P2P architectures run on a routed mesh mostly on network edge don’t really need DC server farms. Switching packets, especially minus porn and cat videos don’t take much DC space or power either. Lemmy isn’t that different from Usenet via uucp on dialup, even considering today’s scale.
Lemmy isn’t P2P though. If it was our clients would connect directly to each other instead of to an instance like how bittorrent works. The Usenet analogy is a lot better, but you are forgetting that modern Usenet is still hosted on large server networks inside data farms. It being decentralised doesn’t actually reduce the computer power needed at all. If anything it actually makes things more complicated. Sure individual instance servers can be smaller, but once you add together all instances it will add up to the same. Some instances like mine require multiple servers working together to host them, and it’s not even the largest instance out there on a relatively niche platform.
The point is that even Lemmy instances not optimized for a P2P distribution model can be run on an embedded footprint on domestic fiber broadband. Which is going beyond 10G in some locations. Though symmetric 1G fiber is quite enough.
The aggregate network crossection and compute plus storage on network edge up to on-prem is already more than sufficient for the purposes without requring significant DC footprint. Even factoring in porn and cat videos.
The reasons many people use commercial cloud and DC hosted severs is cost, network quality and convenience. Self-hosting is a PITA but my point it would be adequate for the kind of people that consume resources like lemmy. Though you probably could build a Netflix scale platform on mostly P2P though it would be tough engineering.
I know you can self-host. It’s nowhere near as energy efficient as a modern data center with the setups most people have. They were complaining about the power usage of data centers, not realising they are actually the efficient way of doing things. When people talk about sabotaging data centers they are doing it for environmental reasons. Most self-hosters are using shit like old desktops, laptops, or 10 year old Haswell and Broadwell servers businesses don’t want anymore. An Epyc Bergamo would give you multiple times the capacity for similar power. Even using new hardware it’s normally better to do things at scale as it reduces overhead.
Self-hosting is actually bad for the environment and for your power bill. It’s great for privacy, practicing sys admin skills and for breaking the law. If you actually asked people who self-host, like me, they would tell you all this. You can get low energy setups, but you will really struggle to compete against data centers in terms of flops per watt especially if your hardware is running near idle all the time. My electricity is fixed rate anyway, so I don’t really care how efficient it is, but I very much know my FX-6300 improvised server is laughable compared to modern server technology.
Though symmetric 1G fiber is quite enough.
How many homes have that? Homes are almost always asymmetric, sometimes to an absurd degree. I have near 1 gig download at my current place, but only 80 Mbps upload. Pretending everyone has 1 gig upload available is dumb, and you know it if you’re not an idiot.
Edit: also all ISPs have routers, switches, and servers somewhere in a data center. That’s also how the internet backbone works. Large interconnection points, maybe a handful of them in a country like mine (UK).
