TransACT shared servers

[Jeremy]

On 2002.03.24 01:13 Alex Satrapa wrote:
> On Sunday, March 24, 2002, at 12:16 , Michael James wrote:
> 
>> Reading the RFC for pppoe made me wonder if we could set up
>>  our home servers to accept pppoe connections
>>  and connect direct through the TransACT cloud.

Kind of.  You can't really run servers like TransACT does - it's kind 
of like being on a boat on a river - you are carried by a current.  In 
this case, the current is TransACT.  You can only offer services like a 
TransACT ISP if you have a server in the TranACT server room.  Entry is 
$1000 per rack per month, shared racks allowed.  Otherwise you have to 
float on top of the river, and be carried by the current.

You may, of course, set up any kind of network on top of the TransACT 
network, but I haven't seen anything approaching the usefulness of 
TCP/IP that can be carried on top of TCP/IP (as already provided by 
TransACT).


> 
> Rather than use PPPoE, why not use PPTP?

The main trouble with these plans is that you are not guaranteed the 
same IP numbers two connections in a row.  All the traditional services 
( and I am thinking DNS-mediated in particular ) rely on a server 
having the same IP number(s) day in, day out.  Dynamic DNS is not a 
good solution, because it needs to be anchored by at least a few IP 
addresses, making it no different to any other server.

Even if you got your servers up, you face the nearly impossible task of 
organising a network.


> 
> Or IPSec?
> 
>> Then we need a proxy setup that says,
>>  "You can have it if it's in the cache,
>>  but if it isn't and you do get it,
>>  please upload the copy you got."
> 
> Most proxies can be configured to along the lines of "You can have it 
> if I've already got it" - I would suggest using a peer to try and 
> fetch it if that cache doesn't have it.

This true, but it still needs a way to find it's companion proxies, 
either by DNS name or IP.

The alternative DNS people (name escapes me... anyone?) have written 
patches to the usual DNS resolver routines that will check the normal 
)names escapes me again..) DNS servers and then check the alternative 
system rather than return a fail... but these aren't going to be in 
mainstream Linux anytime soon, let alone Windows.

I have a big rant prepared on what the net needs.  In actuality, I will 
see about setting up a gnutella/FreeNET server to share useful Linux 
files, maybe even by the end of the weekend.  Users of webone should be 
able to play for free.