hillary-like personal email server appliances

Posted Aug 27, 2016 0:58 UTC (Sat) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
In reply to: hillary-like personal email server appliances by Garak
Parent article: Resisting the centralization of network infrastructure

> If, for example, tomorrow the FCC came out and said that all such prohibitions by terms of service were void because home server traffic was just as 'neutral' in the eyes of the internet as gmail's, then I think we would just about instantaneously see the rapid advancement of making home email server usage as trivial as using and maintaining a toaster.
There are no such limitations in countries like Russia or France. Yet nobody runs home servers.

It's quite simple - running a home server requires A LOT of work to do backups, provide uninterrupted power and so on. Why would you want to do that?

hillary-like personal email server appliances

Posted Aug 27, 2016 6:34 UTC (Sat) by Garak (guest, #99377) [Link] (9 responses)

I'm not going to take that as a legitimate question in this forum of all places. There are literally countless reasons why people would want to operate servers connected to the internet. Wow.

Perhaps you just did a horrible job of making the point that there are also countless reasons to choose not to operate a server from home. But most of us here have the basic understanding of what a server is generally and what it might be useful for.

One very specific reason to operate a mail server at home in the U.S. is because at least historically (still?) there was some law (that the NSA must have known was horrific all along but kept silent about) stating that email left on a remote server more than 60 or 180 days was granted a lesser status than 4th ammendment 'papers'. Not to mention how generally the 'third party doctrine' involving the third party servers gives less legal privacy protection to data than if it physically resides in your home. AFAIUI data on a computer in your physical residence has always enjoyed the strictest possible 4th amendment protections.

The next most noteworthy reason I would add, would be to exercise free speech on the internet, without being under the auspices of any unnecessary gatekeeper. E.g. the person who should decide what speech of mine is publishable on the internet is me, not an employee of twitter or google. Obviously if I publish a bounty on someone's head, the police should pay attention to it, or anybody that complains about it and come and arrest me. But if I want to publish a video of me burning in a fireplace some book I legally purchased, I ought to be able to do that, even if it offends an entire religion.

It seems to me that in order for free speech to exist in any meaningful way on the internet, all endpoints must not be forbidden from operating servers. Otherwise we see things approaching the old ways where massive corporations were the ultimate gatekeepers deciding which speech was published and to how wide an audience. In this day and age, every ordinary internet user ought to be able to decide that something they have to say and want published to world is able to be published to the world. The simplest way I know how to do that is to host my own LAMP server. I don't see another way realistically.

I don't know about other countries, but with Russia's recent history of oppression of journalism, I doubt there are many people interested in pushing free speech boundaries from there. I'm not saying the U.S. is some free speech panacea. In fact, I kind of get the feeling that keeping the power of home server operation out of the hands of the masses is precisely how establishment forces in the U.S. maintain much of their power in the face of the 'disruptive' technology of the internet.

hillary-like personal email server appliances

Posted Aug 28, 2016 6:51 UTC (Sun) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]

Keep in mind that most people extensively document their lives on publicly available Facebook pages...

> I don't know about other countries, but with Russia's recent history of oppression of journalism, I doubt there are many people interested in pushing free speech boundaries from there.
My point is that there's nobody in Russia forbidding you to run your own mail server. Yet pretty much nobody does.

hillary-like personal email server appliances

Posted Aug 29, 2016 21:39 UTC (Mon) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link] (7 responses)

You can lease a great 'endpoint' for $3.50/month. That's probably less than you would spend if you ran a server in your own house, and much much MUCH more reliable.

You claim there are countless reasons to run your own server and it's so easy... so why isn't everyone doing it?

hillary-like personal email server appliances

Posted Aug 29, 2016 23:50 UTC (Mon) by Garak (guest, #99377) [Link] (6 responses)

I'm guessing your $3.50 endpoint plan involves free speech limiting terms of service, and ultimately, more computers along the communication path between you and your intended audience. I of course understand that in a great many engineering cost tradeoff equations, those issues are not going to be decisive factors. But from a free speech policy perspective, I think it's quite important to acknowledge that in some of those situational tradeoff equations, those things matter a lot.

hillary-like personal email server appliances

Posted Aug 30, 2016 3:06 UTC (Tue) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link] (5 responses)

> I'm guessing your $3.50 endpoint plan involves free speech limiting terms of service,

What does that even mean? Do you or don't you want to run a mail server? Because obviously that's allowed by the TOS.

Since you're advocating running a server at home, what do you think of your internet provider's TOS? I doubt it's any better.

> more computers along the communication path between you and your intended audience.

um... Have you ever run traceroute?

hillary-like personal email server appliances

Posted Aug 30, 2016 4:03 UTC (Tue) by Garak (guest, #99377) [Link] (4 responses)

> I'm guessing your $3.50 endpoint plan involves free speech limiting terms of service,

What does that even mean? Do you or don't you want to run a mail server? Because obviously that's allowed by the TOS.

It means that I was speculating as to which service your $3.50 plan was. Having to speculate, I presumed something like, oh lets just say AWS/linode/whatever. I'm guessing AWS, and I recall linode, have many pages of terms of service as part of renting a virtual server from them. I'm guessing amongst those pages of ToS are various catch all clauses that reserve for them the right to cease doing business with you, if for instance you engage in extremely controversial free speech (e.g. flag/bible burning videos). But by all means, lets end the speculation- which specific $3.50 service are you talking about?

Since you're advocating running a server at home, what do you think of your internet provider's TOS? I doubt it's any better.

Yes, that is sort of what this entire debate from my side has been about. My belief remains that the FCC's Network Neutrality uses the right language to foster the internet as a platform for free speech (not letting the network provider favor one type of usage over another, at least anything based on type of speech, i.e. flag/bible burning vids).

> more computers along the communication path between you and your intended audience.

um... Have you ever run traceroute?

Yes, your point being?

hillary-like personal email server appliances

Posted Aug 30, 2016 4:55 UTC (Tue) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link] (3 responses)

https://www.ovh.com/us/vps/ https://hostbrew.com/openvz/ https://safehousecloud.com/ etc, your choice. There are more if you don't like those. (currently using https://www.turnkeyinternet.net/ at $5/mo)

> I'm guessing amongst those pages of ToS are various catch all clauses that reserve for them the right to cease doing business with you, if for instance you engage in extremely controversial free speech (e.g. flag/bible burning videos).

Maybe, same as your home DSL line or any other ISP connection. It's standard boilerplate. They all have intentionally vague terms that let them shut you down if you're being a nuisance. It's because of the immense variety of spammers and abusers out there.

Here's the thing: they don't want to shut you down. Go ahead and host your flag/bible burning videos. Unless you get yourself DDoSed, they will be happy to help you do it.

Running your own server at home probably won't get you better ToS, but you also won't have enough upstream bandwidth to cause much of a nuisance.

>>> more computers along the communication path between you and your intended audience.
>> um... Have you ever run traceroute?
> Yes, your point being?

There are probably no less than six or seven computers on the communication path between you and your intended audience, and maybe far more. If you're both hosting in the same ISP, that number might be as low as three. Hosting at home only makes that number go up.

hillary-like personal email server appliances

Posted Aug 30, 2016 6:34 UTC (Tue) by Garak (guest, #99377) [Link] (2 responses)

you have to look at the whole picture. Hosting at home doesn't make the number go up, it makes it go down. That is assuming that in the non-home hosted case, you are still managing your content at home, and uploading it to the host. The non-home host is an extra hop.

Think about it like this- The most atomic form of communication on the internet might be a trivial sending of the string "Hello World" via a simple standard tcp/ip listen/bind/bla/bla. Imagine that is your atomic unit of free speech. Communicating a string to a requesting audience. How can adding an extra colocated (virtual) server subtract hops from that atomic transaction? The answer is that it doesn't, it adds hops.

As for all the ToS discussion, please don't misunderstand me. I understand full well that I could intentfully simply ignore my ISPs ToS and run my server just fine. In truth, I'm not all that big a bible/flag burner, but I'm big on demanding that I have the freedom to do so. And not the freedom to "get away with it" under the radar of my ISP, but the freedom to do so with no shadow of impropriety over the transaction.

Likewise, when an innovator is developing a new client/server (~or~) p2p FOSS app, one is at a tremendous advantage if there is no implicit shadow of impropriety hanging over end users utilizing that app.

At the end of the day, there is no differential resource burden on the ISP depending on whether my utilization was as a client sending and receiving 1kb each way, versus if I was a server doing the same thing with the same other end/edgepoint. This is why it bothers me that ISPs impede such communications. I think it has become a standard practice, because the general case is that people who use their bandwidth as a server, tend to be commercially profitting from that bandwidth moreso than those who use the precise same up and down bandwidth as a client. As such, the ISPs are effectively taking a 'cut' of presumed profits by charging more. Which in a libertarian capitalist sense is fine, but thats the point at which 'free speech on the internet' clearly becomes 'as much free speech as you can afford'. Which is a sad evolution of the internet as a platform for free speech, from where it was evangelized early on.

If it weren't for the curious subject matter overlap with the Hillary Clinton home email server, I'd wonder why I don't see many other people understanding my points. But I think people are hesitant to discuss this openly for political reasons. (I certainly don't want, nor expect Trump to win, but I suppose it's still theoretically possible). Because I don't think it's difficult to consider this problem from a free speech perspective, asking the simple question "Is there any kind of hard-line free speech on the internet in any truly new way, or is the internet merely a technological evolution of the old media printing press technology, and a new generation of media barons who can fight their battle of ideas by buying ink by the barrel (or transit by the terrabyte)... The U.S. FCC's Network Neutrality makes it sound like the internet is a revolutionary new com tool that somehow provides "free speech". I want some of that good stuff, and I don't know how else to try to dilineate it's existence via the internet other than how I have been. And I challenge anyone else to demonstrate how there is free speech on the internet without the 'right' to operate a server from your access point. Just think about good old Alice and Bob wanting to communicate personal messages back and forth. If neither is allowed to host a server of any kind, that constraint necessitates that they utilize someone else's server. That someone else now has the power to limit those personal messages (free speech). My solution is simple- get "someone else" out of the picture, or rather, don't have an environment where Alice and Bob have no other choice than to bring "someone else" into their communication path.

hillary-like personal email server appliances

Posted Aug 30, 2016 14:37 UTC (Tue) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]

Except, like I said, ISPs are happy to host your flag burning videos. Go ahead and read the ToS of any of those cheap providers. And go ahead and do it -- you'll be fine.

If you're looking for an ISP with zero restrictions (and it sounds like you are), you'll never find it. Just like, if you're looking for a street corner with zero free speech restrictions, you'll never find it. There are too many people who want to abuse the privilege.

The rules must allow for the abusers to be shut down.

hillary-like personal email server appliances

Posted Aug 30, 2016 15:13 UTC (Tue) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link]

But note that there are always restrictions on your freedom to act - even in your part of the USA, there are things that I might think are a good idea as a matter of political speech that are prohibited outright.

For example, I might think that recreating Joseph Standing's mission to Georgia as it ended in 1879 is a good way to remind Americans of how their state governments do not always protect freedom of religion - however, to do that would be illegal, and I would not be permitted to speak out against state governments in that manner.

hillary-like personal email server appliances

Posted Aug 27, 2016 6:56 UTC (Sat) by Garak (guest, #99377) [Link] (25 responses)

It's quite simple - running a home server requires A LOT of work to do backups, provide uninterrupted power and so on. Why would you want to do that?

And I get that this must be a troll, but I don't mind feeding this one- You can buy a UPS or a laptop with a battery (effectively a UPS) for less than $100USD. I'd guess no small percentage of commenters here have one of those lying around, quite possibly collecting dust. I'd also guess that no small percentage of commenters here would disagree with your characterization of the level of work that backups require. You'd be amazed at the number of ways that computers can help you automate tasks. Good grief.

hillary-like personal email server appliances

Posted Aug 27, 2016 7:35 UTC (Sat) by micka (subscriber, #38720) [Link] (22 responses)

They're certainly not trolling. Im' maintaning some services on a computer at home. A mail server is the one I do not want to maintain. Because of the availbiliy requirements, of the necessity to have your mail accepted by others (why bother if you don't send emails?), the necessity of downloading spam even before you can filter it, and many other problems.

And a laptop battery is not equivalent to an ups. Does the laptop battery power the DSL modem? the router ? Does it provide network access (one year ago, workers cut the optical fiber with an excavator, the whole neighbourhood was cut from internet for 3 days).

I'm winding down my dependency on the services I serve from home, wastes too much energy (literally) and pours it in the immediate environment. It's 35 degrees this week and I have no way to get rid of the excess heat. I set it up to be a low power computer at the time, now I will do it again on an ARM or other thingy. But I will still not set up a mail server.

hillary-like personal email server appliances

Posted Aug 27, 2016 8:28 UTC (Sat) by Garak (guest, #99377) [Link] (21 responses)

I think you may have missed my point. My point was that it is important that everyone have the option, not that it's important that everyone avail themself of it. When one describes freedom of speech as the freedom to publicly burn their nation's flag, one is not suggesting that free speech necessitates that people burn their flags. Just that they be free to do so if they want to. If you, given your circumstances and your personality, wish to cease operating a server, I strongly encourage you to avail yourself of your freedom to do so. I merely would like everyone to be able to have the option of the opposite trajectory if their particular circumstances and personality lead them to that choice. It's about freedom and options. That a society enables it's citizens to be free to become sculptors or painters does not mean that anyone has to become a sculptor or a painter if they don't want to. Likewise, an environment where people are free to operate servers from home, does not necessitate that anyone who does not wish to do so, do so. Maybe when products improve, you will look at your new circumstances and change your mind. Believe it or not, as more people perform experimental development of products and software, some of the tasks you accurately described as cumbersome may become much simpler and more robust. Or maybe not. But I'm guessing they will. And I think it will happen a lot faster, the more people are in the category of those who are free to test such emerging options if they choose. (without paying double or triple the monthly fee to the ISP for 'business class' service).

hillary-like personal email server appliances

Posted Aug 28, 2016 7:00 UTC (Sun) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (20 responses)

Keep in mind, that a personal mail server is nigh indistinguishable from a spam bot. And it looks like people prioritize spamless email over being able to run a private server.

hillary-like personal email server appliances

Posted Aug 28, 2016 20:11 UTC (Sun) by Garak (guest, #99377) [Link]

the internet and hammers are both tools. They can be used to build wonderful harmless things, or used to commit murder. The latter are why we have police, courts, and prisons. Spam leaves evidence. That kind of evidence, and its nature, is something the NSA should be educating us all about, instead of obfuscating for their own benefit. That's my opinion at least. And you are wrong, the only similarity in fact, between a spam bot and a home email server, is that they communicate email messages over the same sorts of ports. However there are a multitude of ways to differentiate between the two, starting with the recipient of a spam email contacting the police and/or the ISP of the spammer. When this is an end/edgepoint in another country, things are more complicated. If I tried to run a spam farm from a residence in e.g. california, things would not be that complicated. The government may try to spin FUD implying that existing laws are somehow magically uninvestigatable and unenforceable when the internet comes into play. I think this is entirely disingenuous and used as pretense to erode the privacy and liberty of the public. Tinfoil hat, Snowden, bla bla. You are clearly part of the problem, not the solution Cyberax. Nigh indistinguishable, jesus. Somewhere there is testimony from Vint Cerf to the U.S. congress from around 2005 discussing how the classic spam arguments against net neutrality are pure B.S. Looks like people like you are still parroting them 11 years later. We've got such a long way to go.

hillary-like personal email server appliances

Posted Aug 28, 2016 20:57 UTC (Sun) by Garak (guest, #99377) [Link] (18 responses)

Keep in mind, that a personal mail server is nigh indistinguishable from a spam bot. And it looks like people prioritize spamless email over being able to run a private server.

For my own amusement, let me paraphrase almost as incendiarily as I can- "Keep in mind, that a purple person walking down the street with a toolbelt including a hammer, though they be only a carpenter, is nigh indistinguishable from a person who recently bludgeoned to death someone with a hammer. It looks like the orange people prioritize a harmonious society with more easily investigatable murders over allowing purple carpenters to walk down the street while wearing their toolbelts"

Alternately, if the crime of littering was your highest priority, you could merely imprison anyone who had the physical capability to litter. But we don't do that. As a general rule, humanity seems to have found a balance where giving everyone liberty, including the liberty to commit crimes, outweighs the alternative.

I suppose your argument, is that you, and the rest of the world are perfectly fine with a world where the internet does not involve anyone operating a server from home. Myself, I'm not fine with that at all, because it sounds like a blueprint for how tyranical authoritarians can turn the 'disruptive' technology of the internet, into something where they get to maintain their position as tyrannical gatekeeper over all the new communication the new internet tech allows.

Not cool.

OMG, forget the murderers, I think yesterday I was the victim of receiving an unsolicited email. Stop the presses, re-open GITMO, break out the black hoods. Jesus, overconcerned about the harms of spam much? Oh, but you say that the environment of spam allows even more nefarious crimes to go on. I'm sure the gubernments that managed to whack bin laden couldn't ever track down those spammers and bring them to justice. It's all lies.

hillary-like personal email server appliances

Posted Aug 29, 2016 7:03 UTC (Mon) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (17 responses)

Oh well, what a rant.

Obviously, if you don't get over-enthusiastic about a God-given right to run private email server then you are probably Hitler who wants to put everyone in Gitmo.

hillary-like personal email server appliances

Posted Aug 29, 2016 18:16 UTC (Mon) by Garak (guest, #99377) [Link] (16 responses)

actually it's more like- if you go as far out of your way as you have to *completely* avoid acknowledging a serious and legitimate free speech issue...

hillary-like personal email server appliances

Posted Aug 29, 2016 21:29 UTC (Mon) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (15 responses)

I personally don't see any connections between free speech and personal mail servers. And before you say that I'm a covert GESTAPO agent, I actually lived through (and supported) a fairly recent popular revolution.

Unless you make home hosting easy and practical it won't be used in any significant roles by a significant amount of users. And I just don't see how it can be practical. There are actually more important projects worth pursuing (like https://matrix.org/ ) that can actually make an impact.

And on a sidenote, the rants like the one above is a major reason why people think that techies are completely clueless.

No, Virginia, there is no Santa Claus and your triple-encrypted PGP signed network-of-trust email server won't promote free speech in any meaningful way.

hillary-like personal email server appliances

Posted Aug 29, 2016 22:22 UTC (Mon) by Garak (guest, #99377) [Link] (14 responses)

Unless you make home hosting easy and practical it won't be used in any significant roles by a significant amount of users. And I just don't see how it can be practical.

To be blunt- I think you lack imagination. You clearly see no merit in my theory- that the double/triple-price "business class / server allowed" impediment to development, testing, and deployment of new solutions/evolutions, is very precisely the one and only real impediment to "making home hosting easy and practical".

We disagree, that's fine, it happens.

hillary-like personal email server appliances

Posted Aug 29, 2016 22:35 UTC (Mon) by micka (subscriber, #38720) [Link] (11 responses)

> the double/triple-price "business class / server allowed"

Does it exist in many countries ? In just one ? I sure don't see it here. Does it exist just in _your_ country. If so, is it really an impediment to development, testing and deployment of new solutions/evolution ?
I don't know if it's the case in one, some or many countries, and I'm not sure you know either.

hillary-like personal email server appliances

Posted Aug 29, 2016 22:51 UTC (Mon) by Garak (guest, #99377) [Link] (10 responses)

In my country, the U.S. it does exist. I can't say that I've done a survey asking the major providers what the least expensive server allowed plan is, but... I did manage to utilize the Kansas Attorney General and the FCC to compel a Google(Fiber) lawyer to do the first level of research. I.e. they used in their defense the fact that it was all but defacto practice in the U.S. for major residential ISPs to disallow server hosting in their terms of service.

Shortly after my 50 plus page complaint to the FCC in 2012, a family in Utah (the other major GFiber deployment at the time) got their small children to hold some picket signs, within 48 hours GFiber relaxed their ToS language to allow 'non-commercial' server usage. Which actually feeds my anti-commercial-competitive suspicion of motivation on their part.

As for really being an impediment? I'd sure say so. I can easily enough shell out more money to my ISP or colo or vps provider, but all receipients of any FOSS solutions I develop would need to do likewise. That's enough of a hurdle I think to slow development to a relative crawl. Also going with a colo or vps introduces a new layer of free speech limiting terms of service / gatekeeper being added to the equation. But many other developers no doubt have less concern there.

hillary-like personal email server appliances

Posted Aug 30, 2016 7:00 UTC (Tue) by micka (subscriber, #38720) [Link] (9 responses)

So we have one data point: in your country, some of the ISPs don't allow to maintain a web server.
As far as we both know now, there is one country in the world where some of the people can't do it.
Maybe there are other places, but as for now, we don't know.

How would you conclude, at this point, that it's even marginally an impediment to the creation of these programs when maybe 1/30th of the world population has this problem (and for most of them, don't care about it)?

Ah, and also, the US are not the center of the world.

hillary-like personal email server appliances

Posted Aug 30, 2016 7:28 UTC (Tue) by Garak (guest, #99377) [Link] (8 responses)

The U.S. may not be the center of the world, but I still like our music and stand-up comedians way better than any other countries. (Well, Canada's not too bad, Kids In The Hall, Rush, Good Stuff...)

hillary-like personal email server appliances

Posted Aug 30, 2016 14:51 UTC (Tue) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link] (7 responses)

So you were just trolling? That's a disappointment.

hillary-like personal email server appliances

Posted Aug 30, 2016 16:20 UTC (Tue) by Garak (guest, #99377) [Link] (6 responses)

Yes, read all that I wrote and come to the conclusion that I was just trolling. Go for it. Or convict me for the crime of being moderately disappointed with others who IMHO have failed to take advantage of the wonderful freedom to run servers from home. I think the current situation most certainly does give the opportunity for countries other than the U.S. to outshine the U.S. in the development of this particular kind of home/personal/mobile server software. If the rest of the world squanders that opportunity, then, I guess my respect for the U.S. increases (by a kind of sad default).

hillary-like personal email server appliances

Posted Aug 30, 2016 17:05 UTC (Tue) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link] (5 responses)

Your reply to micka was 100% troll. Makes me wonder about the motives behind your other statements.

The rest of the world has already passed the US by in broadband speeds, mobile coverage, and IPv6 adoption. Perceived ToS limitations seem pretty small in comparison.

hillary-like personal email server appliances

Posted Aug 31, 2016 12:25 UTC (Wed) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (4 responses)

> The rest of the world has already passed the US by in broadband speeds, mobile coverage, and IPv6 adoption. Perceived ToS limitations seem pretty small in comparison.

Not quite so sure about lumping things in together there.

High broadband speeds are generally available to most of the population. Unfortunately due to the lack of meaningful competition in most markets, it'll cost you.

Mobile coverage is primarily a matter of population density. These days, unless you truly live in the middle of nowhere, you're fine. (FWIW, I recently purchased some property that qualifies -- but even there there is good mobile coverage but just not with my current carrier)

When it comes to *fixed* IPv6, Comcast alone puts the US into the top tier of IPv6 deployment. Mobile IPv6 is similarly carrier dependent, but at least two of the national carriers here support it across their entire footprint.

ToS limitations are not "perceived" but actual; In my case, without paying about double the residential rates, I'd be categorically forbidden from running a server of any kind, no option of a static address, and port 25 and 80 blocked upstream.

hillary-like personal email server appliances

Posted Aug 31, 2016 14:15 UTC (Wed) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link] (3 responses)

Oof, I didn't mean to go into the weeds. I just wanted to illustrate that ToS are not the biggest networking problem the US is facing, nor are they unique to the US. (Unless you're using a television company as an ISP I suppose, in which case: what did you expect??)

> High broadband speeds are generally available to most of the population

Only by the old definition. 4MB download is NOT broadband, no matter what the FCC says.

Besides, I wasn't contesting that. I was just saying relative to the world, it looks like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Intern...

Mobile coverage is the same story -- it only seems good if you don't travel: https://opensignal.com/reports/2015/09/state-of-lte-q3-2015/ We've been catching up in the last year but we still have a long way to go.

If you have data that shows otherwise, please share!

You're right about IPv6 -- I was laboring under antiquated information. I'm happy to no longer worry about this one.

hillary-like personal email server appliances

Posted Aug 31, 2016 15:55 UTC (Wed) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (2 responses)

> Besides, I wasn't contesting that. I was just saying relative to the world, it looks like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Intern...

That data shows a pretty wide gap between *average measured* vs *peak measured* speeds. Honestly I'm not sure how useful the latter is -- For example, Singapore utterly dominates peak speeds but on average ranks lower than the US -- but the Q3 2015 data does show that the 80% of the US's population has at least 4Mbps downstream -- but given that the average measured is over 12Mbps, there's a substantial part of the population that has much higher speeds. Those numbers have only improved since then -- the Q1 2016 shows average connection speed is 15.3Mbps, peak is 67.7Mbps, Measured 4/10/15Mbps penetration is now 85.7/56.7/35.1%, a substantial improvement for six months -- and even that data is still nearly six months out of date.

That supports my point that higher speeds are usually _available_ to most of the populace in the US, but are often priced beyond what most folks would consider affordable or worthwhile. Meanwhile, elsewhere in the world, those same higher speeds are not only available but far more reasonably priced.

Of course, what's not mentioned in any of these metrics is the *upload* speed, which is far more critical to running a server.

hillary-like personal email server appliances

Posted Aug 31, 2016 18:37 UTC (Wed) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]

When I visit friends in Japan and Denmark, everyone has cheap 100mbit connections and takes them completely for granted. Over here, we grind along with flaky cable modems and the media still cheers every Google Fiber and Fios announcement. The numbers on that page match my experience anyway.

Agreed, things are getting better, but we're still disturbingly slow in comparison to the rest of the world.

> higher speeds are usually _available_ to most of the populace in the US, but are often priced beyond what most folks would consider affordable or worthwhile

That's always true everywhere. You can pay for a dedicated satellite link if you want. It's another way of saying higher speeds aren't really available, right?

hillary-like personal email server appliances

Posted Sep 1, 2016 5:47 UTC (Thu) by Garak (guest, #99377) [Link]

ToS limitations are not "perceived" but actual; In my case, without paying about double the residential rates, I'd be categorically forbidden from running a server of any kind, no option of a static address, and port 25 and 80 blocked upstream.

Indeed. As far the nuance between 'actual at the business contract / terms of service' level, and 'actual at the ISP gateway filtering' level, I merely opine my original point that such difference simply makes or breaks large swaths of potential competitive solutions.

Of course, what's not mentioned in any of these metrics is the *upload* speed, which is far more critical to running a server.

And here I'll try to bow out of this debate with a final compulsive pedanticism- Not 'critical'. As far as free speech is concerned, as long as there is enough bandwidth for plenty of text communication, that has tremendous utility sans any large amounts of upload bandwidth. Certainly with every increasing order of magnitude of upload bandwidth, your server/s can do more interesting things. Text, then gaming, then voice, then video, then high def, then etc... But never forget, even limited to 56kbps, you can engage in some amazing levels of liberating free (text) speech on the internet. Kids probably take that stuff for granted these days.

Get off my virtual lawn.

hillary-like personal email server appliances

Posted Aug 30, 2016 1:37 UTC (Tue) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (1 responses)

I know that this theory is pure BS. I lived in a country where 1GB Internet was common, without any real restrictions. Yet pretty much the only hosted servic were BitTorrent shares.

hillary-like personal email server appliances

Posted Aug 30, 2016 2:06 UTC (Tue) by Garak (guest, #99377) [Link]

and somewhere in a thousand years, some AI will compare and contrast our points here with recorded history. I am still quite hopeful that home/personal(mobile/subcutaneous/etc) hosted servers will bring a very significant level of utility to humanity in the coming decades and centuries.

hillary-like personal email server appliances

Posted Aug 29, 2016 9:30 UTC (Mon) by NAR (subscriber, #1313) [Link] (1 responses)

I certainly don't have any UPSs around at home. 15 years ago I did have an old 486 server running at home. In those days only dial-up internet connection was available, charged by the minute. One small configuration error on my part led to an uninterrupted two weeks long connection and a telephone bill more than half of my monthly wage. Definitely wasn't fun. It is just one of the things that could go wrong. Running safe, secure and highly available service at home is complicated, otherwise the wages of sysadmins wouldn't be at the level they are now. It's so much easier to access gmail.com.

hillary-like personal email server appliances

Posted Aug 29, 2016 18:18 UTC (Mon) by Garak (guest, #99377) [Link]

I'll point out that I've kept my ranting to a nice subset of this thread. I entirely enjoy the rest of this thread that lays out the technical difficulties involved with being the sysadmin for any kind of email server. I'd also point out that I've addressed how that related to my free speech soapboxing. I just want a soapbox, er, server.