Hosting?

[jago25_98]

Bitcoin relies on me being able to run it so...

hosting. That is, VPS.

What is the best service money can buy

- physical backups via DVD mailed to a specified address
- reputable
- reliable

Then again... one can always put an old computer in a corner in a relatives room.

I just want to see some discussion on it because in effect this is like how banks were years ago - looking after ones resources. Now I think I should know more of the details on that.

For example, I run my bitcoin on a machine with other things going on there. It could be better. I wonder if I should put effort into improving it. I could do this by renting a VPS... or then again go the whole hog and co-lo. But to colocate a machine just for bitcoin is over the top... backing-up the wallet or not....

Lots to think about.

[nelisky]

I can get a bitcoind service going in no time:
- You get one bitcoin server with a wallet
- The wallet gets backup up every... hour? Or I can be smart and backup when new inbound addresses exist.
- You get to use it in an rpc port (not the default) probably only responding to specific IP addresses
- You can request physical backups sent to you periodically
- The bitcoind gets updated with security patches
- Includes (at least) getblock / listtransactions / rpcport patches, can include others by request

But you'll need to run your service against a specific port to talk to bitcoin, and you have to trust me

Is there interest in this? How much would you pay for it, knowing physical backups will be paid separately?

[jago25_98]

 I'd be interested, yes.

hmm... what would I pay.

 Well, the problem at the moment of course is the credibility and not being established. As a result of that I think I'd want to spread the load a bit between people providing this. So I'd have to pay less to spread the load across providers. Let's say spreading the load by a factor of 10 at the moment, but I'd love to cut that down to a factor of 3 as confidence builds.

In terms of what would I pay... it would have to be at least half as I would to a bank (whatever that is - the cost of banking is not clear where I am, they use hidden charges) so that I could have the funds in 2 locations for the same price (thus making the benefit even clearer)...
also... it would have to be alot cheaper than a full VPS of course.

re: RPC IP limiting...
perhaps just a web front end would be simpler, opened by port knocking with a browser to another port one number up from the http it's running on and closing again using a different port down number down from the interface. That way, with https login we're beginning to make internet cafe use possible.

Total guess here but I'd guess I'd pay $12/year at least right now. That works out $10/month for 10 accounts spread-loaded and $120/year for something that's a bit different to the bitcoin websites we already have.
What do other people think?