6 ms·

(magic-wormhole author here) Thanks for making a donation! I run the relay server, but the Debian maintainer agreed to bake an alternate hostname into the pac

(magic-wormhole author here) Thanks for making a donation! I run the relay server, but the Debian maintainer agreed to bake an alternate hostname into the packaged versions (a CNAME for the same address that the upstream git code uses), so we could change it easily if the cost ever got to be a burden. It hasn't been a problem so far, it moves 10-15 TB per month, but shares a bandwidth pool with other servers I'm renting anyways, so I've only ever had to pay an overage charge once. And TBH if someone made a donation to me, I'd just send it off to Debian anyways. Every once in a while, somebody moves half a terabyte through it, and then I think I should either move to a slower-but-flat-rate provider, or implement some better rate-limiting code, or finally implement the protocol extension where clients state up front how much data they're going to transfer, and the server can say no. But so far it's never climbed the priority ranking high enough to take action on. Thanks for using magic wormhole!

pyrolistical 2y ago
Seems like the only way to ensure wormhole to scale is to only to use relay server to setup direct connections. I know this requires one of the ends to be able to open ports or whatever but that should be baked into the wormhole setup.
- fullspectrumdev 2y ago
  Maybe hole punching or similar might be worth examining?
password4321 2y ago
> move to a slower-but-flat-rate provider As I'm sure you're aware: https://www.scaleway.com/en/stardust-instances/ https://www.scaleway.com/en/stardust-instances/ "up to 100Mbps" for $4/month
- lysace 2y ago
  32.4 TB for $4, or approximately 700 times cheaper than AWS. Neat.
  - seinecle 2y ago
    Bare metal love
    - gruez 2y ago
      It's clearly a VPS, not bare metal.
      - lysace 2y ago
        I wonder what it would take for AWS to lower their outbound BW pricing to something that's not insane. I'm beginning to think that the only feasible solution is changing the law.
        gruez 2y ago
        >I'm beginning to think that the only feasible solution is changing the law. Do you also think we should legislate the price of BMWs? You're not forced to buy AWS, there's plenty of alternatives, and the prices that AWS charges is well known. I'm not sure why the government should be involved other than a vague sense of "I want cheap stuff".
        freeopinion 2y ago
        Please don't suggest more laws like this. If you don't like AWS pricing, use something else. That's the only real way to develop alternatives.
        lysace 2y ago
        You disliked my idle thought so much that you needed to reply twice? :) The various factors causing strong lock-in effects, their dominance, and the insanely high pricing of moving data out of AWS - I wouldn't be surprised if they got their antitrust moment within a few years.
        freeopinion 2y ago
- t0mas88 2y ago
  Hetzner.de has 1 gbps unlimited or 10 gbps with a 20TB limit on their bare metal servers. And those can be bought very cheap if you don't need any special hardware.
- KronisLV 2y ago
  Contabo also might be an option: https://contabo.com/en/vps/ https://contabo.com/en/vps/ Throttling after 32 TB: https://help.contabo.com/en/support/solutions/articles/103000269972-rules-for-traffic-with-contabo https://help.contabo.com/en/support/solutions/articles/10300... Some commentary: https://hostingrevelations.com/contabo-bandwidth-limit/ https://hostingrevelations.com/contabo-bandwidth-limit/ I wouldn't say that they're super dependable or that the VPSes are very performant, but for the most part they work and are affordable. Alternatively, there's also Hetzner, as sibling comments mentioned: https://www.hetzner.com/cloud/ https://www.hetzner.com/cloud/ They do have additional fees, though: > You’ll get at least 20 TB of inclusive traffic for cloud servers at EU and US locations and 1 TB in Singapore. For each additional TB, we charge € 1.00 in the EU and US, and € 7.40 in Singapore. (Prices excl. VAT) I also used to use Time4VPS, however they have gradually been rising prices and the traffic I'd get before being throttled would be less than that of Contabo.
jancsika 2y ago
I remember at one point reading about webrtc and some kind of "introducer" server that would start the peer-to-peer connections between clients. Does wormhole try something like that before acting as a relay?
- lotharrr 2y ago
  Not yet. The "Dilation" protocol (which is about 80% implemented) is intended to support WebRTC as a transport layer. IIRC it requires a public server to tell you about your external IP address, but magic-wormhole already has a server that could play that role. Once a side learns its own address, it can send it to the peer (via the encrypted tunnel, through the relay server), and then the WebRTC hole-punching protocol tries to make connections to the peer's public address. When both sides do the same thing at the same time, sometimes you can get a direct connection through the NAT boxes. We don't have that yet, but the two sides attempt direct connections first (to all the private addresses they can find, which will include a public address if they aren't behind NAT). They both wait a couple of seconds before trying the relay, and the first successful negotiation wins, so in most cases it will use a direct connection if at all possible.
floam 2y ago
Do you do NAT hole punching, and/or port traversal like uPNP, NAT-PMP? I think for all but the most hostile networks the use of the relay server can be almost always avoided.

pyrolistical 2y ago

Seems like the only way to ensure wormhole to scale is to only to use relay server to setup direct connections. I know this requires one of the ends to be able to open ports or whatever but that should be baked into the wormhole setup.

fullspectrumdev 2y ago
Maybe hole punching or similar might be worth examining?

password4321 2y ago

> move to a slower-but-flat-rate provider As I'm sure you're aware: https://www.scaleway.com/en/stardust-instances/ https://www.scaleway.com/en/stardust-instances/ "up to 100Mbps" for $4/month

lysace 2y ago
32.4 TB for $4, or approximately 700 times cheaper than AWS. Neat.
- seinecle 2y ago
  Bare metal love
  - gruez 2y ago
    It's clearly a VPS, not bare metal.
    - lysace 2y ago
      I wonder what it would take for AWS to lower their outbound BW pricing to something that's not insane. I'm beginning to think that the only feasible solution is changing the law.
      - gruez 2y ago
        >I'm beginning to think that the only feasible solution is changing the law. Do you also think we should legislate the price of BMWs? You're not forced to buy AWS, there's plenty of alternatives, and the prices that AWS charges is well known. I'm not sure why the government should be involved other than a vague sense of "I want cheap stuff".
      - freeopinion 2y ago
        Please don't suggest more laws like this. If you don't like AWS pricing, use something else. That's the only real way to develop alternatives.
        lysace 2y ago
        You disliked my idle thought so much that you needed to reply twice? :) The various factors causing strong lock-in effects, their dominance, and the insanely high pricing of moving data out of AWS - I wouldn't be surprised if they got their antitrust moment within a few years.
        freeopinion 2y ago
t0mas88 2y ago
Hetzner.de has 1 gbps unlimited or 10 gbps with a 20TB limit on their bare metal servers. And those can be bought very cheap if you don't need any special hardware.
KronisLV 2y ago
Contabo also might be an option: https://contabo.com/en/vps/ https://contabo.com/en/vps/ Throttling after 32 TB: https://help.contabo.com/en/support/solutions/articles/103000269972-rules-for-traffic-with-contabo https://help.contabo.com/en/support/solutions/articles/10300... Some commentary: https://hostingrevelations.com/contabo-bandwidth-limit/ https://hostingrevelations.com/contabo-bandwidth-limit/ I wouldn't say that they're super dependable or that the VPSes are very performant, but for the most part they work and are affordable. Alternatively, there's also Hetzner, as sibling comments mentioned: https://www.hetzner.com/cloud/ https://www.hetzner.com/cloud/ They do have additional fees, though: > You’ll get at least 20 TB of inclusive traffic for cloud servers at EU and US locations and 1 TB in Singapore. For each additional TB, we charge € 1.00 in the EU and US, and € 7.40 in Singapore. (Prices excl. VAT) I also used to use Time4VPS, however they have gradually been rising prices and the traffic I'd get before being throttled would be less than that of Contabo.

jancsika 2y ago

I remember at one point reading about webrtc and some kind of "introducer" server that would start the peer-to-peer connections between clients. Does wormhole try something like that before acting as a relay?

lotharrr 2y ago
Not yet. The "Dilation" protocol (which is about 80% implemented) is intended to support WebRTC as a transport layer. IIRC it requires a public server to tell you about your external IP address, but magic-wormhole already has a server that could play that role. Once a side learns its own address, it can send it to the peer (via the encrypted tunnel, through the relay server), and then the WebRTC hole-punching protocol tries to make connections to the peer's public address. When both sides do the same thing at the same time, sometimes you can get a direct connection through the NAT boxes. We don't have that yet, but the two sides attempt direct connections first (to all the private addresses they can find, which will include a public address if they aren't behind NAT). They both wait a couple of seconds before trying the relay, and the first successful negotiation wins, so in most cases it will use a direct connection if at all possible.

floam 2y ago

Do you do NAT hole punching, and/or port traversal like uPNP, NAT-PMP? I think for all but the most hostile networks the use of the relay server can be almost always avoided.