4 ms·

I really like what Sandstorm is doing here, but the most attractive setup for me (self-hosted on a box I physically control) is hampered by the asynchronous up/

I really like what Sandstorm is doing here, but the most attractive setup for me (self-hosted on a box I physically control) is hampered by the asynchronous up/down speeds of consumer internet. I already have a somewhat slow download (~15Mbps), but my upload is 10% of that, and I'm not fond of the idea of reducing all of my access speeds to my "cloud" data by 90% of what they currently are.

kentonv 11y ago
FWIW, this is why I generally recommend running on a "cloud" provider like Digital Ocean rather than running physically in your own home. But of course that requires trusting the provider, which is a trade-off. <vaporware>Once we have all our federation plans in place it will be easy to have multiple Sandstorm servers that connect to each other so that you can restrict critical secrets (say, your PGP key) to your home machine while putting less-critical stuff in "the cloud", but still have them all connect to each other (essentially: federated Powerbox).</vaporware>
- dikaiosune 11y ago
  s/vaporware/shut_up_and_take_my_money/ EDIT: Also, yes, a DO box with Sandstorm is what I have some amorphous period of time this summer reserved for. Just not as ideal for me as physically controlling the box.
  - heavenlyhash 11y ago
    On the plus side, you can readily start on one cloud now, pretty much drag-n-drop to another cloud later if prices jump, and bring it home to your living room whenever you want. The ability to click "download backup" and get a zip that has 100% of your app state, ready for one-click restore to a functional install, is ammaaaazing.
darklajid 11y ago
My problem isn't speed (300 down, 20 up). It's ipv6 (only). Can't reach my services from the go, because no network, anywhere, runs ipv6. None of my two mobile carriers. Not my employer's corporate network. No network at any of my friends. And I've yet to see a public hotspot that isn't ipv4 only. Everything ipv6 is dark when I leave the house. So.. different cause, same problem. Hosting at home is a non-starter.
- db48x 11y ago
  Consider using a VPN. Great for privacy on untrustworthy networks, and if you run it on your "own" vps you can add things like IPv6
  - darklajid 11y ago
    I don't understand the idea. You want me VPN into a VPS somewhere which is on ipv4 and ipv6? But .. if I have such a VPS, why would I want to host services at home (vs. on this VPS) in the first place? I agree that a VPN is helpful, a good idea. But unfortunately it doesn't solve my problem in a meaningful way: Running services behind my otherwise decent/fast enough home connection.
    - db48x 11y ago
      The run the VPN server on your home network as well. I was merely generalizing away from a completely managed VPN service where you don't get to decide what software is used, which features are enabled, or how the routing is done.
static_noise 11y ago
Privacy comes at a price. Maybe you could host at a friends place or rent a physical server. If you think about asymmetric internet connections there are many reasons it is the way it is but few of them are good reasons. To contrast this, Google fiber offers symmetric connections with 1 GBit/s upload speed which could change the game for some lucky people. But even with your current connection, if you mostly have low bandwidth content like text/notekeeping and small documents you should try it. There is no good reason to store private notes and documents in the cloud.
- dikaiosune 11y ago
  Sure, privacy comes at a price, but projects like Sandstorm are (at least in part) aimed at reducing that price relative to the large-scale SaaS services. I've looked into a physical colo, but there isn't one in the town/city where I'm from and it'd be a minimum 2.5 hour drive to the closest site. Unfortunately re: hosting at a friend's house, a small-ish city like mine doesn't have anyone in it other than large businesses who have decent upload. And that's a big reason why I'm still on Gmail, Dropbox, Wunderlist, etc. -- the cost to self-host is just a little too high. For me, as attractive as I find the idea of proper privacy, the price is almost there but not quite low enough. I look forward to a future where I have access to a symmetric fiber connection -- but that will require either a decade of development where I'm from or a move to a more metropolitan area (the latter is not out of the question, of course). In the meantime I have plans to evaluate a bunch of different self-hosted SaaS options on DigitalOcean in the next few months.
  - static_noise 11y ago
    It's an interesting problem. We don't trust big corporations. Hosting ourselves is very expensive. How could this be organized better? 10 people hosting a small server infrastructure together? Can you trust them? I believe that sandstorm is making the move very much into the right direction. Self hosting will become cheaper and more convenient. In a few years you can drop some little server box off at two friends places and colocate for them and each one will have their own private cluster. With the storage encrypted, of course. Setting this up will just require doing the handshake between the servers and between the servers and clients and done.

kentonv 11y ago

FWIW, this is why I generally recommend running on a "cloud" provider like Digital Ocean rather than running physically in your own home. But of course that requires trusting the provider, which is a trade-off. <vaporware>Once we have all our federation plans in place it will be easy to have multiple Sandstorm servers that connect to each other so that you can restrict critical secrets (say, your PGP key) to your home machine while putting less-critical stuff in "the cloud", but still have them all connect to each other (essentially: federated Powerbox).</vaporware>

dikaiosune 11y ago
s/vaporware/shut_up_and_take_my_money/ EDIT: Also, yes, a DO box with Sandstorm is what I have some amorphous period of time this summer reserved for. Just not as ideal for me as physically controlling the box.
- heavenlyhash 11y ago
  On the plus side, you can readily start on one cloud now, pretty much drag-n-drop to another cloud later if prices jump, and bring it home to your living room whenever you want. The ability to click "download backup" and get a zip that has 100% of your app state, ready for one-click restore to a functional install, is ammaaaazing.

darklajid 11y ago

My problem isn't speed (300 down, 20 up). It's ipv6 (only). Can't reach my services from the go, because no network, anywhere, runs ipv6. None of my two mobile carriers. Not my employer's corporate network. No network at any of my friends. And I've yet to see a public hotspot that isn't ipv4 only. Everything ipv6 is dark when I leave the house. So.. different cause, same problem. Hosting at home is a non-starter.

db48x 11y ago
Consider using a VPN. Great for privacy on untrustworthy networks, and if you run it on your "own" vps you can add things like IPv6
- darklajid 11y ago
  I don't understand the idea. You want me VPN into a VPS somewhere which is on ipv4 and ipv6? But .. if I have such a VPS, why would I want to host services at home (vs. on this VPS) in the first place? I agree that a VPN is helpful, a good idea. But unfortunately it doesn't solve my problem in a meaningful way: Running services behind my otherwise decent/fast enough home connection.
  - db48x 11y ago
    The run the VPN server on your home network as well. I was merely generalizing away from a completely managed VPN service where you don't get to decide what software is used, which features are enabled, or how the routing is done.

static_noise 11y ago

Privacy comes at a price. Maybe you could host at a friends place or rent a physical server. If you think about asymmetric internet connections there are many reasons it is the way it is but few of them are good reasons. To contrast this, Google fiber offers symmetric connections with 1 GBit/s upload speed which could change the game for some lucky people. But even with your current connection, if you mostly have low bandwidth content like text/notekeeping and small documents you should try it. There is no good reason to store private notes and documents in the cloud.

dikaiosune 11y ago
Sure, privacy comes at a price, but projects like Sandstorm are (at least in part) aimed at reducing that price relative to the large-scale SaaS services. I've looked into a physical colo, but there isn't one in the town/city where I'm from and it'd be a minimum 2.5 hour drive to the closest site. Unfortunately re: hosting at a friend's house, a small-ish city like mine doesn't have anyone in it other than large businesses who have decent upload. And that's a big reason why I'm still on Gmail, Dropbox, Wunderlist, etc. -- the cost to self-host is just a little too high. For me, as attractive as I find the idea of proper privacy, the price is almost there but not quite low enough. I look forward to a future where I have access to a symmetric fiber connection -- but that will require either a decade of development where I'm from or a move to a more metropolitan area (the latter is not out of the question, of course). In the meantime I have plans to evaluate a bunch of different self-hosted SaaS options on DigitalOcean in the next few months.
- static_noise 11y ago
  It's an interesting problem. We don't trust big corporations. Hosting ourselves is very expensive. How could this be organized better? 10 people hosting a small server infrastructure together? Can you trust them? I believe that sandstorm is making the move very much into the right direction. Self hosting will become cheaper and more convenient. In a few years you can drop some little server box off at two friends places and colocate for them and each one will have their own private cluster. With the storage encrypted, of course. Setting this up will just require doing the handshake between the servers and between the servers and clients and done.