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Ask HN: What should I do with my unused 1Gig internet?

38 points by kirillzubovsky ↗ HN
I have a gigabit internet hooked up for our coworking space, but due to the nature of businesses here, most of it goes unused. "1Gig internet" is a very good marketing message, so I am not going to downgrade. However, what should do I with unused bandwidth, ideally something that makes money?

A friend suggested running a Bitcoin miner, but that has a very long bayback period, assuming the price doesn't sink. Not convinced this is a good idea. Is there anything else worth doing? Thanks!

56 comments

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opan
Seed torrents or files (or whatever you call them) on IPFS. Mirror a repo for a GNU/Linux distro.
josephcsible
https://community.torproject.org/relay/setup/bridge/

Run a Tor Bridge (not the same thing as a regular Tor relay). This helps people in oppressive regimes bypass Internet censorship (e.g., China's Great Firewall). The way it works is that bridge traffic is disguised to not look like Tor traffic, and there's no public list or other easy way to identify which computers are Tor Bridges, as there is for regular Tor relays.

smachiz
What's the good actor/bad actor percentage with Tor?
josephcsible
One of the benefits to running a bridge rather than a regular relay is that unlike running a regular relay, running a bridge only benefits the good actors. All that a bridge does is hides from your local network the fact that you're using Tor, so bad actors have nothing to gain by using bridges rather than just connecting to Tor normally.
Komodai
Running a bridge requires exposing a port right? If so, couldn't that impact his IP's reputation, assuming he has static?
josephcsible
What reputation systems ding you for listening on a port? It's not an open proxy/relay or anything like that.
xtracto
There are services that pay you to use your connection as a proxy. I don't remember the names but I've tried at least 2.
orev
And those things are used to resell bandwidth to spammers and hacking groups so they can get around IP blocks — a sure fire way to get yourself and your customers hacked, and probably disconnected.
krageon
There are plenty of legitimate services that do this. Even if they weren't, the fact that you're reselling bandwidth isn't going to get "yourself and your customers hacked". At worst, you'd get a few IP bans.
xtracto
Last I read Tor is used for more nefarious things... and yet.
crtasm
Nobody is suggesting OP runs a Tor exit on their connection.
slater
neocities-like "free website" service
hatware
Bandwidth doesn't help much with bitcoin mining, I have a few questions for your friend.

There's not some program you can "donate" bandwidth to and make money off of it. Closest thing would be to self-host media and stop paying for all the streaming services you probably have right now. That will save you money, at least.

kirillzubovsky
Are there any hosting companies not named Amazon or Google? I could see how for a small-scale operation it could be beneficial to host a redundant server for backups... but even then, I am not sure how much that is really worth.
GauntletWizard
DigitalOcean and Backspace are still doing brisk business, and very competitive for some segments (Gameservers and the like)
hatware
If it's just backups there are tons of options out there. Backblaze for example.

The security implications of running your own AWS cloud infrastructure with API building blocks for people to use to build their own infra sounds like too much for a one man shop.

newsbinator
Isn't one (or more?) of the alt cryptocurrencies about distributed bandwidth sharing? I recall something using that combo of buzzwords from 2018 or so, but I can't think of specifics.
buck4roo
Become a bandwidth provider on Orchid?

https://www.orchid.com/

josephcsible
Powered by a "decentralized" proof-of-stake cryptocurrency, of which they already possess more than 40% of all that will ever exist?
skinnymuch
Why is it crypto powered? Like the sibling said to make it seem even more shady, the cryptocurrency part isn’t needed.
Shared404
Find a couple torrents for things that you care about (Linux or other OS's are a good place to look, or possible rare and copyright expired media).

For money, probably the best you can do is offer a small hosting service, maybe "X amount of cloud storage with X time renting" or something similar. Check out Nextcloud if you want a UI that's more advanced then a typical NFS or network share.

moepstar
How about hosting something like Nextcloud for your customers?

Or something different - there's a truckload of selfhosted services that are interesting, useful and easy-ish to set up...

itisit
Do your homework and check your ISP’s ToS. You’re likely not entitled to continuously exhaust your available bandwidth, and in turn, your account can be suspended without notice.

For example, see item 2.h. of Spectrum Business’s acceptable use policy. [0] This kind of policy is common to most providers.

[0] https://www.spectrum.com/policies/spectrum-business-internet...

red0point
As soon as you use a significant portion of it all the time, you don‘t have „1Gig internet“ to advertise anymore.

Be happy to be able to provide actual 1Gbps as a best-effort to your coworking space! If I were a customer, I‘d be glad that I can download my 50GB of whatever I need asap and use the full connection I paid for, and not have 50% of it clogged by some TOR relay or stuff like that.

I mean, the customers are paying for it, right? So they should be able to use it for whatever they need, as much or as little as they need.

tumblewit
I think there can be routing policy rules in place if a request came in asking for 700mbit/s for example the balancing would kick in providing that bandwidth. And tbh there is very likely going to routing balancing rules anyway even if I don’t know the nature of OPs business since he mentions bandwidth here.
josephcsible
It's easy to set up QoS rules such that your Tor relay only gets whatever bandwidth is left over (if any) after your paying customers get dibs at the entire 1Gbps.
kirillzubovsky
Yup, the customers are definitely happy. Getting 1Gig on their own is rather expensive, but this way they pay indirectly, and still get most of the benefit. Many of the users don't overlap, where some come in the morning, some mid day, and some late at night. On top of that, most of the time they aren't exactly downloading terabytes of information, it's predominantly Zoom and YouTube, plus some general web traffic. I could do something with 20% of the bandwidth and no one would blink. But yes, in general, I would err on the side of offering better internet to the users, rather than making an extra buck with some trickery.
imhoguy
Provide Minecraft servers for coworker's families or locals. Low ping is important. You can provide it in coworking bundle, free or just do separate business. Then organize (W)LAN parties on weekends :)
kirillzubovsky
I haven't played video games or had LAN parties in 20 years. Got too much of it early on, and that was enough :) Could you extrapolate on how it works nowadays? Also, is this purely probono, or do the players pay to access these servers?
Komodai
Playing: 99.98% probono Hosting: people usually pay to have a server hosted

Hosting Minecraft servers requires a pretty high-end CPU with a good single-threading score, other game servers as far as I'm aware though, should be easy to host on some midspec hardware.

imhoguy
It all depends on number of users. I host MC Paper server for up to 10 users LAN map on Synology NAS with low spec Intel and it takes just 2GB RAM max.
nix23
-Tor Bridge or Relay

-Run a Mirror for a project you care for

-Run a Yggdrasil Node -> https://yggdrasil-network.github.io /services.html

-Run i2p/i2pd -> https://i2pd.website/

For Money:

-Sia Node (if you have some storage available..the more the better (>4TB) and much more profitable then "mining" bitcoins) -> https://sia.tech/

skinnymuch
People can check Reddit and so on for things like Sia and other beer money suggestions. The money is very low.
nix23
Ah yeah Reddit......
skinnymuch
Not sure what you’re trying to say. Reddit would rightfully say things like that Dan’s other stuff you may have pitched here don’t earn much. Some would give numbers and so on.

Meanwhile here a few people pitched really awful earning and not worth it beer money suggestions without details and so on.

The indictment now is on HN being a bad place for this sort of info. Also for any sliver of transparency and real honesty. If something will make ya $10 a month for example. Say that. And so on.

I know it is getting bad when I think too highly of my own in groups and dismiss others

Jaruzel
Build/Run a website archiving thing for the small-web (i.e. doesn't focus on the larger sites).
kirillzubovsky
Heh. I've actually experimented with something like that before, then came to a conclusion that we have so much information added every day, there is very little value in the archives. It's not to say there's not value, but the effort to create one doesn't justify the return. Maybe you just have to be very interested in the content, or just be a very kind person?
lproven
Honeygain?

Seems fairly legit.

A friend's referral -- not mine, I am not on it. https://r.honeygain.me/FCASSD418E

Anunayj
I'm skeptical, how does this site make money? Installing random closed software that claims to pay you with unclear income sources seems.. scary.
skinnymuch
Pretty sure this will net you almost no money. So even if it is legit. Not much of a point.
MikeAshley178
> Bitcoin miner,

Doesn't matter so much about Bandwidth, That friend knows nothing. You'd need more processing power that offsets the extra bandwidth.

You could try a Seedbox. Easy to setup, cheap.

https://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=bittorrent

other things include

https://geti2p.net/en/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymous_P2P

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lantern_(software)

Setup any number of Game Servers....

https://github.com/OpenRA/OpenRA/wiki/Dedicated

But first invest in a good router.... Or setup a Homelab

https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/

VPN/Proxy Server for family and friends

Plex Server for family and Friends.