Ask HN: What to Do with Surplus Bandwidth?

1 pointwarent5 comments

I have a gigabit connection, symmetrical, and don't use it all.

Is there a good way to donate this somehow, e.g. to some nonprofit or research groups? Any other ideas?

Maybe provide a mirror of the OpenStreetMap https://planet.openstreetmap.org/ , wikipedia https://wikimedia.bringyour.com/ or wikidata dumps. Or Linux https://ftp.fau.de/ (statistics https://ftp.fau.de/cgi-bin/show-ftp-stats.cgi)

There are proxy VPNs that pay for access to bandwidth from residential IP addresses, e.g. to crawl Google results. I can't find a URL right now. It wasn't much though, 20 USD per month if I recall.

great suggestions thank you

Are you on a passive fiber network, like AT&T Fiber GPON?

great question, I'm actually not sure what passive means or how I'd know

If it's a new AT&T fiber installation in your neighborhood, it's most certainly passive. You will also see these devices hanging from telephone poles:

https://www.corning.com/microsites/coc/Fiber-to-the-Premise/...

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