30 ms·

Google Fiber Continues Awful ISP Tradition of Banning “Servers”

241 points by sinak 13y ago

jmillikin 13y ago
Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6129379 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6129379 The main point of contention appears to be that the EFF is defining "server" as any process that opens listening sockets, while ISPs use definitions based more on traffic patterns and uptime requirements. Google's FAQ addresses this issue. From https://fiber.google.com/help/ https://fiber.google.com/help/ : Can I run a server from my home? Our Terms of Service prohibit running a server. However, use of applications such as multi-player gaming, video-conferencing, home security and others which may include server capabilities but are being used for legal and non-commercial purposes are acceptable and encouraged. See also: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/07/google-we-can-ban-servers-on-fiber-without-violating-net-neutrality/ http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/07/google...
- diminoten 13y ago
  I said it before, and I'll say it again, but any attempt to differentiate packets based on use rather than quantity is a violation of network neutrality. All packets are created equally, why should any ISP care why my packets exist?
  - jmillikin 13y ago
    Network Neutrality is typically defined in terms of traffic sources, not use. It's both expected and encouraged that ISPs will differentiate between different types of packets based on what they contain. For example, it would be obviously bad for Comcast to place Netflix at the bottom of the QOS stack, but perfectly reasonable to do so with Bittorrent.
    - diminoten 13y ago
      Comcast should not be maintaining a QOS stack. Period. That is a violation of net neutrality.
      - jmillikin 13y ago
        You are using a definition of net neutrality that differs from everyone else's. In the interest of conversational clarity, you ought to pick a different term. All residential ISPs sell more aggregate consumer capacity than total peering capacity, because very few users require the full use of their connection at all times. This permits their users' bills to be much lower, a tradeoff that is obviously beneficial to almost everyone. Overprovisioning absolutely requires the use of QOS and throttling. If my neighbor decides to torrent a hundred terabytes of ATLAS data, that should (ideally) not cause any of my DNS or RTP packets to be dropped.
        diminoten 13y ago
        "Net neutrality (also network neutrality or Internet neutrality) is the principle that Internet service providers and governments should treat all data on the Internet equally, not discriminating or charging differentially by user, content, site, platform, application, type of attached equipment, and modes of communication."[0] [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality ISPs should stop overprovisioning if it prevents them from being neutral to my packets.
        qu4z-2 13y ago
        He's using the same definition of "net neutrality" I was using... What do you mean by it?
        jmillikin 13y ago
        My understanding is that net neutrality is when the ISP does not prioritize/throttle/block traffic based on sender or recipient. This definition permits traffic shaping based on content, such as dropping bittorrent packets to preserve dns/rtp latency on a link shared between customers.
    - Flimm 13y ago
      No, it's not perfectly reasonable.
  - whyoh 13y ago
    And you'll need to say it again and again, because some people just refuse to understand. I don't care how "normal" it is for ISPs to discriminate traffic and how "every ISP does this" (no, it doesn't). It's just not acceptable.
- gohrt 13y ago
  "What the large print giveth, the small print taketh away" The TOS says "no servers", it doesn't say "non-commercial use' only. Can I run a 1Gpbs upstream feed from my Kittycam to a million non-paying subscribers?
  - jufo 13y ago
    or can I just host my blog and a few Git repositories?
- md224 13y ago
  So, basically: "You can't run a server, unless it's a server-ish thing that most people use, in which case we encourage it." Really wish there was a clearer distinction they could make. Maybe they're drawing a clear line at "legal and non-commercial"?
  - fatjokes 13y ago
    They should just say: you can't run a server that makes money. Of course, that opens up another can of worms...
    - sukuriant 13y ago
      They did: "non-commercial purposes"
      - Dylan16807 13y ago
        Note the word 'just'. They explicitly don't allow commercial purposes. But that's not the full list of what makes something a banned server. What is the full list? Hell if I can figure it out.
- ihsw 13y ago
  Frankly the dancing around the term "server" stinks. It can be resolved quite easily by stipulating that one cannot operate a commercial business out of a home internet connection.
  - bennyg 13y ago
    Like selling things on eBay? Or are we talking about something a little more fine-tuned: Using the listening ports of a computer on the network to facilitate the selling of goods/services for commercial reasons. Is a business license the limiting factor? We need clearer terms before any argument has merit here.
    - ihsw 13y ago
      > Using the listening ports of a computer on the network to facilitate the selling of goods/services for commercial reasons. Sounds about right. We can take it a step further and explicitly state that a customer is prohibited from living on the avails of their residential internet connection, rather than simply "facilitating the selling of goods/services for commercial reasons." Too many things can be considered "facilitating."
      - bennyg 13y ago
        Ebay counterexample still accounts for the "living on the avails" line.
- ajross 13y ago
  Exactly. The EFF and the TOS terms are clearly using different jargon. The problem, though, is that the EFF's definition is the "correct" one at least as commonly understood by technical people. The license is using the term to connote things that it doesn't define, and that's a frustrating place to be if you as a user want to know if your gadget is permitted. The linked FAQ is a great clarification, and Google should be commended for adding it (they may be alone among broadband ISPs in having language like this, I don't know). But they really need to get that clarity into the license itself.
  - mhurron 13y ago
    No, the EFF appears to have it right: https://support.google.com/fiber/answer/2659981?hl=en&topic=2440874&ctx=topic https://support.google.com/fiber/answer/2659981?hl=en&topic=... "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 ..."
patrickg_zill 13y ago
Don't look at what they "say" look at what they "do". They operate on a shared model, with definite over-subscription built in to their network design. However if they allow ports 22,80,443 traffic, then really they are winking at it - basically "use it but don't abuse it in a way that will cause us to make more rules about it" .
wnevets 13y ago
Its kind of silly to watch so many people trying to turn this into a major issue. edit: I suggest everyone just read the wiki on Net Neutrality http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality#Definitions http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality#Definitions
- ihsw 13y ago
  It's because it runs contrary to the concept of net neutrality -- ISPs are dumb pipes, and trying to differentiate between different "traffic patterns" can only lead us down a very dark hole of no return.
  - wnevets 13y ago
    This has nothing to do with net neutrality or traffic patterns. Its a service agreement that says you are not allowed to run a commercial server on their residential service.
    - betterunix 13y ago
      ...how is that not a net neutrality issue?
      - wnevets 13y ago
        because net neutrality is about all packets being treated equally. This is a service agreement. One is a piece of paper and the other is network technology. Can you guess which is which?
        betterunix 13y ago
        What happens when you are caught violating the TOS? The point of net neutrality is that any Internet connected computer should be able to communicate with any other Internet connected computer, without having to pay surcharges or extra fees, without limitations on protocols, directions, purpose, content, etc. It makes no difference if you are being restricted by a contract or by a technical system. If you are unable to host servers using your Internet connection you are not enjoying net neutrality, regardless of why you cannot host servers.
dkulchenko 13y ago
I honestly don't see the problem with this. The restriction on servers is clearly not there to prevent you from SSHing to your home computer or to run a Minecraft server for you and your friends. It's there to prevent abuse of your otherwise unlimited gigabit connection for only $70/month to run a filesharing website on that saturates the connection 24/7/365. If you want to use Google Fiber for business use, pay for their business plan, simple as that. EDIT: Seems a few people are missing a key detail. When you buy a personal Google Fiber plan, you're not paying for an unmetered 1Gbps upstream/downstream fiber connection. You're paying for an unmetered 1Gbps upstream/downstream connection for personal use. (https://fiber.google.com/legal/terms.html https://fiber.google.com/legal/terms.html). There are services that will sell you purely unmetered, unrestricted bandwidth, but it won't be Google Fiber, and it won't be for only $70/month.
- guelo 13y ago
  If you're not selling me a gigabit connection with unlimited bandwidth than don't tell me that's what you're selling. Put in your bandwidth caps if you need to. Just don't tell me what I can do with my bandwidth that I bought.
  - Kylekramer 13y ago
    Why force them to sell one product that is worse (capped) instead of two products with clearly delineated use cases?
    - ihsw 13y ago
      Why not make it obvious what the use cases are rather than attacking customers based on the definition of "server"? It's unclear, vague, ambiguous, and a host of other similar synonyms. Using the term "server" is open-ended and it gives ISPs unnecessary discretion over cutting users' connections. If the rationale is that customers whom are operating commercial businesses out of their home internet connection are abusing their internet connection, then put the goal-post there. Using the term "server" allows ISPs to change the goal-post when its convenient for them, and that's unfair.
betterunix 13y ago
It is appalling that Google would do that, but not so surprising for other ISPs. Verizon is a phone company; if you are a "home user" then you are expected to be a consumer of services, just like it works with the phone. Comcast is a cable TV company; "home users" are expected to be consumers there also, since that is what a cable TV receiver does. Of course those companies miss the point of the Internet. Those companies do not really like the Internet anyway, with its neutrality and the philosophy of "all nodes created equal." Now, we should expect better from Google, given Google's origins...
- jmillikin 13y ago
  The internet has never been based on a philosophy of all nodes being equal. It's only in the past few years that such an arrangement is even technically possible. For the vast majority of the internet's history, communicating nodes could be assumed to be grossly unequal in both bandwidth and latency.
  - betterunix 13y ago
    The neutrality does not refer to technical limitations like bandwidth. It refers to the capabilities of an Internet-connected computer to communicate with other computers. This seems obvious if you are used to the Internet, but there was no technical reason things had to be made this way. Look at a modern cable TV system: that is a computer network too, and if you have a digital cable receiver then you have a computer connected to such a network. You cannot run your own cable channel just because you have a connection. Your receiver is a different kind of node than what is at the head end; head end nodes are allowed to transmit video, receivers are only allowed to receive video and make on-demand requests (and a few other things, none of which include transmitting video).
    - jmillikin 13y ago
      > It refers to the capabilities of an Internet-connected > computer to communicate with other computers. There is no inherent property of the internet ensuring that all nodes are equally capable of sending or receiving packets. There are large sections of the internet placed behind routers that enforce non-transitive forwarding rules. Sometimes, hardware failures or software policies prevent communication between arbitrary sets of nodes. There is no indication that Google Fiber, or any other major ISP, is planning to ban incoming connections. The TOS does not ban users from replying to SYN. I will also note that phone networks are just as node-egalitarian as the internet. In a typical phone network, any endpoint may establish a circuit to any other connected endpoint. Saying that Verizon expects its users to be consumers because they sell phone service is incoherent.
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josh2600 13y ago
I think this is the most hypocritical position Google can take. In terms of "knowing better" is there any company that would be in a better position to understand the nature of servers and infrastructure? The cognitive dissonance is astounding. I would have no problem if they put bandwidth caps, as long as they were articulated. I can totally understand if someone is jamming petabytes, but those are gigabit connections. What constitutes abuse? Is it possible that Google jumped into the ISP world without fully understanding the magnitude of the problem? I think of ISPs as another fractal problem, like email or calendars. From 100,000 feet away, it looks simple, but the details of running very large networks are surprisingly complex. To be clear, my position is that calling a service unlimited and then throttling using intentionally obfuscating criteria is unconscionable. If you're going to throttle me, let me know what the terms are. Pretending a "server" is automatically a giant mainframe like device is the kind of ignorance I expect from the DOD not Google.
eksith 13y ago
Just to be clear, most of these ISPs have a "business" or "pro" version for an extra (exorbitant) fee with marginally higher up/down bandwidth that let you run a server. I've yet to come across a decent provider package that lets me host a server with at least 99% uptime. FiOS seems to go down like clockwork in the mid mornings for the past 2 months or so and that kept me from even attempting to run a server from home. I mean, what's the point? Besides that pretty much every provider has their variation on server bans. I think Optimum just says "servers" are prohibited whereas Verizon goes into a bit more detail "Web, FTP, SMTP" etc...
- aspensmonster 13y ago
  In Austin, the business offerings are actually slower than the consumer offerings. They run over the exact same cables too, in TWC's case at least. Your (fewer) packets just get priority over others in the event of congestion. I utilized TWCBC for a year. 100 dollar installation and 150 dollars a month for 10 Mbps down, 1 Mbps up, and one static IP. I could have spent an extra 100 dollars (edit: monthly) and upgraded to 20 Mbps down, and a whopping 2 Mbps up. Now, I get 21 Mbps down, 3 Mbps up on ATT Uverse (an apples to oranges technical comparison, I am aware, though TWC's consumer cable offerings were similar) for a third of that price, and can push and pull far more packets than TWCBC ever was willing to deliver. This really has nothing to do with "network management," the go to catch-all that every ISP --including Google now, it seems-- trots out every time network neutrality comes up. This has everything to do with ensuring that old-school business models are propped up that expect captive, consuming audiences, rather than adhering to the decentralized model of independent nodes on the network.
  - eksith 13y ago
    That's terrible! I'd have thought that Austin would have had far more options than that considering how many tech companies and startups there are. I guess we're all sorely lacking real competition and it seems Google isn't there either.
    - vonmoltke 13y ago
aspensmonster 13y ago
Earlier HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6129379 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6129379 What a shock that Google is now flip-flopping on network neutrality.
andrewvc 13y ago
Home users don't really want unmetered connections, the costs would be too high, and it'd be wasteful.
- cracell 13y ago
  Then don't sell me one. If you need caps then add caps but don't sell me it uncapped and then complain when I use my connection that you sold me more than you intended.
  - johngalt 13y ago
    So what's the problem? If you violate the ToS and become an unprofitable customer they refuse to keep selling you a connection by disconnecting you. I guess I don't understand all the complaints along this vein. It's not like providers come back and try to sue you for excess bandwidth usage. They just say 'no thanks we don't want you as a customer'. If you walked into a mcdonalds and ordered 1 small fry and asked for 1000 ketchup packets they would probably do the same. Despite condiments being unlimited.
- sp332 13y ago
  Most home users would pay much less for their connections if they only paid for the data they used.
- diminoten 13y ago
  What makes you think the costs would be too high? What technical reason is there for that statement?
  - ddunkin 13y ago
    As soon as you get infected or bring a kid back from college and let them torrent like crazy, the bandwidth overage costs get high, fast. I tried this for years with our customers, we're going unlimited because we're tired of arguing with people who can't comprehend this model.
    - 13y ago
aaronchriscohen 13y ago
am I missing something or is this not just typical TOS boilerplate to give Google power to ban bandwidth hogs? Are there any Google Fiber customers who have been banned for setting up servers that did not also involve moving tremendous amounts of data?
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jpd750 13y ago
Google is nothing but garbage anymore. Reminding me of Microsoft
ddunkin 13y ago
I'm not impressed, this is 'residential' service we are talking about here. If you want to host services, get static IP blocks, run BGP, pay more for a business-grade service.
- knowaveragejoe 13y ago
  The issue here is the(perhaps intentionally) vague definition of "server". What about the folks in the middle ground? Who want to run a home VPN, who want to use their NAS remotely, or who want to run their own "cloud"? The ISPs could define the term more verbosely and lock out people actually abusing home connections while simultaneously not screwing the people legitimately looking to use their home connection for anything but web browsing.
  - tomkarlo 13y ago
    The more precisely the server provider defines it, the more they are giving folks a playbook for skirting the rules, and as a result potentially encouraging more overall abuse. You're assuming they'll be "screwing people legitimately... " but as long as the customer's total data consumption isn't excessive, an ISP has no reason to come down on them - the ISP should be happy to just collect their fee.
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gnu_fan2 13y ago
information creation should be forbidden = no servers allowed
matthiasb 13y ago
I feel that allowing Google Fiber customers to connect their own servers to the network would go against Google own interests. Google business relies on hosting their customers application and data.
doctoboggan 13y ago
To anyone who thinks google is lying by calling this "unlimited" consider this: When you go to a restaurant they will serve you free water and give you free napkins. If you asked the waitress how much water you were allowed to have she would probably say "as much as you want". This does not mean you can connect a hose to their water supply and start selling the water. You can not pull up with a large truck and start unloading boxes of their napkins because you can have "as much as you want". There are common sense limitations on unlimited services, and I do not think google is crossing any lines here.
- bluedino 13y ago
  Did people really thing Google wasn't going to have reasonable limits such as this?
- whyoh 13y ago
  Nobody really expects unlimited bandwidth. Bandwidth and other resources are limited, so it's perfectly reasonable to expect some (common sense) limitations. What is not reasonable is saying "you can use your bandwidth for this, but you cannot use it for that". This is what people are complaining about. If Google doesn't want people to use unreasonable amounts of bandwidth they should just say so. There's no need to use words like "server" in their TOS, because in the best case it just makes things complicated and vague.
- parfe 13y ago
  Surprised none of the indignant commenters are opening a food truck in front of every olive garden. The unlimited Soup Salad and Breadsticks could be resold for pure profit! That's how the real world works, isn't it?
  - amorphid 13y ago
    I actually really like this analogy :) I'll add that anyone who expects the product "inside the box" to be exactly what they see "on the box" is going to have a bad time.
  - Goronmon 13y ago
tuke 13y ago
One of the most interesting claims in Nicholas Negroponte's Being Digital (1996) was that bandwidth would be the same into and out of the home, and that home servers would be ubiquitous. I think his key example was the idea of live video exchange between grandparents and grandchildren. Another Negropontean idea was that bits are bits. The notion of somehow partitioning server-like entities on the basis of their behavior doesn't fit, he argued, the architecture of the Internet.
knodi 13y ago
If google is saying that I can't use my internet connection which i bought though them to sell to or provide internet to large group of other people then that makes sense. A building owner just guy buy google fiber service and charge all their tenants to use his connection which he bought through google fiber. At the end of the day google fiber is business.
wilyk 13y ago
There's a whole lot of hate going around for a company offering Gigabit Internet to residential subscribers for $80/month. Whether it's oversubscribed with caps on utilization or not, it's offering 1024 MB DL speed for $80/month. And you all are COMPLAINING about that in a "you're not the boss of me" kind of way, ranting about how QoS limitations violates "net neutrality", etc etc. Seriously?
- pessimizer 13y ago
  >Seriously? This is not an argument, and neither is "Oh, please!" (for future reference.)
csense 13y ago
The solution is easy. Instead of banning a specific usage pattern, just say that anyone who exceeds 100 GB / month [1] of usage gets their speed cut to 10% [1] for the rest of the month [2]. It's simple and obvious and I'm amazed that Google, of all companies, isn't smart enough to figure this solution out on their own. From the ISP's point of view, their infrastructure costs are based on the bandwidth used, not the specific application. The only reason they care about the latter is to price-discriminate between businesses and consumers. [1] The numbers and units are obviously parameters that a specific ISP needs to tweak based on their actual costs. [2] Or more sophisticated variations on this theme, like using an hourly basis: e.g. if your usage during the last 720 hours (30 days) exceeds 100 GB, then throttle for a few hours until some high-usage hours fall off the end of the 720-hour window. Or better yet, weight previous usage exponentially.
bifrost 13y ago
As someone who has in the past run a small-ish ISP for home/business users, people who want to run servers at home usually create a fair amount of support overhead, so its no surprise that this is a common issue. Most ISP's don't care what you do as long as you're not causing a problem. This only exists because of bad users, don't blame the ISPs for your lousy neighbors :)
EpicEng 13y ago
Sounds to me like their marketing just need to be more clear. I don't think it is reasonable to say things like "personal use can easily saturate a 1gb connection" like I see in the comments here. C'mon, if you're saturating a 1gb connection for a large percentage of the day, you're doing something other than what most would consider "personal use". I think they need to define "personal use", i.e., "typical household use, browsing the internet, watching the occasional streaming video", certainly not "downloading huge torrents at all times and monitoring the cameras at your small business." I would kill for access to G Fiber.
jamespo 13y ago
I wonder if some of the furore is due to people thinking they could start a nice hosting business and saturate their google fiber connection? It's not as if no alternatives exist (or that it is even realistic to think you could max out the bandwidth with servers for that price).
jessaustin 13y ago
I'll be more concerned when we have examples of actually I-know-it-when-I-see-it unfair "server" bans, rather than purely hypothetical risks. (We certainly have had examples of unfairness from other providers, like Comcast.) In these modern times there are many options available for shared hosting, IaaS, colocation, etc. at all price points and service levels. Of course if you're just operating your own low-traffic mail server Google doesn't care. They probably don't even really care if you operate an appropriately-throttled Tor node. If you're saturating the link, however, someone will notice.
killermonkeys 13y ago
EFF continues awful tradition of confusing personal digital liberty advocacy with lame complaining about not getting things that cost money for "free".
johngalt 13y ago
Astonished by the people complaining about 1Gbps connections for $70/month just because they can't run it line rate 24/7. It's unreal how quickly humans adjust to getting what they want. The very next minute it's unfair and they want more. I must be getting old, because I want to scream 'I remember when internet access was charged by the minute! and only at 14.4kbps!'
- Dylan16807 13y ago
  This has nothing to do with how much data you send. A server using a kilobit per minute is just as banned as any other kind of server.
lucb1e 13y ago
This is why the Dutch ISP XS4ALL rocks. Full IPv6 connection since like 2 years, opened port 25 outgoing, and they're totally cool about running any kind of server at home. On top of that you get a free shell server and thousands of wifi access points from them. Yeah it costs five more bucks a month, but I say it's totally worth it.

241 points by sinak 13y ago

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6129379 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6129379 The main point of contention appears to be that the EFF is defining "server" as any process that opens listening sockets, while ISPs use definitions based more on traffic patterns and uptime requirements. Google's FAQ addresses this issue. From https://fiber.google.com/help/ https://fiber.google.com/help/ : Can I run a server from my home? Our Terms of Service prohibit running a server. However, use of applications such as multi-player gaming, video-conferencing, home security and others which may include server capabilities but are being used for legal and non-commercial purposes are acceptable and encouraged. See also: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/07/google-we-can-ban-servers-on-fiber-without-violating-net-neutrality/ http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/07/google...

diminoten 13y ago
I said it before, and I'll say it again, but any attempt to differentiate packets based on use rather than quantity is a violation of network neutrality. All packets are created equally, why should any ISP care why my packets exist?
- jmillikin 13y ago
  Network Neutrality is typically defined in terms of traffic sources, not use. It's both expected and encouraged that ISPs will differentiate between different types of packets based on what they contain. For example, it would be obviously bad for Comcast to place Netflix at the bottom of the QOS stack, but perfectly reasonable to do so with Bittorrent.
  - diminoten 13y ago
    Comcast should not be maintaining a QOS stack. Period. That is a violation of net neutrality.
    - jmillikin 13y ago
      You are using a definition of net neutrality that differs from everyone else's. In the interest of conversational clarity, you ought to pick a different term. All residential ISPs sell more aggregate consumer capacity than total peering capacity, because very few users require the full use of their connection at all times. This permits their users' bills to be much lower, a tradeoff that is obviously beneficial to almost everyone. Overprovisioning absolutely requires the use of QOS and throttling. If my neighbor decides to torrent a hundred terabytes of ATLAS data, that should (ideally) not cause any of my DNS or RTP packets to be dropped.
      - diminoten 13y ago
        "Net neutrality (also network neutrality or Internet neutrality) is the principle that Internet service providers and governments should treat all data on the Internet equally, not discriminating or charging differentially by user, content, site, platform, application, type of attached equipment, and modes of communication."[0] [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality ISPs should stop overprovisioning if it prevents them from being neutral to my packets.
      - qu4z-2 13y ago
        He's using the same definition of "net neutrality" I was using... What do you mean by it?
        jmillikin 13y ago
        My understanding is that net neutrality is when the ISP does not prioritize/throttle/block traffic based on sender or recipient. This definition permits traffic shaping based on content, such as dropping bittorrent packets to preserve dns/rtp latency on a link shared between customers.
  - Flimm 13y ago
    No, it's not perfectly reasonable.
- whyoh 13y ago
  And you'll need to say it again and again, because some people just refuse to understand. I don't care how "normal" it is for ISPs to discriminate traffic and how "every ISP does this" (no, it doesn't). It's just not acceptable.
gohrt 13y ago
"What the large print giveth, the small print taketh away" The TOS says "no servers", it doesn't say "non-commercial use' only. Can I run a 1Gpbs upstream feed from my Kittycam to a million non-paying subscribers?
- jufo 13y ago
  or can I just host my blog and a few Git repositories?
md224 13y ago
So, basically: "You can't run a server, unless it's a server-ish thing that most people use, in which case we encourage it." Really wish there was a clearer distinction they could make. Maybe they're drawing a clear line at "legal and non-commercial"?
- fatjokes 13y ago
  They should just say: you can't run a server that makes money. Of course, that opens up another can of worms...
  - sukuriant 13y ago
    They did: "non-commercial purposes"
    - Dylan16807 13y ago
      Note the word 'just'. They explicitly don't allow commercial purposes. But that's not the full list of what makes something a banned server. What is the full list? Hell if I can figure it out.
ihsw 13y ago
Frankly the dancing around the term "server" stinks. It can be resolved quite easily by stipulating that one cannot operate a commercial business out of a home internet connection.
- bennyg 13y ago
  Like selling things on eBay? Or are we talking about something a little more fine-tuned: Using the listening ports of a computer on the network to facilitate the selling of goods/services for commercial reasons. Is a business license the limiting factor? We need clearer terms before any argument has merit here.
  - ihsw 13y ago
    > Using the listening ports of a computer on the network to facilitate the selling of goods/services for commercial reasons. Sounds about right. We can take it a step further and explicitly state that a customer is prohibited from living on the avails of their residential internet connection, rather than simply "facilitating the selling of goods/services for commercial reasons." Too many things can be considered "facilitating."
    - bennyg 13y ago
      Ebay counterexample still accounts for the "living on the avails" line.
ajross 13y ago
Exactly. The EFF and the TOS terms are clearly using different jargon. The problem, though, is that the EFF's definition is the "correct" one at least as commonly understood by technical people. The license is using the term to connote things that it doesn't define, and that's a frustrating place to be if you as a user want to know if your gadget is permitted. The linked FAQ is a great clarification, and Google should be commended for adding it (they may be alone among broadband ISPs in having language like this, I don't know). But they really need to get that clarity into the license itself.
- mhurron 13y ago
  No, the EFF appears to have it right: https://support.google.com/fiber/answer/2659981?hl=en&topic=2440874&ctx=topic https://support.google.com/fiber/answer/2659981?hl=en&topic=... "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 ..."

patrickg_zill 13y ago

Don't look at what they "say" look at what they "do". They operate on a shared model, with definite over-subscription built in to their network design. However if they allow ports 22,80,443 traffic, then really they are winking at it - basically "use it but don't abuse it in a way that will cause us to make more rules about it" .

wnevets 13y ago

Its kind of silly to watch so many people trying to turn this into a major issue. edit: I suggest everyone just read the wiki on Net Neutrality http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality#Definitions http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality#Definitions

ihsw 13y ago
It's because it runs contrary to the concept of net neutrality -- ISPs are dumb pipes, and trying to differentiate between different "traffic patterns" can only lead us down a very dark hole of no return.
- wnevets 13y ago
  This has nothing to do with net neutrality or traffic patterns. Its a service agreement that says you are not allowed to run a commercial server on their residential service.
  - betterunix 13y ago
    ...how is that not a net neutrality issue?
    - wnevets 13y ago
      because net neutrality is about all packets being treated equally. This is a service agreement. One is a piece of paper and the other is network technology. Can you guess which is which?
      - betterunix 13y ago
        What happens when you are caught violating the TOS? The point of net neutrality is that any Internet connected computer should be able to communicate with any other Internet connected computer, without having to pay surcharges or extra fees, without limitations on protocols, directions, purpose, content, etc. It makes no difference if you are being restricted by a contract or by a technical system. If you are unable to host servers using your Internet connection you are not enjoying net neutrality, regardless of why you cannot host servers.

dkulchenko 13y ago

I honestly don't see the problem with this. The restriction on servers is clearly not there to prevent you from SSHing to your home computer or to run a Minecraft server for you and your friends. It's there to prevent abuse of your otherwise unlimited gigabit connection for only $70/month to run a filesharing website on that saturates the connection 24/7/365. If you want to use Google Fiber for business use, pay for their business plan, simple as that. EDIT: Seems a few people are missing a key detail. When you buy a personal Google Fiber plan, you're not paying for an unmetered 1Gbps upstream/downstream fiber connection. You're paying for an unmetered 1Gbps upstream/downstream connection for personal use. (https://fiber.google.com/legal/terms.html https://fiber.google.com/legal/terms.html). There are services that will sell you purely unmetered, unrestricted bandwidth, but it won't be Google Fiber, and it won't be for only $70/month.

guelo 13y ago
If you're not selling me a gigabit connection with unlimited bandwidth than don't tell me that's what you're selling. Put in your bandwidth caps if you need to. Just don't tell me what I can do with my bandwidth that I bought.
- Kylekramer 13y ago
  Why force them to sell one product that is worse (capped) instead of two products with clearly delineated use cases?
  - ihsw 13y ago
    Why not make it obvious what the use cases are rather than attacking customers based on the definition of "server"? It's unclear, vague, ambiguous, and a host of other similar synonyms. Using the term "server" is open-ended and it gives ISPs unnecessary discretion over cutting users' connections. If the rationale is that customers whom are operating commercial businesses out of their home internet connection are abusing their internet connection, then put the goal-post there. Using the term "server" allows ISPs to change the goal-post when its convenient for them, and that's unfair.

betterunix 13y ago

It is appalling that Google would do that, but not so surprising for other ISPs. Verizon is a phone company; if you are a "home user" then you are expected to be a consumer of services, just like it works with the phone. Comcast is a cable TV company; "home users" are expected to be consumers there also, since that is what a cable TV receiver does. Of course those companies miss the point of the Internet. Those companies do not really like the Internet anyway, with its neutrality and the philosophy of "all nodes created equal." Now, we should expect better from Google, given Google's origins...

jmillikin 13y ago
The internet has never been based on a philosophy of all nodes being equal. It's only in the past few years that such an arrangement is even technically possible. For the vast majority of the internet's history, communicating nodes could be assumed to be grossly unequal in both bandwidth and latency.
- betterunix 13y ago
  The neutrality does not refer to technical limitations like bandwidth. It refers to the capabilities of an Internet-connected computer to communicate with other computers. This seems obvious if you are used to the Internet, but there was no technical reason things had to be made this way. Look at a modern cable TV system: that is a computer network too, and if you have a digital cable receiver then you have a computer connected to such a network. You cannot run your own cable channel just because you have a connection. Your receiver is a different kind of node than what is at the head end; head end nodes are allowed to transmit video, receivers are only allowed to receive video and make on-demand requests (and a few other things, none of which include transmitting video).
  - jmillikin 13y ago
    > It refers to the capabilities of an Internet-connected > computer to communicate with other computers. There is no inherent property of the internet ensuring that all nodes are equally capable of sending or receiving packets. There are large sections of the internet placed behind routers that enforce non-transitive forwarding rules. Sometimes, hardware failures or software policies prevent communication between arbitrary sets of nodes. There is no indication that Google Fiber, or any other major ISP, is planning to ban incoming connections. The TOS does not ban users from replying to SYN. I will also note that phone networks are just as node-egalitarian as the internet. In a typical phone network, any endpoint may establish a circuit to any other connected endpoint. Saying that Verizon expects its users to be consumers because they sell phone service is incoherent.

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josh2600 13y ago

I think this is the most hypocritical position Google can take. In terms of "knowing better" is there any company that would be in a better position to understand the nature of servers and infrastructure? The cognitive dissonance is astounding. I would have no problem if they put bandwidth caps, as long as they were articulated. I can totally understand if someone is jamming petabytes, but those are gigabit connections. What constitutes abuse? Is it possible that Google jumped into the ISP world without fully understanding the magnitude of the problem? I think of ISPs as another fractal problem, like email or calendars. From 100,000 feet away, it looks simple, but the details of running very large networks are surprisingly complex. To be clear, my position is that calling a service unlimited and then throttling using intentionally obfuscating criteria is unconscionable. If you're going to throttle me, let me know what the terms are. Pretending a "server" is automatically a giant mainframe like device is the kind of ignorance I expect from the DOD not Google.

eksith 13y ago

Just to be clear, most of these ISPs have a "business" or "pro" version for an extra (exorbitant) fee with marginally higher up/down bandwidth that let you run a server. I've yet to come across a decent provider package that lets me host a server with at least 99% uptime. FiOS seems to go down like clockwork in the mid mornings for the past 2 months or so and that kept me from even attempting to run a server from home. I mean, what's the point? Besides that pretty much every provider has their variation on server bans. I think Optimum just says "servers" are prohibited whereas Verizon goes into a bit more detail "Web, FTP, SMTP" etc...

aspensmonster 13y ago
In Austin, the business offerings are actually slower than the consumer offerings. They run over the exact same cables too, in TWC's case at least. Your (fewer) packets just get priority over others in the event of congestion. I utilized TWCBC for a year. 100 dollar installation and 150 dollars a month for 10 Mbps down, 1 Mbps up, and one static IP. I could have spent an extra 100 dollars (edit: monthly) and upgraded to 20 Mbps down, and a whopping 2 Mbps up. Now, I get 21 Mbps down, 3 Mbps up on ATT Uverse (an apples to oranges technical comparison, I am aware, though TWC's consumer cable offerings were similar) for a third of that price, and can push and pull far more packets than TWCBC ever was willing to deliver. This really has nothing to do with "network management," the go to catch-all that every ISP --including Google now, it seems-- trots out every time network neutrality comes up. This has everything to do with ensuring that old-school business models are propped up that expect captive, consuming audiences, rather than adhering to the decentralized model of independent nodes on the network.
- eksith 13y ago
  That's terrible! I'd have thought that Austin would have had far more options than that considering how many tech companies and startups there are. I guess we're all sorely lacking real competition and it seems Google isn't there either.
  - vonmoltke 13y ago

aspensmonster 13y ago

Earlier HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6129379 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6129379 What a shock that Google is now flip-flopping on network neutrality.

andrewvc 13y ago

Home users don't really want unmetered connections, the costs would be too high, and it'd be wasteful.

cracell 13y ago
Then don't sell me one. If you need caps then add caps but don't sell me it uncapped and then complain when I use my connection that you sold me more than you intended.
- johngalt 13y ago
  So what's the problem? If you violate the ToS and become an unprofitable customer they refuse to keep selling you a connection by disconnecting you. I guess I don't understand all the complaints along this vein. It's not like providers come back and try to sue you for excess bandwidth usage. They just say 'no thanks we don't want you as a customer'. If you walked into a mcdonalds and ordered 1 small fry and asked for 1000 ketchup packets they would probably do the same. Despite condiments being unlimited.
sp332 13y ago
Most home users would pay much less for their connections if they only paid for the data they used.
diminoten 13y ago
What makes you think the costs would be too high? What technical reason is there for that statement?
- ddunkin 13y ago
  As soon as you get infected or bring a kid back from college and let them torrent like crazy, the bandwidth overage costs get high, fast. I tried this for years with our customers, we're going unlimited because we're tired of arguing with people who can't comprehend this model.
  - 13y ago

aaronchriscohen 13y ago

am I missing something or is this not just typical TOS boilerplate to give Google power to ban bandwidth hogs? Are there any Google Fiber customers who have been banned for setting up servers that did not also involve moving tremendous amounts of data?

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jpd750 13y ago

Google is nothing but garbage anymore. Reminding me of Microsoft

ddunkin 13y ago

I'm not impressed, this is 'residential' service we are talking about here. If you want to host services, get static IP blocks, run BGP, pay more for a business-grade service.

knowaveragejoe 13y ago
The issue here is the(perhaps intentionally) vague definition of "server". What about the folks in the middle ground? Who want to run a home VPN, who want to use their NAS remotely, or who want to run their own "cloud"? The ISPs could define the term more verbosely and lock out people actually abusing home connections while simultaneously not screwing the people legitimately looking to use their home connection for anything but web browsing.
- tomkarlo 13y ago
  The more precisely the server provider defines it, the more they are giving folks a playbook for skirting the rules, and as a result potentially encouraging more overall abuse. You're assuming they'll be "screwing people legitimately... " but as long as the customer's total data consumption isn't excessive, an ISP has no reason to come down on them - the ISP should be happy to just collect their fee.

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gnu_fan2 13y ago

information creation should be forbidden = no servers allowed

matthiasb 13y ago

I feel that allowing Google Fiber customers to connect their own servers to the network would go against Google own interests. Google business relies on hosting their customers application and data.

doctoboggan 13y ago

To anyone who thinks google is lying by calling this "unlimited" consider this: When you go to a restaurant they will serve you free water and give you free napkins. If you asked the waitress how much water you were allowed to have she would probably say "as much as you want". This does not mean you can connect a hose to their water supply and start selling the water. You can not pull up with a large truck and start unloading boxes of their napkins because you can have "as much as you want". There are common sense limitations on unlimited services, and I do not think google is crossing any lines here.

bluedino 13y ago
Did people really thing Google wasn't going to have reasonable limits such as this?
whyoh 13y ago
Nobody really expects unlimited bandwidth. Bandwidth and other resources are limited, so it's perfectly reasonable to expect some (common sense) limitations. What is not reasonable is saying "you can use your bandwidth for this, but you cannot use it for that". This is what people are complaining about. If Google doesn't want people to use unreasonable amounts of bandwidth they should just say so. There's no need to use words like "server" in their TOS, because in the best case it just makes things complicated and vague.
parfe 13y ago
Surprised none of the indignant commenters are opening a food truck in front of every olive garden. The unlimited Soup Salad and Breadsticks could be resold for pure profit! That's how the real world works, isn't it?
- amorphid 13y ago
  I actually really like this analogy :) I'll add that anyone who expects the product "inside the box" to be exactly what they see "on the box" is going to have a bad time.
- Goronmon 13y ago

tuke 13y ago

One of the most interesting claims in Nicholas Negroponte's Being Digital (1996) was that bandwidth would be the same into and out of the home, and that home servers would be ubiquitous. I think his key example was the idea of live video exchange between grandparents and grandchildren. Another Negropontean idea was that bits are bits. The notion of somehow partitioning server-like entities on the basis of their behavior doesn't fit, he argued, the architecture of the Internet.

knodi 13y ago

If google is saying that I can't use my internet connection which i bought though them to sell to or provide internet to large group of other people then that makes sense. A building owner just guy buy google fiber service and charge all their tenants to use his connection which he bought through google fiber. At the end of the day google fiber is business.

wilyk 13y ago

There's a whole lot of hate going around for a company offering Gigabit Internet to residential subscribers for $80/month. Whether it's oversubscribed with caps on utilization or not, it's offering 1024 MB DL speed for $80/month. And you all are COMPLAINING about that in a "you're not the boss of me" kind of way, ranting about how QoS limitations violates "net neutrality", etc etc. Seriously?

pessimizer 13y ago
>Seriously? This is not an argument, and neither is "Oh, please!" (for future reference.)

csense 13y ago

The solution is easy. Instead of banning a specific usage pattern, just say that anyone who exceeds 100 GB / month [1] of usage gets their speed cut to 10% [1] for the rest of the month [2]. It's simple and obvious and I'm amazed that Google, of all companies, isn't smart enough to figure this solution out on their own. From the ISP's point of view, their infrastructure costs are based on the bandwidth used, not the specific application. The only reason they care about the latter is to price-discriminate between businesses and consumers. [1] The numbers and units are obviously parameters that a specific ISP needs to tweak based on their actual costs. [2] Or more sophisticated variations on this theme, like using an hourly basis: e.g. if your usage during the last 720 hours (30 days) exceeds 100 GB, then throttle for a few hours until some high-usage hours fall off the end of the 720-hour window. Or better yet, weight previous usage exponentially.

bifrost 13y ago

As someone who has in the past run a small-ish ISP for home/business users, people who want to run servers at home usually create a fair amount of support overhead, so its no surprise that this is a common issue. Most ISP's don't care what you do as long as you're not causing a problem. This only exists because of bad users, don't blame the ISPs for your lousy neighbors :)

EpicEng 13y ago

Sounds to me like their marketing just need to be more clear. I don't think it is reasonable to say things like "personal use can easily saturate a 1gb connection" like I see in the comments here. C'mon, if you're saturating a 1gb connection for a large percentage of the day, you're doing something other than what most would consider "personal use". I think they need to define "personal use", i.e., "typical household use, browsing the internet, watching the occasional streaming video", certainly not "downloading huge torrents at all times and monitoring the cameras at your small business." I would kill for access to G Fiber.

jamespo 13y ago

I wonder if some of the furore is due to people thinking they could start a nice hosting business and saturate their google fiber connection? It's not as if no alternatives exist (or that it is even realistic to think you could max out the bandwidth with servers for that price).

jessaustin 13y ago

I'll be more concerned when we have examples of actually I-know-it-when-I-see-it unfair "server" bans, rather than purely hypothetical risks. (We certainly have had examples of unfairness from other providers, like Comcast.) In these modern times there are many options available for shared hosting, IaaS, colocation, etc. at all price points and service levels. Of course if you're just operating your own low-traffic mail server Google doesn't care. They probably don't even really care if you operate an appropriately-throttled Tor node. If you're saturating the link, however, someone will notice.

killermonkeys 13y ago

EFF continues awful tradition of confusing personal digital liberty advocacy with lame complaining about not getting things that cost money for "free".

johngalt 13y ago

Astonished by the people complaining about 1Gbps connections for $70/month just because they can't run it line rate 24/7. It's unreal how quickly humans adjust to getting what they want. The very next minute it's unfair and they want more. I must be getting old, because I want to scream 'I remember when internet access was charged by the minute! and only at 14.4kbps!'

Dylan16807 13y ago
This has nothing to do with how much data you send. A server using a kilobit per minute is just as banned as any other kind of server.

lucb1e 13y ago

This is why the Dutch ISP XS4ALL rocks. Full IPv6 connection since like 2 years, opened port 25 outgoing, and they're totally cool about running any kind of server at home. On top of that you get a free shell server and thousands of wifi access points from them. Yeah it costs five more bucks a month, but I say it's totally worth it.