
Ask HN: Cheapest way to host and serve large-ish files? - ageitgey
What options exist for serving large files on the web without getting killed on bandwidth costs?<p>For example, let&#x27;s say I want to host a 5GB file that contains an educational ML data set on S3. Assuming 1000 people download it in a month, that would cost me $450&#x2F;mo in just outbound bandwidth fees. That&#x27;s almost $0.50 <i>per download</i>.<p>Obviously there must be ways to serve files cheaper than physically mailing an SD card to someone. What have you done to serve large files cheaply? Is the only option to maintain a server (either colo or virtual) that has better bandwidth pricing?
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sixhobbits
To add to the other comments about using bittorrent, Academic Torrents [0] is
trying to solve this problem. I don't think they're that popular yet, but they
aim to address some of the issues with bittorrent already highlighted in the
other posts.

[0] [http://academictorrents.com/](http://academictorrents.com/)

~~~
ieee8023
I think averaging 2TB of data served a day is popular!

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icebraining
Well, there's Backblaze B2, it would only cost $0.10 per download:
[https://www.backblaze.com/b2/cloud-
storage.html](https://www.backblaze.com/b2/cloud-storage.html)

Alternatively, there's bittorrent, which was pretty much designed for this.

But considered you can find decently priced dedicated servers with unmetered
gigabit ports, seems like installing Linux + nginx and enabling automatic
security updates might still be the best option.

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weinzierl
Amazon has _Public Data Sets on AWS_. I don't know the current status, but it
used to be free for eligible projects [1].

BitTorrent would be the natural thing to do, but it has it's own set of
issues. Jeff Atwood summarized them nicely in [2]. This was written in 2009,
LegalTorrents doesn't exist anymore and you don't need a tracker anymore, but
the rest of the points are still valid. His summary is:

> It's ironic that BitTorrent, which is justly famous for equalizing the
> highly asymmetric nature of most people's internet connections, is itself so
> asymmetric when it comes to sharing: trivially easy to consume, but awkward
> and confusing to share. That's too bad, because BitTorrent is such a
> powerful tool for sharing. Hopefully this post demystifies the process a
> bit!

[1] [http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=176060&p=irol-
ne...](http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=176060&p=irol-
newsArticle&ID=1232302)

[2] [https://blog.codinghorror.com/sharing-files-with-
bittorrent/](https://blog.codinghorror.com/sharing-files-with-bittorrent/)

EDIT: Thinking about it, there is no shortage of free public data sets. I
believe many of them are provided by individuals and organizations which
wouldn't be able or willing to pay the bandwidth cost out of their own
pockets. Maybe you could research the solutions they are using. A starting
point could be the [3].

[3]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2165497](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2165497)

~~~
ageitgey
I have used Internet Archive in the past for this kind of hosting. They charge
nothing and provide a great (though sometimes confusing) service.

But I'm all for paying my own bills as long as they are reasonable. It seems
crazy that IA can afford to host huge files for free for anyone but S3 charges
so much for so little. I was hoping there was a middle ground. I guess the
middle ground is just running my own dedicated server. Thanks for the reply!

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lovelearning
1 TB storage on Google Drive is $10 (100GB is $2). No bandwidth pricing.

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mozumder
Static business home IP address from your ISP and your own server.

