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How is this different from paying more for a fast lane, which net neutrality is supposed to prevent? Edit: there seems to be a bit of confusion what I'm referr

How is this different from paying more for a fast lane, which net neutrality is supposed to prevent? Edit: there seems to be a bit of confusion what I'm referring to. I'm referring to the Open Internet Order of 2015 [1] which states: 18. No Paid Prioritization. Paid prioritization occurs when a broadband provider accepts payment (monetary or otherwise) to manage its network in a way that benefits particular content, applications, services, or devices. To protect against “fast lanes,” this Order adopts a rule that establishes that: A person engaged in the provision of broadband Internet access service, insofar as such person is so engaged, shall not engage in paid prioritization. [1] https://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2015/db0312/FCC-15-24A1.pdf https://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/201...

manigandham 9y ago
Nothing is being discriminated or artificially slowed down. You pay to use their private network. Standard tier means you leave their private network and move onto the public internet, which would be more open to ISP net neutrality issues if anything.
- jerkstate 9y ago
  You are aware that the Internet is a collection of different companies running different networks, right? Google's network that is serving public traffic is part of the Internet. The inter-network routing decisions that are made are literally the crux of the net neutrality arguments made so far.
  - manigandham 9y ago
    Yes, networks comprise the internet, but it's not free to run on any of them. Some are better than others and cost more. As a typical consumer, this negotiation is out of your hands with ISPs balancing performance and profit (although tilted towards the latter) but as a Google Cloud customer, you now have some control over how much of their network you use - all the way to the edge or just regional - without any discrimination of the traffic itself.
arkadiyt 9y ago
It's not differentiating by content, you're paying for a different service tier. It's like saying getting faster internet by paying for Comcast Business violates net neutrality.
- jerkstate 9y ago
  One of the primary consumer arguments in favor of net neutrality was that ISPs advertised bandwidth at certain speeds, and therefore were obligated to provide that speed to any point on the Internet. Using that same argument, Google should be obligated to provide maximum interface speed from any of their compute instances to any point on the internet, and should not be allowed to sell a tier that gets closer to that ideal.
  - jvreeland 9y ago
    How are advertised speeds and maximum speeds equivalent? Google is advertising speeds to their consumers and their consumers are selecting a speed. Googles obligation is to provide that service at that speed. Similar to how ISPs should provide service at the selected speed. This isn't the ISP choosing to throttle certain services. This is a service choosing to run at a certain speed.
  - abiox 9y ago
    > One of the primary consumer arguments in favor of net neutrality was that ISPs advertised bandwidth at certain speeds, and therefore were obligated to provide that speed to any point on the Internet. really? even a good ten years ago when i was looking for apartments with good DSL speeds, it was always well explained that bandwidth listing was an ideal number that didn't apply to things outside the ISP's direct control.
  - no_wizard 9y ago
    Nope. The core tenets of net neutrality have always been around access and priority of the content going between networks. The only factor where net neutrality would regulate the physical pipe like this is based on edge providers and backbone service access. E.g. A fair price would have to be consistent with what all where being charged. You couldn't say charge Netflix 100 million dollars to have access to inter-network backbones then simulataneously only charge Disney 1 million dollars for the same thing. This is because most large scale network providers are also content companies in the USA. To quote a nice layman summary from the EFF/Save The Internet: Net Neutrality is the internet’s guiding principle: It preserves our right to communicate freely online. Net Neutrality means an internet that enables and protects free speech. It means that ISPs should provide us with open networks — and shouldn’t block or discriminate against any applications or content that ride over those networks. Just as your phone company shouldn’t decide who you call and what you say on that call, your ISP shouldn’t interfere with the content you view or post online. Without Net Neutrality, cable and phone companies could carve the internet into fast and slow lanes. An ISP could slow down its competitors’ content or block political opinions it disagreed with. ISPs could charge extra fees to the few content companies that could afford to pay for preferential treatment — relegating everyone else to a slower tier of service. This would destroy the open internet. No real mention of advertised speeds being ahered to. Speed in the context of which you were using it also would not be correct. Speed in the context of Net Neutrality means no prioritized slow downs or speed ups in exchange for cash, essentially. Again, I think that had more to do with access and not actual pet megabit speeds https://www.savetheinternet.com/net-neutrality-what-you-need-know-now https://www.savetheinternet.com/net-neutrality-what-you-need...
toast0 9y ago
Google is not a broadband provider in this context. This is simply reflecting the reality, that different network connections have different costs and different performance. It costs Google more to transfer it over their own network than to deliver it to another network near your server, and the same in reverse, accepting traffic for your server only from nearby networks saves costs, and they pass the cost savings to you. The problem with "network neutrality" is that the network was never neutral. Using a different connection that is shorter, or otherwise has less latency, and is less congested provides better performance, but that's rarely been exposed to end users. In Europe, it used to be common for customers to pay a different rate for EU traffic and out of region traffic, due to cost of transatlantic bandwidth, but I think that's mostly fallen out of favor as global bandwidth increased.
wmf 9y ago
The concern about fast lanes was mostly about unfair prioritization of traffic over a single link. In this case, Google is offering different links that you can choose to send your traffic over, and they're letting you choose rather than choosing for you. Probably both the standard and premium networks are uncongested on Google's side, although there may be congestion elsewhere in the Internet (that Google can't be blamed for) that slows down standard traffic. The standard path also probably has a higher RTT which may lower TCP throughput. IMO net neutrality was never about equality of outcomes (there's probably not really any way to equalize performance short of socializing the Internet), but that seems to be a common misconception.
abiox 9y ago
if i'm paying google to host my stuff, should i also be getting bills from comcast, time warner, cox, and every other isp on the planet?
- kevincox 9y ago
  No, Google "pays" those for you. It is included in the "standard" egress pricing. Disclaimer: I work for Google but not in networking. This comment is just my best guess.
matt4077 9y ago
Since nobody has so far managed to hit the target: This is Google acting as your network provider. You first choose Google, and then take your pick amongst their offerings. It's pretty much the same situation as it has always been for residential ISPs, where you have always had providers offering tiers at various speed/price points. Net neutrality becomes relevant when you don't have a say in the choice of network. Practically, this will usually mean your audience's ISPs (called a "broadband provider" in that order). You get your servers set up at AWS, or GCE, or Linode or wherever you like the terms. But then, no matter what, you get an e-mail from some residential ISP in Florida, telling you that it'll cost you XX$ if you want to stream to your customers on their network at 1080p. The problem is pretty obvious: the consumer choosing the ISP is not going to take your welfare into consideration, especially if your company doesn't even exist yet. The ISP won't be able to squeeze google, facebook, or amazon. But anything not used by 50%+ of the population simply has no power in these negotiations. The result will be ISPs capturing almost every last cent you can earn amongst their customer base. If your service competes with any existing offering by either the ISP or a company with deeper pockets than yours, you will never have a chance to compete on quality. Oh, and you won't just get an email from that ISP in Florida. You'll get an email from every single ISP in the world. Part of the startup decision making process will be like MadTV (if anybody remembers): should we invest these $2,000,000 into our product, or is it better spent on getting access to the markets in Iowa and eastern Michigan? Should we continue haemorrhaging money in southern Europe, or is time to cut our losses and go dark on that continent?

manigandham 9y ago

Nothing is being discriminated or artificially slowed down. You pay to use their private network. Standard tier means you leave their private network and move onto the public internet, which would be more open to ISP net neutrality issues if anything.

jerkstate 9y ago
You are aware that the Internet is a collection of different companies running different networks, right? Google's network that is serving public traffic is part of the Internet. The inter-network routing decisions that are made are literally the crux of the net neutrality arguments made so far.
- manigandham 9y ago
  Yes, networks comprise the internet, but it's not free to run on any of them. Some are better than others and cost more. As a typical consumer, this negotiation is out of your hands with ISPs balancing performance and profit (although tilted towards the latter) but as a Google Cloud customer, you now have some control over how much of their network you use - all the way to the edge or just regional - without any discrimination of the traffic itself.

arkadiyt 9y ago

It's not differentiating by content, you're paying for a different service tier. It's like saying getting faster internet by paying for Comcast Business violates net neutrality.

jerkstate 9y ago
One of the primary consumer arguments in favor of net neutrality was that ISPs advertised bandwidth at certain speeds, and therefore were obligated to provide that speed to any point on the Internet. Using that same argument, Google should be obligated to provide maximum interface speed from any of their compute instances to any point on the internet, and should not be allowed to sell a tier that gets closer to that ideal.
- jvreeland 9y ago
  How are advertised speeds and maximum speeds equivalent? Google is advertising speeds to their consumers and their consumers are selecting a speed. Googles obligation is to provide that service at that speed. Similar to how ISPs should provide service at the selected speed. This isn't the ISP choosing to throttle certain services. This is a service choosing to run at a certain speed.
- abiox 9y ago
  > One of the primary consumer arguments in favor of net neutrality was that ISPs advertised bandwidth at certain speeds, and therefore were obligated to provide that speed to any point on the Internet. really? even a good ten years ago when i was looking for apartments with good DSL speeds, it was always well explained that bandwidth listing was an ideal number that didn't apply to things outside the ISP's direct control.
- no_wizard 9y ago
  Nope. The core tenets of net neutrality have always been around access and priority of the content going between networks. The only factor where net neutrality would regulate the physical pipe like this is based on edge providers and backbone service access. E.g. A fair price would have to be consistent with what all where being charged. You couldn't say charge Netflix 100 million dollars to have access to inter-network backbones then simulataneously only charge Disney 1 million dollars for the same thing. This is because most large scale network providers are also content companies in the USA. To quote a nice layman summary from the EFF/Save The Internet: Net Neutrality is the internet’s guiding principle: It preserves our right to communicate freely online. Net Neutrality means an internet that enables and protects free speech. It means that ISPs should provide us with open networks — and shouldn’t block or discriminate against any applications or content that ride over those networks. Just as your phone company shouldn’t decide who you call and what you say on that call, your ISP shouldn’t interfere with the content you view or post online. Without Net Neutrality, cable and phone companies could carve the internet into fast and slow lanes. An ISP could slow down its competitors’ content or block political opinions it disagreed with. ISPs could charge extra fees to the few content companies that could afford to pay for preferential treatment — relegating everyone else to a slower tier of service. This would destroy the open internet. No real mention of advertised speeds being ahered to. Speed in the context of which you were using it also would not be correct. Speed in the context of Net Neutrality means no prioritized slow downs or speed ups in exchange for cash, essentially. Again, I think that had more to do with access and not actual pet megabit speeds https://www.savetheinternet.com/net-neutrality-what-you-need-know-now https://www.savetheinternet.com/net-neutrality-what-you-need...

toast0 9y ago

Google is not a broadband provider in this context. This is simply reflecting the reality, that different network connections have different costs and different performance. It costs Google more to transfer it over their own network than to deliver it to another network near your server, and the same in reverse, accepting traffic for your server only from nearby networks saves costs, and they pass the cost savings to you. The problem with "network neutrality" is that the network was never neutral. Using a different connection that is shorter, or otherwise has less latency, and is less congested provides better performance, but that's rarely been exposed to end users. In Europe, it used to be common for customers to pay a different rate for EU traffic and out of region traffic, due to cost of transatlantic bandwidth, but I think that's mostly fallen out of favor as global bandwidth increased.

wmf 9y ago

The concern about fast lanes was mostly about unfair prioritization of traffic over a single link. In this case, Google is offering different links that you can choose to send your traffic over, and they're letting you choose rather than choosing for you. Probably both the standard and premium networks are uncongested on Google's side, although there may be congestion elsewhere in the Internet (that Google can't be blamed for) that slows down standard traffic. The standard path also probably has a higher RTT which may lower TCP throughput. IMO net neutrality was never about equality of outcomes (there's probably not really any way to equalize performance short of socializing the Internet), but that seems to be a common misconception.

abiox 9y ago

if i'm paying google to host my stuff, should i also be getting bills from comcast, time warner, cox, and every other isp on the planet?

kevincox 9y ago
No, Google "pays" those for you. It is included in the "standard" egress pricing. Disclaimer: I work for Google but not in networking. This comment is just my best guess.

matt4077 9y ago

Since nobody has so far managed to hit the target: This is Google acting as your network provider. You first choose Google, and then take your pick amongst their offerings. It's pretty much the same situation as it has always been for residential ISPs, where you have always had providers offering tiers at various speed/price points. Net neutrality becomes relevant when you don't have a say in the choice of network. Practically, this will usually mean your audience's ISPs (called a "broadband provider" in that order). You get your servers set up at AWS, or GCE, or Linode or wherever you like the terms. But then, no matter what, you get an e-mail from some residential ISP in Florida, telling you that it'll cost you XX$ if you want to stream to your customers on their network at 1080p. The problem is pretty obvious: the consumer choosing the ISP is not going to take your welfare into consideration, especially if your company doesn't even exist yet. The ISP won't be able to squeeze google, facebook, or amazon. But anything not used by 50%+ of the population simply has no power in these negotiations. The result will be ISPs capturing almost every last cent you can earn amongst their customer base. If your service competes with any existing offering by either the ISP or a company with deeper pockets than yours, you will never have a chance to compete on quality. Oh, and you won't just get an email from that ISP in Florida. You'll get an email from every single ISP in the world. Part of the startup decision making process will be like MadTV (if anybody remembers): should we invest these $2,000,000 into our product, or is it better spent on getting access to the markets in Iowa and eastern Michigan? Should we continue haemorrhaging money in southern Europe, or is time to cut our losses and go dark on that continent?