Egg Hosting Requirements

We appreciate your offer to host an egg. Here are a few points that must be considered before proceeding.

We are adding new eggs to the network only in remote locations where we do not have any coverage at this time. The US and Europe are pretty well represented.

Participation is voluntary and collaborative. We don't have any commercial interests or intentions, and we don't provide endorsements, beyond annotated links to projects that seem related to the GCP.

It is important for the GCP to have a commitment of at least two years from anyone who wants to host an egg, because the project is for the long term.

The eggs are nodes in a network, and are not intended for use in local experiments. It is possible to look at data for individual eggs, but the evidence suggests the effects we see are essentially non-local. We don't have experience for appropriate interpretation of data from a single node.

To host an egg requires little time, but it does require some computer skills to do the original setup and occasional maintenance if problems arise. Internet connections often involve firewalls that tend to require expert programming.

It is necessary for the computer to run continuously, and it is best if there is a continuous link to the Internet. (It is possible to use dialup, but it has to be automatic.)

The computer's time has to be synchronized to correct time. Both Linux and recent versions of Windows can manage this. Let us know if you have any problem with this.

The IP address has to be accessible for UDP packets from the server in Princeton, as part of the data-transfer protocol. Any firewall has to be programmed to allow incoming UDP packets on port 1105 and outgoing UDP packets on port 2510.

Possibly most important, we would like to hear more about you and how you come to be interested in the GCP.

That's most of what's needed. If it all seems workable, you will need to send:

  1. Information on what operating system you use.

  2. A good mailing address (where we can send a FedEx package).

  3. A telephone number.

  4. Your site's latitude and longitude, or the nearest big city.

  5. The IP address of the computer that will host the egg (if it is dynamic, let me know, and tell me how much of the IP remains stable.)

  6. A name for the egg, something that pleases you. It is desirable to include the country suffix that's used in domain names.


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