FLEB
Dec 20th, 2004, 12:12 PM
Well, first let me introduce myself, since this is only my first or second post... I'm Rudy Fleminger, better known online as FLEB. I'm not a caster (yet?), but I am a hooked listener, and I've been hearing a lot about the big bandwidth woes.
I've seen a lot of PayPal tip jars online, to help people pay for ballooning bandwidth costs on shows that become flash-popular. I got to thinking, and I'm thinking why not eliminate the middle step? Along with soliciting for money to buy bandwidth, and the BitTorrent method that may or may not work, there ought to be a quick and easy way to give and get blocks of bandwidth for load balancing.
Now, I rank myself as "Mid-level Amateur" in web programming, so if anyone sees any big logistical problems with this, please throw them in.
Let's say I want to help out a site that's getting beaten under in bandwidth... Coverville, for instance, which just went down earlier this morning (neeeeeed my fiiiiix... so glad it's back up). I've got a small site, with just text and images, no big media or anything (like I said, I don't cast), so I would have a fair amount of my 65GB/mo of transfer free.
Let's say I wanted to donate 10MB of space and 10GB/mo of transfer (perhaps meted out as 333MB/day). I don't imagine it would be that difficult of a task, using background server-to-server communication via CGI or other scripts, to set up a load-sharing system under these terms.
First, both parties involved would meet, greet, and set up the transaction on each of their servers... trust would be a factor, since someone could more easily slip spurious MP3s in there if signing up was automated.
My server would fetch the relevant MP3 file from his, and store it in a protected location. The file should be served through a script, not directly, to facilitate hit counting (so it knows when the 10GB is used up), and other access control.
His RSS files would access a load-balancing script, instead of the direct MP3. The script would "ping" a script on my server to make sure the file is still being served. If it is, then it would 301-redirect to my server. If it isn't, the load-balancing script would try other servers or use the locally-stored copy.
Once "File Size * Hits = Bandwidth" on my server, my server would close up shop, start denying hits to that file, and return a "Not serving" response to anyone "pinging" it. Perhaps my server would 301-redirect back to a static known location of the file on the original site. It might be too many 301 bounces, but it's better than a "404: Not Found".
An additional option, at the option of the original caster, might be allowing short underwriters' ads or promotional messages to be tacked on to the beginning, end, or ID3 tag when the file is served remotely. That way, people could get something back for the donated bandwidth.
Thoughts? Ideas? Has this been proposed before?
I've seen a lot of PayPal tip jars online, to help people pay for ballooning bandwidth costs on shows that become flash-popular. I got to thinking, and I'm thinking why not eliminate the middle step? Along with soliciting for money to buy bandwidth, and the BitTorrent method that may or may not work, there ought to be a quick and easy way to give and get blocks of bandwidth for load balancing.
Now, I rank myself as "Mid-level Amateur" in web programming, so if anyone sees any big logistical problems with this, please throw them in.
Let's say I want to help out a site that's getting beaten under in bandwidth... Coverville, for instance, which just went down earlier this morning (neeeeeed my fiiiiix... so glad it's back up). I've got a small site, with just text and images, no big media or anything (like I said, I don't cast), so I would have a fair amount of my 65GB/mo of transfer free.
Let's say I wanted to donate 10MB of space and 10GB/mo of transfer (perhaps meted out as 333MB/day). I don't imagine it would be that difficult of a task, using background server-to-server communication via CGI or other scripts, to set up a load-sharing system under these terms.
First, both parties involved would meet, greet, and set up the transaction on each of their servers... trust would be a factor, since someone could more easily slip spurious MP3s in there if signing up was automated.
My server would fetch the relevant MP3 file from his, and store it in a protected location. The file should be served through a script, not directly, to facilitate hit counting (so it knows when the 10GB is used up), and other access control.
His RSS files would access a load-balancing script, instead of the direct MP3. The script would "ping" a script on my server to make sure the file is still being served. If it is, then it would 301-redirect to my server. If it isn't, the load-balancing script would try other servers or use the locally-stored copy.
Once "File Size * Hits = Bandwidth" on my server, my server would close up shop, start denying hits to that file, and return a "Not serving" response to anyone "pinging" it. Perhaps my server would 301-redirect back to a static known location of the file on the original site. It might be too many 301 bounces, but it's better than a "404: Not Found".
An additional option, at the option of the original caster, might be allowing short underwriters' ads or promotional messages to be tacked on to the beginning, end, or ID3 tag when the file is served remotely. That way, people could get something back for the donated bandwidth.
Thoughts? Ideas? Has this been proposed before?