Now That It’s in the Broadband Game, Google Flip-Flops on Network Neutrality | Hacker News Reader

Now That It’s in the Broadband Game, Google Flip-Flops on Network Neutrality

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366 pointshvs204 comments

IMHO, this headline & article is sensational and almost a straw-man argument. I'm not sure anyone should expect to be able to run a substantial business off their home internet connection without buying a business-class connection - nor does this decision by Google somehow imply they've "flip-flopped" on net-neutrality. I run a little game-server from my RaspberryPi at home. Technically, I'm not allowed to do this. While my Comcast IP is supposedly dynamic, it only changes once every 18 months or so. But I really think the law is there for people who go overboard sending terabytes-per-hour with some crazy successful business. At its peak, my site only gets only about 5,000+ hits per month or so(because it reports real-time data and people hit refresh all the time). Like Comcast, even if Google says no, just go ahead and do it anyway. They'll probably not bother you unless you're rolling your own Netflix-clone or something, in which case you really should upgrade to business-class or get on those cloud providers.

Enforcement is currently aimed at users consuming the most bandwidth, but I'd rather not have to hope that the selective enforcement doesn't apply to my rule violations.

"Everyone's a felon" and "everyone's violating the contract" is a terrible state of affairs.

This is what retroactive restrictions based on "generally accepted understanding of what things means" feels like:

Its "Unlimited Internet!", oh wait, if you are in the top 1% of bandwidth users we reserve the right to throttle you. Oh wait, we really don't want you to use more than 5GB a month. Ok fine, if you use more than 2GB we'll start throttling you and at 5GB your network connection will become unusable.

> I'm not sure anyone should expect to be able to run a substantial business off their home internet connection without buying a business-class connection

Right, because you usually don't have SLAs for connection. But apart from that -- why ever not?

Exactly. Business traffic is business traffic. There is absolutely no reason that a "consumer" grade fat fiber pipe is unusable for non-critical business stuff, except for one reason:

"We can charge businesses more".

But hey, I guess little shops that want to provide their customers with wi-fi and batch send some financial information at the end of the day need Big Expensive Solutions (TM) to accomplish it...

As a former pawn in the ISP game, there's a lot of reasons, though most of them are either directly or indirectly related to SLA's. The implied notion is that residential customers aren't going to lose money while their connection is down, whereas most business customers lose money every minute that their connection is down.

When I was in residential support, you don't know how many times I heard, "Well you better get this fixed ASAP! My business depends on it." I'd have to remind them that if they expected business-class service -- including 24/7/365 phone/email tech support, over-nighted equipment replacements, etc. -- then that required a business-class contract. If you pay the pithy rate for consumer-grade service, you get <surprise!> consumer-level support, and there is a world of difference between residential and business support capabilities.

It's also not a secret that the business support techs are usually a rung or two above those in residential support, and so what may take that junior-level tech a few hours to fix, would take the senior-level tech in business support a few minutes (and more often, to resolve it correctly). This is not only due to the nature of the issues being more challenging for business support, but because it's the ISP's prerogative to keep their clients online. Unlike most residential customers, business will more likely have access to more options for service; whereas AT&T, Comcast, TWC, etc. can piss all over their residential customers, it usually doesn't matter because the customer literally has no other alternative. On the other hand, businesses are often courted by ISP's, and competitive offers are always available. This is compounded by the fact that business-class service more specific in its offerings; you don't just pick a "basic" or "turbo" package, you often have 10x as many choices which take into account latency, burst rate, symmetrical upload/download, etc.

Another perk of business-class at some ISP's is a direct communication line to the NOC. Not specifically by phone (still have to go through support for that usually), but at least where I worked, the NOC sent out emails to our business customers for every planned outage (in advance, right before execution, and upon completion) with details of the work, as well as for unplanned outages (which usually detailed the nature and impact of the outage). At times, alerts were sent out when a large-scale malware, DDoS, etc. was present. You know, things that as a business, your own networking/sysadmin staff need to know to do their job effectively.

When I see comments like this I thank my lucky stars I'm not slanging DWDM/Fiber anymore.

I've said this before but it's worth saying again: In the United States we have two classes of Internet. One is the consumer net, which is quasi-3rd world in many parts of the country. The other is the Enterprise, which is, I would argue, the only first-world network on the planet (by aggregate capacity and availability).

When you subscribe to the former, and expect the latter, you'll undoubtably be an unhappy camper.

None of what you wrote is an argument for banning users from running servers on their Fiber accounts.

In fact, it's almost insultingly paternalistic if that is in fact the view Google (or any other ISP) takes.

That's because it wasn't an argument for banning users from running servers on their Fiber accounts.

I was responding to the parent (perlgeek), not the original submission. It was an argument for why business-class services exist, who might require them, and the value they bring.

The real question here is how important it is for home users to have the ability to run servers without signing up for a business-class account. Google wants to create an equivalence between two groups:

1) People who want to run a server at home

2) Businesses

The debate here should be about if that equivalence is dangerous and why.

Perhaps it would be better to avoid the connotations of the word "business" and just view this as Google saying "if you want to run a server, you have to pay more for a premium account." Do people think this is reasonable?

> The real question here is how important it is for home users to have the ability to run servers without signing up for a business-class account.

That may be a real question, but I that its not the real question; equally real is the question of whether what Google did is permissible under the language of the Open Internet Report and Order, since that's a governing regulation (and, on top of that, one for which Google recently and actively lobbied.)

And, related to that, whether the expectation that Google will obey the law governing where they can and cannot restrict customers when offering a service is reasonable.

Google doesn't want to create that equivalence. The problem is the definition of business in the US is so broad as to be unusable for this kind of thing.

For instance Google is fine with you using your connection to VPN to work, but you are technically an agent of your business when you do that.

Thus outright disallowing Businesses is a no-go, since they can't filter you beforehand they have to get you to filter yourself.

One way would be to ensure that the business version is so much better than the consumer version that businesses switch themselves. Unfortunately if you have 99.9% uptime and 1 Gbps total bandwidth, who isn't okay with that?

What if the support options for residential was strictly email, and only answered M-F 9-5 (not including holidays) with a response time of 24-48 hrs, but for business support you get 24/7/365 phone & email support with a response time of 1 hour?

Because that is going to be the story, more or less.

The amount of time you can stand to be without service is basically the crux of the decision; if you just run a gaming server or host your mom's cooking website, being down a day or three won't really matter, but if you (or your clients) depend on your site -- say, you have an online reservation system for a hotel -- then even an hour is going to cost you money, and I know from personal experience that if it's down for a day or more, the client is probably going to drop you unless you pay them off in a big way (free month of service, etc.).

>people who go overboard sending terabytes-per-hour with some crazy successful business

Which is why they probably limit 'excessive use', and / or have hard GB caps in place, which basically every ISP does. If you paid for, say, 20GB of up/down traffic, and you can run your server within that, why should they be able to say you can't do that, just because it's a "server"? If you had uploaded 20GB to e.g. Dropbox, they aren't complaining.

If you have Google's fiber, even if they say it's unlimited, they still have the ability to restrict your up/down speed (I'm assuming, given the legal support of all the past "unlimited X!" that sometimes gets throttled to extinction). Why don't they just limit it if you're being excessive, regardless of the purpose? Or offer extended GB/TB packages and put hard limits somewhere?

Or better yet, just deprioritize the heavy users' traffic. That way you don't even get slowed down unless the queues start to fill up somewhere on the network.

> If you had uploaded 20GB to e.g. Dropbox, they aren't complaining.

It's even more ridiculous than that! If you sync 20GB to dropbox, that's a client. If you sync 20GB with bittorrent sync, that's a server. Same data, same purpose, same network load. But one gets banned.

Also, I have to wonder if someone at google has heard of a thing called an X11 server...

You are defining server that way. Google is not. So you are arguing about something that doesn't even exist.

How does google define server, then?

1. Does P2P count?

2. What if I'm downloading a creative commons movie and seed it to a ratio of 15?

3. What if I'm seeding a hobby video podcast I make at a constant 300mbps?

4. What if I use opera unite instead of bittorrent?

5. What if I switch to nginx?

6. What if I make a living off that video podcast?

7. What if I was only sending it to my family instead of the world?

1: No

2: No

3: No

4: No

5: No

6: Yes

7: No

Computer programmers like exact definitions. Server: The main controller of the program, or main sender of data.

The real world is much more fuzzy. They are concerned with business use, not server use exactly.

wow.. where to begin. So you and Google seem understand the exact definition of "server". "main controller of the program".. lol..

Hah! You try defining server. Don't forget X-windows when you do so.

oops. sorry. I misread your earlier comment.

I think the typical meaning is a system that responds to requests with data. I think this is a usable definition. By default it includes P2P, but you can always add 'except P2P'. X servers don't fit this definition, which seems correct to me.

So your answers to my questions say that anything non-commercial will be fine.

But then you define server in a way that disagrees with those answers.

Do they care about servers, or do they care about businesses? If businesses, why can't they make it explicit in the rules?

They care about businesses, it says so very clearly in the article. And if they haven't already, they should make it explicit.

It's nothing special about google - all ISPs have the same rule.

I DID NOT define server! You read it exactly backward. I said that's how programmers define it, but that's NOT how google defines it (for internet purposes).

Oh. Sorry about misreading there.

But seriously, while programmers are pedantic sometimes, when I'm running a website out of my basement that's a 'server' by ANY definition. If google is only going to enforce the rule on business servers, they should say so.

And it doesn't matter what other ISPs do, we already know they're horrible.

I'm sorry I have to disagree with you. While I accept that they're just trying to target this specific subset of users that they feel they can get more money from, that is very much a violation of net neutrality.

Further, their current terms of service, while in intention mean: "customers who are using our services to run a business", can later be construed to target everyone. Though they promise that they wont. A dark cloud to cast.

Say they want to get rid of Alice, who knows why, but Alice has a Minecraft server. Those clauses arn't about Minecraft servers, but Alice agreed to the terms, and they can use those terms to remove her.

Despite the undercurrent of hatred for Google on hacker news, I think in general we all expect better from the company. This is not better.

Doesn't that make you a felon, ala Aaron Schwartz?

> But I really think the law is there for people who go overboard sending terabytes-per-hour with some crazy successful business.

What law? You mean the term in Google's contract with it's subscribers that prevents servers? That's not a law.

If they wanted to limit servers to a certain bandwidth, or to say you can't use their connection for a business that charges money -- why wouldn't they just put that in their contract instead? It's their contract to write how they like. What they liked was to prohibit all 'servers', rather than what you suggest they meant to do. Maybe their lawyers made a mistake, you should let them know.

Would Tor nodes count as servers under Google's guidelines? Could Google theoretically prohibit someone from running a Tor node if they're not a business-class account?

Don't offer unlimted 1Gbps up/down if you're not willing to make good on that promise.

Companies shouldn't be allowed to choose how much is too much when the usage in question is within the scope of an agreed upon contract.

Allowing potentially every user to utilize 75% of 1 Gbps up/down service 24/7 is crazy.

I don't imagine Google is doing this to line their pockets - the infrastructure was created with certain assumptions in mind and when someone is using it outside of the parameters, it becomes a headache for the engineers. Here's an analogy - Amazon's AWS service. When you have noisy neighbors - people using AWS's service in a way Amazon did not expect, it degrades performance for everyone else. Now while for Amazon it makes sense to increase server capacity, noisy "consumer internet" should upgrade to a business class connection.

And again, it is within the scope of agreed contract, its in the article. I don't think its insane to offer a certain guarantees of a service (1 Gbps up/down) within limitations (you won't be using 75% of it 24/7).

> And again, it is within the scope of agreed contract, its in the article. I don't think its insane to offer a certain guarantees of a service (1 Gbps up/down) within limitations (you won't be using 75% of it 24/7).

Then specify the limits up front, rather than promising a gigabit connection. Metered Internet access is potentially reasonable, unless the limitations are arbitrary, undocumented, and capricious.

>Metered Internet access is potentially reasonable Except when its not, because everyone will bitch & moan about rocking the boat. When Comcast added the 250GB monthly limit, there was a large vocal minority that made sure that that restriction never left trail.

That's because 250GB is stupidly low. It equates to only 4% utilization on a 20mbps connection. I can buy 250GB in a datacenter for a dollar. And on top of that the cap didn't grow over time to reflect increased bandwidth needs and decreasing bandwidth costs.

Give me a cap that represents fair bandwidth prices and I won't object.

250GB may be low, but if you think that you can equate data center prices to prices for transit delivered to an end-user's address, you aren't thinking hard enough.

Educate me. As far as I know, the only expensive part is in establishing a connection to a user. The cost of extra data is only in the backbone parts of the network, and those do not eat a large portion of revenue.

Old, but very detailed:

http://drpeering.net/white-papers/A-Business-Case-For-Peerin...

In short, data centers are generally located at the core of networks, end users are, by definition, at the fringe of the network. All the equipment and lines between the core and the end user add to the cost to supply bandwidth through up-front purchasing cost, maintenance cost and configuration cost. All of those are costs that would not have to be paid if they did not supply internet to end users. To assume that the cost of just supplying bandwidth to a date center is the same as through all that infrastructure is to assume the cost of all that is zero, or close enough they write it off, while in truth it probably accounts for the lion's share of their overhead.

aka the last mile problem.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_mile

...except that the last mile has the same 10mbps or 50mbps or whatever capacity even if you're on the crippled-speed budget plan. The only cost to increase the quota is for the ISP to upgrade its major inter-site links, not the edge connections.

The last mile limits bitrate, not quota.

If even 10% of the end users fully utilized their circuits they would be far over their capacity to get those packets to their core, even if the core could handle moving them to other networks. As such, increasing the amount of transit the ISP purchases may do nothing for allowing it to be effectively utilized at the end user location.

First of all, that's ludicrously low. More importantly, it's a new restriction on an existing service, rather than a new service. Both of those lead to push-back from current and potential customers.

In any case, the problem is that Google has already pitched their fiber service as gigabit, and attempting to meter it will make it look less appealing. Personally, I find arbitrary restrictions on the type of data I can transfer even less appealing, but many people won't.

What would Google say to someone saturating their bandwidth 24 hours a day and not running a server? I can easily think of ways to do that. For instance, how about doing daily image backups of your home media center?

If you want to provide a given level of service then say so. Is it 1Gbps up/down with a 1TB/month transfer limit? (That's less than three hours per month at 1Gbps, FWIW.) Is there no guarantee of performance, so you get 1Gbps sometimes but only 100Mbps when the network is congested? Spell it out. Just saying "no servers" is a cop out that lets them cancel service for half their customers whenever they please because so many people are going to be violating it, probably without even knowing it.

> And again, it is within the scope of agreed contract

The controversy is not over whether it is within the scope of the Terms of Service. It is whether the Terms of Service are consistent with the FCC's Open Internet Report and Order.

> IMHO, this headline & article is sensational and almost a straw-man argument.

No, its really not. Google was a very strong proponent of the freedom of users do use connections as a dumb piple that was written into the FCC Open Internet rules, and is now acting in a way directly opposed to that in favor of a ISPs power to blanket ban all server use (and, on top of that, based on their apparent behavior, also the power to adopt such a blanket ban and then enforce it selectively to only actually prohibit server use that the ISP has other reasons to oppose besides the mere fact of server use, which then serves as an end run around the transparency provisions of the open internet order as well as the neutrality provisions, since the real substantive rules are not disclosed.)

This is a fairly breathtaking flip-flop, and the headline is quite accurate.

> Like Comcast, even if Google says no, just go ahead and do it anyway. They'll probably not bother you unless you're rolling your own Netflix-clone or something, in which case you really should upgrade to business-class or get on those cloud providers

Avoiding "they'll probably not bother you" guesswork is exactly the point of the transparency provisions of the Open Internet report and order, and the specific ISP-based prohibitions of lawful applications that had occurred that the FCC cited as motivating the neutrality provisions included IPSs banning specific server software (notably, P2P filesharing software), so its pretty clear that blanket server bans are within the scope of the problems the neutrality provisions are designed to address.

It really is sensational and straw-man.

I've never heard anybody suggest that the VERY common clause that prohibits servers is in some way related to net neutrality. (for instance, in the 18 pages that Wikipedia uses to describe net neutrality, they NEVER reference the user's ability to run servers)

This just seems to be some sort of flame-bait article by someone who rants hourly about how "Don't Be Evil" is a bunch of crap.

Sure, be upset that Google won't let you run your company web server on a personal Google fiber account. Fine, complain about ToS... but don't pretend that this is about Net Neutrality or Google Flip-Flopping.

And, to be clear, the entire Comcast-banning-software wasn't an issue... it was Comcast disrupting and discriminating against the packets that caused the issue...

> I've never heard anybody suggest that the VERY common clause that prohibits servers is in some way related to net neutrality.

Clearly, you have (well, unless you are using "heard" very literally, in which case perhaps you haven't, but who cares then?), if you've read the article or the comment you are responding to. And I'm sure you've heard it more than that, too.

You've just chosen to disregard those arguments.

> Sure, be upset that Google won't let you run your company web server on a personal Google fiber account. Fine, complain about ToS... but don't pretend that this is about Net Neutrality or Google Flip-Flopping.

Its about Google prohibiting users from running a particular class of lawful applications / services on the fixed broadband service offered by Google, for which Google has offered no network management rationale (they have asserted that it falls within "reasonable network management", but provided no justification for that except "everyone else does it").

The Open Internet report and order (for which Google lobbied) provides: "A person engaged in the provision of fixed broadband Internet access service, insofar as such person is so engaged, shall not block lawful content, applications, services, or nonharmful devices, subject to reasonable network management."

This is absolutely about Net Neutrality and Google flip-flopping.

I'm operating under the good faith assumption that hatsix actually hasn't come across any discussions relating server bans and net neutrality before reading your comment and the original article. That's what I took his comment to mean.

In that case, it would be helpful to actually link to resources that discuss the two. For example:

http://commons.oreilly.com/wiki/index.php/Network_Neutrality...

Also:

http://www.jthtl.org/content/articles/V2I1/JTHTLv2i1_Wu.PDF (search for the phrase "Restrictions on Providing Content")

Now the question becomes: does this reflect a widely-held view?

> I'm operating under the good faith assumption that hatsix actually hasn't come across any discussions relating server bans and net neutrality before reading your comment and the original article. That's what I took his comment to mean.

Even if he hadn't, the article quotes Google itself as promoting a particular server-based application as benefiting from net neutrality. That should be enough to demonstrate some level of hypocrisy.

I really had not heard of any discussions of user-side server bans w/regard to net neutrality.

The quotes in the article do NOT suggest that google has changed stances or flip-flopped. It's the inferences and assumptions that the author made between the quotes that suggest that.

His arguments are only valid if I the reader already believes that Google's definition of "any type of Server" is consistent with the wikipedia definition of "any type of Server". The author provides no proof that this is the case.

The article even points out that google employees are assuring customers that gaming servers and other non-commercial servers are NOT banned.

My very non-hypocritical argument is that google used vague language in their ToS, as most ISPs do, in order to give differentiation between personal and business class service. The author decided to interpret the ToS with a specific wikipedia definition of "Server", despite lack of any indication from Google that this is what was intended, and specific cited and official instances that indicate that this is NOT what is intended. Despite lack of positive evidence for this interpretation and even citing negative evidence, the author asserts that Google is now against Net Neutrality.

> My very non-hypocritical argument is that google used vague language in their ToS, as most ISPs do, in order to give differentiation between personal and business class service. The author decided to interpret the ToS with a specific wikipedia definition of "Server", despite lack of any indication from Google that this is what was intended, and specific cited and official instances that indicate that this is NOT what is intended. Despite lack of positive evidence for this interpretation and even citing negative evidence, the author asserts that Google is now against Net Neutrality.

As a defense of Google's position as not conflicting with the Open Internet Report and Order that they lobbied for, that seems to fail on the grounds that using "vague language" about what is prohibited in the Terms of Service seems to be directly in conflict with the transparency provisions of the Report and Order (and, also, with the transparency principle which is part of the standard for evaluating whether practices limiting use of lawful applications, devices, and services are valid as "reasonable network management practices" under the neutrality provisions of the order.)

So, this argument, rather than contradicting the charges against Google, actually supports them.

Net Neutrality was a reaction to a plan by ISPs to double-dip, charging both their subscribers and the businesses who use them. It was formed back in the days when the telcos first put forth a plan via which they would, in effect, charge for a lot of services they don't actually provide.

While people have come up with a lot of their own ideas since then, the "no servers" clause has been widespread for ages and predates Net Neutrality significantly.

In other words, you could very well fit it under "reasonable network management."

> Net Neutrality was a reaction to a plan by ISPs to double-dip, charging both their subscribers and the businesses who use them.

That was the last straw that led to the effort to get net neutrality regulations, but it wasn't the one and only ISP restriction on that net neutrality was aimed at.

> In other words, you could very well fit it under "reasonable network management."

I don't see how Google's practices (the combination of the ToS's blanket no-servers policy and the apparent -- and Google employee confirmed -- practice that this is not applied to all servers, but means something more limited that is not specifically publicly disclosed) can fit anywhere within the neutrality and transparency provisions of the FCC's Open Internet Report and Order [1], and "reasonable network management" doesn't seem to save it. The relevant neutrality provisions for which reasonable network management is an exception are the non-blocking provision:

  A person engaged in the provision of fixed broadband 
  Internet access service, insofar as such person is so 
  engaged, shall not block lawful content, applications, 
  services, or nonharmful devices, subject to reasonable 
  network management.

And the no-unreasonable-discrimination provision:

  A person engaged in the provision of fixed broadband
  Internet access service, insofar as such person is so 
  engaged, shall not unreasonably discriminate in 
  transmitting lawful network traffic over a consumer’s 
  broadband Internet access service. Reasonable network 
  management shall not constitute unreasonable 
  discrimination.

And the relevant transparency provision:

  A person engaged in the provision of broadband Internet 
  access service shall publicly disclose accurate
  information regarding the network management practices, 
  performance, and commercial terms of its broadband 
  Internet access services sufficient for consumers to make 
  informed choices regarding use of such services and for 
  content, application, service, and device providers to 
  develop, market, and maintain Internet 
  offerings.

There is considerable discussion (at paragraphs 80 through 92) of the considerations that go into determining reasonable network management; but the particularly key one may be paragraph 87, which summarizes the applicable principles thusly:

  The principles guiding case-by-case evaluations of network
  management practices are much the same as those that guide 
  assessments of “no unreasonable discrimination,” and 
  include transparency, end-user control, and use- (or 
  application-) agnostic treatment.

The Google practice here is consistent with none of those three principles.

[1] http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-10-201...

The "no servers" clause, and its inconsistent enforcement, has been a part of literally every single consumer ISP ToS I have ever been a party to since the 90s. I have a hard time seeing it as anything but a longstanding, standard practice of reasonable network management, because there is a reasonable concern that people might saturate their connections and cause issues for others.

The thing people are really up in arms about is that their ISPs might charge them for access to Google, Skype, etc. selectively, even though they do absolutely nothing to run that service. I don't personally ascribe to whatever random definitions of Net Neutrality are out there, I just don't like the idea of ISPs charging for services they don't provide or otherwise selectively degrading them to make money. My principles are not in conflict and I simply do not care about whatever high-minded principles someone has come up with in a poor attempt to replicate that bit of common sense that ISPs shouldn't make up special fees for things they don't even provide.

You may notice how that "things they don't even provide" bit means that I have no weird "is this actually neutral?" edge cases when people pay to run caches/proxies/whatever to actually improve services for people, even when there are fees involved, while people sometimes get concerned over whether or not something is truly "neutral" or not. This is because I do not care about "neutrality" as such, but rather a much simpler concept of fairness: don't charge for (or degrade) services you don't provide.

> The "no servers" clause, and its inconsistent enforcement, has been a part of literally every single consumer ISP ToS I have ever been a party to since the 90s.

It hasn't been part of any of the ones I've been party two prior to 2000, or any of the ones after that except the ones from major telcos (but then, the ones prior to 2000 I was party two weren't, by any stretch, broadband.) But, even so, it doesn't really matter, since prior to the Open Internet Report and Order for which Google lobbied, there weren't FCC transparency requirements on fixed broadband providers, or neutrality rules which included transparency as a factor in determining whether a restriction was reasonable network management. There is now, and Google's decidedly non-transparent practice is inconsistent with the policy for which it lobbied.

> I have a hard time seeing it as anything but a longstanding, standard practice of reasonable network management

I have a hard time seeing it as "reasonable network management" given the way that term is used in the FCC Open Internet Report and Order, a policy for which Google lobbied.

If you can defend the idea that it is such within that context, I would like to hear the argument. But simply repeating time and again the same old "everyone has always done it" argument isn't making that case.

> If you can defend the idea that it is such within that context, I would like to hear the argument. But simply repeating time and again the same old "everyone has always done it" argument isn't making that case.

I have no interest whatsoever in defending principles I do not and have never held. Google can defend themselves without me, in any event.

Rather, I advocate something entirely different than "neutrality" as a principle from which to confront the real threat net neutrality was formed to prevent. That happens to align with what Google is currently doing, if not why it is doing it. The idea of "neutrality" has a lot of weird corner cases that make no sense at all in practice. I'd rather advocate something good than something... neutral.

> Clearly, you have (well, unless you are using "heard" very literally, in which case perhaps you haven't, but who cares then?), if you've read the article or the comment you are responding to. And I'm sure you've heard it more than that, too.

You're absolutely correct, I wasn't using it extremely literally, or even semi-literally. I meant that I hadn't heard anybody suggest this BEFORE I read the article that suggested it. Glad you pointed that out.

> You've just chosen to disregard those arguments.

That's quite an assumption that you've made. But I suppose we arguing on the internet, and that's the MO... assume that the people you're arguing with are both stupid AND intentionally misleading.

But, to set the record straight, I truly had not heard anybody (before this article) suggest that the rules that Comcast did and does have in effect about not operating a mail or web server be removed due to Net Neutrality. I know plenty of people thing that rule is bullshit, but they never linked the two concepts where I read or heard it. All discussion of Net Neutrality that I was aware of (again, before this article, do I really have to keep pointing this out every time, because it really seemed obvious to me when I made that original statement, but I suppose it was confusing enough the first time, so I'll keep clarifying it) revolved around bittorrent or the preferential treatment that ISPs were giving their "approved" (i.e. pay-for-performance) services (and, the discriminatory degrading of services from those who refused to pay).

It was the double-dipping that was publicized, the fact that they have 'tiered' services for personal and business purposes seemed reasonable...

To be fair, I am heavily biased against relying on Comcast for anything, so I guess it had never dawned on me that someone would attempt to run a server on anything that Comcast provides... personal OR business class. But I'm a block away from being able to have DSL, so I'm stuck with Comcast.

I also want to point out that my reading of the quote you provide does not suggest flip-flopping. I'm neither ignorant of nor ignoring the quote, but I take it to mean that "An ISP[...] shall not block ACCESS TO lawful content [...]". Certainly this is an understandable interpretation, especially considering the events that lead up to the net neutrality debates in the first place.

> I also want to point out that my reading of the quote you provide does not suggest flip-flopping. I'm neither ignorant of nor ignoring the quote, but I take it to mean that "An ISP[...] shall not block ACCESS TO lawful content [...]". Certainly this is an understandable interpretation, especially considering the events that lead up to the net neutrality debates in the first place.

I'm not sure how your rewriting (particularly, inserting the additional words "ACCESS TO") is imagined to make what Google is doing anything more inconsistent with the order, or how it is consistent with the order itself [1] (e.g., Paragraphs 65, referring to the language you are modifying/"interpreting"):

"We also note that the rule entitles end users to both connect and use any lawful device of their choice, provided such device does not harm the network."

A server appliance is a lawful device.

[1] http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-10-201...

And when I had 100/100 MBps in Sweden, my ISP had no mention of what you're allowed to use your connection for outside of outright abuse (DoS flooding, hacking). And I was even paying student rates in the range of $15/mo. I ended up running an internet radio station and a image host CDN slave out of my apartment, uploading 3-4 TB/mo. They never cared. Their network was solid, and they were profitable. So few people will do this (especially since with the lack of an SLA) that they can easily afford it.

It boils down to what they are selling?

Does the product ad say, 1 Gb bandwidth for $XX when use of bandwidth doesn't exceed 20%?

Generally, these sort of exceptions are not made clear at the time of purchase.

Frankly, if they are selling bits or bandwidth it shouldn't matter the type of account. The type of account should only impact customer service. The water company analogy should apply.

Good grief. This is about stuff as simple as being able to deprioritize packets from rival businesses — want to make Vonage suck compared to your bundled phone service or Amazon video suck compared to Netflix? Net Neutrality prevents this and the guys who are against it are The Usual Suspects.

There's nothing in Net Neutrality to stop vendors from capping bandwidth, only from cherry-picking packets.

In this specific case, virtually anything — including say the bittorrent client WoW uses to distribute patches or GoToMyPC — qualifies as a server.

Why can't they just limit part of the service to make it impractical to run a large server on it? Decrease the upload bandwidth, or limit the number of simultaneous connections you can have. Those would all be service limitations instead of discriminating on use.

Disclaimer: Google employee here, though nothing to do with Fiber.

I don't really like the no "server" policy, mainly because it's impossible to define what a server is, but I understand it from a business perspective. If a business likely to use a significant portion of their upstream bandwidth, it's reasonable to charge more than a consumer who doesn't. At the same time you want to be nice to power users who aren't running a business, but who use more upstream than average and might recommend the service to others.

Personally, I think this is all a consequence of not having metered billing. It would be more fair if your bill was a function of max bandwidth, actual data transferred, and service levels (support, QoS, etc.), though I would pay more than most of my neighbors.

The headline and net-neutrality tie in are just wrong though. This has nothing to do with net neutrality, it's a service level / market segmentation issue.

If net neutrality is not the practice of the ISP being neutral to the data being sent over its network, then what is it?

If they want to make it an issue of maximum bandwidth, so be it. Give us a cap and draw the line, but ambiguity is not going to do anyone any good.

When I hear people talk about net neutrality, I think of ISPs inspecting and/or rate-limiting (or blocking) certain types of packets.

I don't think that a simple declaration of rules (ie no servers) is as serious of a problem as silently blocking/throttling certain types of traffic.

An incoming request to port 80 vs an outgoing request to port 80 is a certain type of traffic, if you ask me.

> When I hear people talk about net neutrality, I think of ISPs inspecting and/or rate-limiting (or blocking) certain types of packets.

That's one way of violating net neutrality, but that's not the boundary of net neutrality.

> I don't think that a simple declaration of rules (ie no servers) is as serious of a problem as silently blocking/throttling certain types of traffic.

Well, no, silently blocking is both a neutrality problem and a transparency problem, the latter of which compounds the former by obscuring the nature and scope of it from the customer.

Of course, Google's policy (which states a blanket "no servers" but is, per the statements of Google employees that some servers are okay, doesn't really mean that) also seems to have transparency problems on top of its neutrality problems.

People hate caps, but I agree it's probably a better solution.

Personally, to make a clear and less potentially discriminatory rule that encourages business to buy business-class service, I'd probably go with burstable upstream speeds, uncapped at the lower speed with a cap only on the fast speed.

Even without a cap or any such rules whatsoever, there's plenty of room for a business-class service. It could have better uptime guarantees, redundancy, 24/7 support, and more.

In some people's minds network neutrality means no price discrimination (one might cynically notice that people who make this argument stand to benefit from it personally even if the market as a whole wouldn't).

"I don't really like the no "server" policy, mainly because it's impossible to define what a server is, but I understand it from a business perspective."

But that is the rub isn't it, its easy to understand why, from a business perspective, ComCast (nee Xfinity) might think it has the right to limit bandwidth to YouTube while providing full bandwidth to its Video-on-demand service right?

And yet that is exactly the sort of behavior Google argued against in ite neutrality plea arguing that it is about the customer's perspective that is important here, and if the customer wants to get their video from YouTube, their ISP should be prevented from interfering with that, especially if they have a conflict of interest going on.

And guess what, Google has a fecal-load of conflict of interest when you start putting a server on your Google Fiber, that is perhaps an "AppEngine" account they didn't get, or a better email experience than Gmail, or really awesome photo sharing. All things that Google would not get any revenue (advertising or otherwise) if they let that happen.

I expect that we'll eventually get to packet access to the Internet is a city service, like sewer and garbage, and all of this will be moot. But until this is a really poor move on Google's part and entirely hypocritical to their earlier stance. So in that regard I feel the headline is spot on.

Slightly different propositions. YouTube and other providers already buy bandwidth by capacity, say X Gbps for $$/month. When ComCast decides that traffic going through their network has to be taxed, they are limiting their users' bandwidth, which is also already paid for. If that's not working out financially, they should raise prices, not devise a way to extract money from content producers while holding consumers hostage.

Ditto on internet access as a public service, it's about time we fix that.

  > And guess what, Google has a fecal-load of conflict of
  > interest when you start putting a server on your Google
  > Fiber, that is perhaps an "AppEngine" account they
  > didn't get, or a better email experience than Gmail,
  > or really awesome photo sharing. All things that Google
  > would not get any revenue (advertising or otherwise) if
  > they let that happen.

I don't think Google is worried about consumers paying $70 a month to switch from Gmail to a home-hosted server. Anyone capable or interested in running their own server is going to rent a $10/month VPS, not try to kludge something together in their closet.

> I don't think Google is worried about consumers paying $70 a month to switch from Gmail to a home-hosted server. Anyone capable or interested in running their own server is going to rent a $10/month VPS, not try to kludge something together in their closet.

You seem to presume that no one has both:

1) Interest and capability to run their own mail server, and

2) Concerns (privacy or otherwise) that argue in favor of physical control of that server.

I find this unlikely in the extreme.

What's the threat model?

If you're worried about a rogue VPS company employee, then rent a dedicated server -- it's not that much more expensive, and you'd still benefit from having the redundant power and networking of a proper datacenter.

If you're worried about government agents, then the server is probably safer in a datacenter than in your home. When it's in your home, they can get a warrant to break in and bug it without ever notifying any third party.

In any case, the absolute quantity of people who are concerned enough about privacy to operate their own server are unlikely to be a major consideration to any ISP.

We're getting a little off topic here but...

When it's in your home, they can get a warrant to break in and bug it without ever notifying any third party.

When your data is in a data center the government can get it without even a warrant and the provider will be gagged so it won't matter that they know about it.

Actually, in the US through a quirk of US law a server in your residence has stronger protections with respect to seizure by law enforcement than one in a data center.

> All things that Google would not get any revenue (advertising or otherwise) if they let that happen

Wait, is Google Fiber free now?

I'll never understand why ISPs can't just tell you the bandwidth you get and let you use it. If they want you to use less, don't offer more. Why is it so hard to just tell people what you want from them instead of fooling them?

And how in the hell would a customer use even a tiny fraction of 1Gbs upload speed without a server? You'd think Google Fiber was run by idiots; but no, it's just assholes.

Deceptive marketing has a ratchet effect. If ISP A advertises guaranteed 1 Mbps for $50 and ISP B advertises up to 20 Mbps for $50 (in reality both are providing exactly the same service), then ISP A has no choice but to change their marketing if they want to stay in business. It's the same thing we saw with "4G"; once Sprint started advertising 4 Mbps WiMax as "4G" then T-Mobile and AT&T had to call their 7 Mbps HSPA "4G" too.

"4G" doesn't actually mean anything. "20 Mbps" means something specific. If you advertise "20 Mbps" then you should be providing twenty megabits per second. If you don't actually want to provide that then you can call it 20 Mbps burst or what have you, but one way or another you need to be providing what you're selling.

The real problem is the lack of accountability. If the first company to advertise 20 Mbps without actually providing 20 Mbps was held accountable to the offer then everything would be fine: The users who want to use 20Mbps sustained 24/7 for the whole month would be attracted to that service, the provider would have to set the price at a sustainable level or go out of business, the market works. It's the fact that we allow them to get away with offering something they aren't actually selling that creates the problem to begin with.

Yes, I don't like the no server rule much, but it's still not the same to me as violating net-neutrality, even if they both might have sane business rationales.

I think Google is trying to differentiate between consuming a service and providing a service. If you're providing a service, which presumably will use more resources, that you should buy a different level of connectivity.

I don't see any discrimination of the types of content, services, or origins and especially the favoritism, extortion and bundling that I typically associate with net-neutrality.

Don't get me wrong, I am agreeing with you that, "Google is trying to differentiate between consuming a service and providing a service." Where we disagree is that having that differentiation is compatible with the term 'net neutrality' :-) If you are familiar with the original debate, Verizon and friends defined net neutrality as "Anything we approve of you doing on our network." Many people, and I count myself among them, did not accept that as a valid definition.

That Google would model itself in the same vein as the ISPs when it became an ISP is not particularly surprising. it is merely disappointing. From the Veridian Dynamics commercial on Lying.

"Lying. It's always wrong. But sometimes companies have to say things that aren't 100% true. Is that wrong? No. When companies aren't truthful, it's not because we're bad. It's because we understand things that you don't. Veridian Dynamics. People lie. Companies protect their interests. It's different."

> If a business likely to use a significant portion of their upstream bandwidth, it's reasonable to charge more than a consumer who doesn't.

Fine, then have a policy based on bandwidth used. I doubt that many people would object to this, so long as the policy was clear, and didn't discriminate based on the content of the bits transmitted.

I imagine it's not meant to stop people from SSHing to a screen session running irssi, which is something I use my home server for a lot. Other than being a backup server, that's actually the main reason I have it.

So, what is the actual rule here?

As long as they don't stop a simple SSH server then I'd say it's ok.

The terms of service 'no server' clause is a net neutrality issue created as a poor response to a market segmentation issue.

Paraphrased from Wikipedia:

Net neutrality is the principle that an ISP should not discriminate by user, content, site, platform, application, type of attached equipment, and modes of communication.

Google is discriminating by a least a few of these criteria. If there is a market segmentation problem, metering and support contracts as you suggested would be appropriate. But by choosing to instead discriminate by these other factors, the article has accurately described this as a net neutrality issue.

> This has nothing to do with net neutrality, it's a service level / market segmentation issue.

Its a service level market segmentation issue that directly relates to the neutrality provisions in the Open Internet order (for which Google actively lobbied), and which is only a news item because Google is the target of a complaint for violating the neutrality provisions of that Order.

So, yes, its a service level / market segmentation issue, but its also undeniably and unquestionably a net neutrality issue, and its only a potential compliance issue because of the net neutrality aspects.

I think by now most people have learned never to trust Google (or Oracle or Microsoft, etc). This certainly doesn't come as a surprise to me, and I fully expect them to pull as many anti competitive stunts on Chrome and Android in the future as they possibly can.

The question is: what can we do to mitigate this? And no, choosing not to use Google products is about as useful as choosing not to use MS Windows was 10 years ago. We need to try and find solutions now before this becomes a serious problem.

> I think by now most people have learned never to trust Google (or Oracle or Microsoft, etc).

I haven't, and I think you're wrong to make that conclusion.

It's a business, and I trust it to act like a business. It operates in multiple countries, and I trust it to follow the laws it has to. I use their services, and I trust them to act as professionally with my data as I'd expect any of my best friends to do, if they were running Google.

I've been disappointed with some of Google's decisions, but that's a completely different animal from revoking my TRUST in them.

Let me rephrase what I said to be more specific:

Five or ten years ago, I trusted Google to act in the best interests of the web and humanity in general. This is the specific trust that I and many others have now lost. It can now be assumed that Google will act in their own corporate bests interests whenever possible. This is not terribly surprising, as it is the basic mode of operation for companies such as Microsoft and Oracle, but it is a change for Google. I now trust Google to wiretap my communications in any and all countries with surveillance programs. I now trust Google to terminate any projects that are beneficial to the market but not to Google. I expect Google to modify public-friendly projects such as Chrome and Android to be public-hostile and Google-friendly.

I'm very sure I am not alone here. I'm talking to the people here on HN who feel the same way that I do:

How are we going to make this work? Should we fork Chrome and Android and try to get community backing for forks that we can control before it becomes too late? If we act now, we may be able to do something before we end up with the kind of stagnation we had from IE6.

> I now trust Google to wiretap my communications in any and all countries with surveillance programs.

Let's not focus anger at the wrong people. USgov is to blame for that stuff, not Google. Google is an American company and at the end of the day, they _must_ adhere to the law, right? I personally don't care if they fight the law, or obey it immediately. I only care that the law was made in the first place and which groups of people made the law. No point debating what a company should/shouldn't/did/didn't do in the face of an unfair law. Focus should be on the flaw in the system that allowed the law to be created to begin with.

An individual or a corporation is not only to be judged by the laws that are applied. It is also judged by the laws above those laws, like human rights. Someone violating those laws can by prosecuted, and in every case, they can be judged on an ethical level.

If a company bows to laws that are unethical, that lead to the possibility of a huge surveillance regime occupying the world, it is perfectly sound to focus also on the people complying and not only on the people making the laws. There is always another option.

> If a company bows to laws that are unethical,

None of you people have ever listed another alternative for them, that is based on anything but fantasy.

I think some of the anger might come from the fact that any normal person, or any normal group of people, don't have the clout to influence those kinds of laws — Google does. However, they chose to bow to those laws (and charge the government for the privilege.) If Google, the one company tech enthusiasts would trust to be on their side, doesn't want to change those laws, what chance do you think any of us have?

Please provide one shred of evidence for your belief that Google doesn't want to change those laws.

When a dictator comes to power he does so and remains in power because of the support of the people around them. Wrongs are perpetuated and maintained all in the name of 'laws'.

> forks that we can control before it becomes too late

Too late?

You have the entire history of Chrome and Android at your finger-tips.

If ever they do something public-hostile, you can fork immediately before then. If they ever stagnate like IE, you can fork and add your own features then.

Until then, what's your problem? Why would you even consider forking?

> Five or ten years ago, I trusted Google to act in the best interests of the web and humanity in general.

It is naive to think you're going to be able to find companies that act "in the best interests of ... humanity in general." I suggest you work to deal with companies that provide you a quality service in exchange for a fair price. You're buying a product, not looking for a spouse.

> choosing not to use Google products is about as useful as choosing not to use MS Windows was 10 years ago

Actually people that decided not to use Windows 10 years ago are precisely the reason for why Microsoft is more and more irrelevant today. They've been haemorrhaging mind-share amongst developers ever since early 2000.

This isn't something that happens overnight, but when losing the mind-share of influencers, the long-term effects are devastating. And developers in the software industry are the ultimate influencers.

Pick any successful product that's eroding Microsoft's market-share, anything at all. You'll discover an interesting pattern - the early adopters, the influencers, the ones providing the much-needed spark are exactly the people that stopped using Microsoft's products 10 years ago.

And yes, most people are still on Windows, but they aren't locked to Windows any more and guess who made that happen?

Like how videogame developers started shifting from DirectX in 2003 and many now write for open standards, like OpenGL & OpenAL?

Except that didn't happen. The videogame industry got too caught up in the nVidia vs ATI fanboy wars, allowing Microsoft's proprietary standards (or however I should refer to DirectX) to become the de facto industry standard.

"Like how videogame developers started shifting from DirectX in 2003 and many now write for open standards, like OpenGL & OpenAL?"

Hey man, I'm working on it! Give me a break.

There has been some recent changes around this situation such as Microsoft now implementing WebGL in IE11 which means they are starting to loose some of their stronghold on the graphic api world.

I don't think it's a case of Microsoft consciously releasing their stranglehold so much as new devices (smartphones) forcing a change in the videogame landscape.

> And yes, most people are still on Windows, but they aren't locked to Windows any more and guess who made that happen?

Apple? - Sent from my iPhone

Barely. - Sent from my web browser

To answer your question: build compelling software that requires inbound connectivity. If users (voters, customers, ...) want to use their Internet connection where the server is in the home, the providers will eventually step up and take notice. I hate "let the market decide" as much as the next guy, but I don't quite see a better way to do this. One plug[1] is worth a thousand deleted Google accounts.

1. http://meetplug.com/launch/

IMO this headline is a little inflammatory; the (mostly unenforced) ban on servers is a pretty small carve-out. Also note that the NN people haven't been complaining much that every consumer broadband plan also bans servers.

every other consumer broadband plan has been against them from the start. Google, on the other hand is the only company to start off saying do whatever, then change their tune once they started offering broadband.

I just read the TOS of my provider, and servers aren't banned anywhere.

Reselling is prohibited, any kind of "professional use" is prohibited, but they don't say anything about servers.

Besides, the reason nobody hosts servers on personal connections is that the upload speed is terrible, not any sort of legal/contractual thing.

I think running home-servers falls under "professional use", but if I'm wrong please correct me.

The OP itself points out non-professional uses of home servers (Minecraft)...

In general, ISPs don't mind non-professional servers; they're really banning commercial hosting.

[citation needed]

The millions of people who have been kicked off their ISPs for gaming, using Skype, running a little server, etc. Oh wait, that didn't happen.

Yep, and in this case Google is "really" banning all servers for non-business accounts, according to the original article.

If I run an email server for my family, or a web server to host my personal blog what is "professional use" about that?

That's not a "small carveout". That's a muzzle. It's asymmetric power, that you're only allowed to consume, not to publish.

What's more, from a technical standpoint, it's different for a fiber provider than for a cable company. Coax cable capacity is asymmetric. It can carry only a given amount of data and they can carve it up to give you more down and less up, equal amounts, or more up and less down. Obviously most users want fast downloads and aren't as concerned about uploads.

By contrast, fiber is symmetric, offering full capacities up and down at once. So while cable has a technical justification for "service levels" to offer a server, fiber providers do not. Google Fiber is 1000/1000 Mbit/s symmetrical. Forcing the consumer to not use the idle uplink is against consumer generated content and consumer ownership of their own content, for the sake of a "differentiated business plan". It's against the democratization of consumer created content that consumers can control themselves.

(Google has dogs in that hunt too, you "should" host your content on G+ or YouTube, and host your email on Gmail, rather than drop in a Mac Mini Server or "host any type of server" at home.)

FWIW, my $50/mo residential plan doesn't ban servers, even though the company offers business plans from $200/mo up. I can host a mail server and a web server, with dynamic DNS and open ports 25 and 80. Ports >1024 are open for all classes of service, even their lowest.

Finally, I think the point here is that other consumer broadband providers weren't lobbying for network neutrality. Telcos weren't, cable wasn't. Google was.

It feels a bit icky when "don't be evil" turns out to mean "for now ... until we have an offering in that area that enough people adopt and this practice we used to actively call evil turns out could make us more money and is actually good ... for us".

Mind you, being magnanimous until they own enough customers is an excellent strategy. They just need a different slogan and to quit with the flip flopping.

> By contrast, fiber is symmetric, offering full capacities up and down at once. So while cable has a technical justification for "service levels" to offer a server, fiber providers do not. Google Fiber is 1000/1000 Mbit/s symmetrical.

Link symmetry is a property of the datalink protocol and service provisioning, not the physical media.

Many, if not most, FTTH deployments use PON which delivers asymmetric bandwidth that is shared among a number of users. GPON delivers 2.488Gbps down and 1.244Gbps up and is typically shared between 16 and 64 users.

Crap, the Australian NBN is going to be GPON. It's going to be DOCSIS2 all over again - good until you get a lot of users in your neighborhood.

For some reason, I was under the impression Google's FTTH (fiber to the home) was using real (active) fiber networking home runs instead of telco/cable's bastardized passive optical splitting down and TDM up. Wiki cited 1000/1000 symmetric, so I assumed they were using active symmetric.

Seems to be some debate about it:

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r27731107-Google-Fiber-Lates...

If it's not real fiber networking, then yeah, same asymmetric song and dance as cable.

But see pages 10 and 11 of this Google PDF explaining why they might as well use symmetric point to point:

http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrust...

It says end run to users is the ultimate future proof approach and a costs negligible amount more.

If they didn't go that way, well, I am disappointed.

It is also possible that they are using WDM-PON with a different wavelength for each subscriber.

Even with Active Ethernet (the industry term for dedicated run of fiber to each subscriber) you likely still have a bandwidth constraint somewhere, be it at the switch uplinks or border routers so some level of oversubscription is a given.

Right now FTTH networks are getting away with some pretty wild oversubscription ratios since content and consumption are lagging. From what I've seen on my network residential traffic tends to interleave pretty well as it is really bursty. Business traffic tends to a constant during the work day so can't interleave as many business customers. It will be interesting to see what Google Fiber charges medium & large businesses.

Just checked your profile -- love what you're doing. I helped start up a metro ISP in early 90s that we grew gangbusters by guaranteeing no busies and max modem speeds, till it got rolled up by a telco in late 90s.

Incidentally, as this is about hosting one's own servers, early on I wrote the first (as far as I know) dynamic DNS for dial-up users, so when you connected to a Portmaster and auth'd via RADIUS, your username.isp.com got pointed to your dynamic IP, allowing you to host over dialup under your own name. Customers even ran their own mail servers at home since SMTP was happy to wait for them to dial in. I believed in user publishing then and still do today.

From day one competitor telco ISP services (and telco backbone links) were so oversubscribed it felt immoral. Sorry to hear that's still not changing.

They are hardly even a broadband player, their coverage in miniscule.

Google Fiber is an experimental / policy altering service, its TOS as this point in time is inconsequential.

"No servers" means entire classes of consumer products that could leverage a very fast home connection are preemptively banned out of existence for another decade.

You could replace a lot of stuff with plug-in-and-forget devices on a very fast connection - dropbox, email provider, personal web hosting, etc.

> Also note that the NN people haven't been complaining much that every consumer broadband plan also bans servers

Yes, they have. In fact, the bans imposed by other broadband providers were the key motivation for NN folks. (Including the FCC commissioners that included the neutrality provisions in the Open Internet report and order.)

Right now, many NN advocates are yelling louder about Google because Google was on their side until very recently, and now is taking the exact opposite position.

Admittedly in the UK, but the ISP I use don't have a problem with people running servers: http://www.aa.net.uk/

Eh, I don't see a huge problem with Google saying "You can't run enterprise-level servers off of our consumer-level lines" even if they have ridiculous speeds.

"Your Google Fiber account is for your use and the reasonable use of your guests"

I'd consider small-time server software to be within a "reasonable use". If you're hosting a web server with 10 simultaneous requests, you're outside of reasonable use. Any other ISP would have turned your pipe off.

Reasonable use shouldn't make a distinction between incoming and outgoing. If I'm making 10 req/sec to a server in the cloud, how is that any different than someone making 10 req/sec to a server in my living room?

The problem is they don't spell out what reasonable use is, or mention "enterprise-level". They simply have a blanket ban on an entire class of applications; anything that listens for and accepts connections is a server.

"Unless you have a written agreement with Google Fiber permitting you do so, you should not host any type of server using your Google Fiber connection, use your Google Fiber account to provide a large number of people with Internet access, or use your Google Fiber account to provide commercial services to third parties (including, but not limited to, selling Internet access to third parties)."

That is an "or" so no servers at all without written permission. This text is referenced from the TOS as examples of what you shouldn't do but the wording isn't actually in the TOS.

What if I am hosting a Quake match with 10 simultaneous requests, is that outside of reasonable use?

I was thinking the same thing, or even running a Minecraft server. They need to publish examples. Gaming servers like this would probably be considered OK. They're most likely targeting examples such as someone starting up their own mail server, even if just for personal use.

Running your own personal mail and file servers should be the default in a truly symmetric many-to-many internet.

I would say the line would be crossed if people made money with their hosted content.

I remember when the internet was seen as a many-to-many communications medium. Have we given up on that premise?

Unfortunately, that pretty much went out the window when residential ISPs realized they could get away with 25mb/s down and 0.5mb/s up. Which was a while ago.

I don't think that's the point, though. ISPs wanted to charge businesses extra fees for high bandwidth use and they were backhanded to the face. Now Google would like control of high bandwidth use (well, their response vaguely says "any kind of server") in a similar fashion. I think semi-arbitrary rules to distinguish business from consumer usage is a red herring. It ultimately comes down to, can a business charge extra for varying levels of bandwidth usage or not? Google said no when it wasn't an ISP, and now it's saying yes.

Selective enforcement is the most abusable. The goal should be to preempt abuse.

Maybe they are OK if you host a blog, but then maybe if you host a blog critical of them they make you drop of the net.

The thing that concerns me the most if how unresponsive Google has proven to be when someone files a complaint about being wrongly chosen for having their account suspended. Just look to the recent example of Gary Bernhardt trying to get his email turned back on. https://twitter.com/garybernhardt‎

What's going to happen when someone's kid starts up a Minecraft server to play with his friends and Google suspends their Fiber account due to it. Most likely - they won't respond. I hate to see them turn into the next Comcast.

To me, this is one of the most serious concerns about Google Fiber.

Google's legendarily bad customer support (motto: make a product that keeps 85% of your customers happy and ignore the unhappy minority) combined with something as important as a home Internet connection? No thanks.

I seem to remember lots of people talking about the exciting potential Google Fiber would create for internet startups and small businesses. Too bad Google doesn't feel the same way.

Same article: "Google wants to ban the use of servers because it plans to offer a business class offering in the future."

So end users who want to make use of new and exciting internet software, peer to peer applications, media streaming and other tools need a business class connection?

  So end users who want to make use of new and exciting internet software, peer to peer applications, 
  media streaming and other tools need a business class connection?

Because having terms against running a server off consumer pipes stops you from using 'exciting internet software', streaming, or using 'other tools'?

They do if they use P2P technology. Like, say, Spotify.

Or World of Warcraft downloading patches.

Yes, it does. Most modern internet multiplayer games use some sort of P2P functionality at this point, whether for voice chat or hosting or matchmaking. Software/game updaters tend to use P2P to download large patches. Media players might use P2P to accelerate downloads. Gaming consoles like the PS3 allow 'remote play' by acting as a server for remote connections. People turn their home machine into a server to connect using remote access software. Etc, etc.

P2P != Running a Server.

P2P requires running a combined client/server. Its a subset of, rather than equal to, running a server. Prohibit servers prohibits P2P.

In a pedantic sense, yes, a P2P program is a server, but at that level of technicality, anything could be considered a server -- which is the point I am trying to make: you guys are taking this notion of 'server' to an absolute extreme that undermines you point. Pretending that these terms forbid you from downloading a WOW patch is flat out absurd, and to continue down this line shows you aren't concerned about practical reality.

> In a pedantic sense, yes, a P2P program is a server, but at that level of technicality, anything could be considered a server

Well, no. Plenty of programs exist which do not listen for and respond to network connections, either exclusively initiating network connections (pure network clients) or not communicating on the network at all. It is not the case that using "server" to mean what it actually means suddenly means "anything could be considered a server".

> Pretending that these terms forbid you from downloading a WOW patch is flat out absurd, and to continue down this line shows you aren't concerned about practical reality.

The terms plainly prohibit that (assuming that WOW patches use P2P software which involves a server, which I have no certain knowledge of since WOW isn't one of the things I have much interest in.)

It may (quite likely is, from what various Google employees have apparently said about how the Google Fiber policy is enforced) be that the actual enforcement of the terms does not, which actually is problematic in a different way (what it means is that the terms are not the real rules, and the real rules are not disclosed, which, on top of whatever problem the server prohibition itself has with the Open Internet order's neutrality provisions, seems to fall afoul of the order's transparency provisions; which underlines the extent to which what Google is doing here is exactly what the FCC Order -- which Google lobbied heavily for -- was designed to protect consumers against.)

That's nothing pedantic about saying P2P is a kind of server. It can accept connections from clients and it can serve data to them. That's exactly what a server is.

If tomorrow I roll into Apache a feature for it to download files from other websites, it's effectively a P2P app. Are we not going to call Apache a server?

A web browser, on the other hand, is not a server.

P2P is a combination of client and server into one package. Running P2P is definitely running a server.

The idea of having to upgrade to a "business class" offering in order to run my kids' low-traffic Minecraft server seems ridiculous. I would expect this kind of broad-brush treatment from a cable company, I like to imagine that I could expect better from Google.

Google has never, ever objected to server restrictions on residential connections, and the entire industry has had those restrictions for most of its existence.

Remember how big a deal Speakeasy always made of allowing servers? It's because nobody else did.

But this does run counter to basic net neutrality, which Google championed. If it didn't explicitly have an objection to server restrictions before, that doesn't diffuse the hypocrisy; they didn't stand to lose or gain from server restrictions before.

No, it does not run counter to "basic net neutrality". Not as I see it. Especially since one of the key points of net neutrality advocacy is that it simply maintains the long-standing status quo.

You may have your own extremist view of what net neutrality is, but it's not the view shared by everyone.

Apart from the point that a "server" is a very vague term, there is a big difference between inspecting every packed and block/throttle the traffic depending on the content, and requiring the subscriber to not run a business from a home connection.

If you want to draw a distinction between those two types of net non-neutrality, fine. But this is still a convenient distinction for Google to be drawing. In a competitive market, I don't think either type of non-neutrality would survive.

http://lwn.net/images/pdf/google_fiber_response_to_mcclendon...

   Your Google Fiber account is for your use and the 
   reasonable use of your guests. Unless you have a written 
   agreement with Google Fiber permitting you do so, you 
   should not host any type of server using your Google 
   Fiber connection, use your Google Fiber account to 
   provide a large number of people with Internet access,
   use your Google Fiber account to provide commercial 
   services to third parties (including, but not limited 
   to, selling Internet access to third parties)

I think I see what's going on here, they have to assume most people arn't actually going to use their connection. So they offer it on the pretense that no one will take advantage of it.

It's why the bandwidth caps exist, it's why bittorrent shapping is happening at all. BitTorrent really did start making use of the bandwidth the telco's promised. A promise they couldn't deliver.

Frankly, google's going to need more clauses than that in order to prevent people from taking advantage of their empty promise. I can't wait to see these obvious rule patches grow like cancer.

Anyway, Why can't I share my connection? It's very easy. "Hey neighbor, take this Ethernet cable, you're welcome." Oh that's not ok? OK so why can my family use it then? I'm the one buying right and my family arn't guests. What about multiple families that live in the same house? We should order 3 packages?

This is silly. What is going on down there?

As a closing thought. People are laying these expectations of google fiber, because google fiber was supposed to be the ISP that was going to save us. If you're going to lead by example, you're not supposed to go "But those ingrates are doing it, so I can too".

Their entire response is just fancy legal maneuvering to dodge actually having to justify the "no server hosting of any kind allowed" clause in the ToS. The response is essentially: "LOL u have no standing kthxbai" along with a dash of "this is just 'reasonable network management'" and "everyone else is doing it!" You know, the exact same talking points that all of the other ISPs have been spewing.

If Google cannot actually provide symmetric gigabit links to its customers, then it sounds to me like any network degradation is their own doing based on their own failures to reasonably provision the network. I would much rather see Google offering a guarantee on whatever bandwidth they can actually deliver. I'd sooner pay 70 a month for guaranteed symmetric 50 Mbps uplinks than 70 a month for a symmetric gigabit uplink that is subject to Google's (or any other provider's) touchy-feely notions of "reasonable network management."

I would much rather see Google offering a guarantee on whatever bandwidth they can actually deliver.

And then their cable competitors would slaughter them by offering "the same" bandwidth for half the price and Google Fiber would go out of business.

And? If a competitor can do it for half the price then I'd be all for it.

No, my point is that if Google guarantees bandwidth (e.g. 20 Mbps for $70) but none of their competitors do, competitors would offer something that sounds better (e.g. "up to" 20 Mbps for $35) but is actually much worse.

however, will the mom and dads know what is _actually_ true vs what they've been told (and cannot verify)? AKA, marketing.

If this is true, google will end up with the niche customers who do utilize their full bandwidth, while the majority goes to comcast (or whatever company that lies about their bandwidth).

Look, not everyone is going to use 100% util. of the 50Mbps internet connection, infact only a very, very tiny percent of users will, and they are better off getting a business grade contract.

What wmf is saying that the competitors will also offer "50Mbps", and to 99.9% of users, the internet speed will be exactly the same. A single netflix movie will download at 50Mbps, however if Google User A were to host a video streaming service, he would find he had much more consistent speeds than Comcast User B.

Now given that information, you had to choose:

A.) Comcast "up to" 50 Mbps for $29.99/mo or B.) Google 50Mbps 24/7 for %49.99/mo

Which would most user choose given that 99.9% of users will never use or need 100% util. of their connections?

If it were true that 99.9% of all users never ever saturated their lines, then no one would ever be having these kinds of conversations. The only reason network neutrality has become such an issue is precisely because there are ubiquitous technologies that can and do saturate your link, and consumers love them. Napster, Kaaza, Morpheus, Bit Torrent --all popular (or once popular, anyway) P2P technologies that take advantage of as much bandwidth as you want to throw at them. Consumers can, have, and do saturate their lines in great numbers. The ISP industry's response was to throw a hissy fit that consumers were taking advantage of what was sold to them, institute throttling and deep packet inspection, and dig their heels in on upgrading network infrastructure, even when the government threw billions of dollars their way to make it happen.

Google's public image on the matter has strongly revolved around shaming these practices, going so far as to file amicus curiae briefs to the courts in relevant cases condemning the very practices they're now attempting to implement. The rhetorical "think of all the things you could do with a connection that fast!" questions are pervasive in their marketing. They've gone so far as to say that the reason they're getting into the ISP game is precisely to incite the development of technologies that can take advantage of those links. These public faces are at odds with the words of their legal department that wants to hide under "reasonable network management" in ways that make them indistinguishable from the very competitors they claim to be shaming.

I really don't think Google is out to get torrent users. What I think is happening here, is a legal battle.

"Server" is a very broad term, heck every device is technically a server. What I believe Google is pushing for, is the ability to include this language in their ToS, then to discriminate on a case by case basis.

>is the ability to include this language in their ToS, then to discriminate on a case by case basis

I know. I'm pretty peeved about that.

That's not what net neutrality is about - the author is taking it to the extreme.

Not allowing a server on the client side is just reasonable business practice, as opposed to shaping or prioritizing traffic to the client according to the source or the client's pay plan.

No it's not, that's preference of certain packets over other packets. It is completely and entirely irrelevant what the packets I'm sending and receiving on my network are to be used for - server, or client, according to the principle of net neutrality. If there is a bandwidth problem then we can address that, but as it stands there is simply not a bandwidth problem.

Ask how Google or any other company would enforce this. If the answer is packet inspection, then it's probably in violation of the network neutrality principle.

Why is it a reasonable business practice?

The way I see it, client Internet connections are for data consumption, i.e. mostly download. Servers, on the other hand, create and provide the content.

Kind of like being the manufacturer of a watch and being its end user.

The line is getting pretty blurry, but I don't think you can put the two in the same bucket - not yet anyway.

This is pretty disappointing to me, I was looking forward to being able to use my internet however I please on the off chance Google Fiber ever came to my area.

If everybody maxes out a 1 Gbps line, no one will get a 1 Gbps line.

The implication is that the broad terminology will prohibit computers doing common consumer things in addition to servers. Except that hasn't happened.

The complaint was filed by a potential customer, not someone who ran in to the restriction. In fact, it sounds as though Google Fiber keeps making exceptions for even less consumer-like things (Gaming servers in this case).

No, if everybody maxes out a 1 Gbps line, the ISPs will invest in faster networks.

From http://www.google.com/intl/en/about/company/history/

1996: "BackRub operates on Stanford servers for more than a year—eventually taking up too much bandwidth to suit the university."

1998: "Google sets up workspace in Susan Wojcicki’s garage at 232 Santa Margarita, Menlo Park."

I wonder, were those business class connections? Or were they maybe bending the rules just at bit at times?

I love the use of "should" in "you should not host any type of server using your Google Fiber connection".

For a legal document, that's a pretty muddy word. It could be just a suggestion or it could be interpreted as "shall", basically making it a demand.

In other words, now that Google is an ISP, all the concerns that ISP's have about traffic management suddenly make sense.

If they had said only 256 or 128 mb/sec of your 1024 mb/sec is allowed for home server traffic, I'd be ok with that. Yeah, it's a residential connection, so the TOS would surely be different. But as it stands, I now have no compelling reason to choose them over the competition (who will also be offering fast transfer speeds once Google Fiber comes to Austin)

The competition will have the same terms. None of the broadband providers in the US offer restriction-free upstream traffic on their consumer lines. You have to pay more for a different kind of account for that. This is called price discrimination, and it's a good thing for the consumer as it reduces prices. No one could afford to offer 1Gbps for $70/mo or whatever it costs given a typical service provision load of ~50% utilization.

Now, I will agree that as written the terms are inflexible and would appear to apply to things like an inbound ssh port or personal web server, which are certainly things many technical readers would want to use and which clearly won't impact the network.

Also: since when is this about "network neutrality", which has always been about backbone traffic. Consumer lines have always been subject to price discrimination like this.

Ultimately, it may come down to how they enforce this.

I know that TimeWarner will start rotating your IP address as soon as they detect a responsive port 80 on your connection.

> Also: since when is this about "network neutrality"

The reason that this is even in the news is that this is Google's response to a complaint to the FCC that Google is violating the neutrality provisions of the FCC Open Internet Report and Order. So, its an issue precisely because its about net neutrality.

> which has always been about backbone traffic.

No, net neutrality has not always been (at least, not exclusively) about backbone traffic.

I'm not sure which ISP you think is going to compete with Google Fiber here in ATX. I'm currently on Grande at 110Mbps over FTTH, and it's OK, but it's not 1Gbps, either.

Anything above 512 mb/sec, as a practical matter, is irrelevant at the present time. Why? Because you're constrained by how fast the remote server can send bits your way and how fast the internet as a whole can route packets to you. So yes, you could torrent the heck out of stuff because the incoming traffic is spread amongst many computers, but you're still going to have delays from sites that do traditional http stuff.

What does the policy mean by servers? "Hosting a server" might include hosting custom games in Warcraft III or hosting netplay games in $FIGHTING_GAME_OF_CHOICE. It might also include operating some machines that are "servers" even if they are not running any particular "server" software.

Sounds to me like they want to offer a Business level tier. The wording "should not host any type of server" was probably groomed by the legal team. My guess is rather than define what a server is, which is almost impossible, they are covered by that vague terminology.

The important question is to what degree do they enforce it? 0.01%? If so, then no big deal to me. I'm paying a lot more for a lot less with my current ISP. I'd be glad to endure Google's draconion rules.

Google dismissed the don't be evil mantra a while ago and has little resemblance to the company of integrity so many of us fell in love with. They're so big and pervasive - it's a juxtapose of government and multinational corporation with vastly different set of goals and values. Incidentally, not very favorable for us, users. But it will take 3 Stallman's and another Snowden some time in the future for people to finally realize that :)

Its not really against net neutrality in the 'traditional' sense... but its more inappropriate advertising. Google and all the other ISPs advertise their service as 10 Mbps Down/5 Mbps Up, when really if you read the fine print its ('up to' 10 Mbps Down/spike uploads of 5 Mbps but not sustained uploads... which is a fine product, and not a big dealbreaker to most people, but is definitely not what is usually advertised.

I'm trying to piece together the legal basis for the whole no-residential-server thing, and the more I dig, the more baseless it all seems.

Darah Franklin's dismissal [1] of McClendon's complaint states, 'Google Fiber's server policy is an aspect of "reasonable network management" that the Open Internet Order and Rules specifically permit.' That seems like an awfully vague phrase, "reasonable network management", but here's one interpretation, offered by the FCC back in 2009 [2]:

>> Under the draft proposed rules, subject to reasonable network management, a provider of broadband Internet access service: ... 2. would not be allowed to prevent any of its users from running the lawful applications or using the lawful services of the user’s choice; 3. would not be allowed to prevent any of its users from connecting to and using on its network the user’s choice of lawful devices that do not harm the network;

'Lawful services'? 'Lawful devices'? It seems like a private git server should be allowed, after all. But that was just a draft. Franklin doesn't mention any room for exceptions, though:

> The server policy has been established to account for the congestion management and network security needs of Google Fiber's network architecture.

Okay, so "reasonable network management" is justified by "congestion management and network security needs". But then I read the FCC's 2008 decision concerning Comcast's BitTorrent RST abuse [3], and right there on the first page:

>> We consider whether Comcast, a provider of broadband Internet access over cable lines, may selectively target and interfere with connections of peer-to-peer (P2P) applications under the facts of this case. Although Comcast asserts that its conduct is necessary to ease network congestion, we conclude that the company's discriminatory and arbitrary practice unduly squelches the dynamic benefits of an open and accessible Internet and does not constitute reasonable network management.

So the FCC has indeed set precedent that a necessity to "ease network congestion" does not necessarily outweigh "the dynamic benefits of an open and accessible Internet". Franklin makes more than one reference to a certain Preserving the Open Internet Broadband Industry Practices document [4]. I found this reference incredibly brazen. Franklin claims this server issue was specifically discussed. In the document, Google actually argues

> The threat that wireless networks may develop into fundamental non-neutral platforms is real. For example, the terms imposed by most major wireless carriers purport to prohibit the use of, at minimum: ... server or host applications. ... All of these actions threaten user choice and freedom online, and adopting network neutrality rules for wireless networks will allow the Commission to take action against these kinds of practices in the future.

What the hell? Google specifically advised the FCC to disallow what Franklin specifically says is industry standard. Google is playing a Dark Knight here: the laws are bad, and Google wants everyone to feel the full force of bad law. I can't applaud them for playing the status quo so hard like this, and now that they're moving into the ISP sector it's getting more and more dissonant to hear them claim they're powerless over industry standards.

Lastly, I can't find the forum thread described by the Wired article, "But in the Google Fiber forums, employees assure subscribers the rules aren't meant to apply to Minecraft servers." I think this kind of deception is heinous. The employees can't say what their legal department will or will not state. They're maintaining a false PR stance that is simply misleading: Google (Darah Franklin) has clearly stated Google Fiber disallows servers. Tricking the public to think they are in the clear to run a Minecraft server is perhaps well-intentioned but just doesn't jive with "Don't be evil."

[1] http://lwn.net/images/pdf/google_fiber_response_to_mcclendon...

[2] http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-294159...

[3] http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-08-183...

[4] http://www.freepress.net/sites/default/files/fp-legacy/FP_Co...

Sigh. To disallow the ability to run services from anywhere, particularly home, undermines the very future of the Internet's full potential as a massively distributed computational aid and data store. Google was the great hope in this. Now they too have succumbed to the $$ of acting as a cartel. Which means, eventually the Internet will be little more than a glorified cable box.

Don't these terms also forbid Chromecasting? The device itself is a server on your local network.

Why are ISP so terrified to say that you only get a fixed limit of bandwidth? Can you not survive in this business unless you lie and say "unlimited?" It seems we all know that unlimited actually means "some unknown number of Gb before you get a warning letter."

Server monitoring seems so easy. If you're running a serious server-based business then your upload is going to be way out of whack with download bandwidth. Why not just limit your upload traffic and let people do whatever they want?

I'd rather know what my limit was and work with it than to have my ISP tell me I have "unlimited" bandwidth, but then secretly limit or throttle me.

Instead of content-based throttling, why not just switch people from 1GBPS to 10MBPS after the first NTB per billing period? Still fast enough to watch streaming video all month long, just not fast enough to host streaming video.

Don't be evil... Unless you know it helps us make more money or something.

The key will be how they actually enforce this. Siting servers is the wrong thing to tack on to. Because there are perfectly legitimate personal servers as outlined in comments above for personal use that wouldn't eat up excessive bandwidth. That being said I think the "no professional" or "no business" uses are terrible too depending on how they choose to interpret and apply. A loosely enforced version of the latter would be better in my opinion.

All I can think is : thank god I don't live in the US. The telco and cable market there sounds utterly horrible.

Banning servers is normal practice? Those kind of restriction were dropped over a decade ago in civilized countries with decent broadband.

BTW, this is the second time Google has done a 180 on net neutrality. The first time was when it tried together with Verizon to redefine net neutrality with an exception for wireless networks.

Why not just treat broadband as a utility like everything else (electricity, gas, water) and just charge a dollar per TB or whatever?

Because grandma is mad that she got a bill for $1,000 when her computer accidentally downloaded the Internet.

Isn't net neutrality about giving preferential treatment to traffic depending on its point of origin? Has Google flip-flopped on this issue?? All I see is some rambling protestations about Google not allowing servers on their free internet connections.

"Don't Be Evil... you know, generally. When it's practical. For us."

Not surprised, it's a business and like every other business it is trying to protect its interests. The good news is now we know Google's stance, so it's upto you if you still want to get to Fiber.

Frankly, I don't care if Google changes it's slogan to "Do lots of Evil". If it means I get Google Fiber in my area I'm all for it.

I'm not sure I understand the tone of that piece, it strikes me as yet another attempt at vilifying Google for the most trivial and altogether invalid reasons.

Google offers gigabit speeds in very select areas; coverage-wise they are hardly a blip on the map. Ostensibly the main strategic purpose of Google Fiber is proving that 1Gbps connections to consumers are possible and affordable, which in turn might shame the main players to up their game or result in municipal broadband initiatives and the like.

So now after scrutinizing a strictly worded and loosely enforced TOS agreement, the author (in a shameless display of feigned indignation) is invoking the plight of political dissidents?! this is absurd, the author ought to re-adjust his perspective and lay off the navel gazing.

I don't know what the future holds for Google Fiber but from afar it appears to be an experimental initiative that is still evolving, so disallowing enterprise grade servers at this point in time isn't the end of the world, keep in mind that doing similar things on competing services isn't even viable.

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