

Home Servers – The future of the networked world - euphoria83
http://amantech.wordpress.com/2012/03/31/home-servers-the-future-of-the-networked-world/

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dwiel
I'd like this to happen, for all of the privacy, freedom and decentralization
reasons. I think the only way it is actually going to happen is if computation
speeds/prices significantly outpace network speeds.

Take for example an AI that watches your facial expressions and helps you
around the house. It might be cheaper/easier to have the computation happen
locally and avoid the cost of streaming all of that data to a centralized
location all of the time. Then again, having all of the data in one database
may provide the AI with enough benefits that it is worth sending it across the
wire - with aggregate data, valuable aggregate patterns can be found. It's
hard to say at this point.

I have a really hard time seeing people buying a box to support the next
facebook ...

~~~
178
> I have a really hard time seeing people buying a box to support the next
> facebook ...

what if it would be the next _web_?

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tybris
Maybe I can't tell whether the author is being ironic, or maybe I'm just old,
but this is what we did in the past (10-15 years ago). Turned out to be noisy,
unreliable, more expensive than you might think, and generally inconvenient,
so hosting companies grew.

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drewvs
This is a horrible idea. Why would you take the job of computer security,
management and purchase away from a centralized source and leave it up to the
everyday laymen to handle. You say this would solve issues of privacy, but in
fact would be a much less secure form of network and would likely increase the
risk of security and potential data theft.

I'm a System Administrator by trade and would not ever recommend a solution
like this. Centralized systems are just easier on the user and much more cost
effective.

~~~
euphoria83
There are numerous applications that currently run on our laptops (e.g.,
dropbox application) that could potentially steal all your data. As we trust
third party apps to behave themselves on our laptops, so can we trust the apps
installed on the homeservers. With sandboxing now coming to desktop apps
(e.g., thru Mac App Store), this problem will reduce even further.

~~~
chc
This isn't about malicious applications stealing your data. It's about
misconfigured or buggy applications giving people more access to your computer
than you intend.

Think about how many professionally developed websites fall prey to SQL
injections, CSRF vulnerabilities, server exploits and the like. Nginx recently
issued a warning about a big vulnerability in all but the most recent version.
Github got owned by Egor Homakov using an old Rails exploit.

And those are professionally maintained. When your average "I'm not computer-
savvy, but I can work Microsoft pretty well" user is the one setting up and
maintaining the server, how long do you reckon it will be before somebody
takes over his computer? My guess is that you're very optimistic if your
answer uses hours as a unit.

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lucb1e
Maybe an intermediate stage, but no, not the future. Humans are lazy of
nature, if they can get Facebook to host it for them (for free), why bother to
buy such device and plug it in? Even if it didn’t need any setup except
setting a password to manage it or so, I don’t see why anyone would do it when
there are better alternatives. The internet speed vs LAN speed issue will
disappear over time.

~~~
jrsmith1279
I could see IPv6 pushing this along a little more, but I agree that humans are
too lazy to deal with it.

I currently have a home server, but my career is in information technology and
my wife is a photographer. In my case, we have the need to have a central
place to store all of our files so that they can be backed up regularly. Even
being an I.T. guy, it still took me years of thinking about doing this before
I ever did it. I love it now that it's in place, but when there are problems
with it I'd almost rather just go back to living on the edge and storing files
on our various computers than having to deal with the problems.

------
blues
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/¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯

Serverless, encrypted Chat & Filetransfer

Multiple simultaneous downloads / uploads

Search Friends

Messages

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UPnP / NAT-PMP port forwarding support

GnuPG Authentication

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Plugins support

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System tray integration

\\____________________

<http://retroshare.sourceforge.net/>

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bastage
Computing expands, then it contracts, then it expands, then it contracts.

For every pro in any solution there's usually a similarly weighted con, both
of which need to be balanced against the users technical ability,
requirements, "infrastructure", etc.

There's no such thing as a silver bullet, but it's what makes the game fun.

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revolvingiris
I like the idea but it seems like it works better in theory. Unless someone
can really streamline the entire process (sharing, security, hardware
upgrading etc) it seems ambitious that millions of people would want that kind
of responsibility.

~~~
euphoria83
I want to work on this idea to make it into a company. I am kinda soliciting
ideas from people to learn more. I think the this product will be useful
precisely when all the issues you mentioned will be streamlined. A simple web
based UI to the homeserver can allow for installing apps, removing them,
setting up passwords, uploading data and consuming data from within the house
network.

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fl3tch
People are already working on this:

<https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox>

~~~
zoowar
Slow to no progress. The obstacle will be what it has always been. The masses
choose the path of least resistance.

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glfomfn
I like how the title mentions 'the future' when what he describes is a thing
that happened in the past.

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Palomides
my home connection isn't quite comparable to google's; I think this holds for
most other americans, too.

~~~
euphoria83
The homeserver can always be backed-up on an hourly basis as a fail safe. In
case the home connection goes down, the backup server (maintained as a paid
service by a company) can be used for a short while. I don't think traffic to
the homeserver of any one family can be that huge. Torrent upload would
typically have higher datarate than a regular house's upstream.

