Ask HN: Would you use an 'AirBnB'-type service for high speed (100M+) uploading?

[cdvonstinkpot]

Before I had Verizon FIOS' 100/100 speed I remember wanting to upload a large dataset to AWS S3, & couldn't find any public WiFi hotspots that offered fast upload speed. I've since moved & again find myself with relatively slow upload bandwidth (5M).

Sometimes I want to borrow someone's connection who has Verizon FIOS' 100/100 package (or higher) to get something like an initial backup done quicker than I could on my current connection. And I was wondering if someone were to build a thing like AirBnB, to connect those with high upload speed with people who could benefit from using it temporarily, if it would become a success.

What do you think?

[Jonnax]

It's sounds like a cool idea, however I think if it took off ISPs would rush to change their terms of service to block you.

Thing is why not just use an IaaS to do the same thing?

Since you're borrowing someone's connection, I'm imagining you want to be able to ssh into an OS on their network, download, process and then upload some files.

Have a look at the cost of ec2 instances here: http://www.ec2instances.info/ The ones with high network speed aren't all that expensive to use for an hour or two.

That's not to say there isn't a demand around a service that packages it up nicely.

[milankragujevic]

I have a friend who works for a college in Serbia and has access to 1Gbps upload. My home connection is 10/1Mbps ADSL2+. I often mail him DVDs and even hard drives with data to upload to the Internet. I'd totally use such a service if not for the friend.

[mtmail → milankragujevic]

I think the target market of people doing an initial upload of their harddrive will have 200GB or more easily and burning 40 DVD and shipping them is quite a hassle.

Amazon AWS offers to mail you a network attached device containing harddrives and you mail it back. I haven't seen that as a third-party service yet.