EFF Slams Google Fiber For Banning Servers On Its Network 301
MojoKid writes "Anyone who has tried to host their own website from home likely knows all-too-well the hassles that ISPs can cause. Simply put, ISPs generally don't want you to do that, preferring you to move up to a business package (aka: more expensive). Not surprisingly, the EFF doesn't like these rules, which seem to exist only to upsell you a product. The problem, though, is that all ISPs are deliberately vague about what qualifies as a 'server.' Admittedly, when I hear the word 'server,' I think of a Web server, one that delivers a webpage when accessed. The issue is that servers exist in many different forms, so to target specific servers 'just because' is ridiculous (and really, it is). Torrent clients, for example, act as servers (and clients), sometimes resulting in a hundred or more connections being established between you and available peers. With a large number of connections like that being allowed, why would a Web server be classified any different? Those who torrent a lot are very likely to be using more ISP resources than those running websites from their home — yet for some reason, ISPs force you into a bigger package when that's the kind of server you want to run. We'll have to wait and see if EFF's movement will cause any ISP to change. Of all of them, you'd think it would have been Google to finally shake things up."
Who cares what it is (Score:5, Interesting)
Buisness Package (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:WEB hosting isn't expensive (Score:5, Interesting)
Because.
I wanna run a server at home.
I don't wanna pay $4/month more.
I want to run some non-standard OS.
I want to test my custom hardware.
I want to connect my server to my lights.
What do you care why?
Re:WEB hosting isn't expensive (Score:5, Interesting)
I run a server at home because I don't just want web hosting. I want file hosting, email, remote desktop, music and video streaming, video games, and IRC to boot... And I want to access much of that from my home at the same time, and manage it the way I want and upgrade it when I want.
I did once price out what I'd be spending on Amazon to get close to my needs, and it came out to a couple hundred dollars per month. It's cheaper for me to just buy a server and rent space in a data center... and cheaper still for me to run it at home.
Re:WEB hosting isn't expensive (Score:4, Interesting)
Agreed and I'd like to expand on the "test my custom" to "everything."
At work I run and admin web servers, mostly Apache. I choose Apache because I have the most experience with it and have developed a feeling for how much I can trust various configurations. I don't have that level of experience with Nginx. However, I like Nginx better and feel like it would be better suited to meeting our business needs. So I need to spend a couple years getting better aquainted with Nginx, what can go wrong, how they find and handle security issues, how quickly patches come out, how easy it is to handle stop-gap measures, etc.
I can only do that somewhat freely at work because there are different restrictions on what I can do with machines at work and what I'm willing to have fail at work. If I can run Nginx at home for a couple years, I don't have those restrictions. It's hardly reasonable to consider my hobby tinkering a business and unreasonable for me to have to upgrade to a business class service just to give me the ability to ensure I understand how to configure the hardware, software and services I am trying to learn.
I tried FreeBSD for a while at home. I absoutely love some aspects of it. After a couple years, I decided I didn't like the upgrade cycle, but I didn't learn that at work and shouldn't have to. I tried OpenBSD too and discovered some drivers didn't like some of the hardware I was using and that would have been a misuse of my time to discover at work since they don't pay me to play around learning new stuff. I'm a better admin professionally because of my hobby experience at home.
I too had to ask and answer "what is a server?" I have an old Cisco router a couple switches and a 1U server with no onboard hard disk. The Ciscos have built in telnet and web server interfaces. Even my wifi router has an onboard web server for configuation. Surely they wouldn't consider the Ciscos and wifi router servers? Of course not. The 1U dell needs a tftp server to function and can run various systems but none of them necessariy have to offer externally available software servers of any sort. That doesn't sound like a server to me either. In the end, I try to keep my homework limited to a couple things I'm tinkering with and not offer anything the general public might be interested in from my home connection and I believe I'm operating within the spirit of the rules. That doesn't stop me from wishing that the rules were actually more clearly established along reasonable lines. As an admin of a network myself, I believe that it is my job to ensure not only that we have clear rules about what is allowed and what isn't but also to ensure that dangerous or abusive use is curtailed by technology, not a "you find out that you broke the rules only after you've gone far enough to be punished" approach.
Re:If uploads are expensive, cap them specifically (Score:2, Interesting)
Better yet, charge by the megabyte during prime hours, and make it free at other times. Then people would schedule their torrents to run in the wee hours when it won't disturb their neighbors. It would also make Google Fiber cheaper for grandma who only needs e-mail and Facebook.
Problem is much deeper and more fundamental. (Score:4, Interesting)
In fact the Internet, as originally envisioned, hasn't existed for some years now and may never exist again. It's not just that ISPs are forbidding servers, it's that their asymmetric I/O speeds combined with network-address translation fundamentally changed the game from a peer to peer network to a producer/consumer network. The only way to serve up your own content right now is to buy server in a data center, or use an existing service. Just to route around the fundamental brokenness of our modern-day internet, I have to buy a VPS, which is run by a company that pays the big network providers big bucks for peering. Pretty depressing, really.
I wonder how a transition to IPv6 will change all this. Will all ISPs simply assign non-routeable addresses?
Re:Bogus headline, flamebait. Shame, EFF. (Score:2, Interesting)
Not "any trouble at all"
Google is delivering more bandwidth to the KC area than the entire rest of the US Internet combined. That is potentially a problem if all the people so enabled are rude. It's not a matter of them beating down subscribers, it's about not breaking the whole Internet. Having Gigabit Internet is a dire responsibility as a home user. You can't just fire up wget on your favorite site, even /., without crashing it unless you rate limit. You "should not" do that. To most sites ONE user with a gigabit connect and an itchy click finger looks like a denial of service attack. A whole city full looks like a DDOS.
Google is bringing end users into a new era one city at a time, but they understand that most of the Internet is built on legacy tech that can't handle this.
Re:Becoming more capable (Score:4, Interesting)
They become more capable in what interests them.
Tell me - would you want to be "more capable" by learning to read literature? History? Arts? These make you "more capable" in being able to appreciate the world. Or perhaps accounting. Or law (since we can't eve seem to get basic IP law of trademarks, copyright and patents (design and novelty) straight). Or have we gotten to naÃve to think that we know it all? (Given the level of commentary on /.). Or hell, what about mere basic spelling? Or about such niceties as etiquette? (How much are complementary studies courses hated as a "waste of time" when pursuing a degree?).
The thing is - the world is complex. There's way more to learn than one could ever know. And rather than try to learn it all, we specialize. We know IT inside and out (and not all of it - some know how to admin servers, others know how to write an OS, others still write applications that run on top, etc., including databases, web sites, etc.). Then there's designers, blah blah blah.
Well, other people don't care about computers. Being a modern world, you can't AVOID using a computer - there will always be useful websites on your choice of interest for which you can learn, and the Internet took off because no one needed to know how networks, TCP/IP, OSes, etc., worked, and it grew into this whole place where everyone can share information from computers to guns to cars to furries and porn.
The computer is a tool. The vast majority of people see it as a convenient way to access the internet, gather information, share information, keep in touch with family, friends and relatives, etc. It is to many like the car, or telephone, or television - they don't care how it works, just that it works and it enables them to go about their day. They don't care how a car works, they just twist the key and turn the wheel to arrive at their destination. They don't care how the phone works, the basics of circuit switching (or virtual circuits) or ODFM modulation, they just punch a few numbers and in a few seconds, they're talking with someone who can be next door or around the world. Likewise, they don't care about bits or bytes, what CSMA/CD does, or what QAM is - they know they can click an icon, and start perusing information they want to know, or to make contact with someone, etc.
The vast majority of people do not care to learn how to set up a web server just to put a few photos online - they'll use facebook, flickr, picasa or other service. Or if they want to write, they'll go open a Blogger account with Google. Some may want to go into business and create a website - you can do that to without knowing how HTTP works - just purchase some web hosting service, upload a few web pages, and enjoy. None of them need to know how to write an httpd.conf file, what /etc/init.d/httpd does, firewall configuration, etc.
And to be honest, if they had to know it, they'd go "cool" and end up doing things the old way that they always had because they can concentrate on getting stuff done, and not learning unrelated crap just to get stuff done.
That's why smartphones, tablets and consoles are popular - they're good at the "get your stuff done" part and hiding away the crap people don't care about.
And hell, let's say you wanted to learn Linux, so you install Ubuntu, open port 80 on your firewall, and put up some websites. Oh wait, your Linux box suddenly got compromised by some PHP bug and is now uploading at gigabit speeds. Of course, you don't know enough Linux to fix it, your websites are still working and you don't want to take those down (or you copy your stuff off, reinstall, put it back, get infected again...).