0xDECAFBAD - Tag: amazon

dialup ghost towns and amazon ec2

2006-09-01T03:37:54+00:00

Most BBS enthusiasts know that the last outpost for BBSes has been, for some time now, through telnet on the Internet. There was a time, however, when when dial-up BBSes over analog phone lines were the rule, not the exception.

Source: VintageComputing.com | Vintage Computing and Gaming » Blog Archive » The Dial-Up BBS Revisited

Reading this article, and having tinkered with Synchronet, an idea occurs to me: I'll use Amazon EC2 to host a running instance of Synchronet available via telnet - but only from like 9:00 PM until 5:00 AM. I'll save hourly hosting charges and not tie up my parents' phone line all day! Hmm, I wonder: Has anyone tried setting up an auto answer modem under VoIP?

Archived Comments

Gregory Williams
2006-09-01T19:25:46

What a great idea! History has turned the frustration of only being able to run by board at night (before I got a dedicated line) into a nice feeling of nostalgia, and being able to re-live that through a crazy combination of VoIP and Amazon virtualized hosting would be awesome.
Jason Cook
2006-09-01T22:48:42

The problem is that VOIP and modems really don't get along well at all.
Ben West
2006-09-04T22:25:43

It's very hard to tunnel a modem through VoIP.

Amazon EC2 emerges

2006-08-24T12:58:04+00:00

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) is a web service that provides resizable compute capacity in the cloud. It is designed to make web-scale computing easier for developers.
Just as Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) enables storage in the cloud, Amazon EC2 enables "compute" in the cloud.

Source: Amazon.com Amazon Web Services Store: Amazon EC2 / Amazon Web Services

This seems like the sound of the second shoe hitting the floor. Although I tried signing up for this as soon as I saw the email, I was already too late to get in on the beta and start playing. Maybe I'll get in on a second round.

EC2 seems a lot like User Mode Linux virtual hosting, but it charges ~~by the CPU hour~~ by the hour of uptime instead of month-to-month. I'll be very interested to see how this shakes out, and what sort of web app architecture it encourages when used in conjunction with S3 - say AJAX-based queues for instance? - or if it just gets used as a straight LAMP host in general.

Archived Comments

Sencer
2006-08-24T15:27:46

it charges by the CPU hour

Just to prevent confusion: They call it instance hours and mean the hours a vm/instance has been running (independent of utilization). Only saying this, beause some hosts, like dreamhost, use(d) the term CPU-minutes for keeping track of "how much time a processor spends working for your username" and allow(ed) sth. like 60 CPU-minutes a day.

At least that's how I understand the amazon offer.

And thanks for the pointer! It'll be intereting to watch what people are going to come up with. Given that the instances are not "persistent", i.e. data is gone when you stop them (unless you move things int S3 or elsewhere), I am assuming that they will be used differently from regular dedicated machines.

It reminds a little bit of DSL (Damnsmalllinux) which boots/runs of a CD, but allows you to save all your data and customization to an external storage (usb/ftp/etc.) and does auto-restore when you boot into it again. This is nice for people afraid of viruses or getting hacked etc.. I wonder whether this will turn out to be a plus for amazons offer as well. At first it does make things a bit more complicated wrt to usual linux way. But I guess tose things can be solved...
l.m.orchard
2006-08-24T16:29:44

Sencer: Actually, I think your reading is the right one. It's charge per hour of uptime of the instance, and not a meter on CPU cycles.
So, to do a quick napkin calculation - $0.10 per hour x 24 hours x 31 days = $74.40 per month to keep an instance running around the clock.
That makes me think that applications using this service will need to be designed around some clever resource usage, either through scheduled tasks or some interesting way to respond on demand. Simply running a straight PHP app would seem a bit wasteful in many small-scale cases.

If I were to run a blog from it, say, I'd lean more toward the Movable Type school of static publishing than the WordPress school of live PHP pages. Of course, that could all be done from a behind-firewall personal desktop machine, so I need to think of a better example.

Then again, being able to add and drop instances at will is a big, big deal for larger scale applications.
Jonathan Boutelle
2006-08-24T17:12:09

Let's see, back of the envelope calculation ... that's a 10-machine cluster for 720$ /month + bandwidth. With redundant storage and firewall included. Holy crap! Web 2.0 apps just got a LOT cheaper to deploy.

I am also stuck in limbo land: they sent the email out at 3AM PST, which is just rude: a west-coast company should at least wait until California and Washington wakes up before sending out a limited beta. Methinks the geeks in NYC and boston and the research triangle got all the slots.
l.m.orchard
2006-08-24T17:57:58

Jonathan: Yeah, I think your calculation is a better one. Mine just reflects the fact that EC2 doesn't scale down to piddly little apps like I've been playing with. But scaling up, it looks like a much better value.
Daniel Néri
2006-08-24T19:04:19

It appears to be based on Xen, judging from the sample hostnames in the docs.
Alex James
2006-08-25T11:27:19

I agree, you need to band together with a couple of mates to make it worthwhile for really small sites. But at the high end it is amazing value.

Perhaps then there is an opportunity for someone to use EC2 based websites, you could easily create an sort of ISP or ASP model using this, by putting about 20 little websites/application servers on one Image.

BTW Jonathan... I'm from little old New Zealand and I managed to nab a slot!
Website Nepal
2007-08-31T17:23:53

I checked out the Amazon EC2 since I am planning to offer web hosting solution somewhat similar to what EC2 are doing.

no amazon iframes for me

2006-08-18T05:22:56+00:00

So here's a problem that's cropped up for me lately. I think it came with the upgrade to WP 2.0. I'm trying to include some Amazon-provided iframes in the sidebar for continue book pimping, which worked fine with my WP 1.5 installation. But now, for some reason, the iframes are always forced into a display: none style and I can't figure out what's doing it.

Update: Now is the time on 0xDECAFBAD when the head meets desk. Adblock is the culprit. Oof.

Archived Comments

Aristotle Pagaltzis
2006-08-18T09:13:09

Works for me.

Maybe it’s not actually a problem with your site, but rather some adblocking thingie that’s running on your desktop?
Dougal Campbell
2006-08-18T13:32:29

I see it, too. Ad-blocker? User.js? 1337 h4x0rz?
l.m.orchard
2006-08-18T13:39:22

Ugh, now why didn't that occur to me? Yup, I'd installed a particularly zealous set of Adblock filters recently. Thanks for the clues. :)
Scott Allen
2006-08-31T00:35:27

Actually, I'd just like to know where you found that nice lean Amazon iframe. I haven't been able to find the place to generate a link like that. I can copy your links and swap my affiliate ID and the ASIN, but that's a PITA.