Also it was meant to prevent someone modifying the code to always quote cheaper and get all the income. Or quote too high to try and get winfall profits many times the normal price.
Lucky people, the average for the world with Gbps connections skewing the average a lot higher, the speed test sites show average upload speeds as less than 50Mbps.
Indeed, we don’t all have new BMWs and flat smooth autobahns to run them on.
Though it IS fun 
But if this was not “modifying”, but a default way of doing things, everybody would try to offer cheap enough price. Those who have some edge there, offer cheaper, but competition is not unfair.
It’s not different from current system, where the price is set in code and those who can afford to run nodes with that price do, and others don’t.
It’s just that one way you are free to set the price according to your costs. The other way you are free to try to manage your costs according to price. Method is different, but end result the same.
To allow node operators free reign on price setting then you risk some just dropping the price, get all the chunks to their systems and then scram out of here. Network suffers.
Need to have price quote to be according to your node storage (& market) so that everyone can afford to run nodes. So by taking the mean quote value rather than the lowest we eliminate those trying to manipulate the market. The lowest price is not always the best as @Southside says.
Also imagine that I run up a lot of VPS nodes and have my price 5% lower than everyone else. I get to store all the chunks in the close area and the other nodes still have to store but never see anything, but are doing the work.
For redundancy the nodes have to cooperate and that includes the general price. Otherwise the few could get all the payments while the majority get little to none. At least paying the 3 closest to the mean means that the cost and rewards are being shared more evenly and encourages more participation and in a fairer manner for all.
Autonomi is very much a community minded network, the community of nodes have to work together
They only get the payment, not the chunks. Chunks location is based on XOR.
Everyone is never going to afford to run nodes. Costs are not equal everywhere. We see this already.
Can you really afford to do so? Others are trying the same.
Maybe in the short term.
But over time I can’t see average FIAT earnings per node per month be any different, no matter if the ANT price is set by the user or the network.
But to set and enforce it by the network is certainly more work for the network.
Is asking quotes for all 768 chunks in parallel, as fast as it can or does it limit max pending queries any way?
I had some trouble with Launchpad v0.5.5 because I couldn’t enter the ‘Options’ menu to upgrade, until I realized the ‘O’ is case-sensitive. I’m on Windows 10. I don’t know if that’s by design, but it was confusing because I kept pressing the letter ‘O’ and it didn’t work. I thought the node manager was stuck, but the letter ‘Q’ kept working to quit. ‘Q’ is case-insensitive.
If there os
This would mean the uploader gets quite instantly 5376 UDP frames as a response, all from different nodes. But would that be a problem? Maybe not?
The fact is the UX on the Launchpad is dreadful.
Inconsistent case-sensitivity, options shown on one page that only work on another, the list goes on.
This probably does not get enough attention and pushback because most of the experienced users are using antctl, Formicaio or NTracking/anm to manage their nodes and its left to the new users to find the limitations of LaunchPad.
its a true shame the state of affairs im always happy to help people use and set up NTacking or anm but it should not be this way
And it is to my shame that I still have not got around to tidying up some of the loose ends and making it prettier.
It is far and away the most detailed and powerful method of managing and monitoring your nodes.
Buuuut I have to say Formicaio is quite powerful itself and in many cases Just Works out of the box - or rather out of the zip archive.
each to there own Formicaio is beautiful and i had a test install. anm and NTracking is more for the hardcore.
everything has a place here and @ambled is thinking about making a python port of anm.
its just making the right tools available to the right people at the right time.
Some time with wireshark could probably enlighten, but I see where you are coming from!
Tbh, the client should only need quotes for each batch of chunks. No need to get them all at once.
For cost queries, obviously we need them all as soon as possible, but that can still come in batches.
I haven’t looked at the code or done any analysis, but it’s surprising that just getting quotes is so heavy on the client and the local network. Surely, quotes should be tiny? What is it doing?
YOu really MUST change that option 9 Stop Nodes so it does not do a reboot without a warning message
gets them every time lol
Too much too soon by the looks of it
touch $HOME/.local/share/no-reboot
will create a file that will cause it to skip the reboot
That should be an automatic part of the install that can be overidden if the user really feels a reboot is required “to be on the safe side”
people can do what i tell them or fork off 
its to make sure the ports are freed up before the next run iv not tested recently but back in the old days ports were not freed up but i am going back a few years
Linux default UDP buffer size is ~213kb, so it could really be a problem, 213kb/5376 frames = max ~40 bytes/frame.
Edit:actually it is 213kb/socket, so maybe not