Hi there, I understand enough of the web to dislike the existing “Walled Garden” concept of contained Internet platforms and in particular undemocratic forums. Is Maidsafe sort of like that SETI project in a sense where you give up a chunk of your hard drive here in Europe half the day while it is switched on, then at night your site maybe hosted in Australia can still be online? Because if this is my way of understanding it let’s go! 
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Yes and no.
Think of every file is split up into 1MB chunks and spread across the world. 8 copies of each chunk is stored in different “vaults” to provide redundancy. So your website is made up of multiple files and each file is split into at least 3 chunks. The network will retrieve each file for you so you don’t have to worry about how it is stored.
Your site has it webpages stored and the site visitor’s browser asks for the pages as needed just like it does on the web now.
If someone turns off their vault then the network automatically makes sure that the chunks that were stored on that vault are stored elsewhere in the network so as to maintain at least 8 copies of each chunk
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Wow! 8 copies! That’s more than enough! Thank you for the fast answer! So logically to have 24 hour coverage you really need distributed hosts around the world to get around silly peeps like me switching off my PC at night! So e.g., my data in Germany is being hosted in Sydney, Australie while I’m in bed! Is this right?
Another question: does this mean you no longer have to pay for a hostname? Because if you set up your own no need for a DNS? Did I get this right? Free hosted information?
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I think you missed the point. Your data is hosted on multiple vaults (machines) all around the world.
Lets say you have a simple site with 8 pages and each file (page) is less than 3MB.
- 8 files * 3 chunks gives 24 chunks.
- each chunk has at least 8 copies of it which means 192 chunks
- so 192 machines around the world is storing your pages.
- when any one of those vaults is turned off the network copies the chunks it was storing to other vaults somewhere around the world
It does not matter who uploads those 8 web page files, and does not matter where they were initially stored. The network always makes sure there are 8 copies of each chunk being stored “randomly” arounf the world.
Lets take one of those files which was split into 3 chunks. The 1st chunk may have its 8 copies in 8 different countries or maybe less, we don’t know for sure since its random. Same for the 2nd chunk of the file and those 8 copies will be in other random vaults. And so on for all the chunks.
So to say if you turn off your computer in europe then the chunk will be stored in sydney is wrong. Your file chunk copies will be on other people’s computers in vaults.
Just the cost to “PUT” the name data onto the network, nothing special no registration fess etc.
The distributed name service uses data store that is accessed by anyone and the store is rather like file storage, multiple copies etc. If you try to register a name that already exists then the Mutable Data object will exist and you cannot change that, only the one who created that object can change it. So you have to choose another name. Search the forum there is a lot of discussion already about good and bad of the system.
When you store a chunk or mutable data object the network charges some fraction of a safecoin to do the store. But yes its a forever store with a one time cost and the cost is a lot cheaper than web hosting costs.
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How much does the PUTting of namedata on the network cost?
It will vary depending on how full the network is. It is paid for with SAFE coin
This really gives excellent overview of SAFE:
https://safe-network-explained.github.io/architecture
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Okay I had a quick read. btw I’m a 50 year old Brit, reasonably au fait with Ubuntu command prompty installs, self-taught in Java/HTML/CSS, sent my first email in 1988 on the UK’s JANET university system and fed up with internet censorship. So right now, if I give up a chunk of my 160Gb disk to Maidsafe, say 10Gb, so others can store their stuff on it, does that earn me a Safecoin?
If this is as revolutionary as you make out to be it may change the entire internet! I’m more intrigued!
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That’s the idea. Your safecoin earnings will also depend on how much spare capacity the network has
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Whoa. These quick answers. There’s an army of you out there! Do you have any broad overview of the number of nodes like my small 10 gig space there are out there? (Once it proves itself to me I’d open up much more)
At the moment it’s in testing / Alpha mode and running on hosted VMs so the answer is ‘none’, but previous tests were run successfully using home-based PCs, and the fourth Alpha will reinstate user-run vaults. Check the timeline at the bottom of the MaidSafe homepage.
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I have experimented with VirtualBox as I wanted to get into servlets and JSPs on Openshift. Thus I understand the complexities of VMs. Good luck with the implementation!
I managed to get the SAFE Browser working! I am proud! Now are there any test URLs to visit?
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At the moment Maidsafe the company is running the vaults using cloud services VMs. That is data centre computers that they rent. Alpha 4 is when we should have vaults running at home and many here hope that the 6Mbits/sec up requirement is reduced. It will be reduced some time, just not sure which test net.
The vault does not need a VM, it is an application that runs natively on windows or linux and when cross compiled on ARM devices.
Oh a young guy 
And a Brit, I won’t hold that against you 
Welcome to the forum and there is a wealth of information in the forum and some people have produced guides. The weekly dev updates are posted in the Updates category. Thursday for you guys but Friday for the old penal colonies. 
Early on it may very well. I’m potentially going to use something similar to a Raspberry Pi with a 16GB memory stick as a test vault. Only when the network is going live will anyone be able to earn safecoin.
Plenty of passionate people who are eager for the network to be built.
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