Of course you can see logs from anywhere in the world, just as you can do Zoom calls with anyone in the world but my point was not about efficiency.
My point was about physicality, commitment, and the "in-your-face" rather than "out of sight and out of mind" aspect.
You are right that a lot of witnesses just set and forget and some don't even notice they are missing blocks for days or weeks.
It is precisely because they are using far away rented servers that they have less commitment and interest in learning witness skills than if the witness node was living with them.
I keep my own backups of block_log and do my own snapshots which I can transfer to whichever Hive node needs them over my Gigabit Ethernet LAN. Even the 330Gb block_log only takes less than one hour to transfer.
While I agree that the ability to replay is also important for hard-forks and emergency patches, replay speed is NOT about internet connection or where a node is located.
Its about single core CPU performance, RAM and I/O speed.
The fact is that the machine I specced above will beat 90% of servers in those factors.
In particular, server CPUs generally have a large number of cores but relatively poor single thread performance. High end desktop and gaming PCs by contrast generally have fewer cores but much better single thread CPU performance.
Regarding knowledge: if you want more people to have it then more effort needs to be made to spread it.
While I have got great assistance from people like @someguy123, @deathwing and @rishi556 the availability and accessibility of documentation on running Hive nodes is quite poor and out of date.
This is something that really needs to be remedied. There needs to be an Idiots Guide accessible on all major front-ends and hive.io.
I disagree, I don't think that has anything to do with it. Granted if someone buys hardware they likely care more about Hive than renting, but correlation is not causation.
I will agree this is far easier on your own LAN.
Yes, but that wasn't my point. My point is you cannot rely on snapshots, especially when a witness is needed most (during hard forks and chain down events).
Regardless, I have no problems with running an API node on a home network if you have the resources to do it, a witness node I am not so agreeable about. I merely was saying the Internet is more of the critical factor especially as the chain gets larger and providers make their data caps smaller.
Wow, I'm not going to take the time to count them, but what would you say, 20 comments or so to get to this point?
I'm so impressed that I'll ask you for the same information once again: can you share what you think those necessary resources are?
Edit: please forgive me if you've already laid them out - I got tired of getting lost in your maze and stopped reading but did want to see how you ended things. Even if you have, maybe you might consolidate your thoughts and dedicate a of post of your own on the subject? Remember, focused, with a title something like: Running an API Node from Home. ;-)
Good job on all this, but I think it's very clear that there is heavy resistance to the idea (you can bet that more than one have been following this thread closely, and they've probably got Discord burning hot!), and that this is going to be a long haul marathon. To be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if you, and a few others too, might just end up being who does the documentation. Lots of work, but it'll be worth the effort. Count on me to help in any way that you think may be useful and possible. Maybe you might want to start a "Documentation Community". It's an idea that came up the other day on one of @taskmaster4450's threads. It might seem a bit like overkill, but it's really the only way to have admin control to be able to manage, update, and, ultimately control the content, and it seems to me that with the importance documentation carries with it, administrative control is absolutely necessary. Food for thought, and thanks for taking the lead. This is really good stuff. I, for one (and I'm also absolutely sure - on this one too - that I'm not alone on this), am lapping up every bit of your contributions on the subject! 😋