Fwd: Easy way for community to volunteer storage

Valerio Bellizzomi support at selnet.org
Mon Apr 19 06:49:00 UTC 2021


On Sun, 2021-04-18 at 22:06 -0400, Sajith Sasidharan wrote:
> It looks like at some point there was interest in allowing storage
> nodes
> behind NAT; not sure what, if anything, has happened since.
> 
> https://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/ticket/445
> https://tahoe-lafs.org/pipermail/tahoe-dev/2009-December/003331.html
> 
> In that mailing list thread, IPv6 was proposed as a solution.  I live
> in the
> metro area of a first world country, and my ISP does not offer IPv6
> out of the
> box, twelve years later... looks like it remains unsolved? :^)
> 
> Regards,
> Sajith.

You cat get an IPv6 tunnel from Hurricane Electric at 
https://www.tunnelbroker.net/

Kind Regards.


> On Sun, 2021-04-18 at 21:43 -0400, Sajith Sasidharan wrote:
> > Hi Swami,
> > 
> > You are right, your email did not make it to the list.  I'm sorry
> > about
> > that.
> > Our list is a little broken right now.  We're working on fixing it.
> > 
> > Thank you for not giving up on us though!  One challenge we have is
> > not
> > knowing enough about real world users or usage of Tahoe-LAFS, so I
> > am very
> > glad that you persisted.
> > 
> > The usage pattern you've proposed sounds like sounds like a
> > variation of
> > what
> > is called a "friendnet" in Tahoe-LAFS parlance, where a group of
> > friends
> > share
> > storage with each other.  Tahoe-LAFS could be appropriate for you,
> > although
> > not quite in its current shape, and not right now, just as you
> > thought.
> > 
> > You have gathered some ideas from the linked Gridsync issue about
> > difficulties
> > of running Tahoe-LAFS storage nodes in people's home machines.  I
> > am still
> > new
> > to Tahoe-LAFS, so I am not sure I have better ideas than
> > that.  Hopefully
> > more
> > experienced people in the list will chime in.
> > 
> > Regarding point 1, Tahoe-LAFS is not super simple to install or use
> > at the
> > moment.  I suppose we should strive to improve that.  Regarding
> > point 2, I'm
> > not quite sure what kind of challenges there are when running a
> > storage
> > server
> > node behind a home router -- I have not partaken in a friendnet
> > myself.  About
> > all your points, I'd love to heed to the community's wisdom.
> > 
> > To answer your question about interest in the ideas, I do think
> > they are
> > interesting.  It should be possible to create what you describe
> > using Tahoe-
> > LAFS as a building block.  I am just unclear about the amount of
> > effort.
> > 
> > In any case, I suppose we should stay in touch. :)
> > 
> > Regards,
> > Sajith.
> > 
> > 
> > On Sat, 2021-04-17 at 23:38 +0530, Swami Kevala wrote:
> > > Hi Sajith,
> > > 
> > > Not sure if my email to Tahoe lafs Dev list was getting
> > > through... So
> > > sending to you directly. Hope you don't mind.
> > > 
> > > Kind Regards
> > > Swami Kevala
> > > 
> > > ---------- Forwarded message ---------
> > > From: Swami Kevala <swami.kevala at ishafoundation.org>
> > > Date: Sat, 17 Apr 2021, 13:09
> > > Subject: Easy way for community to volunteer storage
> > > To: <tahoe-dev at tahoe-lafs.org>
> > > 
> > > 
> > > Hello,
> > > 
> > > I am looking for a way to use Tahoe-LAFS to enable a large
> > > community of
> > > non-
> > > technical people to volunteer a fraction of the hard drive space
> > > on their
> > > personal computers to collaboratively host an archive of digital
> > > content
> > > in
> > > perpetuity. (Sort of a cross between BitTorrent and the SETI at Home
> > >  project
> > > -
> > > but for storage rather than processing)
> > > 
> > > We have an archive with about 1 PB of content, and we have a
> > > community of
> > > over a million active supporters. We are looking at cost-
> > > effective and
> > > resilient ways of hosting our archives on several redundant
> > > systems.
> > > Sharding, encrypting and distributing it to our community seems
> > > like one
> > > robust way of doing this.
> > > 
> > > Points to note:
> > > 
> > > 1. Software installation and configuration should be super-
> > > simple. One-
> > > click 
> > > install, which asks the user how much space he can volunteer, and
> > > which
> > > local directory will be used   
> > > 
> > > 2. Most people will not have a static IP address, so the solution
> > > should
> > > work for the average personal computer setup (dynamic IP assigned
> > > by ISP)
> > > -
> > > without needing any additional router configuration
> > > 
> > > 3. It is not a problem if many people have their computers
> > > switched off
> > > frequently (e.g. during non-work hours). The primary purpose is
> > > to provide
> > > a
> > > durable long term archive; speed of restoring content is a
> > > secondary
> > > factor. 
> > > 
> > > 4. The volunteers would not use the grid to share their own
> > > content. The
> > > system would be strictly one-way. Our central archives would be
> > > pushed
> > > onto
> > > the distributed storage provided by the community. The motivation
> > > for the
> > > community to participate is that they understand the archive
> > > holds content
> > > which is of great value to humanity.
> > > 
> > > 5. The amount of storage per node could vary between say 10GB on
> > > a home
> > > PC,
> > > to say 1TB on a server type system 
> > > 
> > > For your reference, I initially posted this question on the
> > > Gridsync
> > > Github
> > > page, and was directed to this mailing list by the developer
> > > 
> > > https://github.com/gridsync/gridsync/issues/341
> > > 
> > > I understand that currently this may not possible as I have
> > > described.
> > > Would
> > > like to know if there is any interest in the ideas being
> > > proposed, and any
> > > likelihood of this kind of arrangement being possible in the
> > > future.
> > > 
> > > Kind Regards
> > > Swami Kevala
> > > 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> tahoe-dev mailing list
> tahoe-dev at tahoe-lafs.org
> https://tahoe-lafs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tahoe-dev




More information about the tahoe-dev mailing list