Some users might be aware of folding@home, a distributed computing programme run by the Pande Group at Stanford University, which utilises spare CPU resources to fold proteins in the search for cures to a wide range of diseases & illness.

Users may not be aware of a new project by the Pande Group is seeking to utilise spare HDD capacity, called Storage@home. Information for this new project can be found here: http://en.fah-addict.net/articles/articles-6-20+the-plan-for-splitting-up-data-in-storage-hom.php

During the testing of S@H, I have been in communication with the developer of the project, because he's noticed my system hasn't been communicating properly. The project communicates via port 300, and ascertains connectivity via pings & pongs. Having shared my application and firewall logs with him, we've concluded that while my system is receiving the pings from Stanford University and has processed them properly, they are unable to be returned to the Stanford servers.

This has left us wondering whether there is an ISP level issue which is causing the data to not get returned to Stanford. Perhaps the data is being blocked, either because it is a ping, or because it is using port 300.

I would appreciate any help on the situation and I am willing to provide application and router logs, as well as my correspondence with the Project Designer. Folding@home and now Storage@home are the two main reasons why I've moved to Big Time; the use of bandwidth for a such a positive and legitimate purpose.

I understand that some Telecom staff members regularly look at these forums, so it'd be great and I'd greatly appreciate it if they could help get the ball rolling to see whether there is something they can do to facilitate improving connectivity to allow other Telecom users to participate in this project. I'd also like to share any information/advice with the project manager, so that it may help them in rolling the project out to users of other ISPs around the world.


Kind Regards,

k1wi

Edit: details about storage@home and how to participate/further info on how it works can be found here: http://foldingforum.org/viewforum.php?f=56, if that helps.