Google To Develop ISP Throttling Detector 198
bigwophh writes "Google has been very vocal on its stance for net neutrality. Now, Richard Whitt — Senior Policy Director for Google — announces that Google will take an even more active role in the debate by arming consumers with the tools to determine first-hand if their broadband connections are being monkeyed with by their ISPs."
Kinda hard to do (Score:5, Interesting)
I think Google is afraid it's youtube dreams are being squashed by evil ISP's. Google more than sure doesn't give a cent about P2P applications, so their app probably will only work for http throttling, namely flv streaming/youtube.
Sorry for the google bashing, but this doesn't seem like google is as much interested in defending the poor customers against the evil ISP's as it's trying to defend it's own commercial interests.
Something else, I don't think there will be a big success in bateling the big ISP's, as trafic rises, there is no way they can maintain the current bandwidth/price ratio, even with massive profit cuts and investments in infrastructure. ISP's are overselling at a massive scale, more than 100 times their banwidth capacity. (well, in the US it's possible to maintain current prices since it's one of the most overpriced countries in this domain).
Potential money loss for Google (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Legality Question (Score:5, Interesting)
How ironic that my feelings on the matter so closely match the quote "What we've got here is failure to communicate... Now I don't like this any more than you do."
Why not caps? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Legality Question (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Why not caps? (Score:3, Interesting)
Easy to avoid.... (Score:4, Interesting)
on the bandwidth thing (Score:3, Interesting)
We currently have an 8Mb line, and I do mean 8, it gets to that speed quite often, especially in transfers from my university machines, other Janet sites, and other good download locations.
Otherwise we get around 4Mb.
Ok, all fine, but now UK ISP have started talking about max 2Mb lines in my area, and several have 'tested' my line and found it cannot go above 2mb, even when I clearly can get much greater speeds then this, and have before and after their 'test'.
Since this is usually accompanied by 'great deals' on 2mb packages, I smell several day old former fishies.
Re:Legality Question (Score:5, Interesting)
When it comes to bandwidth the total amount really doesn't matter (despite what the ISPs would have you believe). It's the amount per second, or, more reasonably, minute, that is the real determining factor. If I use 300 Gigs of bandwidth, but do so in 10 gigs a night, at the times when every normal person is asleep, over the course of the entire month that's going to have far less of an impact on my neighbors than if I used 30 Gigs on the first of the month during the waking hours.
Hmm...anyone else getting visions of power company like pricing? You pay per gig (or something) a reasonable fee (such that the average person pays the same then as now), but if you use it during off hours you pay less. It's probably been thought of before but it might help, those torrents would be a lot cheaper to run during off hours, making normal usage faster during on hours.
Re:Kinda hard to do (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Easy to avoid.... (Score:4, Interesting)
If it is as simple as what you suggest it would be a great move for Google as the ISP's could unthrottle Google and Google would get superior network traffic over all of the smaller sites that don't have their own well used network-throttling-detectors.
Re:Legality Question (Score:4, Interesting)
You pay a flat fee and you can download as much as you want.
The catch is either in the fine print or its omitted completely.
Its illegal in Australia but legal in the US to do that.
Thats why nearly all our net plans have fixed quotas (sometimes with on and off peak) and your shaped after reaching the limit.
It is the next simplest solution and its extremely fair for consumers.
Re:on the bandwidth thing (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Potential money loss for Google (Score:2, Interesting)
And I need help detecting the infringement.
How will Google implement this? (Score:3, Interesting)
FCC needs to step in (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Kinda hard to do (Score:3, Interesting)
What makes Comcast incredibly underhanded is that they advertise the wonders of their fiber optic network...and falsely imply FTTH service with lines like "I actually feel the fiber optic light from Comcast."
Dont think this is going to happen (Score:3, Interesting)
First, you can bet your ass this is pretty damned hard not to get false positives, however I will admit before someone does it for me that the collective mind of Google is much smarter than I. I will not say it cannot be done. Its just unlikely ( still nothing technical ).
I work for a company that provides software ( and firmware ) for the largest ( physically, and capacity wise ) commercial satellite in the world. It only moves IP packets ( plus meta ). I am not a sales person, I design, prototype, sometimes build the software that controls the flows. I certainly maintain a heavy hand in in it all technically, I have nothing to do with service level policies, other than providing feasible solutions.I feel somewhat qualified to tell you strait up that this 'net neutrality' thing is both a bunch of bullshit and that its prompted by "Board Room" level jealousy of profits.
Before I get into the heavy of it I want to tell you that I feel that if you buy 1mbps you should get 1mbps. None of this "until you reach 15GB" crap... unless thats what you paid for.Unlimited should be without qualification unless they qualify it up front ( meaning its not "unlimited" ). Truth in advertising is the key here.
But on the other hand, you want your VOIP calls to be clear, you want your game session to be non-choppy. You want your web pages to take temporary priority over your FTP session, oh yes you do.
Likewise, you do not want the guy in the next cubicle to take up all of available bandwidth downloading [insert something big] over P2P or whatever you kids do these days to defeat fairness controls.Some of the legislation put forth in the name of neutrality would make it illegal for me to make it fair.
When I first got into this business it was common practice to oversell by five times, I recently have had documents cross my desk that suggest it is common practice to sell it 80 times over. Given that providers like TimeWarner want to jack the max speed to 15mb for an extra 5 bucks, its no wonder that they then want to put into place caps on usage ( they didn't mean you should use it ).
Oh wait, we were talking about neutrality. Right. So anyhow, you have groups trying to prioritize traffic, and then you have groups trying to tell the googles and the ebays in the world that they need to pony up some cash if they want fair access to the customers. This has nothing to do with QoS, this is extortion. We already have laws that cover this. Google is taking the wrong tact in the sense that they are trying to rally people behind them in demanding fair access, and I think they should be pressing criminal charges.
Do not get me wrong, my satellite covers a large portion of Asia, it has nothing to do with what is being proposed right here with Net Neutrality, other than the fact that my Internet is getting messed with by largish companies and politicians that do not know much about the problems.
Please... understand what you are proposing before you start pushing the badwagon.
I want to be clear, I feel that legislated "Net Neutrality" is bad, it will not work out well. I feel that there are plenty of laws in place that should incarcerate corporations ( if only we could ) for the obvious laws they are breaking by trying to force popular internet sites to pay them for access to customers that are already paying them. I would like to get into honesty in advertising, and why its really up to you guys to fix this, but it would rather go in a book for I am long winded.
Really guys and gals, we need some perspective on this, no one wants our internet messed with like this and if you leave it up to the corps and the elected, its going to get messed up. I am not sure what you expect to gain by this, but I am sure what you end up with is a pile of crap if it continues for too long. Please, we can apply laws that have been enforced for decades to cover this, its not mystery to us, its time we demystify it to everyone else.
P.S. Isnt the posting editing window really small now?
--dant