16 ms·

Ask HN: What would you do with unmetered 10gig?

123 points by linsomniac 6y ago

In the next 3ish months I will have unmetered, symmetric 10gig fiber Internet available at my house. I recently exchanged messages with the first person in town to get the 10gig service, and his reasoning for getting the 10gig service was "it's cool", which I understand... I'd like to actually be able to justify 10gig service. Ideally, running something on it that appeals to other potential customers of the municipal broadband, to attract new customers to it. The easy one is to set up a Linux mirror server. In the past I've run a mirror server for ~a decade, so that shouldn't be a huge deal. I like the idea of running a Tor exit node, but worry about the liability of that. Some sort of a block storage for backup service came to mind while reading that Cloudflare Utah post yesterday. I run production Linux boxes and networks as my day job. But I don't have machine space at my house, so I'm limited in the number of servers I can put in place. Clever ideas to attract other locals to the Municipal Broadband service?

dave_4_bagels 6y ago
Download all the uncompressed 4k blu-ray rips...
runjake 6y ago
I would have to read your terms of service before I could offer any useful input. Depending on those ToS, offering services to others could expose you to legal problems.
- Bedon292 6y ago
  Yeah, you will definitely want to read the ToS very closely. A lot of home service providers explicit say you cannot host and commercial services, and at least in the past had issues running servers. Back in the day my internet was shut off because I had an ftp server running. Though don't think that is common anymore.
- quickthrower2 6y ago
  In addition I would assume not 100% uptime, and not enough uptime to run websites for businesses etc. Unless there is a reason to think otherwise. So whatever it is it has to survive downtime. Torrents for example would be OK, but http servers for business not so much (but http servers for hobby sites maybe).
mtmail 6y ago
OpenStreetMap is looking for caching servers, those need a lot of outgoing bandwidth https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Servers/Tile_CDN https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Servers/Tile_CDN
- windthrown 6y ago
  That would be fantastic! To add, the OpenStreetMap Foundation (OSMF) may even be able to provide the hardware.
- dirtnugget 6y ago
  Please support them, such an important infrastructure that is undervalued.
- linsomniac 6y ago
  This is a spectacular idea that I hadn't thought of. Especially since we use OSM tiles at work.
NonEUCitizen 6y ago
Who's your provider? Thanks.
- vulcan01 6y ago
  > Municipal So most likely their city/county.
ssivark 6y ago
In a similar spirit, maybe IPFS nodes, or instances of federated communication networks like Mastodon/Matrix/etc for friends and family, or maybe even something like Nextcloud. If you band together with a few people in your community, you could also use each other’s machines for encrypted “off-site” backups (note: you’re all still sort of co-located geographically, so YMMV).
client4 6y ago
I ran an ISP. Most people max their bandwidth for: backups, downloading Steam games, torrenting, and then about a week later their usage drops to about 5-8mbps sustained for Streaming and Videoconferencing.
- whoisjuan 6y ago
  One question. Why is it that ISPs don't have an on-demand offering for larger bandwidths? Like if I pay for a 300mbps but I need 1gbps for the day you can charge me 5 bucks extra per day that month. Are the unit-economics of this that bad? I never understood why ISPs have such crappy/unflexible pricing tiers. Mobile carriers are way ahead on this type of flexible offering and the math seems to work.
  - battery423 6y ago
    I would like something different: garanteed bandwith + max bandwith You buy a 1gb line with 50mb guaranteed. That would allow you to use it in the night to a full extend while your ISP doesn't need to provide 1gb all the time
    - iptrans 6y ago
      This is effectively what you are already doing. The guaranteed bandwidth just isn’t explicitly defined.
      - Skunkleton 6y ago
        Not exactly. Any sort of SLA will jack the price of your connection way up. We had a 50Mbps connection at the last company I worked for, we couldn't find an isp that charged less than ~$1500 a month for this. This wasn't that long ago either.
        iptrans 6y ago
        Depends on the market. Some regulators enforce minimum performance levels even for consumer connections.
dmead 6y ago
you could run plex and give me access.
- 300bps 6y ago
  I have tried to get Plex up and running with my ~20 TB collection but its library management doesn’t work for me. Fails to load files, categorization is horrible and many other problems. Kodi (XBMC) has perfect “point it at a folder and don’t worry about it” functionality. It just doesn’t have the remote capabilities I’ve found as good as Plex. What am I doing wrong with Plex?
  - jedieaston 6y ago
    If you don't have your files named correctly, it won't work right. https://support.plex.tv/articles/naming-and-organizing-your-movie-media-files/ https://support.plex.tv/articles/naming-and-organizing-your-... It can sometimes be forgiving, but other times it won't find it unless you name the file exactly correct. With a library of that size, you might have to leave it for a day or two to do the initial scrape, as it sometimes does a couple passes to find everything (why, I don't know).
  - nikisweeting 6y ago
    Start by running it with Sonarr and Radarr so that your files are named correctly, then Plex "just works" without any tweaking. Both work well for library file management and renaming, they're not only useful for pirates.
  - sergiotapia 6y ago
    12TB collection here. Throw your media at https://www.tinymediamanager.org/ https://www.tinymediamanager.org/ - then Plex, Emby, whatever will pick up seasons easily.
- archi42 6y ago
  Actually this isn't as stupid as it sounds. For home use, that's the only thing I can really think of wanting a lot of egress bandwidth. I run a PMS on my connection (400/25), and it's nice that I can let friends or family members watch a movie from it instead of needing to lending them the DVD (and keeping track who has which DVD, getting them back, etc.). My bandwidth means I'm limited to two streams (but then again, I don't buy many movies, I'm more a music person). Symmetric 10Gb/s are still total overkill, symmetric 1Gb/s would already be pretty good for that usage. But it's specialized: You need at least some knowledge for the setup and on how to get your BR and DVDs into the server - and then of course a collection of DVD & BR to start with. And, in the age of streaming, this means the person running the PMS is either pretty retro, a home theatre nerd or a pirate. And you probably don't want to taint the offering with "it's mostly useful for piratez" ;-)
abstractbarista 6y ago
Run full blockchain nodes, a bittorrent client, Tor relay (not exit node, so less door knocks)...
throwaway888abc 6y ago
You can donate bandwidth to your community. Open wifi hotspot etc.etc. Depend where you live (neighborhood), but still believe people appreciate. Like library free internet access. You can make people happy. Sharing is caring.
- 300bps 6y ago
  Have to be careful with this or may end up with a no-knock warrant served on your home at 3:00 am for whatever illegal things someone you shared your IP address with.
  - xur17 6y ago
    I really wish there was a way around this, I'd love to offer free wifi, but don't want to deal with illegal content that might flow through it. I've considered using something like PIA that claims they don't log, but not sure if that would help.
    - throwaway888abc 6y ago
      Valid points. Technically: Pairing this with unmetered VPS (Scaleway) for VPN could be good solution Hotspot Client -> Hotspot -> Wireguard VPN -> Scaleway VPS That way the client always has hidden your ip and traffic encrypted. $3/month for 200/Mb https://www.scaleway.com/en/virtual-instances/development/ https://www.scaleway.com/en/virtual-instances/development/
      - iptrans 6y ago
        Ignoring everything else, this will add a lot of latency, unless OP is located close to Scaleway’s DC.
        throwaway888abc 6y ago
        Fully aware. Still, high latency internet for free is better than no internet access at all. Another solution can be registration form and tracking end user private IPs assigned (Ipam) for such any legal issues.
airstrike 6y ago
Host a couple of community Vainglory servers to ressurrect the best touch-first MOBA that has is essentially in ICU due to poor management by SEMC / Rogue reddit.com/r/vainglorygame
archi42 6y ago
> Clever ideas to attract other locals to the Municipal Broadband service? If that's the aim, imho it's really difficult. Assuming your neighbourhood isn't made up 99% nerds&geeks, I'd assume most private users are pretty happy if they can watch movies in 4k, download their games on Steam and/or update their gaming console "fast enough". Downloading 50GB already takes only ~30m on my 400MBit/s, and wouldn't feel much different to 1Gb/s. Latency for gaming/video conferencing also isn't an issue these days. Maybe for big families or shared housing (student dorm) this would make sense. If you wanted to sell me, you'd get me with (1.) reliable and (2.) affordable. Maybe a no-BS pricing scheme instead of "25 US$/month the 24 months and after that 70US$/month" (which virtually every ISP in Germany does, which means I need to waste my time with stupid ISP hopping every other year if I don't want to feel like being ripped off). I just know that - for my usage - there is no practical difference between 1Gb/s and 10Gb/s. At least none that's worth paying more. Sorry, not that useful, but maybe some valuable feedback? :) On the business end, this is much more interesting. No need to worry about hitting bandwidth limits when video conferencing with customers is pretty nice (we sometimes have that issue and work around it with multiple connections). Also a perk: Faster access to cloud-stored data, or the ability to put data on-premise and still allowing sufficiently fast external access. Of course it must be reliable. But then, your day job is networking, I think you know that kind of business better than I do :) //edit: Ooooh, post a "Ask HN" and bask in the envy of the internet people =) /s No, seriously, I think promoting offerings like this is a good thing to do, and asking for advice on HN is a good idea. I'd love to see (or maybe even run) a local, no-BS ISP in our municipality.
- linsomniac 6y ago
  The service should be providing the reliable/affordable/no-BS portion. It's $60-ish/mo for gigabit symmetric, $300/mo for 10gig, run by the city, all underground infrastructure. The city power infrastructure is super reliable, so they do have some demonstrated ability...
300bps 6y ago
I have a hard time finding uses for my 1 gbps FIOS line. Which is surprising considering the bandwidth I had with my first modem (which is also my username).
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
moneytide1 6y ago
Some comments here suggest donation, which implies that groups of users could utilize what you are not using. But I am used to rationing 250 MB (Verizon plan from 2015) - and there is so much information that can be obtained with this amount of data (mostly text based and some pictures). High quality Youtube videos do not mean as much to me as the audio. A 10 second HD Snap or TikTok does not concern me. Torrenting hundreds of gigs of movies will only occupy your life with sitting and watching movies. Video game downloads are a one time affair (mine have been performed/patched every few months at a public watering hole Starbucks/Gym/Walmart). Aren't you tired of HD Zoom calls with your social circles? 5G wireless everywhere approaching does not feel practical to me. I do not subscribe to conspiracies about direct health detriments (indirect more concerning - people lusting for 4k videos of everything while sitting in a bathroom stall, or in a public place alone instead of natural resolution of the eyes gazing upon real life). Perhaps high resolution IoT data upload could occupy your infinite bandwidth somehow? This would only be local. Red flag to me seems to be constant upgrading of "data throughput". Surely data transmission is good, but at some point is it a waste of effort when we can all only take in so much? Youtube audio and 480p video satisfies my curosity...
api 6y ago
Go install www.zerotier.com and create a community LAN, then share each others' stuff?
rmellow 6y ago
A decade ago when I had my own Ultima Online server, I would have asked you to host for me!
manquer 6y ago
You mentioned a linux mirror,, A mirror is a just like CDN PoP . Assuming your neighbourhood is not full of linux enthusiasts , if you can run a actual CDN PoP it would be the highest impact for your neighbourhood. Anything for specific providers like FB, Youtube, Netflix, Prime,Play Store, Apple , Disney + etc or general CDN providers like CloudFlare, MaxCDN etc can change end user experience enough for them to buy in. It also has the added benefit of saving municipality upstream peering requirements and perhaps money. Alternatively you can provide application services like OwnCloud, Jitsi for equivalent cloud products, it will be cheaper/faster etc. and target schools/community services, it may help them save on their IT bill as well. Final idea discord, game servers, streaming servers etc can generate network effect driven interest. i.e. If i want to play with my school friends and few of them are on your servers on the municipal broadband already it is strong incentive for me to get one.
- iptrans 6y ago
  AFAIK you cannot self host a CDN node for any of the services mentioned above. You might be able to self host an Apple cache.
  - manquer 6y ago
    Perhaps he can convince the municipality to host for the providers he cannot, it will still serve his objective. You would be surprised on how small some PoPs around the world are. Providers usually come with their own boxes and have specific requirements on space/power/legal ownership etc.
    - iptrans 6y ago
      I doubt the municipality will have much luck either. CDN operators and OTT providers have fairly high traffic requirements before they will qualify you for an on-net appliance. Netflix, for example, requires a minimum of 5 Gbps of traffic until they will even talk to you.
      - manquer 6y ago
zrm 6y ago
> I like the idea of running a Tor exit node, but worry about the liability of that. There are also guard nodes and intermediary nodes, which don't cause third party traffic to exit from your house. > I run production Linux boxes and networks as my day job. But I don't have machine space at my house, so I'm limited in the number of servers I can put in place. A single virtual machine host can saturate 10G and allows an arbitrary number of virtual machines, limited primarily by memory and storage. Linux KVM is good enough for Google and AWS and it's free. Get some Socket G34 or LGA2011 workstation with 8+ memory slots, fill it with cheap registered DDR3 and you'll be all set. But realistically, the biggest benefit of 10G to ordinary people isn't being able to transfer 2500TB a month, it's being able to transfer 25GB in 25 seconds instead of hours. There are people who upload 5GB to YouTube every day. With garbage upload speeds like 10Mbps, that takes more than an hour and a half. With 10Gbps, not only would it only take five seconds, you don't even need to upload it to YouTube because you can host it yourself.
- blueplanet200 6y ago
  > you don't even need to upload it to YouTube because you can host it yourself. One of the main value props for YouTube has to be discoverability right? Depends on why you're uploading I suppose.
  - zrm 6y ago
    It's kind of chicken and egg. Everything ends up on YouTube because people don't have the bandwidth to self-host video, so then people go to YouTube to look for videos. If more of them were self-hosted then the default search method would be one that finds them everywhere. At this point there is more work to be done than only getting people more bandwidth in order to get there from here, but one step at a time.
- linsomniac 6y ago
  My primary concern with limited server space is things that are computationally expensive scaling with bandwidth. Serving 10gbps of HTTP Linux mirrors that have internal signatures is different from serving OwnCloud over HTTPS, for example.
jedieaston 6y ago
Out of curiosity, do they include hardware to actually use it? When Comcast came around here trying to get people to sign up for 2Gbps they required a couple thousand up front and for you to rent a PCIe card for your PC to actually get the speed (since you needed a 10Gbps NIC), which would've been annoying. Unless you have a ton of devices, or are hosting services (does your ISP let you do that?) I don't know what I'd use it for. Having a Linux mirror within 100 miles has been handy for me in the past though, so if you can spare the storage that would be a good idea.
- virtuallynathan 6y ago
  The hardware to use it is pretty cheap these days, a 10G nic is about $13 on Ebay. A 10G switch is $200-400, and a ~10G router is now $380 from Ubiquti (will only do ~8.5Gbps right now).
- linsomniac 6y ago
  They seem to be providing a 10gig copper port on the equipment they drop in, from looking at a photo of the other guys 10gig install... I don't currently have any 10gig, so I'd have to put those parts in place.
virtuallynathan 6y ago
I've had a number of dedicated servers with 10G unmetered bandwidth (and still do have access to one), and its difficult to find good uses for them. A younger, more idealistic me did run a large exit node with support from an organization with legal backing, but this still lead to emails and calls from various countries Anti-Terror police forces. Would not recommend without serious consideration and talking to your ISP.
mgarfias 6y ago
I've got 1gbps symmetric unmetered fiber here, and I really don't do much more than when I had 100mbps, or 50mbps. What I really like is that everyone in the house can go crazy and it doesn't affect me working.
cdnsteve 6y ago
Tons of options Game servers Voice servers IRC Mirrors for software or datasets Custom download to usb service for those in rural areas.
- linsomniac 6y ago
  USB? Interesting idea... You've heard of dead drop USB? Perhaps I could add something to our Little Public Library where you could insert a USB stick with a list of URLs, and it would download them to the USB stick... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_dead_drop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_dead_drop
rowawey 6y ago
Mirror archive.org and brag on r/datahoarders
floatingatoll 6y ago
Would each new local customer be given 10gig symmetric, or does your loop get 10gig total and your price drops based on # of people on it? Most people want conferencing that doesn't suck, so that they can Zoom/FaceTime/LTE-over-WiFi/Landline-over-VoIP without having Netflix interrupt their call. But I have that solved on a 50mbit down / 5mbit up connection by using an anti-bufferbloat NAT shaper (Eero SQM, or IQrouter, or homebuilt can all do this). So if you said "this fiber internet ensures that your calls will stop being interrupted by netflix", that might be a great selling point for people who've experienced this problem on their current Internet, without having to discuss bufferbloat in any significant detail. (Note that you can still have fairness issues with the wireless router, independent of bufferbloat upstream of it — the above-listed devices apply their fairness stuff not only to the WAN uplink but also to the WiFi downlinks — so 10gbit fiber isn't a complete solution, but it's certainly 95% of the way there.)
- linsomniac 6y ago
  The standard service is 1gbps, there is a 5x more expensive 10gig service. Neither one is "local loop speed", but they also do design the service with expected overcommit. I suspect most of the contention is going to be inbound though, so if I'm serving something to the local community there hopefully will be plenty of bandwidth out of my neighborhood.
  - floatingatoll 6y ago
    For 1gbps service, the question would be: Does either the 'modem' linking your home up to the fiber service, or the service network itself, introduce significant high-latency buffering when capacity is exceeded either at your router or at their router? If the answer is "yes, we introduce significant latency to artificially boost throughput when network capacity is exceeded in either direction", then their 1mbps service is no better than Comcast and is not attractive as a solution to the latency issues of classical providers, and I may as well stick with my 50/5 shaped connection instead of their 1000/1000 connection.
    - linsomniac 6y ago
Havoc 6y ago
>Linux mirror server Consider adding torrents. You could also check out running a folding@home node. Though that seems to require a fairly beefy server. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaMjPs66cTs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaMjPs66cTs
secfirstmd 6y ago
Considering running Tor servers!
_bxg1 6y ago
I honestly haven't cared about bandwidth since I hit 50mbps. Having 300mbps, it's fun when I download a new Steam game to watch my hard disk become the bottleneck. But that's about all I get out of it.
- nikisweeting 6y ago
  I regularly use my full 500mbps between torrents, steam, backing up my VPS servers to local NAS, and my whole family backing up to my NAS over the internet from their 100mbps connections. I'll admit I am the exception, but with a decent ZFS pool you can easily saturate 500mbps with remote backups alone. I have a bunch of cheap SSDs in a mirror config and get about 2000MB/s write on a good day, so the bottleneck is very solidly on the network side.
  - jotm 6y ago
    How do they backup to NAS using the Internet connection? Is it not local?
    - nikisweeting 6y ago
      Time Machine over VPN (Tailscale/Wireguard), works great. Requires fast ping and good bandwidth though, which we have (<10ms rtt from NYC to MTL! still blows my mind). Family -> NAS (using Time Machine) NAS -> Backblaze B2 (using Duplicati)
- theandrewbailey 6y ago
  300mbps = 37.5MB/s. That's a pretty slow hard drive.
  - _bxg1 6y ago
    ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ it's a 2TB spinning disk that's a few years old. Been meaning to upgrade to an SSD for this exact reason.
- jotm 6y ago
hitpointdrew 6y ago
Are you connected with the Municipal Broadband service in anyway (I don't mean like technologically, I mean relationship wise)? Are they asking you do come up with some services they can offer customers? If so how about setting up Pi-Hole, then the Municipal Broadband customers can use that as their DNS.
- linsomniac 6y ago
  Not connected, though if I were to come up with compelling services, or there were questions about my intentions, I know people involved. The Mayor also used to hire the company I ran to provide technical consulting, so that would probably help.
nikisweeting 6y ago
Help the OpenZim.org project run a scraper for their Zimfarm service that archives large sites like Wikipedia, Project Gutenberg, TED talks, etc. https://farm.openzim.org/about https://farm.openzim.org/about Or you can run your own internet archiving node with something like ArchiveBox.io or Webrecorder.io and feed it your entire browsing history (including viewed YouTube videos, streamed music, all git repos looked at, etc.). Alternatively run an IPFS or Bittorrent node, or a Tor snowflake relay, which is a lot less risky than running an exit node: https://snowflake.torproject.org/ https://snowflake.torproject.org/
- nikisweeting 6y ago
  And to specifically help users around you, you can then rehost the ZIM archives that you help scrape, and provide a local offline copy of Wikipedia, TED talks, etc to your community so that even if the originals go down, your peers will have access to that content. See https://www.kiwix.org/en/downloads/kiwix-serve/ https://www.kiwix.org/en/downloads/kiwix-serve/
gravypod 6y ago
Where do you live and how can I get one?
- linsomniac 6y ago
  Fort Collins, Colorado. 6+ months into a multi-year build-out. I think the anti-muni-broadband advertisement that the local telco and cable operators took out made HN front page a few years ago...
ab_testing 6y ago
I am interested in knowing the price that you are paying for this 10 Gig unmetered connection.
- gitgud 6y ago
  From another comment it looks like $300 USD per month https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23481803 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23481803
- Youden 6y ago
  FWIW, you can get 10Gbps for $50/month in Switzerland [0] and Sweden [1]. [0]: https://fiber.salt.ch/en https://fiber.salt.ch/en [1]: https://bahnhof.se/ https://bahnhof.se/
mjevans 6y ago
The best reason for this level of service is: You get to stop caring. It's fast enough that everyone you invite over can do _everything_ on hardline and they won't impact each other. As others have mentioned you could also actually run (personal) servers at home as well. * Games, with higher bandwidth (audio, video conferencing) * Live auto-video conferencing the easy P2P way. * Have a media library of your own and access it while out. This can include private video memories, not just photos. However you could also store and forward images of legitimately purchased HD content* (Assuming you support the private use format shifting doctrines). * If you're teaching a class from home that video-call could be self hosted, rather than routed through a data center half a country away.
- paxys 6y ago
  While all this is true, you hit the "not caring" stage well before 10gig. I have a reliable 100 Mbps connection at the moment and do almost everything mentioned above (simultaneously) with zero disruption. Almost every internet problem people have is due to latency, jitter and general unreliability rather than bandwidth.
  - arkitaip 6y ago
    Depends. A AAA game like Red Dead Redemption 2 can take hours to download with a 100 Mbps connection.
    - paxys 6y ago
      You are going to be throttled by the CDN in any case well before reaching gigabit download speeds.
    - mywittyname 6y ago
      You can't really download games from PSN at anywhere close to that speed anyway. I have a hardwired gigabit connection to my PS4 and I'm lucky to hit 100Mb download. It's a similar story with Steam, when the stars align it might hit 500Mb for a minute right before finishing, but it usually hovers around 100-200Mb too. It's also much faster than the speeds of rotational hard drives, so unless you keep HD video on SSDs, it's no good for that either. Beyond speedtests, the only way I can realistically saturate my internet connection is through S3.
paxys 6y ago
I'll be honest there is absolutely no need for average or even very technical home users to pay for a 10gig connection right now. If you want to make municipal broadband attractive, the focus should be on providing cheap and reliable 100-250 Mbps connections to a large area.
- Consultant32452 6y ago
  Just to put some real world perspective on this. Netflix recommends 25Mbps to stream 4k movies. https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/columnist/2017/12/10/youre-buying-4-k-tv-how-much-internet-bandwidth-do-you-need/933989001/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/columnist/2017/12/10/you...
- supertrope 6y ago
  Metcalfe's law. Every time I have to accommodate someone on the wrong side of the digital divide I wish we had wider broadband deployment. But I know pausing speed upgrades in already served areas won't bring about universal access as the same million dollars spent wiring up lower density areas yields far few connections.
dyingkneepad 6y ago
Well, I guess your first step should be to redo your LAN to actually be able to make use of those 10gig :)
- linsomniac 6y ago
  Sure, but I'm not gonna upgrade my LAN unless I have something to put on it. If I have an attractive application, setting up a 10gig switch, router, and pulling some cat7 is the easy part. :-)
Mave83 6y ago
Maybe Cloud and heat, use servers as your central house heating system instead of oil, gas,...
- linsomniac 6y ago
  Son, let me tell you about the early days of Bitcoin... I left the windows open that winter.
adenozine 6y ago
Libgen, personally. I've used it so much, may as well pay it forward.
- linsomniac 6y ago
  For those, like me, unfamiliar, Wikipedia says: Library Genesis (Libgen) is a file-sharing website for scholarly journal articles, academic and general-interest books, images, comics, and magazines.
  - zrth 6y ago
    wikipedia unlike google always has the current Library Genesis URL https://libgen.is/ https://libgen.is/
    - fomine3 6y ago
      This is funny but looks somewhat useful. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22790425 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22790425
jmakov 6y ago
Share libgen, sci-hub and run a storj node.
coreyoconnor 6y ago
Run OpenShift and invite friends to use it for hosting.
sloaken 6y ago
I cannot help but ask - So how much does this cost? You mentioned several different plans. Of course I will not get that here, but I will enjoy living vicariously through you and your awesome internet speed. I can hear myself now at work: "I know a guy who gets 10G! And for only $100 a month" Wait for the ohs and ahs.
- linsomniac 6y ago
  Sorry to break it to you, but it's $300/mo for 10gig. :-)
  - foepys 6y ago
    That's a steal here in Germany. My company is paying ~500€/mo for 35/35 Mbps...
    - zeepzeep 6y ago
      No, it's 2020. Everyone in germany has 1Gbit. They promised.
    - sloaken 6y ago
      My company in the UK was paying the same as you. We asked how much it would cost to get more. We are getting 300M for about 200. When asked why they used to charge us so much, when more cost less. 'If you are too lazy to look up a better price each year, they are too lazy to offer it'. I would engage your service provider, and see if they have a lower price for more.
  - sloaken 6y ago
    So I just need 10 neighbors and charge $30 each. Yeah 10 that way I am free Bwah ah. Yeah that is a lot for home use. I would not mind a little faster than what I have, 50M, you know maybe 100M or 200M. Like you, no idea what I would do with 10G,
jmakov 6y ago
You can also contact the-eye.eu who host, among others, a curated list of covid articles. Helping make knowledge available is an interesting cause.
LockAndLol 6y ago
Share bandwidth on I2P? It's like TOR, but with no exit nodes. Many services run on it: IRC, bittorent, anonymous limewire clone, anonymous websites, etc. Your function would be similar to a TOR relay and you could do that too of course. Maybe even hosting a Jitsi or Matrix server could be interesting.
lumost 6y ago
I would seriously consider hosting my own startup ideas and side projects at home on a personal server if I had a symmetric 10Gig service. An old server off of Ebay with an SSD raid-1 array is reasonably unlikely to fail, and much cheaper than a VPS.
johnwheeler 6y ago
Run speed tests.
tutfbhuf 6y ago
> I like the idea of running a Tor exit node, but worry about the liability of that. Run a Tor relay instead. > But I don't have machine space at my house, so I'm limited in the number of servers I can put in place. Also you probably want them to be noiseless and with low energy usage. For example: 10x Raspberry Pi 4 cluster could make use of 10 gigabit and sounds like a fun project.
- Havoc 6y ago
  Isn't it quite difficult to get software to run on a rasp cluster?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
zeepzeep 6y ago
"I like the idea of running a Tor exit node" Do it. It's the best thing you can do. Thank you in advance. You can also run a Lightning Network node!
mister_hn 6y ago
how have you got that deal?
blaser-waffle 6y ago
I'd have hard time using FastE (100 Mbps); 10Gbps seems like overkill. Tor node? Seedbox? I'd be hesitant to have either of those at my house or anything with my name on it, though.
- iptrans 6y ago
  > I'd have hard time using FastE (100 Mbps); You must not get out much :)
johnklos 6y ago
I use my bandwidth to cost people who host "Flash Updater" Trojans money. When you find a site with a downloadable Trojan, just run a download script which downloads in a loop a hundred times simultaneously. I'm very public about it: https://twitter.com/AnachronistJohn/status/1234313952865214464 https://twitter.com/AnachronistJohn/status/12343139528652144... I do hope someone reports me, because if they do, then I'll know who they are. So far, I've cost one scammer close to $2,000 before their links died completely.
- ghj 6y ago
  Would that be classified as a denial of service attack? (which is apparently a federal crime)
  - johnklos 6y ago
    No. I'm not denying or attempting to deny anyone service. I'm simply taking them up on their offer of a free download, but just a million times. Web sites WANT to be popular. If they get too popular, though, they have to take responsibility for the costs that come with popularity. If someone wants to claim that the I'm costing them money because their intention wasn't to allow their file to be downloaded millions of times, they'll have to come out of hiding to make the claim. I welcome that.
    - jonnypotty 6y ago
      The real mvp here. Amazing work.
- iSloth 6y ago
  Unfortunately all to often they are hosting these files on a hacked server, or using a stolen card - So your good deed may backfire
dwild 6y ago
Maybe not using it? At that price, you aren't getting a dedicated 10gbps line to anywhere else than your ISP (and still...), afterward it's shared by everyone else. Using that bandwidth fully is not only going to make it not worthwhile to offer this service to people, it's also going to impact the service of others. Use it for what you would be normally using it, don't make up some usage for it, just to use it.

robjan 6y ago

ISPs operate on a similar business model to gyms. They couldn't afford to provide the service if everyone maxed out what they are paying for. Allowing on demand increases of bandwidth would break this business model.

iptrans 6y ago
While true in general, the cost of unoversubscribed wholesale bandwidth is rapidly approaching the cost of oversubscribed retail bandwidth. Wholesale bandwidth is 5 cents per Mbps or less at scale. Not that the ISP pays for all bandwidth, peering and CDN traffic is free. In other words, even if you max out a 1 Gbps line 24/7, you are only costing the ISP $50 per month. Add to that that most people are unable to consume even 10 Mbps on average and bandwidth costs become less and less of an issue. An average subscriber will use 2-4 Mbps of bandwidth during primetime, and primetime is all you care about as an ISP. Nothing in this means that offering bandwidth on demand is impossible or a threat to the ISP business model. It’s just that the overhead of offering an on-demand product to consumers isn’t worth the time and effort, as you’d be making peanuts while having to deal with a lot of grief. Bandwidth on demand is a thing for businesses and operators. A good example of this is Megaport, who offers virtual cross connects and transport. Price start from $100 per month plus a varying fee per Mbps, from a few cents to a few dollars per month.
- zokier 6y ago
  > Add to that that most people are unable to consume even 10 Mbps on average and bandwidth costs become less and less of an issue. An average subscriber will use 2-4 Mbps of bandwidth during primetime, and primetime is all you care about as an ISP 4k Netflix is around 15 Mbps alone, even 1080p is >5 Mbps. And with games being now > 100 GB downloads these days, I would expect that to contribute meaningfully too to the bandwidth usage even if average person probably doesn't quite download new games daily.
  - iptrans 6y ago
    Nope. Subscribers average 2-4 Mbps during primetime, less averaged over the course of a whole month. Netflix is only about 30% of all Internet bits, and there's a limit to how much Netflix and chill anybody can do.
  - gnopgnip 6y ago
    1080p Netflix is 2-2.5 Mbps in practice because of video compression. You only get 1080p or better with certain browsers too. Many people use Netflix in Chrome or Firefox and only get 720p
    - zokier 6y ago
      I took my numbers from here: https://www.androidauthority.com/how-much-data-does-netflix-use-976146/ https://www.androidauthority.com/how-much-data-does-netflix-... 3 GB / hour to Mbps = 6.667 Mb/s https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=3+GB+%2F+hour+to+Mbps https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=3+GB+%2F+hour+to+Mbps 7 GB / hour to Mbps = 15.56 Mb/s
    - gtm1260 6y ago
      Wait...netflix in chrome is only 720p!? How do I get 1080?
      - kn0where 6y ago
        You have to use Edge or Safari, because DRM.
        TheGoddessInari 6y ago
        Or the netflix-1080p extension. It's not a matter of DRM.
  - Spooky23 6y ago
    Netflix aggressively compresses. HBO on the other hand...
- fragmede 6y ago
  > In other words, even if you max out a 1 Gbps line 24/7, you are only costing the ISP $50 per month. In bandwidth sure, but the world isn't wired that way. There's a bottleneck somewhere between the ISP and the customer, that can't support all customers on that link running maxed out. In the gym analogy, even if the gym has 1 treadmill per customer, that doesn't help the shortage of weight machines. An ISP may choose to (or choose not to) invest in adding capacity to remove bottlenecks, but that's additional capital outlay that may not be prioritized or budgeted for.
  - Spooky23 6y ago
    The rationale gets weaker and weaker. Switches get cheaper and cheaper every year and require less and less labor to run. You can support 5x the bandwidth at 50% of the cost and 20% of the labor than you could in 2005-2010.
  - iptrans 6y ago
    The OP is on a brand new FTTH network. There aren't going to be many bottlenecks and any bottlenecks can be cured by inserting a new line card. And, as I wrote before, in no real life scenario will all 100% of subscriber be running their line at full tilt 24/7.
- supertrope 6y ago
  A 1 Gbps link in meet me room or downtown in a big city is very cheap. 1 Gbps in a residential neighborhood could be the node uplink shared between hundreds of households. Like electricity, most of retail cost is distribution to your home.
  - iptrans 6y ago
    In a CATV network, possibly. In a new FTTH network, not likely. Engineering a non-blocking 1 Gbps network isn't particularly hard or expensive using FTTH.
OldHand2018 6y ago
> ISPs operate on a similar business model to gyms. They couldn't afford to provide the service if everyone maxed out what they are paying for. My ISP is a "small" provider that focuses on multi-unit urban residential buildings in the midwest. Their business model is to make an agreement with the building management and provide a baseline service to every unit, while offering upgrades and extra services to individual units that want them. They have an incentive to provide far more capacity than the baseline so they have room to offer upgrades. I pay $25 per month for 250mb symmetrical and am definitely getting those speeds 24/7. I have the option to upgrade to 1G symmetrical for something like $500 per year, but haven't seen the need. Unless an ISP is serving a very low density customer base, the cost of building out full capacity just isn't prohibitive anymore. My ISP only has around 20,000 customers and they have direct peering with Netflix, Amazon, Apple and others - clearly an ISP doesn't even have to get very large before those cost benefits arrive.
- netllama 6y ago
  I don't think you fully grasp what operating an ISP is truly like outside of most developed, Western countries. Its absolutely nothing like what you're describing (and blatantly assuming). For example, Brazil literally has thousands of tiny ISPs, each with, at most, a few hundred customers. They operate on the narrowest of margins, squeaking out close to no profits. They cut corners everywhere. They definitely do not have spare capacity, and over sell by insane percentages. Another example, Mongolia, where there's basically just one ISP, the government owned Unitel. They have zero incentive to do anything extravagant, or even provide good service. Its a monopoly. The cost of building out full capacity is very much still a limiting factor in many parts of the world.

linsomniac 6y ago

Many, particularly smaller, ISPs pay for bandwidth based on 95%ile utilization. Years ago when I was involved in a few specialized ISPs, say I could fit in 60mbps 95% of the time, and was paying $10/mbps. A day of you using 300Mbps could cost me thousands of dollars. This is the difference between consumer and business Internet in many cases, and is why so many residential services severely limit the outbound bandwidth: it competes with their extremely profitable business service levels. (Things may have changed, I haven't been involved with ISPs for 5 years)

iptrans 6y ago
The days of $10/Mbps are fortunately behind us. You can get bandwidth for 10c/Mbps or less. Also a day of 300 Mbps would not have cost you thousands of dollars as you get 36 hours for “free” when using 95th percentile billing.
- linsomniac 6y ago
  24 hours of 300Mbps would effective change the 95th %ile to 98.35 %ile, which could be dramatically higher than the 95%ile billing. As far as $0.1/Mbps, not common around here. Maybe in CA at HE or something, but I can't touch that price around here. Correct me if I wrong, but Amazon's price for a megabit/mo is $55-ish...
  - iptrans 6y ago
    Amazon bandwidth pricing is wildly overinflated, so that's not a useful metric to use as a comparison to wholesale bandwidth costs. At scale means purchasing bandwidth in quantities of 100G. You'd be surprised how straightforward it is to get reasonable wholesale bandwidth rates almost anywhere once you cross a certain monthly spend threshold. As to the 95th percentile thing, sure, if you've already used up your "free" burst capacity, pushing a further 300 Mbps for a day will push you over the limit.
  - welterde 6y ago
    Amazon, GCP, etc. transit are completely disconnected from reality. Those sub-$0.5/Mbps you can probably get in most big metros across the US and Europe if the connection point is on-net for the ISP in question. And if you are a residential ISP you can probably handle 80% of your traffic by peering at a few internet exchanges (google,youtube, netflix, etc.)..

Hamuko 6y ago

>Open wifi hotspot etc.etc. Only do this if you're prepared to talk with law enforcement about child pornography being shared from your IP address.

nikisweeting 6y ago
I believe in Canada activity "from your IP address" is not enough to legally imply you are the one who did it, which is why even the Canadian equivalent of DMCA notices have no teeth here when sent to residential homes. But IANAL, YMMV, etc.
- supertrope 6y ago
  If the police smash down your door, the news labels you a pedophile, and you have to spend $$$$$ on legal costs an eventual acquittal is still a huge loss.
  - nikisweeting 6y ago
    Right, I'm saying afaik in Canada the police don't have a right to smash down your door only based on an IP address. This is different from the US where an IP address is enough probable cause to get a search warrant. See USA: - https://www.mjpetro.com/search-and-seizure/search-warrant-attorney-chicago/ https://www.mjpetro.com/search-and-seizure/search-warrant-at... vs Canada: > Receiving a notice does not necessarily mean that you have in fact infringed copyright or that you will be sued for copyright infringement. > The Notice and Notice regime does not impose any obligations on a subscriber who receives a notice and it does not require the subscriber to contact the copyright owner or the intermediary. - https://ic.gc.ca/eic/site/oca-bc.nsf/eng/ca02920.html https://ic.gc.ca/eic/site/oca-bc.nsf/eng/ca02920.html - https://www.mccarthy.ca/en/insights/blogs/snipits/you-can-stay-anonymous-scc-recognizes-privacy-interest-protecting-anonymity-internet https://www.mccarthy.ca/en/insights/blogs/snipits/you-can-st... - https://apanewslaw.wordpress.com/2014/06/17/the-supreme-court-of-canada-has-ruled-that-we-need-a-warrant-to-obtain-subscriber-information-matching-to-an-ip-address-from-an-internet-service-provider/ https://apanewslaw.wordpress.com/2014/06/17/the-supreme-cour... But IANAL, please correct me if I'm wrong here.
    - kcolford 6y ago
      For child porn it is still grounds for a search warrant. Which they'll execute and return your stuff after not finding anything (six months later minimum). Notice and notice is about copyright infringement only. It's just a pretty toothless way to intimidate. If they were actually going to do something then they would use notice and notice to serve you a summons to court. In that case it's either small claims, where you don't need a lawyer and the judge will help you if the other side uses one, or it's full court where the loser pays the all the winner's costs. So as long as you're on the right side of the law, it actually doesn't cost anything if you get sued (no filing fees as the defendant). Whether or not you're actually liable in this situation is going to have to be answered by a real lawyer.
      - nikisweeting 6y ago
        Thanks, good info.