Your earnings as a node operator are bounded by your upload speed and your line's stability. Here's how the big Indian ISPs compare for bandwidth sharing, based on fleet measurements and published plan specs.
The short version
| ISP | Typical upload | Latency to Mumbai | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jio Fiber 1 Gbps | 150–200 Mbps | 20–40 ms | Best price-per-Mbps, lowest latency from most of India |
| ACT Fibernet 500 Mbps | 250–500 Mbps (symmetric on many plans) | 30–50 ms | Best raw upload; slightly pricier |
| Airtel Xstream 300 Mbps | 100–150 Mbps | 20–40 ms | Solid, widely available, consistent |
| Hathway / local cable | 50–100 Mbps | 30–50 ms | Works, but watch evening congestion |
Why upload matters more than download
Clients download through your node — which means your node uploads to them. A "1 Gbps" plan that only delivers 100 Mbps upstream caps your node at 100 Mbps of serving capacity. ACT's symmetric plans win on paper here; Jio Fiber wins on price and latency.
Latency is the second lever
The Snowpad core runs in Mumbai. Every millisecond of RTT between your node and the gateway adds to the client's time-to-first-byte. North India fibre should see 25–50 ms. If you're consistently above 100 ms, your ISP is routing you badly — your sessions will be shorter and your earnings lower.
Test yours:
ping -c 20 <gateway-host>
Under 60 ms average = healthy. Over 100 ms = consider a different ISP or a different vantage.
Stability beats speed
A 200 Mbps line that dips to 20 Mbps every evening moves fewer GB than a stable 100 Mbps line. Before committing hardware, run a week-long test:
- Keep the node online 24/7 for 7 days.
- Watch the app's uptime and GB counters.
- If GB/day plateaus despite good uptime, the bottleneck is your line.
The recommendation
- Best overall: Jio Fiber 1 Gbps — upload saturates the VPS port, latency is lowest from owner-home-region, price is right.
- Best for max upload: ACT Fibernet 500 Mbps symmetric.
- Already on Airtel? Don't switch. The difference is 10–20%, not 2×.
Whatever you pick: wire the node over Ethernet where possible, WiFi adds jitter that shortens sessions.
One node per line
Multiple nodes behind the same NAT share one public IP — the pool treats them as one supply source. Spread nodes across locations/ISPs, not copies on one line.