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Why not use a cheap unmetered VPS for high-traffic file hosting?
alfonzo8812
Member
Hi everyone,
I'm excited to be joining the LET community! This is my first post, so please bear with me if I've made any mistakes – I'm happy to correct them. Thanks in advance!
Recently, I've been researching methods for AV de-mosaicing, and the open-source project lada has been incredibly helpful.
Out of curiosity, I looked into the history of the project and found the incident where its repository was deleted from GitHub. The project was so popular that the download traffic became overwhelming. According to the developer, a single Windows release (v0.8.1) generated about 119TB of traffic:
This massive bandwidth usage led to the repository being taken down.
After the project moved to Codeberg, a discussion emerged about finding a new file hosting solution. Members of the community suggested options like SourceForge and Google Drive.
This brings me to my question: I was surprised that no one in that discussion suggested using a cheap VPS with unmetered bandwidth. For example, I've seen providers like Colocrossing offering plans for as low as $11/year with 1Gbps unmetered bandwidth. The files that need to be hosted are less than 4GB in total, which would easily fit on a VPS like that.
Is there a reason this wasn't considered a viable option? I'm very curious to hear your thoughts on why one wouldn't use such an affordable VPS for this purpose.
Comments
unmetered doesnt mean unlimited.
you will get kicked out if you use over 100TB of bandwidth on a $11/y VPS. Also tbh I'd be surprised if you could considering the limited CPU
not use a cheap unmetered VPS
even 11$ doesn't make any sense to use unlimited bandwidth for entire year
the cheapest way to this is to host it in a bunch of free filehosts and have a html page at github pages with javascript redirecting in round robin/randomly every visitor
Ban
If you know you will be using X amount, don't try and cheap out and expect a provider to have no fair use on their services.
If need a set amount of resources agree it with the provider and pay the going rate, then you have no issues.
It's called greed and considered to be a sin
hello everyone...!
There are plenty of providers which sell unmetered for cheap and will actually allow you to use it. It just became generally accepted here to sell unmetered when it isn't, but there are providers which actually deliver on the promise.
1 gbps would not suffice for 119 TB per month, you would need multiple servers. But it is actually possible to do, and the cheapest way of reliably and conveniently delivering such downloads.
You could also use Cloudflare R2, it has zero egress fees.
A 1Gbps public network port working non stop and always at full speed will be able to transfer approximately 300TB in a month. That traffic is to be shared among dozens of users.
If just one single user eats 119TB out of the available 300TB then it's easy to figure what will happen next.
Pivot to torrents and host a seed with limited bandwidth like 100 Mbits so it can't go over it
Is it really 4 gb? If then ovh VPs and torrents
In fact, this compressed file is even smaller than 4GB—it's only slightly larger than 3GB.
Thank you all for your responses. I understand why this approach is not taken.
Your host will ban you for wasting their bandwidth if they notice.
But if you pay $50/month or so, instead of $1/month, you totally can.
I can host it
It is recommended to use Cloudflare's S3 storage
Can you share the link?
The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed -- for lack of a better word -- is good.
Greed is right.
Greed works.
Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit.
Greed, in all of its forms -- greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge -- has marked the upward surge of mankind.
Greed for love sounds like another sin