• From: A not too distant future
  • Registered: 2013-03-03
  • Posts: 478

Topic: User Hosting-Possible server solution?

This may seem stupid, but just bear with me. I, as well as at least some people, have an old computer collecting dust somewhere in the house. However, a possible solution to the problem of server hosting is having at least some of the widgets allowed for hosting per computer. Maybe via a client, such as octopus or like Folding@Home. This computer's a Pentium 4 with a 500 GB hard drive. If enough people donated their computers to the cause, Chumby would effectively have server hosting free of charge. What do the other users think?

2 Reply by servalan (edited by servalan 2013-03-04 15:23:50)

  • From: Australia
  • Registered: 2008-11-12
  • Posts: 104

Re: User Hosting-Possible server solution?

The hassle will be people with dynamic IPs & the management thereof... That's not to say it isn't doable, torrent clients make anyone a server... just a bit messier than pitching in $X/month|year for hosting... Depending on where you are in the world, the power bill for running a dedicated host at home might be much more than just forking over $ to a sub service.

  • Registered: 2012-02-07
  • Posts: 535

Re: User Hosting-Possible server solution?

The other problem with this is that one of the core principles of Chumby's widget hosting was that authors could remove their widgets at any time; with pretty much any sort of peer-to-peer solution, this control is removed or at least lessened.

If we could somehow get a hold of the authors, perhaps this P2P network could be made "opt-in", so if authors are okay with this loss of control their widgets could continue to be published this way.

I like the idea, and it would provide a more resilient Chumby network that is likely to persist much longer, but there are a few issues that need to be worked out before it's a viable solution smile

  • xamar
  • New member
  • Offline
  • Registered: 2013-07-19
  • Posts: 1

Re: User Hosting-Possible server solution?

If the deployment of the widgets is 100% file system based (like having an XML and SWF in an specific path) we can have a 'Bittorrent Sync' server holding the master copy, where the authors can add/update/delete their widgets and an open reading key for the rest of self-hosted users.

I just tried the beta for this app yesterday and is really simple to setup. It is also multiplatform, it works in Windows/Mac/Linux/freeBSD.

The biggest benefits for this approach of delivering/synching the widgets are that the secondary servers are constantly in sync with the master copy and that the master copy won't have a lot of traffic as it is P2P: the more self-hosted users mirror the master server the faster and less bandwidth demanding will be for all.

http://labs.bittorrent.com/experiments/sync.html