Google Fiber now allows servers for non-commercial use

This is why I can't stand libertarians. FREEDOM MUST BE PROTECTED WITH LAWS. It's a precedent that has been set in stone since the Bill of Rights!

ljlolel here is, with a straight face, DEFENDING the ability for AT&T to siphon bandwidth off of Google's residential fiber service in order to resell it. Does that really sound reasonable to anyone?

Same deal with the GPL. "OMG I hate the GPL because it doesn't let me take free software and make it proprietary then add all kinds of DRM and shit and subjugate users." Boo fucking hoo!

The intent has always been USER freedom, not freedom for commercial entities are making a living attempting to peddle knockoff products at hiked-up prices.

Bandwidth is not like gas. It's not something that you buy, and consume it, and then go out and buy more.

Instead, there's an infrastructure that need to be built. That infrastructure has a certain capacity; at any given time, only so many bits per second can be flowing over it.

Now, most people don't use all of their capacity at a continuous, constant rate. Rather, their usage is quite bursty. You use a lot of bandwidth for a short amount of time when loading a video, and then none while you're watching it. Or you use lots of small bursts while surfing the web.

If they sold 100 Mbps (no one sells 100 MB/s) and guaranteed that to you, it would be astronomically expensive. But selling you service that gets 100 Mbps in bursts if people have average personal-use utilization patterns is perfectly possible.

Now, how exactly should they advertise that? That's a tough question. If they were going to advertise the minimum guaranteed bandwidth, it would be laughably low (and of course, they could never really guarantee any minimum, since how much bandwidth you get for a given transfer depends not only on your connection, but the backbones in between and server's connection; there is no way to guarantee any particular amount of bandwidth in any meaningful way). And you would almost always get more than that, so that would be a fairly meaningless number.

Perhaps they could advertise an aggregate average bandwidth? That would be pretty hard to define and test (what sample period are you measuring over? How do you know when a transfer has stalled due to congestion somewhere vs being finished?), and wouldn't really give you much meaningful. Are you really going to go out an canvas your neighbors to determine if your neigbhorhood really is getting the promised average aggregate bandwidth?

The only really meaningful thing they can give you is what the actual maximimum bandwidth they will allow over your connection. That is a hard and fast number, and can be tested fairly easily. Of course, that doesn't say much about your bandwidth accessing any particular site, but there's nothing you can really do about that without control of the entire network.

Now, actually in practice, it appears that when I buy a certain level from Comcast, they don't actually use that as a hard maximum. I've seen bursts that were higher than the advertised bandwidth; and of course, I've seen transfers that were lower.

I know that everyone likes to criticize ISPs, and there is definitely some behavior that I find odious (blocking particular protocols, attempts to subvert net-neutrality). But over-selling bandwidth is not one of them. I can't really imagine a system that would work better than over-selling bandwidth.

No, as someone who lives on both sides of that comparison, I would like both kinds of freedom. I don't think they have to be mutually exclusive as long as we set up a few basic rules about the use of infrastructure that everyone needs. Most actual net neutrality proposals go way beyond what is necessary. Much like the GPL.

To be clear, I'm not defending most of it. I'm only defending 'ISP's can charge less to home users in exchange for them agreeing not to do specific things'.

I'm not defending the anti-competitive nature of laws in the USA. I'm not defending overzealous use of 'home/business' seperation. And I'm not defending overselling backhaul

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In your example, you use an rented apartment. This is a perfect example, a rented apartment is like the 20x20 MetroE line I described above, you can do whatever you want, you paid for the whole thing.

A timeshare is what your looking for -- a timeshare also a rented apartment (or house, ect), but you dont get all the time, you only get a piece of it (say 'up to 1 month per year'). You get a significantly lower rate (in theory) on a timeshare, because you only get a part of a time.

Timeshares are cheaper than a full apartment lease. You got the cheaper rate because you agreed to the restrictions.

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Even ownership doesn't absolve you of these restrictions. For example, if you buy a condominium, you usually agree to the condo boards rules (many of which include things like "no guests for more than 7 days" or "no commercial / industry / business / trade activity") http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2002-12-08/business/02120...

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If you want me to name 'other services or products that include these restrictions', I can name a bunch :

- Rental Cars (mileage restriction, modification restriction)

- Leased Cars (mileage restriction, modification restriction)

- Hotel Rooms (limits on number of people present, not allowed to use it for commercial activities, ect)

- Electricity (limit to how much you can use at residential rates, if you exceed this, your price usually jumps.)

- Commercial Libraries, e.g. Universities (time limits on checked out books, if you exceed them, you pay late fees. Not allowed to re-lend-out books you've borrowed from the library. Not allowed to make copies of books you've borrowed from the library. Ect.)

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EDIT : Full disclosure, I'm trying to start an new Internet Service Provider that isn't evil, from scratch, using our own network. (Not re-selling DSL / Cable). It's really really difficult.

I'm as pro-user pro-net-neutrality pro-open-internet anti-censorship pro-EFF as they come. But from a mathematical standpoint, the numbers don't work out. There's no way to cover expenses selling dedicated 50x50mbps uncapped, completely unrestricted internet connections for $30-60/month (unless your Google, and can subsidize the whole thing).

Normal home users are fine. People who just want burst fast speeds, but push some number less than 300-600GB total each month, no problem. I don't care if your running some webcams / Minecraft servers / web servers / SSH / VPN / programming for your business / accepting orders / selling ETSY stuff / ect.

But "power users" who want to host small data centers on their $30/month residential plan, or are seeding terrabytes of Torrent data each month, or are trying to resell that connection -- it can't happen today. Your making your friends and neighbors pay more for your crazy high usage. You need to be on a business plan, and pay for dedicated internet.

Remember, 600GB is a huge amount of bandwidth for a home user. That's enough to stream 25 days straight of tv-quality video (or 214 hours of HD Netflix)

I have no problem with heavy bandwidth users. But I do have a problem with heavy bandwidth users who insist they pay only the bare minimum rates because of their flawed interpretation of 'network neutrality'.

"Can you name a single other service or product in the world that include such restrictions, and "up to X" quantity?"

Sure. Semitrucks pay greater highway tolls (and are subject to greater usage scruitiny e.g. weighing stations) than light vehicle traffic.