On my server machine, I run a JSTUN-based STUN server since November 2007. I was doing so because I am the lead developer of JSTUN and hence I needed a test server every now and then. Also, other developers and testers should have the possibility to test JSTUN easily. My third motivation to run a JSTUN-based STUN server was that I wanted to test the compatibility of the JSTUN library against as many STUN implementations as possible. One way to do this was to provide an open accessible STUN server and let the world know that it can be used for testing or productive service.
As I told you, my JSTUN-based STUN server is up and running since November 2007. The up-time of this service is more than 99.9 percent. The service has been restarted only twice. The first restart was due a bug in my STUN server implementation that could crash the server. The second restart was required because the operating system underneath the STUN server required a reboot.
In the beginning, the STUN server was not used a lot. From November 2007 till September 2008 less than ten unique IP addresses connected to the STUN server daily. In October and November 2008, I realized a steady increase of unique IP addresses that connected to the STUN server. Until then, the highest number of unique IP addresses that connected to the STUN server at a single day was 36. In December, the number of unique IP addresses that accessed the STUN server nearly doubled. In January, the number of unique IP addresses just exploded. On Junary 30th, 217 unique IP addresses used the STUN server service. Since that day, the number of unique IP addresses that connected to the STUN server was always larger than 180. The highest point was reached on February 5th by 225 unique IP addresses. The following figure depicts the number of unique IP addresses that accessed the STUN server for every single day in the range of August 1st, 2008 until February 1st, 2009.
I am pretty happy that my STUN server is used so often. It is nice to see that the server is able to handle the workload easily.
What baffles me is what caused the increase of the number of people using the STUN server? Is it because JSTUN is used by LimeWire and other P2P applications? Is some other software using JSTUN I am not aware of? Did some software use the STUN server running on my machine as default STUN server? A lots of open questions. Do you have any comment on this?
Best regards,
Thomas King
Posted by Thomas King at 15:06 2009-02-22 | Trackbacks (0) | Comments (0)
