Success rate had a known fixed benchmark of 80/110 ≈ 72% to compare against, so you didn’t have to have a second node.
Now you will get a decent success rate even for relatively bad configurations.
Indeed. But knowing whether a change you make to your potato actually improves operations is known. Now potato operators have even less indicators to guide optimization of their nodes.
But there is a simple thing Storj Inc. can do to remedy this, and it is publishing the success ratios used in the algorithm. This way node operators can look up how their nodes work compared to others’. It’s not like these ratios are secrets—any customer can run a large number of uploads and publish their success ratios along with node IDs. Storj Inc. can do that as regular satellite operations though, by just publishing the numbers they already have.
Yep, I fully expect some node operators to drop over ISP limits.
SQM is magic. But it takes a good router to have enough CPU to do it at throughputs >200 Mbps. My observations are, typical ISP-provided potato routers are too cheap for that.