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Show HN: Gridspot, 10x cheaper cloud compute using distributed computing

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Re: Show HN: Gridspot, 10x cheaper cloud compute using distributed computing

#111

Post by donavanm »

slig wrote: post #34
panarky wrote: post #26

This would be perfect for crawling with a large number of distinct IP addresses, or for fighting DDOS attacks. However: "All network traffic is proxied through a central data center we maintain." https://gridspot.com/compute/api_help

How is possible to fight a DDOS attack with lots of IP addresses?

Increase the attack surface area. With anycast the nearest nodes to the attackers "sink" all of the traffic. The rest of the nodes continue to serve other customers with no I'll effect.

With this product you will have a very wide base of unicast addresses. Treat each node/address as disposable. Use fast failing health checks and an out of band control plane. As each node falls to attack remove it from your service discovery layer (DNS/http 302/etc). See "fast flux dns" for implementation ideas. The attacker will spend a disproportionate amount of resources (packets/s) attacking each of your disposable nodes. The majority of your "good" customers will continue to be served. In a traditional tiered architecture the L3->L7 routing layer (LB/Proxy) is very expensive to scale vertically. Your data store & compute end are clustered behind these choke points. Remove/minimize shared state and you can have independent units of compute. Remove those L3->L7 choke points and you can get a wider & flatter L1->L3 network fabric. Besides increased durability you get more aggregate bandwidth per $.

Re: Show HN: Gridspot, 10x cheaper cloud compute using distributed computing

#112

Post by damian2000 »

zxcvvcxz wrote: post #74

Can somebody explain to me how this works? Gridspot doesn't use a server farm like Amazon? I don't get it. Looks like a pretty sweet service though.

If I understand it right, the 'cloud' VM you get is running whole or in part on desktop user's machines out there somewhere in the world (and connected to the internet) who have donated their machine's spare CPU power to GridSpot.

Re: Show HN: Gridspot, 10x cheaper cloud compute using distributed computing

#113

Post by pash »

damian2000 wrote: post #110
KaoruAoiShiho wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment is quite rude, but I still haven't seen an answer for this yet. How did you get all these users to donate their computers even though nobody seems to have heard of you yet? Something seems fishy, and I wish you'd answer.

Fake it till you make it? I don't know for sure, but could they be subsidising the launch by running instances on EC2? ... When they get enough hosts signed up, switch over to their distributed model, or even run a hybrid combination to handle demand spikes.

Google shows results for "gridspot.exe" on ID-this-process sites dating from mid-March. So it's out there and has been for a few months. The question is whose machines it's running on.

Re: Show HN: Gridspot, 10x cheaper cloud compute using distributed computing

#115

Post by MichaelApproved »

nmridul wrote: post #103

Is it possible for someone to lend the idle time of their VPS / dedicated web Servers in return for cash ? People could run their websites without issue as most of the time, they may not be using it to full capacity. And you will get better connection (better than DSL speed) and better performance machines (server grade). Could be a win win for everyone.

I bet web hosts would put in a clause that won't allow you to sublet in this manner.

Re: Show HN: Gridspot, 10x cheaper cloud compute using distributed computing

#118

Post by EmmaKay »

staunch wrote: post #105
qeorge wrote: post #14

I'm curious to see if this works. "SETI but paid" is a very tempting idea, but we could never get the back of the envelope math to work out to the point where we could pay the contributors anything compelling (e.g., enough to offset their power cost). I guess you can get a few people to sign-up for fun, but we could never come up with a reason other than serendipity that would make people donate their CPU time for us…

Maybe turn it into a raffle? Every month a random VM host gets a huge prize (all the money that would have been distributed)? If the service was really successful you could be giving out n * $100k prizes every month. Just treat it like the (much cheaper) server hosting bill.

Already being done: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jjqHXsVF-0

Re: Show HN: Gridspot, 10x cheaper cloud compute using distributed computing

#119

Post by EmmaKay »

larrys wrote: post #61
freshhawk wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't work. As soon as you move the incentive to the world of financial norms people start wondering why they are bothering for a couple bucks a year. They will get more people doing it to be part of a community if they can keep that community seeming "cool" in some way.

Exactly low pay (generally) provides more of a disincentive than no pay. OTOH if you say "we will donate to charity $x" that might work.

It does work, and it's being done: www.charityengine.com

Re: Show HN: Gridspot, 10x cheaper cloud compute using distributed computing

#120

Post by hhjj »

adamsmith wrote: post #25
soupboy wrote: post #21

From [1] - "Our users volunteer their idle compute resources because they want to be part of something valuable to the world. We believe that this is a motivator far more powerful than paying people a small amount of money every month.". Yeah, I don't think that is going to work, especially because you are for-profit organization not SETI [1] - https://gridspot.com/gridspot_safe

There's a surprising behavioral economics result that says people will do things for free that they won't do for small amounts of money. A check in the mail for a dollar or two every month isn't as compelling as being part of a group effort. And empirically, it seems to be working. The number of contributing machines is currently in the six figures. The main risk right now is on the demand side, i.e. whether or not p…

Your "giving back" paragraph about what motivates your users is completely dishonest. You know your users are clueless and installed your client because it was bundled with an application they actually wanted to use.
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