[p2p-research] What should a Community do with Profit? (was: personal server technology)

[M. Fioretti]

On Sun, Feb 21, 2010 21:58:03 PM +0100, Eugen Leitl (eugen at leitl.org) wrote:
> On Sun, Feb 21, 2010 at 09:22:26PM +0100, M. Fioretti wrote:
> 
> > Unfortunately, I have no *direct* experience of any such ISP, so I
> 
> Does community-owned include the last mile infrastructure?

Eugen,

I answered to Patrick trying to stick to the original question, that
is "personal servers". Speaking of servers means speaking of
"datacenters" and of course "datacenters" may be anything from a
closet to a big structure as I described. In any case, I sticked to
that, ignoring on purpose the last mile and backbone connectivity
issues. I agree with most of what you said about infrastructure, but
that's a different issue wrt the original topic.

For example, I say this:
> > keep it running, replace faulty hw components asap etc... Inside those

to point out that this is what you need to keep a *server* up and
running. What you answered:

> Redundant networks (meshes qualify) degrade gracefully, so there's
> no need to rush out for repairs.

is true, but is a whole other issue (network uptime and performance vs
reliability and uptime of the single server). Even if I agreed that
carrier quality systems are an overkill for _connectivity_, I would
still want my actual server to run carrier-quality hardware.

> The only reason for a virtual server is energy efficiency,
> professional operators and it being close to the network
> core/backbone.

My reason for a virtual server is high energy efficiency and
reliability at a much, much lower price than I would have to pay to
get the same quality of service with a home box. Again, regardless of
the nature of the network connecting it to everything else.

> It's mostly a marketing problem. There's plenty of VPN products

the services we're discussing here require no VPN. This said, of
course it's marketing, but there's no demand for it yet, since most
people are so enamored with the "cloud".