Can a SMR drive handle these requirements?

This is a combination of (at least) three factors. One is the distribution of nodes. There’s just not that many nodes outside of North America and Europe. Second is that the current approach to spread pieces by /24 blocks prefers countries with many /24 blocks, i.e. countries which operated Internet infrastructure earlier. Third is that nodes further from you will more likely lose races during uploads.

The first factor could be improved by promoting becoming a node operator more, especially as revenue should be more enticing due to usually lower costs of life in areas outside of North America and Europe.

The other two factors could be helped by changing the way nodes are spread. One proposition is here. Though, any such approach will be quite a bit more complex to implement and maintain than the current one, which has the advantage of being extremely simple and fast, putting low load on satellites.

Another idea would be for the uploader to voluntarily agree to slower uploads by reducing the number of nodes participating in a race. Then nodes further away will have more chances of winning the race.

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