⚠️ Community request: Chitchatter needs a TURN server! about chitchatter

[jeremyckahn]

I spent some time looking into Oracle's free VPS. Even for the free tier, I need to provide credit card info. I don't really feel comfortable with giving Oracle this information, so I'd prefer not to go this route.

If someone else is interested in setting up a free account with Oracle and hosting a Coturn instance for Chitchatter, please let me know!

[jeremyckahn]

Someone reached out to me privately about contacting the EFF about potentially providing/funding a TURN server for Chitchatter. I think this is a great idea and I will try to do that soon. 🙂

[dillfrescott]

Is there the option to somehow avoid using a TURN server entirely? I think the more decentralized chitchatter is, the better of course!

[jeremyckahn]

We can certainly go without TURN servers (and may end up needing to do so if nobody can help with this issue), but then Chitchatter peers will simply fail to connect in some scenarios. In particular, Chitchatter users on mobile and corporate networks will probably be most affected. For home "desktop" use, connections should still generally work in my experience.

This is a fundamental issue with all P2P applications and is not specific to Chitchatter. I think that some non-web apps such as BitTorrent have various ways to mitigate this, but they do not seem to be an option for Chitchatter given that it is a pure web app.

[dillfrescott]

Not sure if this would help at all, but Oracle cloud allows you up to 2 "always free" rather low powered VPS servers with unlimited bandwidth. They would be more than enough to run a coturn server on for free.

[jeremyckahn]

Oracle cloud allows you up to 2 "always free" rather low powered VPS servers with unlimited bandwidth. They would be more than enough to run a coturn server on for free.

That's an interesting idea! I have reservations about using Oracle's platform (I haven't heard great things about them as a company), but this might be a good solution to our problem. I will explore it!

[ThatsMyCall]

Hi Jeremy,

If personal creditcard details is an issue i think i got a solution. There are multiple Turkish apps the easiest one would be Oldubil is a good one that give out a prepaid creditcard number without the need to fill in personal details or deposit money.
They just need a phone number which can be get anonymously using crypto for example from 5sim.net

If you need help let me know.

[jeremyckahn]

Hi @ThatsMyCall, thanks for the suggestion! I'm US-based, so I'd prefer to stick with US-based solutions such as https://privacy.com/ to avoid any regulatory issues. Regardless, I see your point. I can look into one of these options to see if it would safely enable use of Oracle's VPS. 🙂

[dbd5]

Hi @jeremyckahn,
Did you have any luck with EFF?
It may be helpful if you could determine the budget and share the information for those that are willing to contribute

[jeremyckahn]

Hi @dbd5, I haven't had much time to focus on this in recent weeks, but I'm hoping to get back to it soon. You raise a great point about determining budgetary needs. That should probably be figured out before we reach out to anyone specifically.

Does anyone here have experience with hosting a TURN server? I never have, so it's hard for me to gauge what it might cost. Chitchatter (intentionally) has no analytics, so I have no idea how many people use it and what the usage looks like in terms of TURN relay bandwidth. Generally speaking, we should probably determine a max bandwidth budget because unbounded usage could result in exorbitant server costs.