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 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 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.
I will agree this is far easier on your own LAN.
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.
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. ;-)