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As an Austinite and an EE student, I am very excited about the potential. However, our local media (KXAN)[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8A08jNxAaA https://ww
by aspensmonster 14y ago
As an Austinite and an EE student, I am very excited about the potential. However, our local media (KXAN)[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8A08jNxAaA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8A08jNxAaA] is harping on all the benefits this will bring startups, and I'm not convinced. Google's ToS for their fiber lines essentially forbids all of the cool things that you could do with a symmetric gigabit link. They have a wiggle-room clause in their (non-binding) FAQ about whether such things are "legal and non-commercial," but I'm not holding my breath. I don't get the obsession over how this will "help" tech startups if commercial use of the line is expressly forbidden. If I were a founder, I'd be very wary about basing my business on something Google could pull out from under me at any time. If I developed a standalone Dropbox alternative that could take advantage of fiber lines to customers' homes, would that constitute a "commercial" use of the lines? Probably not for the customer, but what about me? As well, I've heard that the hardware provided is relatively limited in terms of network configuration, and has no bridge mode to hand off the connection to hardware that _can_ handle such configuration. That means no pfsense or other routers with Tomato or DD-WRT or other firmware. And I've yet to see an official stance from Google on whether things like running exit nodes or seeding legal content are permitted.
TL;DR - This Austinite isn't convinced.
- aspensmonster 14y agoDownvotes? How about an explanation?
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- cbhl 14y agoStanford nearly shut down Google when it was still operating out of the campus network. It's not unusual to be in legal gray zones when you're in the humble beginnings of a startup (in the parents' garage, say). They have to say things like "no running servers" and "no commercial use" because of the lawyers, but I doubt Google's own employees would let the Fiber team live it down if they found out a legitimate startup had been disconnected for a frivolous violation of their ToS.
- driverdan 14y agoThey don't mean running servers out of your basement. At least I hope they don't, that'd be stupid. They mean the opportunities that accompany residential gigabit access.
- OGinparadise 14y ago" is harping on all the benefits this will bring startups" Google giveth, Google taketh when they want to. Don't be the sucker to base your start-up on the idea that a 1 GB pipe is going to be there and or at $80 /month. Google is just trying to pressure TW, Verizon, Comcast etc to increase the speed (Youtube, G Play and all)
- kyrra 14y agoDo you have any details about the google fiber router and bridge mode? I've been trying to find any details that walk through the router's configuration UI without much luck. Looks like it always NATs connections and the best you can do is port-forward.