Now That It’s in the Broadband Game, Google Flip-Flops on Network Neutrality (Wired)

There's also a correlation between the number of support calls and people running servers.

>The big problem with a "no servers" clause is that any listening port is a server.
Again, nobody cares about transient servers like hosted games or VoIP endpoints. Google even says that in their policy. As long as your services do not consume epic amounts of bandwidth or generate complaints - ISPs simply don't care.

Servers (as in real servers like web, email etc, not SSH, game or such) cause support issues, they get IP blocks into the RBL they can cause SPAM and all sorts of problems that cost ISPs serious support money. This is why business class service costs more, to handle the support issues of customers running servers that consume bandwidth, cause security issues and generate support tickets.

I've never seen an ISP filter or monitor traffic in any way other than simple measures like port blocks on 25 and 80 on residential connections , except where they are getting support complaints (though Comcast did use DPI to cut off torrent traffic and was rightly taken to the shed for it). People running low volume stuff are likely to fly under the radar up until they get slashdot'd and shut down their entire neighborhoods connection at which point their accounts will likely be terminated. Google and every other ISP on the planet uses these draconian terms so they can easily shut down customers that cause problems. It reduces support costs and helps keep the service cost down. It's not the best method to do it, but I'd lay money on them not bothering a soul that isn't screwing up others service.

There are two things you have to keep in mind, first is that Google is offering free lifetime connections (at 5mbit) for a $300 install fee. Second at the price they are offering gigabit they aren't counting on any support costs.

Finally network neutrality doesn't have anything to do with customers and them "getting what they were sold". It's always been about messing up the routing and throughput deliberately then charging extra to undo it. The potential for abuse in doing so is extreme, the potential abuse of the ISPs requiring separate accounts for business and personal use is non existent.

Networks are very, very complex beasts on their own. Throw in millions of people's individually unique usage patterns, and the behavior of that complex system becomes an impossible thing to precisely describe.

As a consequence, network operators deal in abstractions where such are useful. Again, though, the more you try to take those abstractions and make them more precise, the more you try to reach an impossible degree of complexity, and the more customers spend as they confuse "wants" for "needs".

If I wanted to get a 10GbE network connection to my home, I could. It'd cost me a pretty penny in installation costs, but it's doable; I'd have to pay someone to either bury or hang single-mode fiber between me and an L3 center about three miles away on the other side of downtown. And then I'd have to pay to have (and keep) it lit. And then I'd have to pay for IP addresses. And transit. And support. Every single one of those things you mention.

There's a reason it's expensive, and there's a reason you don't see those kind of connections land on every home.

Instead, you have organizations like Comcast, RoadRunner and AT&T who move to the other extreme and abstract things as broadly as possible. As a consequence, they can provide oodles of bandwith *cheap*. There are a ton of guarantees you don't get, and services you're not promised, but you get a service that's "good enough" for the vast majority of people (much as we might prefer people to move out of centralized services...), and you get the option to pay for a higher tier that gets you preferred status on the network (no complaints about bandwidth consumption, and you even get OB port 25 unblocked), red carpet treatment in support (call drop? they call me back.), and they're *happy* to send out a tech to swap out a modem, tune attenuation or replace a line if you're not getting 24/7 connectivity.

Now, let's say the traditional last-mile providers started offering these things a la cart. Most people would *hate* it; people want to have choice in principle, but when faced with it they either buy it all, cheap out and don't buy what they need, or agonize under information overload. (Your average user isn't going to know what $some_feature is, and will blame the ISP when they face problems owing to their own ignorance. I expect this is why Comcast _only_ provides on-link (not routed) IPv4 subnets.)

And if last-mile providers did offer a la cart services, there would be general complaints about how the evil ISPs are "nickle-and-diming" their customers.

As for bandwidth caps and other things that are "ripe" for abuse. That's theory. Practice varies. Comcast isn't abusing it...at least not in a way that's visible around here. Yes, they were seriously nasty back in the bad old days of DPI and anti-torrenting behavior, but every Comcast tech I've interacted with, from netops on down to the contractor testing my home connection, is chiefly interested in building the best network they can.

Individuals, communities and corporations _always_ work around the limitations set forth by current networks, if they're allowed to. Users got bittorrent to deal with asynchronous network connections. Companies like Akami and Limelight seek to place their own distribution-point equipment within the boundaries of major networks, to reduce network-boundary congestion. And the owners of those networks rightly charge them for the privilege, infra and support costs that go with those arrangements.

"Net Neutrality" is an attempt at implementing a ham-handed, political solution to what is ultimately a technical and market problem. To put in place a net neutrality mandate would be to lock the shape of the network into the current status quo...unless you put in enough caveats and flexibility that it's meaningless and just another "we have to run this by a political committee before we can implement it." And that's not a good place to be.

The Internet is not mature, and I should hope it never ceases to be the hotbed of innovation and creativity it's been over the last thirty years. But a Net Neutrality mandate would be the biggest stifler of creativity it's ever seen.