27 ms·

Project Volutus: Micro data centers at base of cell towers

53 points by thekhatribharat 8y ago

loopycode 8y ago
Data security?
- yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
  It's a data center; why would it have different security properties than any colo facility?
  - lotyrin 8y ago
    Because you're stepping down on the spectrum of "vault with a mantrap, several factors of authentication and 24/7 posted security" down toward "fence and a padlock"?
    - patrickg_zill 8y ago
      How many datacenters have you been in?
      - karambahh 8y ago
        I do agree they are usually far from "Mission:Impossible" style security that OP seems to have in mind. To be fair to OP, average regional DCs have better security than cell towers.
      - lotyrin 8y ago
        How many examples of the extreme ends of a spectrum have you heard? Of course not everyone is Iron Mountain.
        microcolonel 8y ago
        It's amazing how, despite all the investment Iron Mountain makes in securing facilities, arson is still something like 50% effective at destroying everything.
  - Spooky23 8y ago
    It’s a prefab shed with a broadcast tower and an 8-12ft fence and a commercial grade door. Not a meaningful challenge to access. There are exceptions — a few AT&T long lines facilities are towers now, but that is truly an exception.
- patrickg_zill 8y ago
  Encrypted at rest filesystem, and fiber-backed video recording of everyone who steps inside the fence.
- j1vms 8y ago
  Lest we forget the warning that was Cloudbleed [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloudbleed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloudbleed
olehif 8y ago
So now anyone can triangulate location of their users?
- ddalex 8y ago
  To within 90 miles (1ms latency)
pwarner 8y ago
There site is dead, so maybe I missed some benefit. But aren't we talking about a 1ms latency increase to back haul to a proper data center? In theory you can go 90 miles if I did my math right.
- pmorici 8y ago
  From the Google Cached version of their site it looks like they want to be a CDN for mobile. There aren't any details of their actual "micro data centers" that I could find which would be the most interesting aspect of this really.
  - staticfloat 8y ago
    I believe it's called the "Vapor Chamber": https://www.vapor.io/chamber/ https://www.vapor.io/chamber/
    - baybal2 8y ago
      Same outfit marketing them?
    - pmorici 8y ago
      Looks like it is only rated to 104F / 40C that doesn't seem like the kind of things that you can just set outdoors and expect it to work anywhere.
      - jzwinck 8y ago
        That's because it is designed to be installed indoors. It's more of a prefab datacenter aisle, not a standalone structure. They explain that the central exhaust plenum is to be connected to the building's HVAC, and say "the Vapor Chamber can rest just as easily on a slab floor in an equipment room as it can in a traditional raised floor data center."
        pmorici 8y ago
di 8y ago
Site is down, here's a cached page: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:UqBmRUgl5aUJ:https://volutus.io/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:UqBmRU...
- tyingq 8y ago
  Some irony there in that it's cacheable static content, but down. Guess they don't eat their own dogfood.
  - Quequau 8y ago
    There isn't a micro data centre at the base of my cell tower I guess.
flyinglizard 8y ago
Large telecoms are already talking about edge computing at the base stations for 5G. It makes a lot of sense with modern distributed systems and would be great for gaming.
- martinald 8y ago
  Why? All these 5G stations will have fiber backhaul. You are probably saving <1ms of latency here, and there isn't really any limit on bandwidth. Cannot see why this makes any sense at all...
  - ckdarby 8y ago
    Why do you think it would be <1ms latency saving? Just my ISPs PoP to Google's closest geo node is ~8ms and that is entirely over fiber and even going through IXPs.
    - billylindeman 8y ago
      I see it being huge for content caches and CDN's. I see it as more about saving backhaul bandwidth than anything else.
      - pwarner 8y ago
        But if you have fiber 100 Gbps is easy and 10 Tbps is possible, at higher cost. This is today, in a year it will be 2 or 4x. This is all a single fiber pair, probably there are dozens.
        lgierth 8y ago
        Storage density growth has long outpaced bandwidth growth, so it makes more sense to have caches everywhere (and Internet protocols that can make use of them), then betting on growing bandwidth.
        bdonlan 8y ago
gyre007 8y ago
Ironically they called their SW "Vapor"(ware) and here we are seeing it crashing under load
Sephr 8y ago
I'd be concerned about physical security of the hardware. Most of these cell towers are only secured by a chain-link fence and a padlock. As far as data security, it should be easy to auto-wipe your server when intruders are detected, but then there is still the matter of the valuable server hardware and the risk of theft. Hopefully nobody is colocating very expensive hardware or they will probably be prone to theft.
- microcolonel 8y ago
  > I'd be concerned about physical security of the hardware. Most of these cell towers are only secured by a chain-link fence and a padlock. And usually not a particularly good padlock either. Sites like these are regularly prone to non-destructive entry, don't configure or assemble tamper detection circuits, etc. But honestly, none of this is a huge deal day to day. It's something you can improve over time. For the most part, people do not attack these facilities, it's just that if they did, they would have effectively free reign.
  - nkurz 8y ago
    Hi microcolonel. I've noticed that most of your comments lately are autodead, although some have been revived by people vouching for them. Checking through your history, I don't see any clear reason for this. You might want to email 'hn@ycombinator.com' and ask what's up.
    - kbenson 8y ago
      I vouched for a comment and responded to it at few days back, then looked at his history and vouched for 3-4 more when I saw that. Previously I've seen a few vouches take someone out of being dead, so I hoped it would do so this time. Guess not. I also didn't see anything particularly worthy of shadowbanning.
      - microcolonel 8y ago
        I think there was a particularly hot thread a few months back which one mod thought I was pouring fuel on (I won't opine on that, partly since I don't really know which comment[s] constituted the offense); and that's why I'm hellbanned. It's actually not been so bad, I don't know if they want me back fully though.
edwhitesell 8y ago
This is interesting. A friend and I talked about a similar idea about 10 years ago where we thought about buying gas stations that were going out of business to turn into mini data centers. These would have been the smaller, sometimes Mom & Pop places that were obsoleted as the larger Truck Stop looking stations moved in. We thought already having underground fuel tanks and permits would be a meaningful start. Also, already being at or near major roadways, etc would make fiber access easier. But, life got in the way and we never went anywhere with it.
- NickNameNick 8y ago
  The major end-of-life event for smaller gas stations near me is the underground tanks becoming uncertifiable. You may have found that the existing infrastructure was a liability, not an asset.
  - tomcam 8y ago
    Can confirm at least in the state of WA. There are some beautifully located former gas stations centered insome very expensive real estate for that reason.
- Spooky23 8y ago
  Stay away. 80% of these sites are toxic dumps with plumes of leaked gas in the earth. Not fun when they go to dig up the road in a few years and you’re held partially responsible for the pollution. The out of the way places I would look for are schools, libraries, and youth prisons. In many areas between ERate and the Obama stimulus a lot of fiber was run for education and telemedicine. Sometimes counties received grants for fiber rings for school and police purposes as well.
tedd4u 8y ago
Not sure I would want my certificates in a cell tower shed. I barely trust CDNs. At least there are posted guards at POPs and colos.
- viraptor 8y ago
  There are good ways to protect that. It could be fully encrypted with keys available only over local network via trusted execution app. Nothing unbreakable of course, but it would not be possible to get it without significant effort and cost. Also, this is assuming no checksums served from the origin of the service. If you don't provide secrecy, trusted CDNs are easy :-)
bognition 8y ago
If (and its a big if) they can get this off the ground I see this as more of a threat to CDNs then to cloud hosting providers as it makes zero sense to do anything but host content at the cell tower. Hosting compute is completely bonkers as only those customers who connect to a tower where you've co-located your compute will see the speed up. So you either co-locate everywhere, or you only co-locate if you have a geographically isolated set of users.
- thekhatribharat 8y ago
  This is not just for human users, but also for internet connected robots and that includes ground and aerial robots doing everything from delivery to inspection to surveillance, etc. Not to forget self-driving cars. Just like today's data centers are strategically located close to where the demand is, these micro data centers would also be located close to where most robotics activity happens - A small industrial area could be one example, a highly automated urban locality could be another. These data centers coupled with wireless 5G standard provide huge benefits to internet connected robots.
acd 8y ago
Interesting idea, it may be that ower powered ARM servers near cell towers will provide CDN Like this green top 500 system powered by ARM. https://www.top500.org/system/179165 https://www.top500.org/system/179165 The ultimate is a distributed system where your neighbors provide your CDN cache and there is some kind of either sharing economy or bitcoin like economy.
Ari_Ugwu 8y ago
We're almost there. With a little more work people might be able to enjoy cloud servers in their own homes and businesses. What would we call these ultra fast local machines able to 'serve' up content? 'Server' feels a bit on the nose. Perhaps 'Home Cloud: Secured by Blockchain'. </snark>

loopycode 8y ago

Data security?

yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
It's a data center; why would it have different security properties than any colo facility?
- lotyrin 8y ago
  Because you're stepping down on the spectrum of "vault with a mantrap, several factors of authentication and 24/7 posted security" down toward "fence and a padlock"?
  - patrickg_zill 8y ago
    How many datacenters have you been in?
    - karambahh 8y ago
      I do agree they are usually far from "Mission:Impossible" style security that OP seems to have in mind. To be fair to OP, average regional DCs have better security than cell towers.
    - lotyrin 8y ago
      How many examples of the extreme ends of a spectrum have you heard? Of course not everyone is Iron Mountain.
      - microcolonel 8y ago
        It's amazing how, despite all the investment Iron Mountain makes in securing facilities, arson is still something like 50% effective at destroying everything.
- Spooky23 8y ago
  It’s a prefab shed with a broadcast tower and an 8-12ft fence and a commercial grade door. Not a meaningful challenge to access. There are exceptions — a few AT&T long lines facilities are towers now, but that is truly an exception.
patrickg_zill 8y ago
Encrypted at rest filesystem, and fiber-backed video recording of everyone who steps inside the fence.
j1vms 8y ago
Lest we forget the warning that was Cloudbleed [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloudbleed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloudbleed

olehif 8y ago

So now anyone can triangulate location of their users?

ddalex 8y ago
To within 90 miles (1ms latency)

pwarner 8y ago

There site is dead, so maybe I missed some benefit. But aren't we talking about a 1ms latency increase to back haul to a proper data center? In theory you can go 90 miles if I did my math right.

pmorici 8y ago
From the Google Cached version of their site it looks like they want to be a CDN for mobile. There aren't any details of their actual "micro data centers" that I could find which would be the most interesting aspect of this really.
- staticfloat 8y ago
  I believe it's called the "Vapor Chamber": https://www.vapor.io/chamber/ https://www.vapor.io/chamber/
  - baybal2 8y ago
    Same outfit marketing them?
  - pmorici 8y ago
    Looks like it is only rated to 104F / 40C that doesn't seem like the kind of things that you can just set outdoors and expect it to work anywhere.
    - jzwinck 8y ago
      That's because it is designed to be installed indoors. It's more of a prefab datacenter aisle, not a standalone structure. They explain that the central exhaust plenum is to be connected to the building's HVAC, and say "the Vapor Chamber can rest just as easily on a slab floor in an equipment room as it can in a traditional raised floor data center."
      - pmorici 8y ago

di 8y ago

Site is down, here's a cached page: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:UqBmRUgl5aUJ:https://volutus.io/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:UqBmRU...

tyingq 8y ago
Some irony there in that it's cacheable static content, but down. Guess they don't eat their own dogfood.
- Quequau 8y ago
  There isn't a micro data centre at the base of my cell tower I guess.

flyinglizard 8y ago

Large telecoms are already talking about edge computing at the base stations for 5G. It makes a lot of sense with modern distributed systems and would be great for gaming.

martinald 8y ago
Why? All these 5G stations will have fiber backhaul. You are probably saving <1ms of latency here, and there isn't really any limit on bandwidth. Cannot see why this makes any sense at all...
- ckdarby 8y ago
  Why do you think it would be <1ms latency saving? Just my ISPs PoP to Google's closest geo node is ~8ms and that is entirely over fiber and even going through IXPs.
  - billylindeman 8y ago
    I see it being huge for content caches and CDN's. I see it as more about saving backhaul bandwidth than anything else.
    - pwarner 8y ago
      But if you have fiber 100 Gbps is easy and 10 Tbps is possible, at higher cost. This is today, in a year it will be 2 or 4x. This is all a single fiber pair, probably there are dozens.
      - lgierth 8y ago
        Storage density growth has long outpaced bandwidth growth, so it makes more sense to have caches everywhere (and Internet protocols that can make use of them), then betting on growing bandwidth.
      - bdonlan 8y ago

gyre007 8y ago

Ironically they called their SW "Vapor"(ware) and here we are seeing it crashing under load

Sephr 8y ago

I'd be concerned about physical security of the hardware. Most of these cell towers are only secured by a chain-link fence and a padlock. As far as data security, it should be easy to auto-wipe your server when intruders are detected, but then there is still the matter of the valuable server hardware and the risk of theft. Hopefully nobody is colocating very expensive hardware or they will probably be prone to theft.

microcolonel 8y ago
> I'd be concerned about physical security of the hardware. Most of these cell towers are only secured by a chain-link fence and a padlock. And usually not a particularly good padlock either. Sites like these are regularly prone to non-destructive entry, don't configure or assemble tamper detection circuits, etc. But honestly, none of this is a huge deal day to day. It's something you can improve over time. For the most part, people do not attack these facilities, it's just that if they did, they would have effectively free reign.
- nkurz 8y ago
  Hi microcolonel. I've noticed that most of your comments lately are autodead, although some have been revived by people vouching for them. Checking through your history, I don't see any clear reason for this. You might want to email 'hn@ycombinator.com' and ask what's up.
  - kbenson 8y ago
    I vouched for a comment and responded to it at few days back, then looked at his history and vouched for 3-4 more when I saw that. Previously I've seen a few vouches take someone out of being dead, so I hoped it would do so this time. Guess not. I also didn't see anything particularly worthy of shadowbanning.
    - microcolonel 8y ago
      I think there was a particularly hot thread a few months back which one mod thought I was pouring fuel on (I won't opine on that, partly since I don't really know which comment[s] constituted the offense); and that's why I'm hellbanned. It's actually not been so bad, I don't know if they want me back fully though.

edwhitesell 8y ago

This is interesting. A friend and I talked about a similar idea about 10 years ago where we thought about buying gas stations that were going out of business to turn into mini data centers. These would have been the smaller, sometimes Mom & Pop places that were obsoleted as the larger Truck Stop looking stations moved in. We thought already having underground fuel tanks and permits would be a meaningful start. Also, already being at or near major roadways, etc would make fiber access easier. But, life got in the way and we never went anywhere with it.

NickNameNick 8y ago
The major end-of-life event for smaller gas stations near me is the underground tanks becoming uncertifiable. You may have found that the existing infrastructure was a liability, not an asset.
- tomcam 8y ago
  Can confirm at least in the state of WA. There are some beautifully located former gas stations centered insome very expensive real estate for that reason.
Spooky23 8y ago
Stay away. 80% of these sites are toxic dumps with plumes of leaked gas in the earth. Not fun when they go to dig up the road in a few years and you’re held partially responsible for the pollution. The out of the way places I would look for are schools, libraries, and youth prisons. In many areas between ERate and the Obama stimulus a lot of fiber was run for education and telemedicine. Sometimes counties received grants for fiber rings for school and police purposes as well.

tedd4u 8y ago

Not sure I would want my certificates in a cell tower shed. I barely trust CDNs. At least there are posted guards at POPs and colos.

viraptor 8y ago
There are good ways to protect that. It could be fully encrypted with keys available only over local network via trusted execution app. Nothing unbreakable of course, but it would not be possible to get it without significant effort and cost. Also, this is assuming no checksums served from the origin of the service. If you don't provide secrecy, trusted CDNs are easy :-)

bognition 8y ago

If (and its a big if) they can get this off the ground I see this as more of a threat to CDNs then to cloud hosting providers as it makes zero sense to do anything but host content at the cell tower. Hosting compute is completely bonkers as only those customers who connect to a tower where you've co-located your compute will see the speed up. So you either co-locate everywhere, or you only co-locate if you have a geographically isolated set of users.

thekhatribharat 8y ago
This is not just for human users, but also for internet connected robots and that includes ground and aerial robots doing everything from delivery to inspection to surveillance, etc. Not to forget self-driving cars. Just like today's data centers are strategically located close to where the demand is, these micro data centers would also be located close to where most robotics activity happens - A small industrial area could be one example, a highly automated urban locality could be another. These data centers coupled with wireless 5G standard provide huge benefits to internet connected robots.

acd 8y ago

Interesting idea, it may be that ower powered ARM servers near cell towers will provide CDN Like this green top 500 system powered by ARM. https://www.top500.org/system/179165 https://www.top500.org/system/179165 The ultimate is a distributed system where your neighbors provide your CDN cache and there is some kind of either sharing economy or bitcoin like economy.

Ari_Ugwu 8y ago

We're almost there. With a little more work people might be able to enjoy cloud servers in their own homes and businesses. What would we call these ultra fast local machines able to 'serve' up content? 'Server' feels a bit on the nose. Perhaps 'Home Cloud: Secured by Blockchain'. </snark>