Salad’s bandwidth-sharing jobs serve up appetizing earnings for the well-connected Chef. Curious to know how they work? Dig into this Salad Guide to find out what’s happening under the hood.
Concept Glossary
Since Ape Escape taught us never to try anything on before we’ve understood it, here’s a brief glossary of terms to get you up to speed with high-bandwidth jobs.
Bandwidth
Bandwidth measures the amount of data transmitted over an internet connection during some increment of time. It is usually recorded in megabits per second (Mbps) or gigabits per second (Gbps) (for the lucky few already gone gigaspeed into the Metaverse).
Bits vs. Bytes
Computers use encoded information formats to transform huge sources of data—like websites, video streams, or downloads—into snackable packets. Bits are the smallest data format, and they’re binary encoded as either a “0” or a “1.”
With eight bits to every byte, it’s easy to confuse megabits per second (Mbps) with megabytes per second (MBps). Downloading the next 90-gig CoD update should help you illustrate the difference. Bytes are commonly used to approximate storage capacities, while bits are more often associated with data transmission.
Latency
Whenever you stream video or execute skull-crushing Fatalities online, your device sends a request to a server that must send back a response. Latency is the hang-time duration between the moment data is requested and when it’s received.Measures of latency typically correlate to the physical distance between the sending server and the requesting device. The farther you are from the origin point, the greater the latency—which means it takes more time to get information back.
Connection Speed
Bandwidth isn’t quite the same thing as connection speed (which factors in latency), but the terms are sometimes used interchangeably. The important difference is that bandwidth measures the actual volume of data sent in some span of time, while connection speed provides the rate at which that data gets from A to B. Your connection speed is therefore a function of both bandwidth and latency.
High-bandwidth Jobs
If it wasn’t already clear, your internet connection can process huge volumes of data every second! Salad’s newest flavor of compute cuisine allows you to share spare bandwidth to earn even more Salad Balance from your idle PC.
Since GPU- and CPU-sharing workloads require only minimal bandwidth (for logging and transmitting results), high-bandwidth jobs can be completed alongside other computesharing activity. To enable bandwidth sharing within the Salad app, simply navigate to the “Performance” tab and click the toggle that says “High-Bandwidth Jobs.”
As always, the longer and more often you Chop, the more you’ll earn. We hope to introduce new types of high-bandwidth jobs in the future that will diversify the ways you can share on Salad.
Download Salad to get started. If you have questions about using Salad on your home PC, please visit our community Discord or ask a question on our official Reddit forum.
Secure Streaming
Salad’s first supported bandwidth workloads involve video processing for virtual private networks. As users of personal privacy software queue up videos from premium streaming services, your PC can now process and relay chunks of buffered video data to serve up a flawless viewing experience.
To protect Salad Chefs and their PCs, we’ve limited the kinds of traffic allowed in the Kitchen. Your shared bandwidth will only service video stream requests made from authenticated accounts on a restricted list of well-known video platforms—meaning folks using privacy networks in conjunction with a paid streaming subscription.
Salad cannot see or track what is being watched. Your PC will only interpret video streams and Chop them into encoded little data packets, like a prep kitchen for a buttery-smooth binge sesh.
We have tested high-bandwidth jobs in public beta trials with the help of volunteer Chefs from North America and Europe. Before enabling bandwidth sharing in your region, we encourage you to read Top 5 Facts About Bandwidth Sharing for answers to frequently asked questions.
For digestible refreshers on more tech topics, please visit our Salad Guide collection.
