Post AtRPQ7LUhMEDwP5SPQ by ricci@discuss.systems
(DIR) More posts by ricci@discuss.systems
(DIR) Post #AtR5aKoZTfr1WjHYUi by ricci@discuss.systems
2025-04-25T02:47:57Z
10 likes, 15 repeats
With bluesky (mostly) going down for a few hours today, I got to wondering about how decentralized the fediverse really is in terms of where its servers are hosted. I grabbed a server list from fedidb, with network information coming from ipinfo.io .These stats are by the number of *servers* not the number of *users* (maybe I'll run those stats later).fedidb currently tracks 2,650 servers of various types (Mastodon, pixelfed, lemmy, misskey, peertube, etc)The fediverse is most vulnerable to disruptions at CloudFlare: 24% of Fediverse servers are behind it. Also note that this means that I don't have real data on where this 24% are located or hosted, since CloudFlare obscures this by design.Beyond CloudFlare, the fediverse is not too concentrated on any one network. The most popular host, Hertzner, only hosts 14% of fediverse servers, and it falls off fast from there.Here are the top networks where fediverse servers are hosted:504 Cloudflare, Inc.356 Hetzner Online GmbH130 DigitalOcean, LLC114 OVH SAS56 netcup GmbH55 Amazon.com, Inc.55 Akamai Connected Cloud36 Contabo GmbH33 SAKURA Internet Inc.32 The Constant Company, LLC31 Xserver Inc.28 SCALEWAY S.A.S.24 Google LLC23 Oracle Corporation16 GMO Internet Group, Inc.14 IONOS SE14 FranTech Solutions11 Hostinger International Limited10 Nubes, LLCHalf of fediverse servers are on networks that host 50 or fewer servers - that's pretty good for resiliency.There is even more diversity when it comes to BGP prefixes, which is good for resiliency: for example, the cloud providers that have multiple availability zones will generally have them on different prefixes, so this gets closer to giving us a picture of the specific bits of infrastructure the fediverse relies on.The top BGP prefixes:55 104.21.48.0/2050 104.21.16.0/2048 104.21.64.0/2041 104.21.32.0/2041 104.21.0.0/2038 104.21.80.0/2032 172.67.128.0/2031 172.67.144.0/2028 172.67.208.0/2028 162.43.0.0/1727 104.26.0.0/2026 172.67.192.0/2026 172.67.176.0/2023 172.67.160.0/2019 116.203.0.0/1617 172.67.64.0/2017 159.69.0.0/1616 65.109.0.0/1614 88.99.0.0/1614 49.13.0.0/1613 78.46.0.0/1513 167.235.0.0/1613 138.201.0.0/1611 95.217.0.0/1611 95.216.0.0/1611 49.12.0.0/1611 135.181.0.0/1610 37.27.0.0/1610 157.90.0.0/1675% of fediverse servers are behind BGP prefixes that host 10 or fewer servers, meaning that the fediverse is *very* resilient to large network outages.Top countries where fediverse servers are hosted:871 United States439 Germany156 France148 Japan75 Finland57 Canada49 Netherlands38 United Kingdom26 Switzerland26 South Korea21 Spain19 Sweden18 Austria17 Australia15 Russia12 Czech Republic10 Singapore10 ItalyAnd finally, a map of the locations of fediverse servers: https://ipinfo.io/tools/map/91960023-e8c6-4bee-9b07-721f2c8febab
(DIR) Post #AtR5l3Gt2l2cIpdXoe by ricci@discuss.systems
2025-04-25T02:49:57Z
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Many thanks @fedidb for the server list!
(DIR) Post #AtR5lAZDuyrsvjGmrw by freya@chaosfem.tw
2025-04-25T02:50:00Z
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@ricci we are not surprised at all that Germany is second behind the US in terms of fedi hosting
(DIR) Post #AtR5nTi1ifsUsRUKwa by ricci@discuss.systems
2025-04-25T02:50:29Z
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@freya yup š
(DIR) Post #AtR5sk5iEsWn8J4r7g by freya@chaosfem.tw
2025-04-25T02:51:23Z
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@ricci huh, we just checked and it appears our instance (chaosfem.tw) is *also* hosted with Netcup. Nice. We're movuing all our stuff to there, one big ARM server, and one tiny little X86 one running Solaris.
(DIR) Post #AtR6CJuhHD3PjhGCUy by dan@discuss.systems
2025-04-25T02:54:48Z
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@ricci I can recognize a lot of these IP prefixes without looking up, and I don't particularly like that about myself.
(DIR) Post #AtR6ISvEhArvPhRVjc by ricci@discuss.systems
2025-04-25T02:56:04Z
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@freya It's actually kind of interesting: the ones in the US are spread across *many* more hosting providers, where the ones in Germany and elsewhere in Europe are far more concentrated at just a few providers. This is actually a bit worrying.
(DIR) Post #AtR6LbCeMc4Nxt59oO by ricci@discuss.systems
2025-04-25T02:56:35Z
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@dan yeah I uh was able to spot the CloudFlare ones easily :)
(DIR) Post #AtR6ZcwQhI29PWBUJc by freya@chaosfem.tw
2025-04-25T02:59:08Z
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@ricci hmm. thought: lots of english speaking fedifolks, but not all german server providers have english UIs. Hell, to get the teeny littke X86 box with Netcup, we had to go to and sign up on their German-only website
(DIR) Post #AtR6rVkOBSLoJK5212 by ricci@discuss.systems
2025-04-25T03:02:19Z
2 likes, 0 repeats
One thing that's interesting to me in this data is that there is actually *much* more consolidation on a few cloud providers in Europe than there is in the US. This is actually somewhat concerning. 81% of fediverse servers in Germany are at Hertzner, 73% of the servers in France are on OVH. By comparison, the most popular American provider, Digital Ocean, hosts only 14% of servers in the US. I don't know how representative this is of cloud usage overall (eg. Digital Ocean is definitely not the top cloud in the US) but it does certainly suggest much more centralization in Europe as compared to the US.
(DIR) Post #AtR6zZK6luQ5ibd6TA by dan@discuss.systems
2025-04-25T02:58:20Z
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@ricci also tempted to move this instance to my own prefix to see if I can get my home network onto the list, but even Azure isnāt on the list!
(DIR) Post #AtR6zaJ57DC0li9nVY by ricci@discuss.systems
2025-04-25T03:03:45Z
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@dan You only have to host 10 domains to get it pretty far up there!(FWIW, I did check and discuss.systems is in fedidb's list)
(DIR) Post #AtR77JYDIUuV7Lv960 by ricci@discuss.systems
2025-04-25T03:05:04Z
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@dan I assume Azure is attributed to Microsoft in ipinfo; it hosts a whoppin 7 fediverse servers
(DIR) Post #AtR7jkFUU0s2vMULFw by Arataka@esper.lol
2025-04-25T03:12:06Z
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@ricci looks pretty good, nice post! Would be cool to see someone make a site to better help people pick what instance to join. I know a few things like this already exist but I just donāt think they are all that user friendly. Something modern and clean with a simple interface. I feel like that would help the fediverse spread out its user base even more instead of most people heading to mastodon.social right off the bat.
(DIR) Post #AtR7uI4nZGugjaW2O8 by dan@discuss.systems
2025-04-25T03:13:59Z
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@ricci yup, AS8075, I taught myself how to use BGP by logging into its core routers.er, possibly I shouldn't admit to that.
(DIR) Post #AtR8pdL1BrCrBMRgjA by ricci@discuss.systems
2025-04-25T03:24:20Z
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@dan calling the microsoft cops ( @dev )
(DIR) Post #AtR91vvtsfTYKPYu0W by jawnsy@mastodon.social
2025-04-25T03:26:39Z
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@ricci @dan @dev Microsoft Dev Network, assemble!
(DIR) Post #AtR983RCtGiHLG7kvI by wollman@mastodon.social
2025-04-25T03:27:39Z
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@ricci "National champions"
(DIR) Post #AtR9CAjngw6R8lmho8 by Doomed_Daniel@mastodon.gamedev.place
2025-04-25T03:28:31Z
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@ricci Hetzner probably is the cheapest provider for real dedicated servers - the regular ones start at $42/month and they even offer older ones (that aren't used in their regular products anymore) starting at $35/month
(DIR) Post #AtR9EX6BWal74TNdy4 by ricci@discuss.systems
2025-04-25T03:28:59Z
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@Doomed_Daniel whoa that's expensive!
(DIR) Post #AtR9LQzactnG9xaQ6q by Doomed_Daniel@mastodon.gamedev.place
2025-04-25T03:30:12Z
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@ricciExpensive for a dedicated server?Those are not VPS, you get the whole machine for yourself
(DIR) Post #AtR9h0t8MTe5ZOr9o8 by ricci@discuss.systems
2025-04-25T03:34:03Z
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@Doomed_Daniel Ah, I see, yeah, pretty good price for that!
(DIR) Post #AtRA0lGW9ld6uND7Bo by Doomed_Daniel@mastodon.gamedev.place
2025-04-25T03:37:35Z
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@ricci Yeah, so I guess if you got a slightly bigger instance that needs more power than a cheapo VPS offers that's quite attractive.Less attractive is that they sometimes terminate contracts without notice or giving a reason, see https://ursal.zone/@Ursalzona/112259839960115911or https://woem.men/notes/9ragjwecxwul3nis
(DIR) Post #AtRDCAgwGLxooWhX4S by SystemsAppr@discuss.systems
2025-04-25T04:13:20Z
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@ricci We were looking at the user numbers recently for the same reason: https://aus.social/@Drbruced/114335400872850185
(DIR) Post #AtRDbp1TRv8l8eXNpI by SystemsAppr@discuss.systems
2025-04-25T04:17:47Z
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@ricci Also we grabbed a version of the AS level data from someone back in 2022, as reported here https://systemsapproach.org/2022/12/05/decentralization-strikes-back/Looks like things have decentralized quite a bit since 2022
(DIR) Post #AtRDpYoqUVHYwDBKQi by ricci@discuss.systems
2025-04-25T04:20:24Z
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@SystemsAppr FWIW, "network" = AS in my post above
(DIR) Post #AtREPNyuGM0dkZyDxo by jonny@neuromatch.social
2025-04-25T04:26:51Z
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@ricci also important as far as "really existing decentralization" is thinking about what the remedy would look like if there was some catatrophic event where e.g. hetzner decided to ban all fedi instances and immediately wiped the vps and vm images with no warning. like the fediverse is on lots of different servers but it's also on many different backup servers beyond that, and the labor and coordination of needing to restore instances is concentrated on the people who already maintain them. like that's a reasonable chunking, where having everyone have their own instance would be more vulnerable to a provider-level attack, or having a small number of invisible backend providers like bsky and the way PDSes are shaking out. i don't know how mastohost does backups and if people keep them who use mastohost, but that would be one point of weakness above and beyond concentration on mastohost itself. and i actually have no idea what the proportion of instances that make regular offsite backups are either... but i was thinking about the difference between "using cloud servers" and "using Capital C '''The Cloud'''" - there's a difference between building someting into one very specific archipelago of microservices, e.g. "we are deploying on azure or on aws" vs. doing something you could do anywhere on a rented server, e.g. "we are deploying to a virtual machine we rent from azure." and the thing that makes that different is the ability to walk. making a lot of people interact with the way the thing runs is good for longevity in the long tail, even if it's unfortunately still too heavy on the "need to know computers" side of things.
(DIR) Post #AtRFIp9Mx3aFwKIbwm by ricci@discuss.systems
2025-04-25T04:36:59Z
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@jonny Yeah this is really interesting, and it made me dig in the data in some other interesting ways; here are the counts of the top 10 IP addresses that host fediverse servers: 68 94.23.75.107 61 178.33.220.142 39 104.21.16.1 29 176.31.213.231 28 217.182.80.236 20 104.21.80.1 18 54.38.247.97 17 153.126.214.250 17 104.21.64.1 17 104.21.48.1The 104s are CloudFlare, the rest are almost all at OVH, and I assume they are mastohost. There's also one in Japan on that list. It suggests that the ones in France are *super* concetrated, not only are they almost all on the same cloud provider, they are maintained by the same organization. Hertzner is very different, I see few if any cases there where multiple servers are behind the same IP address. So clearly people are using them for very different use cases / purposes.Another interesting thing here is that while CloudFlare, and to some extent Akamai are notable points of failure in the current fediverse, they would almost certainly be temporary disruptions, since they are just proxying the traffic, losing them would not actually involve real data loss
(DIR) Post #AtRFWuhF7wOvCBrURs by wyatt@soc.megatokyo.moe
2025-04-25T04:35:43.319233Z
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@ricci should also be noted that my instance at least is hosted on-premises and just uses a VPS to bounce traffic through.
(DIR) Post #AtRFWvxwPLLt8GgL7A by ricci@discuss.systems
2025-04-25T04:39:24Z
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@wyatt It also appears that a significant number of servers use VPNsAccording to ipinfo, here's how many are behind proxies/VPNs:Top Privacy Services- Troywell VPN 196 (7.4%)- TunnelBear 38 (1.4%)- VPNSecure 8 (0.3%)- ProtonVPN 7 (0.3%)- ZoogVPN 5 (0.2%)... though I never know how much to actually trust what ipinfo thinks is a VPN
(DIR) Post #AtRFoj8ipkMKZ7D1YO by wyatt@soc.megatokyo.moe
2025-04-25T04:41:59.334211Z
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@ricci i'm running an openVPN server on my VPS to tunnel the traffic actually
(DIR) Post #AtRFokHGbSmw5uDMVk by ricci@discuss.systems
2025-04-25T04:42:41Z
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@wyatt yeah, I do this for my own mailserver too
(DIR) Post #AtRGSt9t0GnxDmu74C by alexelcu@social.alexn.org
2025-04-25T04:49:54Z
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@ricci That's b/c Hetzner is significantly cheaper than Digital Ocean, you can afford more RAM with it, which is sorely needed for hosting Mastodon.It's also a mistake to attribute nationality to these servers. I'm not a German citizen and my instance is hosted at Hetzner. I was initially on Digital Ocean, but gave up due to pricing. I have acquaintances from the US hosting at Hetzner as well.And US shouldn't be compared w/ Germany or France individually, it should be compared w/ whole EU.
(DIR) Post #AtRHdGjqHwfBCfEgYy by 13reak@infosec.exchange
2025-04-25T05:03:02Z
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@ricci You have to factor in the size. Entire Europe is smaller than the US.Comparing Germany to Montana would be closest in size.So how distributed is Fedi in Montana?
(DIR) Post #AtRIKHhwYmpSf5rKNM by InkomTech@infosec.exchange
2025-04-25T05:10:45Z
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@ricci European # concentration seem less distressing if we think of them as a consolidation like in the us, or look at how concentrated (by state or metro area) the seemingly-diverse US companies are? E.g., 20% overall for hertzner, 16% overall for OVh, etc. the one way, or that NYC/SF (the two digital ocean towns) likely are DCs of several hosting providers?
(DIR) Post #AtRM2j6OMyTGECB5W4 by jgivoni@mastodon.social
2025-04-25T05:52:29Z
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@ricci Love this data, thanks for the work put into it!
(DIR) Post #AtRMtwkANhUjst9w1o by foundseed@spore.social
2025-04-25T06:02:05Z
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@ricci I'm old enough to remember when cloudflare was going thru some outages and servers learned to move away from cloud flare as a bottleneck in this pipeline, in exactly the way I think you're discussing. So our resilience, to some degree, was in response to that part of our network not being reliable, to some degree, anyway. I think that's neat.
(DIR) Post #AtRMvGiva7E88nD6Tw by k3ym0@infosec.exchange
2025-04-25T06:02:20Z
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@ricci damn, this is so cool. Thanks so much for sharing this.
(DIR) Post #AtRN6BaV17kLOhTQps by zoul@boskovice.social
2025-04-25T06:04:08Z
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@ricci Great data! Thank you. I have taken the liberty to visualise it. Hereās the chart of where Fediverse servers are hosted: https://www.datawrapper.de/_/Cuziw/
(DIR) Post #AtRNElSPXTNixfmU5Y by ricci@discuss.systems
2025-04-25T06:05:53Z
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@zoul excellent! Maybe tomorrow I'll put up the data in a more useful form, I'll ping you if I do
(DIR) Post #AtRNdGcXKH2oYxCWGG by zoul@boskovice.social
2025-04-25T06:08:51Z
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@ricci And hereās the country distribution: https://www.datawrapper.de/_/dcGua/
(DIR) Post #AtRNl2F8fGiyHxxdi4 by dan@discuss.systems
2025-04-25T06:11:34Z
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@ricci also I am intrigued by what fedidb thinks happened on 4/8, but I suppose it'd be a nice peaceful day if everyone left the fediverse for a little while except ten of us
(DIR) Post #AtRNzUYGDAPK8jnYuW by ricci@discuss.systems
2025-04-25T06:14:10Z
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@dan oh that was the day there were 5643% tariffs on all activitypub traffic, good thing they didn't last
(DIR) Post #AtROApQ4xsZc2wNSG8 by dan@discuss.systems
2025-04-25T06:16:15Z
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@ricci knew I shouldn't have imported this packagehttps://pypi.org/project/tariff/
(DIR) Post #AtROJDuBoNdMIuSqO0 by ricci@discuss.systems
2025-04-25T06:17:50Z
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@dan I will only respect this package if it is capable of imposing tariffs on itself
(DIR) Post #AtROamhPhZTl8drWAC by jonathan859@someplace.social
2025-04-25T06:21:03Z
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@ricci Interesting, btw it's Hetzner. Also F to the Contabo ones.
(DIR) Post #AtROlUpWTmVEu4lMzQ by openrisk@mastodon.social
2025-04-25T06:22:55Z
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@ricci fascinating patterns and "anomalies". For example the UK seems abnormally low. Has it completely outsourced hosting to other countries?Ultimate resilience would come with people self-hosting at home. Not inconceivable with fiber and commoditized server hardware on one side lowering costs and mature and stable software platforms on the other lowering the maintenance bar...
(DIR) Post #AtROn9gC5TF1syBsFU by ricci@discuss.systems
2025-04-25T06:23:13Z
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@uastronomer yeah I was pretty surprised by that too. It's possible that the 24% going through cloudflare is hiding a significant number on AWS. It also could just be that fedi folks are more skeptical of the biggest providers than the population in general
(DIR) Post #AtROrAcaWlJBxtQ0hM by ricci@discuss.systems
2025-04-25T06:24:01Z
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@jonathan859 oops! guess I have hertz on the brain
(DIR) Post #AtRPEA4siNeOwIcE8e by stephen@microbe.vital.org.nz
2025-04-25T06:25:54.158190Z
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@ricci I see this little server isn't mapped (I'm in New Zealand so it's easy to tell) so I would suspect small instances are undercounted...
(DIR) Post #AtRPEAkiCr6x22BdL6 by ricci@discuss.systems
2025-04-25T06:28:02Z
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@stephen yeah I don't know much about how fedidb sources its data but I'm sure that 2.7k seriously undercounts the true number of fediverse servers - but probably tends to miss the smaller ones
(DIR) Post #AtRPQ7LUhMEDwP5SPQ by ricci@discuss.systems
2025-04-25T06:30:14Z
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@uastronomer there are 7 (including the instance I'm on š)
(DIR) Post #AtRQFPaKe1b7HIUD20 by crichardson@mstdn.social
2025-04-25T06:39:35Z
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@ricci@lisamelton@mastodon.sociaI miss when I could track free cloudflare servers with crimeflare:82
(DIR) Post #AtRS9OfvJXW0cwMSp6 by djsumdog@djsumdog.com
2025-04-25T07:00:54.519755Z
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BlueCry isn't federated. I don't understand why anyone would use it. The PDS servers don't talk to each other. It's the same slop you'd get anywhere else.I host on Hetzner and it's popular because it can be very cheap. You're basically using old hardware. (One of my hosts is old server grade hardware and the other is an old gaming motherboard). The biggest problem with fedi is the blocklists and censorship. My domain is instantly blocked by any moron who sets up a new server and blindly imports a block list. Nostr seems to be a better solution, but its userbase has fallen heavily.
(DIR) Post #AtRTNIhkPRCI7NPN1U by brendan@out.ruin.io
2025-04-25T07:14:33Z
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š it appears I don't exist
(DIR) Post #AtRVAzTKI1NKu0v8TY by dummzeuch@mastodon.social
2025-04-25T07:34:44Z
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@ricci the market in Germany and the EU in general is much smaller than in the US, because the lage US providers are also active in the EU. That might be a reason for the concentration on a few providers there.
(DIR) Post #AtRWYY283cl4htzp6O by snep@y.diskcat.com
2025-04-25T07:50:15Z
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@ricci My guess is that this is just an issue of availability, both in cheap VPS providers that aren't just using Hetzner or OVH in the background /and/ fast, reliable internet at home someone might want to host behind. Then again, I can imagine many just use a low tier VPS as a reverse proxy or to route IPs from, as that's the cheapest way to just get a public, static IPv4 and offer services behind, eben if they're not running on the same VPS.
(DIR) Post #AtRXyGPuHGwVYOwb9E by Lisamatthew@mastodon.social
2025-04-25T08:06:06Z
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@ricci Pope Francis, the first Latin American pontiff, departs this world leaving behind a profound legacy of compassion, progressive reform, and unwavering advocacy for the marginalized. His commitment to humility and social justice has reshaped the global perception of the Catholic Church. https://shorturl.at/zObCr
(DIR) Post #AtRZgJFHDqBp1RXRuy by yopox@rivals.space
2025-04-25T08:25:15Z
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@admin espaces rivaux c'est sur Hetzner ?
(DIR) Post #AtRbFsmPCLtpJsYoro by u@f.cz
2025-04-25T08:42:48Z
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12 fediverse serverÅÆ v Äesku. Za mÄ sluÅ”nĆ© skore. DĆky vÅ”em!
(DIR) Post #AtRdceippW6WI0sShM by starsider@valenciapa.ws
2025-04-25T09:09:19Z
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@ricci Also keep in mind there's people that host their fedi instances at home but proxy them through a cheap VPS just to avoid exposing their home IP and location. I know of VPSs as cheap as $1/mo.How many people? That I don't know.
(DIR) Post #AtRhMKxLx0YSAc8sYC by NathanielHigger1488@poa.st
2025-04-25T09:51:23.168577Z
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@djsumdog @ricci Cuz they don't have to worry about some random faggot like me coming along and yelling NIGGER NIGGER NIGGER at them
(DIR) Post #AtRhkDLzrtepXd3SRE by cubeExplorer@mastodon.social
2025-04-25T09:55:38Z
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@ricci needs some wider commections: Rimuhostimg (NZ), OVH (De)ā¦
(DIR) Post #AtRijwHjQhBMYdUabw by chris@mastodon.chrispelli.fun
2025-04-25T10:06:47Z
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@ricci very nice analysis. I think it might be good to correlate this with user numbers. It would still be bad if the instances with the most users go down.
(DIR) Post #AtRjwFdfOl7w0mBeue by GNUmatic@deppenkessel.de
2025-04-25T10:20:07Z
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@ricci Ain't that bad once you treat Germany like Texas and France like California, is it. š„³
(DIR) Post #AtRmMqCCIq2IpQ93tg by tfiebig@wybt.net
2025-04-25T10:47:20Z
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@ricci There is also this site with somewhat live data: https://fedi.wrm.sr/
(DIR) Post #AtRmj8OjJBDleUdaIi by Dragon@toast.dragon2611.net
2025-04-25T10:51:26Z
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@ricci thatās likely because both OVH and Hetzner operate at the budget end of the market and are usually somewhat ok
(DIR) Post #AtRnbW45WyIEgwuiHI by skatan@social.spejset.org
2025-04-25T11:01:12Z
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@ricci not sure if this make sense, but I feel like the comparison between USA and Germany or France is not really meaningful or fair, as the latter are smaller countries (and, I assume, have a smaller user base). That would mean that 14% of US servers corresponds to more users than 14% in Germany. On the other hand the number is of course still a valid indicator for the vulnerability of the fediverse in that specific country, and for the vulnerability of that specific community.
(DIR) Post #AtRqjNDuaSd9RuwlkG by serapath@mastodon.gamedev.place
2025-04-25T11:36:17Z
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@ricci You might want to explore nostr.Its the most decentralized social network on the planet. It got the architecture right.Not instances with instante operators, but interchangable relays. Users own their account by using keypairs they control instead of email/passwords the instance admins control.Without this criticial designs decision, decentralization wont work.
(DIR) Post #AtRrZkrBxmMTo1IUGe by wordshaper@weatherishappening.network
2025-04-25T11:45:48Z
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@ricci I suspect AWS going down would have the largest effect, though it would mostly manifest in media unavailability. A lot of servers use it on the back end for blob storage.
(DIR) Post #AtRuX8XTl0RqFRWI5o by Crazypedia@pagan.plus
2025-04-25T12:18:50Z
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@ricci I would bet that those two European hosts are being used by mastohost and spacebear respectively for their fedi server hosting services
(DIR) Post #AtRvXwXRxaAhGzSFfc by nick@piraten-partei.social
2025-04-25T12:30:14Z
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@ricci would also be interesting to run the numbers relative to users or active profiles.
(DIR) Post #AtRx4VmkY56NoGhl0S by ricci@discuss.systems
2025-04-25T12:47:24Z
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@wordshaper yeah true, this is only looking at where the front page is hosted
(DIR) Post #AtRxty596NG8L5qUYy by ricci@discuss.systems
2025-04-25T12:56:37Z
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@starsider yeah this would be really interesting to learn!
(DIR) Post #AtRy4545zfyItPB0TY by amy@fedi.amy.mov
2025-04-25T07:52:44.569Z
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@ricci@discuss.systems i would guess that most people arenāt strictly tied to CF though, using it for dns and caching, so could more trivially move that compared to having to migrate all your data etc
(DIR) Post #AtRy46HbSwN2faVJAW by ricci@discuss.systems
2025-04-25T12:58:28Z
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@amy agreed!
(DIR) Post #AtS1HBnGaWh1O7FNey by vandorb12@infosec.exchange
2025-04-25T13:34:30Z
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@ricci can we see an update of this in 6 months or a year from now, with a stats comparison?
(DIR) Post #AtS24Oh3PpZfaMo03s by menelion@dragonscave.space
2025-04-25T13:43:19Z
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@ricci That is even more cocerning given the fact that Hetzner, for example, can block your account without any explanations (google for a Reddit thread about it, it's quite at the top of search results).
(DIR) Post #AtS3AVvxVbjHjVG25o by lolcat@digipres.club
2025-04-25T13:55:42Z
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@ricci I'd a little surprised not to see more university-based instances. Go back to 1999, and every third *nix workstation at every uni seemed to be running one or more web servers (sometimes without the knowledge of the department that owned it).I could, of course, just be misinterpreting the data...
(DIR) Post #AtS3RVFtHiLaYFgJqy by shalien@mastodon.projetretro.io
2025-04-25T13:58:47Z
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@ricci Hey I see my server in there !
(DIR) Post #AtS5bxjuR5SrhJpzyC by ricci@discuss.systems
2025-04-25T14:23:06Z
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@lolcat Well, I only specifically posted the top hosts, there certainly could be some further down in the list, hosting one or two instances
(DIR) Post #AtS5hTZnUiaPszjkgq by ricci@discuss.systems
2025-04-25T14:24:05Z
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@vandorb12 if I remember lol
(DIR) Post #AtS5pzHzTG4SYfSzEu by ricci@discuss.systems
2025-04-25T14:25:39Z
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@tfiebig Oh, very cool site!
(DIR) Post #AtS5zScVmwGs8IaADo by erincandescent@akko.erincandescent.net
2025-04-25T10:14:48.046848Z
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@ricci if you look at who's behind cloudflare, the US providers score goes up: https://blog.benjojo.co.uk/post/who-hosts-the-fediverse-instances
(DIR) Post #AtS63fgn8jmBp9ald2 by ricci@discuss.systems
2025-04-25T14:28:01Z
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@erincandescent Ooh, that's an excellent analysis, very nice way to determine the actual hosting providers behind the CDNs!
(DIR) Post #AtS69PpyzOeoOkd8Nc by lolcat@digipres.club
2025-04-25T14:29:08Z
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@ricci Could be. But being so far down the list suggests to me a big change in student culture. Back in the day Ā®, students *played* with computers. Having access to the global internet, static IPs, and always-on *nix hosts was treated like a subversive playground where the only limit was your imagination.Maybe that's all still true, but I can't see it bc I'm stuck in the past and am blind to how things work now.
(DIR) Post #AtS6DeaU5hWvIqOyEi by elisethemuppet@raru.re
2025-04-25T14:29:51Z
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@ricci Honestly I figured most of fedi was just hosted on aws or hetznerIt's still a significant minority, but we're doing a lot better than I expected
(DIR) Post #AtS6IsjYvFJ4cp8nMu by ricci@discuss.systems
2025-04-25T14:30:48Z
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@cairobraga Yeah that's a good question, so I double checked; using the @fedidb API, it stops giving me 'next' links after 268 'pages', so it's clearly not returning the full list it has (and of course there are plenty of servers it doesn't index, though I'd guess that they tend to be on the small side)
(DIR) Post #AtS6UDgLNVRUmQ2eS8 by Branedy@mastodon.social
2025-04-25T14:32:52Z
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@ricci
(DIR) Post #AtS6ZYDkRWF7vaCzKq by marcelcosta@bcn.fedi.cat
2025-04-25T07:31:01.609632Z
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@ricci Nice analysis!In my experience, when looking into users things are more centralized than when considering servers.
(DIR) Post #AtS6ZZN0AbEtUZXtOi by ricci@discuss.systems
2025-04-25T14:33:49Z
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@marcelcosta Here is a nice analyses on that front:https://aus.social/@Drbruced/114335400872850185
(DIR) Post #AtS6q1V5LjltN1Akbo by lord@pleroma.lord.re
2025-04-25T07:47:21.904529Z
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@ricci did you use fedidb.org ?it shows 27000 servers not 2600.i love those stats ! it would be great for those to be integrated into fedidb :-)
(DIR) Post #AtS6q2eL4olew0Vefg by ricci@discuss.systems
2025-04-25T14:36:48Z
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@lord https://discuss.systems/@ricci/114399081190284614
(DIR) Post #AtS72FAOMfbpELJvai by ricci@discuss.systems
2025-04-25T14:38:57Z
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@echedellelr @Doomed_Daniel yeah if I was going to host something in Europe, I'd likely go with Scaleway
(DIR) Post #AtS7Btz5yTUKQldre4 by ricci@discuss.systems
2025-04-25T14:40:48Z
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@lolcat I know what you mean, I ran an Unreal Tournament server on campus when I was an undergrad.Unfortunately, campus IT organizations are taking away this freedom, fast, to the point where it's getting a bit hard to be creative even if you are faculty ... campuses are being run far more like businesses now
(DIR) Post #AtS8deEOEpkndRadxg by lord@pleroma.lord.re
2025-04-25T14:45:13.287133Z
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@ricci Ho i see ! You could maybe look into https://fedilist.com/instance :-) Maybe even easier to parse and automate ?
(DIR) Post #AtS8dfFqQuVmoFHJrs by ricci@discuss.systems
2025-04-25T14:56:57Z
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@lord Aha! I didn't know about this, will try again with this list
(DIR) Post #AtSBaSAiuvHlED2kng by lolcat@digipres.club
2025-04-25T15:30:02Z
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@ricci Yeah, that trend contributed to my decision to bow out of academia a few years ago. In my experience, HPC operations tend to operate largely outside campus IT, and, as a result, you see more of the play culture there. Campus IT management generally hates HPC and does everything in their power to shut it down - not necessary bc they're opposed to playfulness (though, they are), but because it represents a power center ($$) outside their control.
(DIR) Post #AtSBkPT9ovdpk3Pgh6 by ulvida@mastodon.uy
2025-04-25T15:31:39Z
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@ricci Figures and charts are very interesting, thanks! But I'm quite skeptic about some interpretations of them. I think the analisys speaks more about hosting market than about the fediverse decentralization or resilience. geographic locations are tho hosting ones, but how are distributed and linked their clients? Decentralization of the infrastructure of the fediverse reflects more its diversity than the deployment of a resilient service.
(DIR) Post #AtSBq7BKj3iylHnS3k by markrprior@ohai.social
2025-04-25T15:32:50Z
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@ricci one thing to note is that different fediverse systems have different hosting distributions. According to me, top 10 Mastodon countries are:1832 FR1739 DE1451 US671PT483JP262GB227FI206CA191NL172SGbut Wordpress is 7754 US 1004 DE 221 FR 145 GB 114 NL 87 JP 87 CH 48 DK 46 CA 44 IT
(DIR) Post #AtSBxMNacTJfvJz504 by ricci@discuss.systems
2025-04-25T15:34:11Z
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@markrprior This is very interesting! I did suspect that there might be a different distribution like this, but didn't analyze it, thanks!
(DIR) Post #AtSC8zcP4QZUo3Sagq by ricci@discuss.systems
2025-04-25T15:36:15Z
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@ulvida My specific interest here was in the comparison to BlueSky WRT its outage yesterday; from an organizational point of view, the fediverse is several orders of magnitude more resilient than bluesky, but I was wondering if there are specific hosting providers that could go down and wipe out big parts of the fediverse. The answer seems to be mostly no
(DIR) Post #AtSEsDh7mYVjP0MVhg by markrprior@ohai.social
2025-04-25T15:35:27Z
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@ricci overall top 1010819 US 4579 DE 2885 FR 961 JP 682 PT 585 GB 558 FI 505 CA 486 NL 253 CH
(DIR) Post #AtSEsF1ipSa5XB0TRo by markrprior@ohai.social
2025-04-25T15:43:29Z
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@ricci top IPv6 is somewhat predictable.9383 2606:4700:3000::/42 - Cloudflare 1702 2a06:98c1:3120::/46 - Cloudflare 1087 2606:4700::/36 - Cloudflare 826 2001:41d0:302::/48 - OVH 190 2a01:4f8:c010::/46 - Hetzner 168 2600:9000:2000::/35 - AWS 161 2a03:4000:30::/44 - Netcup 160 2a04:4e42:8e::/48 - Fastly 135 2402:1f00:8001:1000::/52 - Sakura 130 2001:4800::/29 - OVH
(DIR) Post #AtSEsFufXAX8HaiM5o by markrprior@ohai.social
2025-04-25T16:04:59Z
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@ricci the other thing to note is that any instance using Cloudflare, Fastly and friends for a service they offer isnāt necessarily where the IP might suggest it is as thatās the service front end rather than the instance.
(DIR) Post #AtSEsGVXK61Y7vxnYe by ricci@discuss.systems
2025-04-25T16:06:44Z
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@markrprior right; someone else in this thread pointed me to this excellent blog post that uses some cool techniques to get a view behind the proxies: https://blog.benjojo.co.uk/post/who-hosts-the-fediverse-instances
(DIR) Post #AtSFkNZ5IhLPeUQVNY by elithebearded@fed.qaz.red
2025-04-25T16:16:36Z
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@ricci 1. How many of the EU ones are from masto-dot-host? I counted about 180 in 2022.2. All those BGP prefixes are IPv4. I noted a significant number using IPv6 in 2022, but I don't know how many were dual stack.
(DIR) Post #AtSHShGDX96TQuIWAa by ulvida@mastodon.uy
2025-04-25T16:35:51Z
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@ricci ok, I understand the technical point of view. Global failure is indeed a spectre haunting all central managed systems... Internet Protocol resilience, as well as the fediverse one, are based on "no center". Never ever. Anywhere. And, by the way, this builds also neutrality.
(DIR) Post #AtSJYOl5R8cLhBaD9k by ricci@discuss.systems
2025-04-25T16:59:19Z
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@elithebearded 1. I didn't specifically capture this, and my 'data pipleine' of one-liner shell scripts doesn't make it easy to go back and check :) However anecdotally based on IP addresses that host many servers, I would guess that they are a substantial fraction of the ones on OVH2. Yeah I just did A queries for the addresses, since I figured I was more likely to get reasonable geolocation data for those
(DIR) Post #AtSM3qr1EA5riaU2Ua by CleanWeb@masto.nu
2025-04-25T17:27:14Z
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@ricci Over 500 are connected to the giant data collector cloudflare? This is terrible news.
(DIR) Post #AtSYWDnuh0E8SEKEXA by ricci@discuss.systems
2025-04-25T19:46:59Z
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Thanks to suggestions from others, I did this with a much larger dataset of 27k fediverse servers (10x as many as my last post). This time the data is from https://fedilist.com/instance Here's what I get:CloudFlare does sit in front of a large number of servers (4620) but a smaller percentage: 17%Hetzner is replaced by OVH, barely, as the second most popular host, each host about 11% of fediverse serversTop 10 networks in this dataset:3000 Cloudflare, Inc.2471 Hetzner Online GmbH1009 DigitalOcean, LLC861 OVH SAS655 Akamai Connected Cloud627 netcup GmbH353 Amazon.com, Inc.340 IONOS SE334 Oracle Corporation327 Contabo GmbHThe astute reader will notice that this does not match what I said above re: Hetzner and OVH; this is because the first set of stats counts each *domain* once, and this set counts each *IP address* once. Many of the domains at OVH are hosted from a handful of IP addresses, this is likely due to masto.host but I didn't look deeply.Here are the top 10 IP addresses hosting fediverse servers:681 94.23.75.107 (OVH)657 54.38.247.97 (OVH)481 151.101.3.7 (Fastly)255 104.21.16.1 (CloudFlare)251 178.33.220.142 (OVH)184 50.56.249.138 (Rackspace)172 217.182.80.236 (OVH)166 104.22.76.159 (CloudFlare)144 151.101.131.7 (Fastly)135 139.99.39.10 (OVH Singapore)Now, the majority fediverse servers are on networks that host *five or fewer* fedivserse servers. Six thousand fediverse servers are the only one on their network.To take out half of the fediverse (remember, we're talking servers here, not users), you'd have to take out more than *three hundred networks*.Top countries in this bigger dataset:7114 United States4230 Germany1248 France862 Japan605 Finland599 United Kingdom565 Netherlands529 Canada221 Australia217 SwitzerlandAnd by continent (as defined by ipinfo):8874 Europe7661 North America1218 Asia250 Oceania73 South America24 AfricaSeveral folks suggested other interesting analyses:* A post that peeks behind the CloudFlare curtain: https://blog.benjojo.co.uk/post/who-hosts-the-fediverse-instances* A cool site that displays similar data in a much more pretty form, and has some per-user data: https://fedi.wrm.sr/* A graph that shows that while there are big instances of course, users are actually spread across a large set of instances overall: https://aus.social/@Drbruced/114335400872850185Thanks to the people that brought these to my attention!Finally, a more complete map:https://ipinfo.io/tools/map/190d4a54-1b40-4749-ad1b-17524bed11ea
(DIR) Post #AtSZXGUwGIhz3MVmAC by ricci@discuss.systems
2025-04-25T19:58:22Z
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Ironically, I think I temporarily killed the instance I'm on by editing my post about fediverse resiliency (this sends out a flurry of messages to update it)You're welcome @dan
(DIR) Post #AtSZw0jW0pqPOn84rA by ricci@discuss.systems
2025-04-25T20:02:47Z
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@cec047b yeah I killed my instance š
(DIR) Post #AtSaGyC8e3aDbjVmJk by jtk@infosec.exchange
2025-04-25T19:56:28Z
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@ricci Far be it for me to suggest more work, but if someone had the energy to sum the number of users on each server, if available, might also be neat to rank net/locale by user count.
(DIR) Post #AtSan4BvsvqFTMiiHI by erik@mastodon.infrageeks.social
2025-04-25T20:12:25Z
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@ricci @jonny Side note: my fediverse server is hosted on a bare metal instance at OVH (along with other VMs on that server) but not on any kind of service. Rolled my own on a Linux VM.
(DIR) Post #AtSazTfH0BEnx3MVH6 by ricci@discuss.systems
2025-04-25T20:14:42Z
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@jtk https://fedi.wrm.sr/ does this
(DIR) Post #AtSb2fhwgN1WAg8Qvg by mousey@mastodon.seattlematrix.org
2025-04-25T20:15:15Z
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@ricci awesome analysis, thank you!
(DIR) Post #AtSbIebqX9ynOju3VY by ricci@discuss.systems
2025-04-25T20:18:10Z
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@jtk I will also put up the raw data somwhere later, but it's a busy day...
(DIR) Post #AtSi42RGM1Rmdevkzg by Tristan@catnest.net
2025-04-25T21:33:57Z
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@ricci who the hell is shelling out AWS money to host their fedi instance lmao
(DIR) Post #AtT3C10vdKI5ZeG3TE by piber@woof.tech
2025-04-26T01:30:39Z
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@ricci This is so dang cool! Thanks for sharing
(DIR) Post #AtThQVZX4UxKn9Ztx2 by cjd@pkteerium.xyz
2025-04-26T09:01:30.868774Z
2 likes, 1 repeats
> and blindly imports a block list(IQ test)
(DIR) Post #AtTlHxXAICJORxNOhU by Sophistifunk@noauthority.social
2025-04-26T09:36:36Z
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@cjd @magicalthinking that gag is almost worth driving a vw.
(DIR) Post #AtTvA7d9ruhyzO56NU by tyx@lor.sh
2025-04-26T11:35:24Z
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@ricci @jonny >Another interesting thing here is that >while CloudFlare, and to some extent >Akamai are notable points of failure >in the current fediverse*In the current InternetWhen the censorship agency in one of the authoritarian country screwed up and banned CloudFlare completely it was spectacular.>It suggests that the ones in France >are *super* concetrated, not only are >they almost all on the same cloud >provider, they are maintained by the >same organization. The same OVH who let one of their DC to burn down to the ground few years ago? Hope the instances are not in one building physically.
(DIR) Post #AtUFsSUDgciVUtJqDo by falcennial@mastodon.social
2025-04-26T11:40:27Z
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@djsumdog @ricci why would importing a block list block yours? only if your setup was on it tho right, not otherwise? it would be pretty unusual for people to go blocking whole servers they havent even heard from I would think. I likely am missing something about how it works.
(DIR) Post #AtUFsSzlnJxD4k52Om by djsumdog@djsumdog.com
2025-04-26T15:27:20.629339Z
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Are you new here? Most of the block lists out there contain hundreds, if not thousands, of single user instances and dead servers. People who maintain these lists will just add anyone for the slightest reason. Your own instance silences my server and I've even contributed to the Mastodon codebase. People accused me of 'ban evading' when I set up my Pleroma server, even those I have the same username, icon and it's very clearly me.If you switched from mastodon.social to a place such as shitposter.world or noauthority.social, you would see an ENTIRELY different version of the fediverse.
(DIR) Post #AtUGFT5lbK3U2Hqxiy by theorytoe@ak.kyaruc.moe
2025-04-26T15:31:30.915835Z
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@falcennial @djsumdog @ricci except they do (i dont even know why im posting since I too am blocked)
(DIR) Post #AtVrTTLXLK8ULCjLEG by jubei@fedi.deemos.club
2025-04-27T10:03:27Z
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@ricci people should just host their own mastodons on a small raspberry pi at home. I know there's an overhead that comes with that but hopefully somebody can make some linux distro that will simplify that.
(DIR) Post #AtdUqFiHjvHlQu6Usa by ricci@discuss.systems
2025-05-01T02:27:37Z
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@ireneista yeah I think the other dataset ended up being better - though it seems not useful for things relating to user counts, as there are many instances listed there with user counts that seem highly improbable
(DIR) Post #AtdhlZ7DTToDZ0rPgu by ricci@discuss.systems
2025-05-01T04:52:26Z
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@ireneista yeah and I have no problem with instances and users who don't wish to be analyzed, that's something we should all have a right to