[Bloat] Flent-farm costs

[Rich Brown]

Dave wrote:

> Costs on the "flent-farm" continue to drop. Our earliest linode
> servers cost $20/month and our two latest ones (nanoservers) cost
> $5/month. For "science!" I've been generally unwilling to
> update/change these much ...

I've been running netperf.bufferbloat.net (the netperf server that we most publicize) for several years. It's a modest OpenVZ VPS from RamNode in Atlanta. It has two failings:

- It costs ~$16/month (I don't mind this expense, but $16/month >> $5/month for the nanoservers)
- About ever third month, its traffic goes over the 4TB/month limit, and RamNode shuts the server off. I regularly run a script to find heavy users and block their IP using iptables. (Many people are running a test every five minutes for days at a time.) But that's a hassle. And buying an additional terabyte per month from RamNode is $10/month, which gets expensive.

To address this, I stood up up a new (KVM-based) VPS with RamNode (also in Atlanta, presumably in their same data center) that will permit more in-depth iptables rules. My goal would be to look at connection frequency, and if someone is trying to do every-five-minute testing, limit their bandwidth to 10kbps. 

This raises a host of questions:

- For Science - the current netperf.bufferbloat.net is atl.richb-hanover.com; the new server is atl2.richb-hanover.com. Do you get similar performance from both servers?

- Is this plan to bandwidth-limit abusers realistic? Will it be possible to design rules that exclude abusers while allowing legitimate research use? (I'm concerned that running five tests in a row in 10 minutes might look like an every-five-minute abuser...)

- Should I use one of the Linode nanoservers?

- Should we move the netperf.bufferbloat.net name to use the existing flent server farm machines?

- Are there other approaches to supporting netperf.bufferbloat.net?

Many thanks!

Rich