Ok we all know bandwidth is going to be a huge resource and in high demand. And with the advent of non persistent vaults things get even more tricky. So I was thinking is couldn’t one set things up to mine safecoin in bursts. That is crunch numbers or data and then transmit it out or in only what’s absolutely nessesary. Then I realized the whole point of non persistent data is basically to delete old data from after you restarted your machine; it’s a security feature. But the fact is downloading again and again is not practical given download caps. Could we not figure a way to loan one user someone’s speed (processor power) in exchange for brandwidth? Say you’re living somewhere in the UK, have a lot of room on your computer, plenty of bandwidth but have a slow computer. But you have a friend in North America with a fast computer but who has a download cap. Between the two you could farm safecoins like nobody’s business but the question is how do you put the two rigs together? Download caps in essense turn any desktop into a mobile computer as far as safecoin farming is concerned because you really can’t farm if you can’t download. So really this is something that needs to be figured out.
I do not not see the bandwidth an issue in the near future, all internet will grow with more demand for bandwidth, I do not understand why a person has a slower computer then people from USA unless everyone is using Raspberry pie’s in the UK.
Do you not understand why someone would EVER have a slower computer than ANYONE? Honestly dude the point is that SOMEONE in the UK has a slow computer and would want to trade speed for their infinite bandwidth. Or maybe they have a fast computer or just want to have more processor speed.
Relative to what? Have you considered that subjectively speaking both Canada and the U.S. are quite a bit behind the rest of the world when it comes to internet. Have you also considered that pretty much all of North America uses brutal bandwidth caps. And have you considered that not everywhere even has high speed internet! For crying out loud a single E10 line services the entire valley where I grew up, that’s a community of 1.5k and granted in the grand scheme of things that’s small but when you put that in relative terms, an isolated rural community stricken with poverty and one of it’s few ways of connecting with the outside world being the internet then yes “high speed” is an issue. I went from literally not being able to download more than 50 gigs a month, to a culture where they cap your internet because it’s so fast they don’t want you to download more than 250 gigs a month. And now you’re talking about some organic demand for internet bandwidth? By whom? And where? And in what country? And in what part of said country? And who’s going to pay for it? And even if there is demand is it going to be allowed? There’s been demand for faster internet in Canada for years, we know our internet is behind but no one does anything because there’s no funding available.
Frankly I find this belief that just because the technology is developed that somehow it’ll magically become available to everyone to be quite naive. Market forces only work if there is money to pay for stuff. However without money it doesn’t matter how much demand there is or if the technology is available.
Over the internet. 
I guess you’ll have to farm within your means. If your ISP has a tight data cap those means may be relatively meagre.
It is true, but that’s Canada’s and the U.S.A.'s problem, isn’t it? Sounds harsh maybe, but this is in my view not a problem this project should try to solve. My reply to the first quote wasn’t just a joke, your demand is essentially what the internet provides, but your access to that internet is limited.
Anyway, maybe projects like this will help in the future:
Online gaming for console is increasing two fold, online streaming media, are all increases bandwidth. Sorry but china have a massive super fast network. I am from Australia and expect fiber to my door in the next year or two. I come from a different position from the people with super fast computer and low bandwidth. I have a choice faster bandwidth at 200gigs or slower speed unlimited bandwidth. At the moment I pay $100 a month for 200gig. But listening to the interviews I will not need the best computer to farm maidsafe just raspberry pie equivalent with lots of ram and efficiently low wattage. I am super happy for once as a investor, farmer/miner I will not have to buy expensive mining equipment worth thousands of dollars and have to compete with the people with cheap tec. I see maidsafe fair go for all.
That is essentially the problem I’ve been presenting. Now how do we solve it?
Canada and the U.S.A. are nice easy examples of large populations with severe data caps. However other populations also exist with data caps. I happen to know there are internet ISP monopolies in South Africa that also throttle the net quite harshly, if not even more harshly. But more to the point not it isn’t just “their problem” because the mechanic affects the whole planet. It’s the network’s issue because the issue we’re talking about in the code affects whole populations the world over. It doesn’t matter if it’s the U.S., Canada, Africa, Russia, or some guy from Timbuktu. The point is the decision to have non persistent vaults excludes, or highly discriminates against, whole populations that have datacaps and low bandwidth. It doesn’t matter where they are or what country they’re in or even why they’re limited the fact is they’re prevented from accessing and/or flourishing on the SAFE network and that IS the network’s issue. To say that it’s not is like saying that fast internet or clean water should only be for the rich.
I think one point that hasn’t been brought up yet ir that when you turn your vault on, you aren’t flooded with data. You will receive data as other vaults turn off or new data is posted. If you have capped Internet with a 10TB vault, it will fill pretty slowly. David has also mention that there would be configurable throttles in the code so that you could set it to only go at x speed to download. Between that setting and setting you vault size right, you could configure you vault to not possibly go over your cap. I would also assume you could set you vault to “seed” (if not, seems like a feature not too hard to add) so that you will not get any more data, but you could still send data for farm attempts. That could be used for “oh crap I watched too much YouTube this month” situations.
Non-persistent vaults were overall considered beneficial to the network by the devs, it requires less overhead and offers better load balancing compared to persistent vaults, in addition to better security. Sacrificing that to cater to contemporary bad internet service seems backwards to me. New technology should push countries that are falling behind to catch up. In the case of the USA at least, the general consensus seems to be that the cuplrit is a mono- or duopoly in the ISP market. Sounds like something that the government could and actually should fix.
A solution on the individual level would be to get a raspberry pi and make it a persistent vault by never shutting it off, I’d suggest to look into that.
I actually doubt bringing back the old persistent vaults would solve your data cap troubles. Consider that every MB downloaded from the network is also uploaded by a machine in that network, i.e. vaults and routing clients. You may not hit your upload cap now, but it’s probably even lower than your download cap. To make matters worse you probably have an assymetrical connection, where upload bandwidth is much lower than download bandwidth. So even with persistent vaults you’d be limited by your upload cap and bandwidth, preventing you from running a sizable vault.
This would solve the issue of restarting one’s computer and having data erased however it wouldn’t solve the inherent problem of bandwidth data caps. Say I was your average computer user that didn’t use a dual boot computer but still was stuck with an ISP that throttled my internet. The problem remains: I can only farm up to my data cap. My suggestion is that somehow we code some kind of bridge between someone with lots of space and someone with lots of bandwidth. Of course how this could be done I have no idea because in order to do anything over the net you need to upload and download which means going through your isp and that brings you back to square one.
It may help with bandwidth, by reducing the peak & overhead of rejoining each time, but what I think you need is a way to limit the bandwidth taken up by a SAFE vault per day, so that you aren’t suddenly hit with a massive peak.
David has mentioned some form of resource control, so this issue would be one of the factors in designing that. It won’t be foolproof though, because SAFE isn’t going to monitor what else is taking up your bandwidth, nor can it know what your provider has determined you’ve used. So you will still need to monitor and adjust things yourself, while knowing SAFE should only be using up to or around a certain amount per day.
This may not help enough to make such farming worthwhile, but I think that’s not something SAFE can help with.