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Ask HN: What should I do with my leftover bandwidth?

3 points by fredp ↗ HN
I have a static IPv4 and symmetric gigabit connection at home which is only rarely utilised fully. What can I do with the rest of my bandwidth that is good for society? (e.g. hosting archives or mirrors)

11 comments

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averageValentin
A few years back, I was in a similar situation and found BOINC(https://boinc.berkeley.edu/) to be a great way to contribute. It's a platform that lets you support various scientific research projects by sharing your computational power and bandwidth. However, it's worth noting that BOINC might tends to be more CPU/GPU intensive rather than bandwidth-heavy(I'm not entirely sure about its bandwidth usage)
fredp
I’d prefer something less power hungry
FrankoDelMar
Wrong answers: Seed Metallica? Become a Tor exit node? Join a vigilante botnet?

Better answers: Run your own vpn or Owncloud instance or run your own Matrix/Jitsi server

pestatije
why is a tor exit node no good?
FrankoDelMar
I would agree it is good for society but considering the risk of getting shut down by your ISP or getting subpoenaed it tends to be poor advice except for the adventurous.
fredp
Yeah, I have an OwnCloud, VPN, and other “homelab” stuff

Tor exit node might cause conflict with my ISP!

gregjor
I have multiple water spigots in my home, I never have them all open all the way. I don't use all the electricity available to me either. I don't breathe all the air that surrounds me.

Bandwidth isn't a perishable resource. If you don't use it then it's available to other people. I get the impression you overpay for bandwidth capacity you don't need and a static IPv4 address. You could just pay for what you need, free up the static IP, and then not have to signal like this.

fredp
Not sure what “signal like this” means, but gigabit is the lowest bandwidth package offered and I do use my static IP already.

Electricity and water are metered… bandwidth is not.

idk why you have to be hostile

8chanAnon
Host a CORS proxy server. Maybe like this one: https://kraker-remote.vercel.app

There used to be several options available a couple of years ago but almost all of them have gone offline. It would nice to have more options again. Mine is a good baseline to go with. Runs with Nodejs and has no dependencies but is quite powerful.

Find the source code here: https://github.com/8chanAnon/Kraker-Local-Proxy-Server

You can promote your proxy server here: https://gist.github.com/jimmywarting/ac1be6ea0297c16c477e17f...

DerekBickerton
You could be a CDN (Content Delivery Network) and act as a point-of-presence (PoP) for the country you're in. Mirror Linux distro ISOs, offer the ability for netizens to download offline versions of Wikipedia which are over ~50GB sans images.