their networks settings made it difficult to do things).

Re:server ban?

[Arker]

It's not "nowadays" it was baked into the internet from day one. It's a peer-to-peer network where it's expected that a node may appear as a server in one context and a client in the next. These clauses are only written into ISP contracts with an eye to forcing residential customers who generate 'too much' traffic to pay more for business, but once that tool is there in the contract it's only a matter of time before it is used more generally. And it makes no sense. They should just define specifically what the limits of the service is instead of writing in nebulous language about servers that could mean anything a lawyer wants them to mean.

Re:server ban?

[PopeRatzo]

They should just define specifically what the limits of the service is instead of writing in nebulous language about servers that could mean anything a lawyer wants them to mean.

That right there is the whole thing in a nutshell.

On the other hand, I'm a little bit sympathetic to "make the thing first, then work out the details" because if I had to hammer out every detail, every contingency of the things I do before I do them, I'd never get anything done.

However, when you get the size of Google and have that much of a bigfoot-effect from everything you do, there is a fairly substantial responsibility to define parameters. Because other people depend on you.

Re:server ban?

[shaitand]

"suppliers typically charge per the amount of bandwidth available, not the amount actually downloaded"

Yes.

"For example a 1Mbps link of UNCONTENDED bandwidth might cost $400 per month, regardless of whether it is utilised or not."

On average it is more like $5/MB, for Google much much much less. You could manage to pay $400 for 2MB if you were at the absolute bottom of the purchasing scale.

Re:server ban?

[Anonymous Coward]

On the other hand, I'm a little bit sympathetic to "make the thing first, then work out the details" because if I had to hammer out every detail, every contingency of the things I do before I do them, I'd never get anything done.

In this case, working out every detail could be done as simple as "25 Mbit", rather than "100 Mbit, but no servers, no torrents, no downloads, no anything that might get you near 100 Mbit".

Re:server ban?

[mic0e]

Do you have reliable sources for that number?

Re:server ban?

[Anonymous Coward]

The bandwidth is asymmetrical for most cable modems; typically the return spectrum for a CATV system is 5-40 MHz (with anything below about 12 MHz being basically unusable) and the downstream spectrum is much larger from 54 MHz to 1 GHz. This is the reason that servers are frowned upon from your local ISP.

Re:server ban?

[Vanderhoth]

I often wonder why anybody would want to run a commercial business venture off a home connection.

Probably not intentionally. I have a friend that started up a small consulting business in his spare time. He initially just used a FTP server to provide completed project files to his very small customer base (it started off as 3 people). After about six years he's pretty well doing his consulting full time, he had to hire on someone to help out with paper work and data entry and is now looking at having a commercial server since he's dealing with nearly a hundred clients. It's still not a big start up, but he's realized the number of files he serves has grown exponentially to the number of clients/projects he's taken on and is starting to feel the growing pains. All he needs now is for the ISP to step in and cut off his connection because he's using a server, so he's shopping around at the moment for a better option.

Re:server ban?

[JanneM]

Many reasons. You may want to have a web cam, temperature station or other local data source connected to the net*. You may want to host a game server. A number of applications effectively act as servers even though they're really just applications in practice.

And at least where I am, you never pay per Mb for wired internet. I just pay an extra $10 (or thereabouts) per month to get a fixed IP address from my provider, and I can use it for anything non-commercial.

* Why? For fun.

Re:server ban?

[Anonymous Coward]

And here I thought the biggest threat was the ISP's themselves.

Revealed: How US and UK Spy Agencies Defeat Internet Privacy and Security

The agencies, the documents reveal, have adopted a battery of methods in their systematic and ongoing assault on what they see as one of the biggest threats to their ability to access huge swathes of internet traffic – "the use of ubiquitous encryption across the internet".

Those methods include covert measures to ensure NSA control over setting of international encryption standards, the use of supercomputers to break encryption with "brute force", and – the most closely guarded secret of all – collaboration with technology companies and internet service providers themselves.

Re:server ban?

[segedunum]

Because Google don't want you running your own services. They want to you to be using their e-mail and other services. Giving people all that bandwidth and allowing them to run what they like on their own negates their business model.

Re:server ban?

[Anonymous Coward]

There was a server ban? What for?

Yes and No.
Yes, in that saying "No servers" is standard for any residential TOS from any ISP.
No, in that almost nobody actually enforces the ban on "servers" for things like VPN's, remote access, personal "servers" for things like playing games, and other small-scale things which could still be called a "server".
Yes, in that you can't run any kind of commercial-grade type server, business use server, etc.

Kudos to Google for actually changing the language of the TOS, instead of relying on a "gentleman's agreement" like most ISP's do.

Re:server ban?

[Anonymous Coward]

Transit is not calculated in data, but in 95th percentile burst of mbits, but your number is "close" for most Tier2/3 Customers. Whole sale transit is about $0.60/mbit. If you want to peer at a local IX, you can purchase a 100gb/s port for about $5k/month, plus your own cost to get fiber to the IX and your own equipment at the IX and the colo for your equipment. That's about 61petabytes of data per month that could be transferred over a $5k port, assuming maxed 24/7. That never happens.

Re:server ban?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you have reliable sources for that number?

No he doesn't, because there are no reliable sources. Any time you go out to purchase bandwidth you sit down and talk to a sales rep from the company who you're looking to buy from, you tell them what you're looking for, when, and where, and they prepare a quote for you.
The actual cost of the bandwidth varies a LOT, based on a wide variety of factors. What's the physical distance between endpoints? Are you buying dark fiber? An ethernet circuit? A wave circuit? Do you want protection? What kind of uptime/SLA do you require? Perhaps you're buying more than one circuit, if so maybe you're asking for each to have a diverse path. Are you picking these up at co-location facilities, or do you need them run all the way out to a data center? Are you adding to an existing bundle, or is this all completely new? How long of a contract term do you want?
The sales rep takes all that, looks at how much bandwidth they have to sell, looks at their upcoming plans for adding their own capacity, looks at competition, and gives you a number.

I've seen a single copper T1 go for twice what an OC-192 sold for, due to differences in SLA, geography, distance, and contract length. Anybody who tries to just tell you that fiber costs "$X" is either bullshitting you or simply doesn't know what they're talking about.

Re:server ban?

[noh8rz10]

no, they're acting as a dumb pipe so you can use bandwidth for more youtube and gmail and all that other stuff. also, instead of just recording your actions on some websites, they can record your actions 24x7 and link it to a real person, not just an online profile. profit!

Re:server ban?

[Anonymous Coward]

I often wonder why anybody would want to run a commercial business venture off a home connection.

People are cheapskates.

Re:server ban?

[hairyfeet]

While I don't know if it was for the same reason everywhere I was helping out at an ISP when the first server bans were instituted and the reason they did it was guys were running Quake and other FPS servers and pretty much killing the bandwidth for everybody. If they ran a popular game server even when they were down it was getting pings up the ying yang from guys trying to hook up and the infrastructure, at least where I was at, simply couldn't handle it.

Re:server ban?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because 10TB of storage at home is affordable and 10TB in a colo is not. If I was starting to build a server, I would rather start with a $120 desktop case than a $900 rack case.

Re:server ban?

[Anonymous Coward]

Technical blah blah blah, the upstream to downstream ratios enforced via caps with every cable ISP I've ever seen don't reflect the technical limitations of the network. Modern DOCSIS 3 modems are only slightly asymetric yet the ISPs sell plans like 100/5 because the idea that any old user can start running their own private youtube scares the crap out of the content industry.

Re:server ban?

[Anonymous Coward]

often wonder why anybody would want to run a commercial business venture off a home connection. With all the other options out there, like shared hosting, VPS, cloud servers, rented private servers, and renting racks in a proper datacenter,

Price out how much it would cost you with any of those options if you filled a 1Gbit pipe 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for a month. Heck, just compare it with a fairly common 30/10 internet plan.

What you will find is that those companies stay in business by charging you out the ass for bandwidth (or storage capacity/etc) that often costs them very little to provide due to peering arrangements.

Plus, many of the shared services have horrible response times for databases or what not because they are so oversubscribed. I moved the database off an inexpensive shared hosting provider to a guruplug running at my house a couple years ago just to see what the performance improvement was going to be. The database was a whopping 8MB, and got something 10-15 queries in quick succession once every few hours. Running on the shared hosting, the initial couple queries were taking upwards of 5-20 seconds to complete causing the web page to load very slowly. Running on my home machine the whole thing happened in under 50ms. The whole site was so low traffic I could have hosted it at my house rather than paying the $10 a month or so it cost to run on the shared hosting site and the performance would have been much better.

Re:server ban?

[swb]

There's lots of reasons not to -- power, network connectivity, etc.

I suspect that actual commercial server hosting happens by accident, a small consulting or partnership that just needs basic access to get off the ground (FTP, test web site, etc) and it just grows from there.

Although considering I pay $79 per month for Comcast business class internet with unlimited throughput, I don't think there is any colo option cheaper than that that's not a grossly oversubscribed low-budget VPS.

Re:server ban?

[Anonymous Coward]

Billions of spam messages are sent through insecure mail servers run by idiots on residential connections. I'm glad it got shut down.

Re:server ban?

[msauve]

Server/client is an arbitrary distinction. For example: An X "server" is the keyboard/mouse/display, and the "client" is the application. Exactly the opposite is where a web browser is a "client" talking to a web "server."

Re:server ban?

[Anonymous Coward]

There was a server ban? What for?

A network cable has finite bandwidth. If your neighbour runs a business with high-bandwidth servers, your gaming is going to lag. Your ISP could build separate pipes for everyone on your street, but then you would end up paying a lot more just to get away from your neighbour's traffic. Or your ISP could build a fatter shared pipe, again you ending up paying for your neighbour.

It is cheaper for you if everyone on your street agrees not to run high-bandwidth business on your residential network, because then you can all share a more reasonably specced and priced connection. If your neighbour wants high-bandwidth servers, he buys a separate connection, and the bill goes to him, not you.

The problem isn't servers per se, but how do you draw the line between a personal game server and a high bandwidth server. The line has to be able to stand in court, when your neighbour sues the ISP for throttling his business.

Re:server ban?

[omnichad]

Kind of pointless these days to run a mail server on a consumer connection anyway. No major email delivery system trusts IP's that are known to be dynamically assigned (easily determined by reverse DNS patterns).

Re:server ban?

[Anonymous Coward]

The "unlimited" bandwidth isn't really unlimited. It's unlimited until you try to actually use it for one of these revolutionary new purposes for which it's touted. When you do that, you're by definition 0.1%, so you're "abusing," and they cut you off.

People should stop demanding unlimited bandwidth. It's better to have an explicitly stated cap, a price for overages that's fair (ie, it shouldn't be cheaper to buy a second connection with a second cap when you go over your first one), and then should be purely neutral, allowing anything, even hosting porn. I hope people would do more interesting things with it than host porn, but as Chomsky says, you're either in favour of freedom of speech for views you oppose, or you're not in favour of freedom of speech. It should not be the ISP's business what people do with their connections. It shouldn't even be their business whether the use is "commercial" or not. It should not be possible for them to discriminate in price based on the content of your communications, full stop.

The FCC, both enforcement and "broadband plans," have really failed us here.

I also had high hopes for Google since they have so many supposedly-empowered hard-core geeks working for them, but it seems the geeks are not in charge any more. They're acting more like wal-mart, cynically pandering to hopeless masses.

Re:server ban?

[Anonymous Coward]

Retail just crossed $1/mbit assuming at least 10gb and is closer to $0.60/mbit at wholesale(think Netflix). Projected to be about $0.4/mbit next year and $0.2/mbit in 2 years. That's for transit. Once you include peering and CDNs, the price drops a lot. Transit is about routing around the world, peering and CDNs is about better efficiency and data locality.

About 50% of current bandwidth consumed is Netflix, YouTube, and FaceBook. You can peer with any of them for free, ignoring infrastructure costs. The main point of peering is that total costs are less than transit for both peers.

Re:server ban?

[Anonymous Coward]

what the fuck? Where are you getting $400/mbit? Put down the crack pipe. Reasonable prices four years ago were like $3/mbit with 1gbit/s commit (meaning you pay at least $3k/mo) from level3. And that's transit, ie the "send to eyeballs" price. The price for eyeballs to receive is lower.

Please, back up these numbers. Maybe 1gbit/s "for real" does cost more than gfiber, but people are throwing around some crazy prices here.

$6/tbit also seems crazy. Please state what company quoted the price, when, and what the whole deal is. I don't think "uncontended" is a term of this art. It is just made-up speculation on your part, no? "Cogent" is a term of art, since they are (or used to be) somewhat shitty. I realize I didn't state all these things myself, but I'm just saying you're clearly definitely crazy. I don't have info that meets my own standards. And please be clear whether you mean bits or bytes, since we're talking about consumer stuff here, and they're accustomed to tools that read in "K per second" and such.

Re:server ban?

[cusco]

Cost, convenience and inertia. Most small businessmen, once they've learned a procedure and are comfortable with it, have no interest in learning an entirely different (and more expensive and less convenient) way of doing the same thing. What they have works, and they're busy running their remodeling or dry cleaning business. Why would they want to change?

Re:server ban?

[KPU]

Some of us run servers that receive mail.

Re:server ban?

[Obfuscant]

so far as I know no one was ever booted by their ISP for running a VPN or hosting a multi-player game (though occasionally their networks settings made it difficult to do things).

The second reason for a written ban was so that when you complained that their network settings were making it difficult to run your multi-player game server, they could say "you aren't supposed to be doing that" and they could ignore you, instead of waste, I means expend, engineer time fixing it.

Re:server ban?

[omnichad]

As I used to. My previous ISP blocked port 25 outbound which is fine, since there were so many spam bots out there. My current one is blocking port 25 inbound, which is just plain pointless. Thankfully, Google Apps were still free and I'm using them as a glorified port redirector.

You were saying low-volume and you have no control over inbound - so I made the likely assumption. Of course technically outbound email is a client connection, but most of that's usually done by MTA servers acting as clients and the email clients are connecting via a non-standard port anyway.

Re:server ban?

[Guspaz]

Google likely pays far less than $0.60 megabit on average, because they're handling large amounts of traffic through public and private peering arrangements. They've got their own fibre to get data to the appropriate public IX. For example, all my traffic to/from Google goes through TorIX, regardless of if I'm talking to a Google service or a Google Fibre customer. Many of the local server and colocation providers are also connected to TorIX or QIX.

Re:server ban?

[chihowa]

Most people running mail servers at home use their ISP's SMTP servers to send outgoing mail while receiving mail directly. This lets the ISP watch for (and control) spammy customers while still allowing the customers to manage everything else themselves.

Comcast has recently been cracking down on residential customers that do this, even if there is no spam involved. In many regions, they've started blocking inbound port 25, which has nothing to do with blocking spam.

Re:server ban?

[hobarrera]

Fine? How do you send emails with a blocked port 25? Some server don't support TLS, so you can't use 587, you need to stick to plain-text/port 25.

Re:server ban?

[shaitand]

I think you meant to reply to the guy above me.

I assume it was a reference to the price of a T1 link... which isn't really relevant when we are talking about Google... or anyone else really in the modern age. A small branch that would have once used a T1 is better off using the local broadband connection. Get the telco flavor plus the cable flavor if you are that worried about availability.

Re:server ban?

[sjames]

It's more a way to make residential users think they're getting a lot more than they really are and pursing 'value based*' pricing.

Specifically, offer unlimited with big speed ratings knowing very well that the whole thing will come crashing down if they actually (god forbid) use even a fraction of what is offered.

Then ban anything that might actually cause a user to use a significant amount of what they have paid for. At the time it started, that was servers. As long as they didn't have a server, they would remain low use.

* NOTE: in a healthy market, value based pricing is impossible to maintain. Market forces will drive the price down to the marginal cost of production. The only place for 'value' in that computation is that if the value is below the cost of production, the product/service won't be produced at all. Further note that this implies that a great many markets are unhealthy these days.

Re:server ban?

[Anonymous Coward]

My ISP went with Point-to-Point fiber because when rolling a new network, P2P is nearly identical in cost to a passive network, plus it's easier to maintain. Google uses a hybrid network, with WDM-GPON, which gives each customer a dedicated 1.25gb/s of symmetrical bandwidth back to their trunk.

A network cable has finite bandwidth

Around 50tb/s and since dedicated FTTH is about the same cost as non-dedicated, everyone gets 50tb/s links! We'll have to settle with 1gb for now because of optics costs.

Since dedicated bandwidth from the ISP to the customer is the same price, what's your next excuse? Sonic.Net started a $40/m 1000/100 unlimited business connection. Once you exclude enterprise style SLAs, the cost is dirt cheap. Not everyone needs 99.999% uptime, multi-homing, and 1hr responses with a 24/7 direct contact number with no wait time, just because they want a dedicated line. The line itself and the bandwidth is cheap, it everything else that's expensive. Cut away all the fat, and you're left with 1000/100 business connections for $40.

I'm sure the bulk of Sonic.Net's bandwidth usage comes from residential users from 8pm-11pm. So their transit is probably nearly free during all other hours of the day. Most businesses technically operate on off-peak hours.

Re:server ban?

[aztracker1]

It's more that people have more need for download capacity than upload capacity, and there are so many channels that can be bound to. Though a modem could technically be setup with more upstream... Youtube, Netflix, Hulu and the like as down streams far outweigh typical upstream requirements. Also, what's so horrible about having some market segmentation between commercial and residential services. I happen to have both a commercial and residential service setup in my home.. my servers are on the business connection with a routed /28 block. Internally, I have a dual network on the same routers, so I just bind an internal IP and external on the servers, and have the firewall allow different relay rules from the non-commercial systems.

Re:server ban?

[sjames]

Same deal for DSL.

Re:server ban?

[sjames]

That's what happens with overcommits in the hundreds to one.

Re:server ban?

[Megane]

You set up your mail server to send it out via your ISP's outbound mail server. It sees that you are from an "inside" address and happily sends it on.

Re:server ban?

[omnichad]

Except now many ISP's won't even relay mail that isn't from the ISP domain.

Re:server ban?

[omnichad]

A lot of servers will even do plain text over 587 and 80 and 8080 and 2525.

Re:server ban?

[sjames]

Actually, since it's the rate that causes congestion, it should be sold by rate.

Even better, it should use a fair queue where each user is allocated a committed rate (however small) with some reasonable burst and the ability to borrow unused bandwidth fairly.

The ISPs don't want to do that because the effective committed rate (what they could provide if everyone was trying to max out at once) is embarrassingly tiny. Also because then there would be a meaningful number that potential customers could judge them against and that might actually lead to competition (something these paper capitalists HATE) AND to top it all off, there would be no opportunity to stick people with surprise bills for overage or to dump less profitable customers (read, anyone who actually intends to use what is offered).

In the end, I suspect that Google's efforts come down to a threat against ISPs that want to double dip by charging Google a fee to carry traffic to them even though their customers have already paid for that traffic several times over. Specifically "shut up or we'll have a sale on internet connections and you won't have any customers".

Re:server ban?

[sjames]

I have no idea where you are, but here, even in small quantities it's in the $10-$20 per Mbps and falls fast as quantity goes up.

There is typically a loop charge if you can't meet the provider in their facility, but Google owns fiber everywhere.

Re:server ban?

[shaitand]

The $400/month reference I was responding to had to be referring to a T1 link? A T1 is a lot more than $20/month.

Re:server ban?

[wagnerrp]

So when your upstream can only carry 75% the throughput per channel as downstream, and you only have seven channels of upstream versus several dozen downstream (after video gets the bulk of the channels), that ratio does not reflect the actual behavior of the network?

Re:server ban?

[sjames]

For small business, it would make a huge amount of sense. Server down at three A.M. Would you rather stay up and fix it in your living room or trudge to the colo facility.?

Would you rather rent expensive rack space or use an unoccupied room in your house for free? Buy rackmount gear or put your old tower to use?

Some people need a server but don't have the need (or delusion of need) for 27000 nines uptime.

Re:server ban?

[sjames]

I would think rickety old XP boxes run by the clueless would be at least as much of a problem.

Re:server ban?

[sjames]

A T1 is irrelevant for an ISP these days. Nobody uses them for that. The $400 is mostly loop charges and those are irrelevant when you already own fiber to the IX.

But I meant to respond to the AC above.

Re:server ban?

[bill_mcgonigle]

For one, seizure of data meets a much higher standard. Then, try comparing the cost of storage vs. cloud rental and the cost of home-hosting vs. data-center hosting.

If you don't need a fat pipe and do need lots of storage, hiring it out is expensive. If you care about privacy, it's hideously expensive.

Re:server ban?

[bill_mcgonigle]

Maybe so, but Comcast cut off my friend for running a low-volume mail server.

If you're on Comcast, get a business connection. Then they help you and don't complain. Yes, it's slightly more expensive, but only slightly.

Re:server ban?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Do you have reliable sources for that number?

http://www.dslprime.com/dslprime/42-d/4830-internet-transit-costs-down-50-in-last-year

I did the math to convert units from the way ip transit is priced to the way most isp users think about it.

Re:server ban?

[KingMotley]

Yeah. I vote we fix that. Everyone should pay 100x what they are now, and we'll get that fixed right up. Where can I send your new bill to?

Re:server ban?

[Anonymous Coward]

The IRS, since that's where we already sent the money for the taxpayer-funded communications infrastructure.

Re:server ban?

[sjames]

First tell me what the ACTUAL offer is and we'll let the market decide who gets to send me a bill. Be sure to implement a proper queueing system so we can both be sure you're giving me what you offer.

But note that municipal internet has already proven that I can get twice as much for half the price while you still turn a profit so if you want to be in the running, your pricing should reflect that.

Be sure to deduct the big fat subsidies you already got for building out infrastructure.

Re:server ban?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want a constant gigabit with unlimited bandwidth you'd better fork over the big bucks and get a service level agreement. Do you actually think that google is entitled to give you a datacenter grade internet connection for $70/mo?

Re:server ban?

[sjames]

If they want to, I won't stand in their way, so I supposed they are entitled to :-)

What If I just want 5 or 10 megs? I'm not trying to be the new youtube here. Make it 20 and I'll fork over an extra $100/month for it.

Re:server ban?

[w1zz4]

Nope, easier to spam or host phishing website on an insecure server than create one with a trojan horse...

Re:server ban?

[sjames]

Not anymore. Those are offered now as canned exploit kits for a low low price.

Re:server ban?

[hobarrera]

Some ISPs. Others charge for email hosting and SMTP services.

Re:server ban?

[AlphaWolf_HK]

Why would they target Quake servers? They don't really use that much bandwidth, especially the first quake which actually worked fine for players using 28.8k dialup modems. Modern FPS are higher than that, but not by much. You could easily run a 20 player server on a T1 link, and remember that is about 1.544mbit, and even have bandwidth to spare. With modern FPS games, the bottleneck tends to be the CPU of the machine that is hosting the game.

Game servers tend to be on the low end when it comes to traffic demands. Now FTP or web servers on the other hand can get much worse, depending on what they host and how many users they get, but even for low volume they have the potential of being a lot more bursty.

I'd say more than anything, I'd be concerned about torrent users. Or at least, ones like me anyways - I do at least 700GB of data per month just on torrents alone. Then again, my seeding policies are a lot more generous than most people I imagine (torrent must seed a minimum of 3:1 ratio, or be inactive for at least 72 hours.)

Re:server ban?

[Cyberdyne]

There was a server ban? What for?

Backdoor way of limiting bandwidth usage. On TCP/IP, really a "server" is just the one that sends SYN|ACK packets in response to SYN packets, rather than sending out SYNs - but ISPs latched on to "no servers" as a more marketable way to kick heavy users off without being honest about usage limits.

With cable, downstream bandwidth is more abundant and more efficient (the upstream channel is vulnerable to collisions, since there are multiple senders on a channel) so heavy upload usage can actually be a problem to some extent. On ADSL and its derivatives, though, it's only your own link you're filling up with upstream traffic: the backhaul connections are invariably symmetric, so those gigabit+ links between you and the ISP are only full up in the other direction.

I switched back in 2012 from "unlimited" (but no servers, dynamic IP, ports blocked, sending nastygrams to anyone using "too much" of the "unlimited" bandwidth) to an ISP with actual explicit usage charges (and a small routed subnet with no ports blocked). As long as it's legal I can do what I want: mail servers, web servers, the lot - I just have to pay a bit more if I download more. (It's download traffic that matters to them: upstream, there's bandwidth to spare, because the links are symmetric.) I hated the idea of usage-based charging - but I hate all the other restrictions more; at about $0.30 per Gb, it's low enough not to bother me as much as "unlimited, but use it too much and we cut you off".

So much...

[Anonymous Coward]

...for network neutrality.

Re:So much...

[Luthair]

This isn't anything to do with network neutrality, they aren't restricting access to different services.

Re:So much...

[sjames]

yes, they are, RTFA. They are restricting commercial servers. Type of use is part of network neutrality. In true network neutrality, a packet is a packet without regard to protocol or purpose.

Re:So much...

[Anonymous Coward]

yes, they are, RTFA. They are restricting commercial servers. Type of use is part of network neutrality. In true network neutrality, a packet is a packet without regard to protocol or purpose.

"sjames" appears to be a fringe personality to which the British would gladly say, "Bugger off".

Re:So much...

[sjames]

You mean someone who actually knows what something is? I can see why that could be terribly inconvenient to politicians and marketers.

i got a question

[etash]

but does google offer google fiber for businesses for those who want to host their own servers ? Or the only service they offer is for home users ?

Re:i got a question

[elashish14]

No.

http://googlefiberblog.blogspot.com/2013/10/some-clarification-for-small-businesses.html

Re:i got a question

[bill_mcgonigle]

Glad to see Google is subsidizing the office costs for large corporations before helping entrepreneurs gain some economic advantage.

OMFG This is Huge

[Anonymous Coward]

Google has officially reversed a rarely ever enforced and rather inconsequential AUP rule against "servers". They still ban what most people refer to as servers, websites and FTP servers serving hundreds/thousands/millions of people. But, they don;t bring the ban hammer for you port forwarding the web server of your IP camera or your personal email server.

Guess what, hardly any other ISP ever enforced the bans against those servers either, despite the AUP ban.

Looks like its going to be a rather meta news day.

port 80

[Anonymous Coward]

Are they going to block/slow incoming port 80 or any other ports?

Seems Reasonable

[Anonymous Coward]

They are doing what every other ISP does. Overselling. There isn't anything wrong with that in and of itself, though obviously you want to avoid congestion as much as possible, so don't oversell too much.

The problem is that the prices they are charging are insanely low. They don't want people running datacenters in their home. Supplying a gigabit network that is even remotely close to saturated is a very expensive task. A person running a small game server or some such for his friends is not going to use up a ridiculous amount of bandwidth. Certainly no more than the guy torrenting 1080p rips of every TV show in the past 10 years. However a person running a website hosting company out of his garage is go chew through multiple terrabytes per day.

Re:Seems Reasonable

[StripedCow]

Sigh. I want to pay just for what I use, just like in the old days. To hell with these complicated terms and conditions which are only fair to google.

Re:Seems Reasonable

[Skapare]

This has nothing to do with running a server. It's all about bandwidth and nothing but bandwidth. They are giving you gigabit as a PEAK capability, not as a continuous rate. What they should do is specify the limits of their service in those terms like the maximum amount of data you can transfer in one second, one minute, one hour, one day, etc.

The reality is, most people will be downloading. That means most of the usage is in one direction. They will have plenty of capacity in the other direction.

Re:Seems Reasonable

[Anonymous Coward]

I would argue that it's more the type of users. You can break customers mostly into two groups, Enterprise services and not. Anyone running a commercial grade server will likely consume huge portions of bandwidth, Small businesses and home users don't typically.

Kind of like an insurance company looking at people who smoke or don't smoke. Yes, some non-smokers will get lung cancer, but you just eat the cost, but when someone smokes, then you charge them more because they are in a completely different risk category.

Sonic.Net has this same stance. They claim to have a few home users that use most of their 1gb connection 24/7, but they don't care because those kinds of users crop up in a large enough population.

Re:Seems Reasonable

[Salgat]

Then buy a t1 line which guarantees up/down bandwidth with 99.9% uptime. There is a reason you are paying $300/month for that guarantee.

Re:Seems Reasonable

[Anonymous Coward]

Kind of like saying: Want to jog on the sidewalk for more than 30min/day when the average person only uses the sidewalk 30sec per day, buy your own city. Just because I use the sidewalk more than others, doesn't mean I should have to buy my own city because of undue wear and tear. Just give me the $10 bill it costs for my extra usage.

Re:Seems Reasonable

[Anonymous Coward]

99.9% uptime is horrible. That allows for 43.3 minutes of downtime per month. I've had 0 minutes of downtime, based on my 24/7 ping to Youtube and Google, in the past 6 months. Even when I had cable, instead of my current dedicated fiber, I would only have about 1 hour of downtime every 2 months, which is still better than 99.9%. On cable, I did have periodic issues with congestion, like limited bandwidth or jitter or high pings, but dedicated fiber on a new ISP fixed all of that.

My residential dedicated fiber has better ping and up-time characteristics than my companies enterprise 10gb dedicated fiber through Charter.

Happy to see this, for two reasons

[C0C0C0]

Of course, I'm glad to see the policy nixed (like I'll ever get Google fiber), but I think it's rare we give companies props for reversing decisions we've nuked them for. So, go Google. Way not to be evil.

Re:Happy to see this, for two reasons

[HideyoshiJP]

It's more than them not being evil. Their original stance is exactly the same as most ISPs: no servers on home accounts. While these are rarely enforced, allowing most game (i.e. Minecraft) servers and the like, it is still the policy of any ISP I've dealt with. Google has done a good thing by allowing these personal use servers. Sadly, they're not likely to reduce the amount of traffic sniffing.

Re:Happy to see this, for two reasons

[interkin3tic]

Lets move away from the silly evil / not evil. It's a good motto, it's good to try to not be evil, but in judging the actions of people or companies, declaring whether things are good or evil is simplistic and useless. It's clear that google fiber is better than most of the options that currently exist for most people, but it's clear that it's not perfect compared to how good it could be while still making a healthy profit. I think that's about as simple a statement as one can make.

Re:Happy to see this, for two reasons

[swillden]

Sadly, they're not likely to reduce the amount of traffic sniffing.

Google Fiber doesn't sniff traffic.

Re:Happy to see this, for two reasons

[Anonymous Coward]

+1 Funny

Re:Happy to see this, for two reasons

[swillden]

+1 Funny

Do you have any evidence to the contrary? At all?

Because they have all the right taps in place

[Gothmolly]

All this means is that they've implemented the infrastructure needed to intercept and decode your traffic.

Re:Because they have all the right taps in place

[ericloewe]

Not exactly. While I'm not saying they don't, this does not prove they do.

Something as simple as looking at their logs to see you've been transferring several TB per month is enough to tell them something is going on.

Ideally, this would be the extent of the cotrols - low volume stuff that people typically use wouldn't register (or wouldn't seem extraordinary) and they'd quickly spot some smartass trying to run an ISP.

Freedom of Speech / Freedom to Listen?

[Yebyen]

I feel like if the founding fathers had been born when I was, they would have known that "freedom to listen" on port 80 is just as important as "freedom of speech."

What difference does it make if I'm using a home connection to promote my political ideas? The exceptions listed do nothing to benefit freedom of speech. You pay for home internet, and then they want to ding you again to serve up your ideas on Port 80. Why don't they just give you a NAT'ed address and be done with it forever.

Re:Freedom of Speech / Freedom to Listen?

[Yer Mom]

Why don't they just give you a NAT'ed address and be done with it forever.

This is probably one of the reasons for server ban clauses these days — if they do decide to go to carrier-grade NAT rather than, say, actually getting IPv6 working, then they can dismiss complaints of breakage with "you shouldn't have been running a server anyway"...

Re:Freedom of Speech / Freedom to Listen?

[Riddler Sensei]

Why don't they just give you a NAT'ed address and be done with it forever.

Which is what my ISP did. And they're damned proud of it, too. Even have a webpage dedicated to telling people how awesome and safe this whole NATing thing is. A big problem is that the tier 1 techs have no idea what that even means. I reckon they have to have some incentive to resolve issues themselves as opposed to escalating tickets because they fight tooth and nail to hold onto your issue, even if they're not authorized to resolve it ("Can I get a public IP?", "I need a new modem provisioned", etc.).

Re:Freedom of Speech / Freedom to Listen?

[spire3661]

The problem with your argument is that port 80 is not required to serve up a webpage, merely a default. You can easily host on another port.

Re:Freedom of Speech / Freedom to Listen?

[Yebyen]

OK sure. Take a random sample of 100 people on the street and see how many make it back to your webpage when you tell them to visit "spire dot net colon 9000"

Impediments such as this placed in the way of free speech are in fact prior restraint on free speech. I suppose you think it's OK to have mandatory voter IDs too?

Re:Freedom of Speech / Freedom to Listen?

[spire3661]

Adding a port number to a URL is like dialing an extension on a phone. Sure its not 100% convenient, 'direct dial' is preferred, but its not a civil rights violation. The 'workaround' is incredibly trivial and adds no burden. I wont address the rest of your comment as it is irrelevant to the point.

Re:Freedom of Speech / Freedom to Listen?

[Yebyen]

It's not a civil rights violation because it's not the government doing it to you. It's not action against any protected class (the poor are not protected).

I agree with you, but if "not convenient" leads to 90% attrition rate on your subscriber funnel (political speech, not commercial) then it negates the usefulness of the service.

They are not blocking connections to port 80 anyway, but hypothetically if they were, I disagree with your position. It's undue burden. I agree with another commenter who said they really don't want you to speak, they want you to pay them to consume the media that others publish.

P2P

[Anonymous Coward]

Does this mean they won't allow P2P usage?

Huh

[Arkiel]

So no one had to get the FCC involved? And the ISP still changed their policy? I don't understand.

Re:Huh

[Skapare]

One of the company executives actually came in to work one day.

Re:Huh

[intermodal]

The ISP changed their policy enough not to get the FCC involved. It's like settling out of court to avoid a patent being invalidated.

Home user uploads

[tepples]

Uploads that a home user is expected to make, such as pictures to Flickr or Picasa or videos to Dailymotion or YouTube, still run up a sending bill.

Re:Home user uploads

[PIBM]

But far less than sending all those same photos and videos directly to your friends and family..

Re:Home user uploads

[tepples]

If each photo is viewed at least once on average, serving them from an actual server uses less data transfer volume. But if most of the photos end up never viewed, serving them from home uses less data transfer volume.

RANT: it's not internet access

[RichMan]

Any provider that bans "servers" is not providing internet access. They are providing media consumption access. They should be forced to very clearly differentiate that as a type of service provided.

Internet access is unconstainted IP packets. Both TCP and UDP and whatever other protocol you want.

Re:RANT: it's not internet access

[Sockatume]

Believe it or not there are shades of grey between "completely unfettered use of the connection" and "I am ter conumar", and properly discussing this issue would probably benefit from understanding the kinds of distinctions involved.

Re:RANT: it's not internet access

[disposable60]

Any provider that bans "servers" is not providing internet access. They are providing media consumption access.

And this is all the MAFIAA is willing to allow. The tiny portion of Internet users who believe any other use is even possible, let alone useful, would fit comfortably on the campus of your average US land-grant university.

Re:RANT: it's not internet access

[Kjella]

Internet access is unconstainted IP packets. Both TCP and UDP and whatever other protocol you want.

Since pretty much all residental connections I know of block outgoing port 25 I don't think most of the world has "internet access" the way you define internet access. Good luck in your quest to redefine it.

Re:RANT: it's not internet access

[swillden]

Internet access is unconstainted IP packets. Both TCP and UDP and whatever other protocol you want.

Since pretty much all residental connections I know of block outgoing port 25

Google Fiber doesn't.

Re:RANT: it's not internet access

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a very good point. Well put Sir!

Now mod this comment up.

Re:RANT: it's not internet access

[Luthair]

I disagree. They definitely provide the user with unrestricted access to the Internet, however they don't claim to provide the Internet with access to the user.

Look up the dictionary definition of access then explain which definition you're trying to use to justify your statement.

Re:RANT: it's not internet access

[Rude Turnip]

If I had a nickel for every time I've seen this statement on Slashdot over the last 15 years, I could buy myself a nice lunch.

They are offering internet access in the purest sense of the term. There are no technical barriers in place that prevent all the normal types of traffic you can have over an IP connection. Rather, it's a contractual agreement that Google is already admitting is behind the times.

Re: RANT: it's not internet access

[Anonymous Coward]

The internet is a bi-directional connection. You can't even complete the TCP handshake without "the internet" having access to you. Go troll elsewhere.

Re:RANT: it's not internet access

[Anonymous Coward]

Any provider that bans "servers" is not providing internet access.

Yes, they are. They're selling you access to the internet via their network.

They are providing media consumption access.

Yes, exactly.

They should be forced to very clearly differentiate that as a type of service provided.

They are. You seem to be confused as to what internet access means. You seem to be operating under the assumption that it's the same thing as gaining a presence ON the internet, which it's not. You CAN get what you're describing, but you'll need to start by getting your own ASN.

Internet access is unconstainted IP packets.

No it's not. (I assume you meant unconstrained...) You're purchasing a residential service, it's considered an entertainment package. If you want unrestricted ability to send/receive packets then you need to go pay for a business account.

You CAN have unlimited internet. You CAN have full bandwidth all day long. All these things people bitch about ARE available, you just have to pay for it. Most people don't need or care about most of those things, and so normal residential service will be just fine for most people.
Seriously, you're like a guy who walks into an all-you-can-eat buffet at 5pm and complains because there's a line and you don't have a private table. Well guess what? There are places where you can reserve a private table at 5pm and get great food with no wait... but you're going to have to PAY for it and it's going to cost a lot more than the buffet.

Re:RANT: it's not internet access

[Anonymous Coward]

They should not be given access to the telephone poles to provide anything other than internet access.

I realize everyone believes in hypercapitalism and all, but there's no market-efficiency excuse for price discrimination based on content. You can't wave your hands on this one. You need to actually block the jack moves.

Re:RANT: it's not internet access

[cbhacking]

CenturyLink does by default but you can get them to allow it. Clear allows it. I think the GP is a bit... confused, and thinks that Comcast = "pretty much all residential connections". No, thank you!

Re:RANT: it's not internet access

[antdude]

Tell to residential Internet services like cable and DSL companies.

block of ipv6 addresses mandatory

[Anonymous Coward]

isps had an excuse to limiting one ip address per customer, and an excuse for using dynamic ip addressing, charging extra for a fixed ip address, with the ipv4 address shortage. With ipv6, this is no longer the case. ipv6 address space will allow the use of ipv6 addresses for addressing/talking to various household objects for home automation for example, various parts of automobiles, etc.

Google has no excuse for not assigning a large block of ipv6 STATIC addresses to each customer. This will also, beside fast speeds and allowance of servers, help individuals to experiment and create the next big thing or next big things to help themselves, their families, and in the end society in general.

The demand for a block of ipv6 addresses to be assigned to each customer, weather they use them or not, needs to be made standard practice now, before ipv6 becomes widely adopted and before isps create and make widespread the practice of assigning only one ipv6 address, and possibly even continue with charging for more than one address or charging for a static address.

A large block, maybe 65,000 addresses or more, should be considered the mandatory starting point, with more available on request. Remember, this is ipv6 address space we're talking about. 65,000, or even far more are doable. Assigning one address to each electronic item in one's house, each appliance, each mechanical part, home automation, car parts and more would easily push over 1,000 addresses, with far more needed as new applications create the need for more addresses. Programmers and potential programmers would find good use for a large availability of ip address availability over time.

Re:block of ipv6 addresses mandatory

[Anonymous Coward]

The requirement for IPv6 is to assign at least a /64 as many parts of the standard assume this. Every user will have at least 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 addresses. Most ISPs allow /60s or /56s for free on demand.

Why run a server at home

[tepples]

Seeding a torrent to 100% without leasing a seedbox is running a server at home. Being player 1 in an online game is running a server at home. Using GoToMyPC or LogMeIn or any other sort of remote desktop is running a server at home. Sharing a large (tens of GB) collection of photos or other files with family members (or with yourself, just in case you're on another computer and need the files off yours) without leasing a VPS and uploading them all, expecting that most won't be downloaded, is running a server at home.

Re:Why run a server at home

[afidel]

Sorry, I should have been more specific, why would you want to run a high bandwidth commercial server at home? Residential lines have by FAR the highest $/Mbps of any kind of line outside of T1/DS3 with SLA's, bulk transport is FAR cheaper to buy at a colo.

Re:Why run a server at home

[Anonymous Coward]

For control/security and privacy reasons, for example. Especially with this NSA stuff going on...

I hope this wasn't just part of their plan

[ctrlshift]

You know, give us New Coke, gain a huge amount of publicity, then "j/k lol!" their way to victory.

Fiber for the sheeple

[Anonymous Coward]

So they are ripping up the sidewalks and streets out there and don't want to enable people to use the fiber installation to their hearts' (and minds') content?
Pretty condescending viewpoint by Google there.

Few want internet access

[tepples]

There isn't much demand for Internet access at home, apart from the edge cases that inhabit Slashdot.

Re:Impeach Obama

[Anonymous Coward]

i will pay you $4.00 to touch your Obama loving wiener.

CONTROL

[Anonymous Coward]

NEVER give control to Google or any other corporation.

they provide it to browse ebay, not BE ebay. share

[raymorris]

They provide X Mbps for a few seconds at a time.
For example, a page on eBay might be 5 Mb and take one second to load, that's 5 Mbps. When you're not loading a page, another customer is using that bandwidth. A residential user might be downloading 1% of the time, so 50Mbps of capacity serves 100 users at about 50 Mbps.

On the other hand, a popular server is serving customers approximately 100% of the time. No-one else can share that bandwidth since the server is constantly using it. Therefore, server bandwidth costs about 100 times as much as residential bandwidth, simply because the server is using.it all the time so it can't be shared.

no, 100 Mbit at a time , but not all the time

[raymorris]

It's not a matter of 100 Mbps or 25 Mbps.
You can download something at 100 Mbps and in ten seconds you'll be done. Your neighbor can then use that SAME 100 Mbps of capacity for a few seconds. So you, your neighbor, and 98 other people all get 100 Mbps when you want it. At 100 Mbps, it takes you a lot longer to read a web page than it does to load it, and a lot longer to listen to a song than to download it. You use zero Mbps when you're sleeping, at work, running errands, cooking dinner - overall you use the bandwidth about 1% of the time.

Compare that to if eBay connected their servers to Google fiber connections. Servers would be using the bandwidth all the time. It couldn't be shared with neighbors, so Google would need to add dedicated capacity just for those servers. That costs alot more to have it all to yourself versus sharing with 99 other people.

Re:no, 100 Mbit at a time , but not all the time

[hypergreatthing]

The logical fallacy in your statement is that servers do not use 100% of the bandwidth all the time. There is no service that i'm aware of that will use a full 1gbit link 100% of the time. If i put up a moderate website, i doubt that'll get more than 1 gigabyte of traffic a month. That equates to ~10 seconds of full speed on a gigabit connection. I'm fairly sure google can spare 10 seconds out of 2678400 seconds in a month for a simple website. Even if it's a terrabyte of traffic (year right), that's 9000 seconds of that 2678400 in a month. You'd have to transfer ~300 terrabytes of traffic to utilize it 100%.

I guess if you run a torrent site and allowed full bandwidth with unlimited connections you could use a bunch of that bandwidth, but then again, you don't need a server to run that. You're also limited to the bandwidth on the opposite side.

Re:no, 100 Mbit at a time , but not all the time

[sjames]

That's what bursting and borrowing is for in a fair queuing setup. You define a commit. Then you define a burst, then you make the bandwidth borrowable.

Everyone gets their fair share of the available pipe. If few are using it, you get to use more (since an unused pipe is just as expensive as a utilized one) and you have a bit of burst so you can get a nice snappy response when you browse the web but can't damage other's network performance.

Once that is set up, it doesn't matter one bit how you actually use your connection.

Re:no, 100 Mbit at a time , but not all the time

[KingMotley]

The logical fallacy in your statement is that servers do not use 100% of the bandwidth all the time. There is no service that i'm aware of that will use a full 1gbit link 100% of the time. If i put up a moderate website, i doubt that'll get more than 1 gigabyte of traffic a month. That equates to ~10 seconds of full speed on a gigabit connection. I'm fairly sure google can spare 10 seconds out of 2678400 seconds in a month for a simple website. Even if it's a terrabyte of traffic (year right), that's 9000 seconds of that 2678400 in a month. You'd have to transfer ~300 terrabytes of traffic to utilize it 100%.

I guess if you run a torrent site and allowed full bandwidth with unlimited connections you could use a bunch of that bandwidth, but then again, you don't need a server to run that. You're also limited to the bandwidth on the opposite side.

Lol, I know of many services that would use a 1tb/sec connection at 100% of the bandwidth all the time. You are just thinking too small, and vastly underestimate what people will try given the chance.

Re:no, 100 Mbit at a time , but not all the time

[Anonymous Coward]

Then I have an idea... don't sell a "speed tier", sell it per unit (bit, kB, MB, GB, whatever) and don't throttle the connection. Then some douchebag that saturates a residential connection gets a whopping huge bill and stops doing that. And if he doesn't, why cut off the revenue stream? Build out your network near him and keep those billable bits flowing!

Old News

[Anonymous Coward]

As someone who has Google Fiber, this policy was changed back at the beginning of this year to read what it states now on their site:

"Our Terms of Service prohibit running a server for commercial purposes. However, personal, non-commercial usage of servers that complies with our Acceptable Use Policy is acceptable, including using virtual private networks (VPN) to access services in your home, and using hardware or applications that include server capabilities for uses like multi-player gaming, video-conferencing, and home security."

What's the use of a pipe that big?

[GodfatherofSoul]

If you can't run servers on it? I can't imagine using even a fraction of that unless I'm running some kinds of servers out of my house.

Re:What's the use of a pipe that big?

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't imagine using even a fraction of that

I guess they're counting on it to reduce costs. When they carry the bandwidth of 100 homes they probably don't use a pipe that is 100x the size of the pipe for one home.

Re:What's the use of a pipe that big?

[fallen1]

Porn. Massive amounts of all-I-can-possibly-see (until I go blind from it) porn downloaded or streamed at glorious speeds. ;-)

Re:What's the use of a pipe that big?

[cgt]

I believe the point is that you don't have to worry about bandwidth (or latency).

Re:they provide it to browse ebay, not BE ebay. sh

[Anonymous Coward]

Therefore, server bandwidth costs about 100 times as much as residential bandwidth

Not when you purchase in bulk. 1gb will run you about $1,000, 10gb about $2,000 and 100gb about $5,000 when you bring your own infrastructure. That's $50 per 1gb of bandwidth. If you want to purchase a 1gb link to your local Tier 1, that will cost you about $6,000, but they do all the work.

Bandwidth is cheap, infrastructure is expensive. Modern infrastructure can support more bandwidth than there is demand. Most of the Internet backbone is darkfiber. It was placed because of bandwidth scares from around 2000, but it turns out that technology has been keeping up with or even outpacing demand for fiber. Copper and WIFI are entirely different beasts and are expensive because the infrastructure has a hard time keeping up with demand. Copper is about to hit its physical limit and wifi is naturally noisy. They already have fully working prototypes of throw-away cheap fiber optics that can handle 1tb/s+ speeds. It's commercially ready, just requires major retooling. Get ready for a fiber BOOM.

The current state-of-the-art is routers that can support 1pb/s of layer3 routing with 400gb/s non-blocking ports and will support 1tb/s non-blocking ports in the future, and photonic integrated circuits can can multiplex any combination of 1gb-400gb ports to allow a maximum bandwidth of 8tb/s over a single fiber, using already in the ground "normal" industry standard long haul fiber, with no repeaters or re-generators for about 680km.

I'm still trying to wrap my head around 500 non-blocking 1tb/s ports on a single router. And it consumes 8x less power per mbit than their prior generation.

Meanwhile in Overland Park

[symbolset]

If you were ever interested in running for city council or mayor, this may be your year.

Two weeks after OP balked at Google Fiber they approved it, only to have Google withdraw the offer. OP will now be the island of "no gigabit" in a sea of Internet.

Throttling Progress and Life

[Anonymous Coward]

Corporate business apartheid. A lower liege commerce may have its own server, some bandwith, hoist a clipped banneret, and bear a coat-of-ars, - er, I mean, arms - with matte primary colours. A privileged serf must hobble his servers upon entering the net, and may not wear leggings with stripes.

In the 19th cenury, in England, the first automobiles ("horseless chariots") were obliged by law to be preceded by a man on foot, with a horn or bell and a flag, to warn the pedestrians.

" ... wherefore in the fourth of Edward IV it was ordained and proclaimed that beaks of shoon and boots should not pass the length of two inches, upon pain of cursing by the clergy, and by Parliament to pay twenty shillings for every pair. And every cordwainer that shod any man or woman on the Sunday, to pay thirty shillings. ... " - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poulaine

Also : http://www.mercwars.com/longtoe.shtml

rotfl. Never _seen_ a server, have you?

[raymorris]

> If i put up a moderate website, i doubt that'll get more than 1 gigabyte of traffic a month.

We did 600 GB - in 1997, before there was any video on the web. A GB is 1/4th of a DVD iso.
Our "half server" plans include a terabyte for each of the two customers on a server. (Meaning 2TB per 1U server.)
One guy I work with - one guy, working out of his house, has a site that never drops below 100 Mbps. It peaks at around 400 Mbps.

  > servers do not use 100% of the bandwidth all the time. There is no service that i'm aware of that will use a full 1gbit link 100% of the time.

Their average use, for a typical web site, is 40%-50% of their peak. A site provisioned for 1 Gbps will use about 300,000 GBs, while a
residential customer might use 10 GBs. See why one costs more than the other?

Re:rotfl define a server

[hypergreatthing]

You're talking commercial leased vms and such. If an entrepreneur wants to start his own company and hosts a website on his home computer, what's the harm in that? Besides it being against the TOS, he's using minimal bandwidth. If i created a song and hosted it on my home computer and even it was popular and got downloaded a million times, it's still low bandwidth.

So in your scenario, if a hosting company or a data center moved to oklahoma city to save on bandwidth/connection costs by using google fibre, yes i can see the concern. You define exactly what a server is and i'm sure others will completely disagree. The definition between a server and a home computer is pretty blurred at the moment.

Btw thanks for the definition of a GB in terms of DVDs. I had no idea that DVDs are 4.7 GB. No idea whatsoever. While you're at it, please define "typical website".

What a crock of shit

[Anonymous Coward]

We at google chose Provo, Austin and KC because of their entrepreneurial spirit.

But fuck off if you want to use it for anything entrepreneurial.

What a joke. Fuck google, they're the more popular MS of this decade.

Yay! In-home small business is OK.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

The linked site says that it's OK to use the fiber for business if you're running a "small" business FROM YOUR HOME.

Terms-of-use cut is whether you LIVE there (apparently as a primary residence, not camping out at the office) rather than the site being an office-only.

I suspect they might waffle if you set up the next e-bay/facebook/netflix class service in your back room. But for people like me, with a consulting business, it would be just fine - and explicitly allowed - to use the fiber for mail service, VLAN-on-the-road, etc.

What can a home server be used for

[RichMan]

These are all potential applications that could be enabled by Home Server Applications. These require good security. But "Why can't we make secure apps?". And yes you can do all this now. It is just not as easy as it could be.

a) Why can't I have my own "facebook" Why do my pictures have to be uploaded to a webserver with dubious terms of use that are subject to modification at any time. My own server would allow access only to my friends and totally controll my content among that group.
b) Google Drive, without the Google. Again why does it have to pass through a 3rd party
c) Monitoring aging parents. Souped up home security server system (which itself is outlawed by the no server). Can I check the fridge. Have they taken medications ...
d) run your own Game Server. New machines should easily be able to run 5-10 and even 40 player real time games. Again why do I need a 3rd party host.

There are likely to be a host of others that become available. The issue is not security. The issue is "monetization" in that the home server removes the third part and "profit" from the loop.

Re:What can a home server be used for

[Anonymous Coward]

There are likely to be a host of others that become available. The issue is not security. The issue is "monetization" in that the home server removes the third part and "profit" from the loop.

The issue is both security and monetization; it's never as simple as "either or".

ISPs don't work for free, despite what the fringers on /. think. Then there is the issue of security. The typical "non /." user doesn't want to be hassled by security issues no matter how robust that security can be. Go "google" the writeups on Google drive-by scanning of open wireless access points to learn something about typical consumer behavior.

The typical "non /." user wants it simple, ala D-Link, Netgear, etc. If you strap them down to difficult setups they will return the device; "it's broke...it don't work". Why does most consumer gear have simple "pull it out of the box and plug it in" setups? The average consumer wants it "simple" and doesn't want to be bothered with firmware updating, security rule definitions, and a lot of other administrative stuff. Put it in homeowner terms: "How many people clean out their gutters every fall?" or "How many people drain and flush their water heater tank every few years?" Most do not because it's a hassle and they don't have the time for whatever reason.

Security isn't simple; it's complicated and requires attention to detail to setup correctly...and makes a nice job for some of us out there.

An insecure or completely unsecure home server is a dream for a haX0r, especially if it's on a high bandwidth link, since they can hide their traffic under the "noise" generated by the home user. If a bot master can wrangle up hundreds or thousands of home servers, given various DDoS attack methods available today, then that bot master can unleash lots of pain. If a haX0r can infect much of a cable or DSL ISP, then they have some decent resources to sell/lease to a bot master, and infecting a network "from the inside" is usually easier then going through the expected doorways; "weak security inside most ISP networks" (eggshell security).

Think about it people. If security were simple why do we still read reports of web sites getting broken into and defaced, of trojan servers being loaded and used to distribute "whatever", of DDoS still hitting hard on weak or unprotected sites while making a decent business for those that know how to handle such attacks using "anycast" and/or "deflect into the bit bucket" designs. Effective security is not simple.

ISPs have a right to charge for whatever services they offer. If you don't like the TOS or AUP, then STFU and go elsewhere. If you don't have any choices that YOU like, then STFU and "learn to live with it", or open your own business (and expect others to STFU in respect to what you decide).

All the constant whining and bickering (and no effective demonstration of problem solving skills) I hear from the fringers on /. make me seriously worry about the future of the world we live in. These /. fringers remind of those spoiled brats raised by parents that think "every kid is a winner and there should not be any losers ever".

Re:What can a home server be used for

[RichMan]

My point is that the internet is more than a replacement for Cable TV. It can be so much more if we use it for all that it can do. And the ISP's are limiting the ability to expand the functionality of the internet by limiting its uses which means business are not going to start up supporting the other functions.

Of all things Google.

[ralphaostrander]

I am calling you out Google explain how you could be that retarded in the first place. I dont see why commercial should be a problem. Google how would you like me to tell you what to do with the bandwidth you buy. After you sell it it is theirs you should have no further say unless it is a illegal activity. Dont over sell your bandwidth and there will be no problems. I hate all of you.

How many times faster than dial up is that?

[raymorris]

> That's what bursting and borrowing is for in a fair queuing setup. You define a commit. Then you define a burst, then you make the bandwidth borrowable.

Sure, you, me and Linus can sign up for that. Normally, broadband is advertised as "30 times faster than dial-up, 50X faster than dial-up"
because most home users don't know what a Mbps is. Hell, half the WEBMASTERS we have as customers say their office service is "x megaBYTES".

Re:How many times faster than dial up is that?

[sjames]

I'll bet they know 5 for $80/month isn't as good as 6 for $70/month. If the liars screeching about unlimited and claiming nearly unreachable theoretical peaks as if it meant something were penalized by the FTC, those customers could probably figure it out well enough to make the market sorta work (assuming actual competition exists).

Re:Yay! In-home small business is OK.

[steelfood]

From the link:

If you live in and work from your home (e.g. accountant, graphic designer, online tutor, talent agent for clowns)

I didn't know MPAA execs had talent agents.

Cable poles; multicast

[tepples]

They should not be given access to the telephone poles to provide anything other than internet access.

I guess that's part of why some cable companies choose to put up their own parallel poles rather than lease from the telco.

there's no market-efficiency excuse for price discrimination based on content.

Digital cable TV is essentially a multicast stream, while video over the Internet is most often unicast. If the cable company can get its customers to watch video over a digital cable channel, then it needs to send a stream to a neighborhood only once instead of once for each viewer.

Google demands you not advertise?

[lpq]

So if you create a website, and like nearly everyone else, you try to get ad-slots (probably using google) filled, to defray the costs or support server upgrades, wouldn't that allow them to call you "commercial"? I.e. if you take ads from them or anyone are you commercial?

Suppose you take "donations" -- and in return give "benefits" (examples include more space, on server, more downloads of "valued material" (whatever it is that people on the site want), or voting rights of what features will be implemented in 'vim'). The way things stand, google already supports such ventures through various google "offerings" (google groups, for example).

Are they going to set a limit of how much you can make per/year to be considered non-commercial? If you are a non-profit organization (or religious or political organization) are you exempt?

What a mushy, arbitrary line -- perfect for selective enforcement and abuse.