Introducing Network Service Tiers • Hacker News Board

Re: Introducing Network Service Tiers

#41

Post by jerkstate » Wed, Aug 23, 2017, 5:53 PM UTC

arkadiyt wrote: post #34

jerkstate wrote: post #28

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,…

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.

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.

Re: Introducing Network Service Tiers

#42

Post by puzzle » Wed, Aug 23, 2017, 5:53 PM UTC

lowbloodsugar wrote: post #10

So is this like the app engine price hike debacle a few years ago but with "better" messaging? So "Try Network Service Tiers Today" means "Migrate to Standard Tier today to avoid the massive price increases coming soon"? But fundamentally they just massively underestimated costs and need to find a way to adjust pricing. With app engine it was very conveniently beta, so they used the end of beta for the price hike. Fo…

When will the AppEngine pricing change from six years ago stop being relevant? Has there been another hike since? Pricing AE is very different from pricing bandwidth. Even more concretely, there weren't historical data or industry trends to draw from.

Re: Introducing Network Service Tiers

#43

Post by jerkstate » Wed, Aug 23, 2017, 5:55 PM UTC

manigandham wrote: post #30

jerkstate wrote: post #28

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,…

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.

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.

Re: Introducing Network Service Tiers

#44

Post by toast0 » Wed, Aug 23, 2017, 5:56 PM UTC

jerkstate wrote: post #28

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,…

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.

Re: Introducing Network Service Tiers

#45

Post by deusex_ » Wed, Aug 23, 2017, 5:58 PM UTC

jstapels wrote: post #33

user5994461 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course not. They are not competing with Digital Ocean / Linode at all.

If that's true, why did Amazon come out with Lightsail? https://amazonlightsail.com

That's just a card to be in the game, it's hardly their mainline product.

Re: Introducing Network Service Tiers

#46

Post by jloveless » Wed, Aug 23, 2017, 5:59 PM UTC

Google's network (especially w/ BBR[1]) is amazing and this makes the price point more approachable for other use cases (like running your own CDN[2]).

[1] https://cloudplatform.googleblog.com/2017/07/TCP-BBR-congest... [2] https://blog.edgemesh.com/deploy-a-global-private-cdn-on-you...

Re: Introducing Network Service Tiers

#47

Post by skybrian » Wed, Aug 23, 2017, 5:59 PM UTC

jedberg wrote: post #37

The most interesting thing to me here is that they can actually deliver a cheaper service by going over the public internet. I would think their private net would be cheaper because they don't have to pay for transit. I guess transit is still cheaper than maintaining ones own lines...

Seems like a shaky inference? Hypothetically, two tiers could have the same cost to provide, but have different profit margins. Market segmentation tends to be more about value to the customers and what they're willing to pay.

Re: Introducing Network Service Tiers

#48

Post by boulos » Wed, Aug 23, 2017, 6:00 PM UTC

benbro wrote: post #26

Can I use the new standard tier with all services like cloud storage or only with compute instances?

Right now (in Alpha), you have to put your own Regional Load Balancer in front of GCS [1]:

> Standard tier for Google Cloud Storage can be configured by adding the bucket as the backend of cloud load balancer and then setting the network tier on the forwarding rule. For this release, you cannot directly configure the tier on the Google Cloud Storage bucket.

Disclosure: I work on Google Cloud (but not on this)

[1] https://cloud.google.com/network-tiers/docs/using-network-se...

Re: Introducing Network Service Tiers

#49

Post by gwern » Wed, Aug 23, 2017, 6:02 PM UTC

CCJK2X wrote: post #31

xg15 wrote: post #29

Not that I'm really surprised, but does that map imply that Google has its own trans-atlantic undersea cables? Is there some more info about that?

Numerous cables under the Atlantic, their network map is quite something. https://cloud.google.com/about/locations/#network-tab

Are they exclusive owner/builders of any of those? I know I've seen a number of cables which Google was a part investor/owner in, but sole ownership would be amazing.

Re: Introducing Network Service Tiers

#50

Post by _7iun » Wed, Aug 23, 2017, 6:02 PM UTC

A long standing complaint of mine is that Cloud egress pricing severely limits the usefulness of compute. If I want to say process some visual effects on a large (1TB) ProRes video, I might spend $1 on the compute but $100 on the egress getting it back.

Unfortunately these changes don't really resolve that problem. "Standard" pricing is a paltry 20% less. That 1TB video egress still costs $80 and for that price I can rent a beefy server with a dedicated gigabit pipe for a month.

Why is "Cloud" bandwidth so damned expensive?

I'd love a "best effort" or "off peak" tier. I imagine Google's pipes are pretty empty when NA is asleep and my batch jobs aren't really going to care.