Comment by lambda | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lambda | Hacker News Reader

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I like the effort they go through in the comment thread to discuss the performance, power draw, etc. compared to a VPS. For instance, a VPS appears to draw 56 watts per user, while the SheevaPlug plus disk at high load draw only 20 watts; a pretty nice power savings.

From the site http://pluggr.info/#ps

"Please note that TonidoPlugs installed on our network have the torrent functionality disabled, as it is a violation of our AUP to download torrents via our network."

Sigh. I know why they do this, but I will not host on a network that forbids a protocol just because some people use it for unsavory purposes. I like to transfer free software and creative commons licenses work using Bittorrent; I should be able to do that on my own server, and if they want to charge me for the bandwidth usage, that's fine, but they shouldn't just ban it outright. Also odd that they don't actually mention this on their AUP http://pluggr.info/#tos but they do seem to forbid running IRC servers for some reason.

I know why they do this, but I will not host on a network that forbids a protocol just because some people use it for unsavory purposes.

I understand your perspective, but coming from the other side, I can tell you for a small ISP operation it can be a major PITA worrying about lawsuits and other potential issues related to users doing things on your network that draw the wrath of content owners. I don't limit bandwidth or protocols, and I've gotten a few notices of boxes that were hosting copyright content, but it's more overhead and hassle that you don't need to deal with.

AUP = Acceptable use policy? I'm beginning to hate acronyms from the bottom of my heart.

When I first saw this, I felt gutted. Having quickly record the coating whilst waiting for this pathetic ryanair flight get boarded, I feel better knowing I have just got a fantastic deal on my VPS. Won't mention the company here unless asked to, cost is just £10/ month.

eh, a 32GiB ram 8 core G34 opteron with 4 disks is going to eat around 150 watts; that's a lot of 512MiB VPSs. The shevaplug/disk setup will definitely get you better I/O performance than the VPS (hard drives share... poorly.) but as far as power goes, the VPS, on modern hardware is going to win.

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