
Project Volutus: Micro data centers at base of cell towers - thekhatribharat
https://volutus.io/
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flyinglizard
Large telecoms are already talking about edge computing at the base stations
for 5G. It makes a lot of sense with modern distributed systems and would be
great for gaming.

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luhn
Why would it be great for gaming?

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flyinglizard
Game live streaming at a reasonable latency.

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solarkraft
How would caching improve realtime point to point connections?

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Sephr
I'd be concerned about physical security of the hardware. Most of these cell
towers are only secured by a chain-link fence and a padlock.

As far as data security, it should be easy to auto-wipe your server when
intruders are detected, but then there is still the matter of the valuable
server hardware and the risk of theft. Hopefully nobody is colocating very
expensive hardware or they will probably be prone to theft.

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microcolonel
> _I 'd be concerned about physical security of the hardware. Most of these
> cell towers are only secured by a chain-link fence and a padlock._

And usually not a particularly good padlock either. Sites like these are
regularly prone to non-destructive entry, don't configure or assemble tamper
detection circuits, etc.

But honestly, none of this is a _huge_ deal day to day. It's something you can
improve over time. For the most part, people do not attack these facilities,
it's just that if they _did_ , they would have effectively free reign.

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nkurz
Hi microcolonel. I've noticed that most of your comments lately are autodead,
although some have been revived by people vouching for them. Checking through
your history, I don't see any clear reason for this. You might want to email
'hn@ycombinator.com' and ask what's up.

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kbenson
I vouched for a comment and responded to it at few days back, then looked at
his history and vouched for 3-4 more when I saw that. Previously I've seen a
few vouches take someone out of being dead, so I hoped it would do so this
time. Guess not. I also didn't see anything particularly worthy of
shadowbanning.

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microcolonel
I think there was a particularly hot thread a few months back which one mod
thought I was pouring fuel on (I won't opine on that, partly since I don't
really know which comment[s] constituted the offense); and that's why I'm
hellbanned. It's actually not been so bad, I don't know if they want me back
fully though.

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di
Site is down, here's a cached page:

[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:UqBmRU...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:UqBmRUgl5aUJ:https://volutus.io/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

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tyingq
Some irony there in that it's cacheable static content, but down. Guess they
don't eat their own dogfood.

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Quequau
There isn't a micro data centre at the base of my cell tower I guess.

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gyre007
Ironically they called their SW "Vapor"(ware) and here we are seeing it
crashing under load

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pwarner
There site is dead, so maybe I missed some benefit. But aren't we talking
about a 1ms latency increase to back haul to a proper data center? In theory
you can go 90 miles if I did my math right.

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pmorici
From the Google Cached version of their site it looks like they want to be a
CDN for mobile. There aren't any details of their actual "micro data centers"
that I could find which would be the most interesting aspect of this really.

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staticfloat
I believe it's called the "Vapor Chamber":
[https://www.vapor.io/chamber/](https://www.vapor.io/chamber/)

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pmorici
Looks like it is only rated to 104F / 40C that doesn't seem like the kind of
things that you can just set outdoors and expect it to work anywhere.

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jzwinck
That's because it is designed to be installed indoors. It's more of a prefab
datacenter aisle, not a standalone structure.

They explain that the central exhaust plenum is to be connected to the
building's HVAC, and say _" the Vapor Chamber can rest just as easily on a
slab floor in an equipment room as it can in a traditional raised floor data
center."_

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pmorici
Ah, I missed that part, that makes sense.

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bognition
If (and its a big if) they can get this off the ground I see this as more of a
threat to CDNs then to cloud hosting providers as it makes zero sense to do
anything but host content at the cell tower.

Hosting compute is completely bonkers as only those customers who connect to a
tower where you've co-located your compute will see the speed up. So you
either co-locate everywhere, or you only co-locate if you have a
geographically isolated set of users.

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thekhatribharat
This is not just for human users, but also for internet connected robots and
that includes ground and aerial robots doing everything from delivery to
inspection to surveillance, etc. Not to forget self-driving cars. Just like
today's data centers are strategically located close to where the demand is,
these micro data centers would also be located close to where most robotics
activity happens - A small industrial area could be one example, a highly
automated urban locality could be another. These data centers coupled with
wireless 5G standard provide huge benefits to internet connected robots.

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olehif
So now anyone can triangulate location of their users?

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ddalex
To within 90 miles (1ms latency)

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tedd4u
Not sure I would want my certificates in a cell tower shed. I barely trust
CDNs. At least there are posted guards at POPs and colos.

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viraptor
There are good ways to protect that. It could be fully encrypted with keys
available only over local network via trusted execution app. Nothing
unbreakable of course, but it would not be possible to get it without
significant effort and cost.

Also, this is assuming no checksums served from the origin of the service. If
you don't provide secrecy, trusted CDNs are easy :-)

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edwhitesell
This is interesting. A friend and I talked about a similar idea about 10 years
ago where we thought about buying gas stations that were going out of business
to turn into mini data centers. These would have been the smaller, sometimes
Mom & Pop places that were obsoleted as the larger Truck Stop looking stations
moved in.

We thought already having underground fuel tanks and permits would be a
meaningful start. Also, already being at or near major roadways, etc would
make fiber access easier.

But, life got in the way and we never went anywhere with it.

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NickNameNick
The major end-of-life event for smaller gas stations near me is the
underground tanks becoming uncertifiable.

You may have found that the existing infrastructure was a liability, not an
asset.

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tomcam
Can confirm at least in the state of WA. There are some beautifully located
former gas stations centered insome very expensive real estate for that
reason.

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acd
Interesting idea, it may be that ower powered ARM servers near cell towers
will provide CDN Like this green top 500 system powered by ARM.
[https://www.top500.org/system/179165](https://www.top500.org/system/179165)

The ultimate is a distributed system where your neighbors provide your CDN
cache and there is some kind of either sharing economy or bitcoin like
economy.

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Ari_Ugwu
We're almost there. With a little more work people might be able to enjoy
cloud servers in their own homes and businesses. What would we call these
ultra fast local machines able to 'serve' up content? 'Server' feels a bit on
the nose. Perhaps 'Home Cloud: Secured by Blockchain'.

</snark>

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loopycode
Data security?

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yjftsjthsd-h
It's a data center; why would it have different security properties than any
colo facility?

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lotyrin
Because you're stepping down on the spectrum of "vault with a mantrap, several
factors of authentication and 24/7 posted security" down toward "fence and a
padlock"?

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patrickg_zill
How many datacenters have you been in?

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lotyrin
How many examples of the extreme ends of a spectrum have you heard? Of course
not everyone is Iron Mountain.

