You have to open the RPC port in addition to the regular P2P port. In addition to whatever the bandwidth is required for a regular node (I don't know the current number), additional bandwidth would be demanded by those using it. Finally there are few tweaks needed to restrict some requests. For example, you probably don't want public RPC users to be able to turn mining on and off. Before the --restricted-rpc option was added to Monero those offering public nodes generally patched these things themselves.
Smooth, thanks for the info. Based on your explanation, I reviewed the Monero code for the restricted rpc options. Then I commented out the corresponding commands in the aeon core_rpc_server.h, then recompiled. This was quick and dirty (I'm sure there is a more elegant solution).
I can successfully connect, refresh, and TX from a remote simplewallet. The commands save_bc and start/stop_mining now don't work (as expected), they throw an error in simplewallet. The only problem was bc_height didn't work from the remote simplewallet, but it does work correctly locally. I'm not sure why that is.
Anyone is welcome to test this server. If you break it, I won't cry.
34.201.20.65
RPC port 11181
For example:
./simplewallet --daemon-address 34.201.20.65 --daemon-port 11181 #incorrect
./simplewallet --daemon-host 34.201.20.65 --daemon-port 11181
or
./simplewallet --daemon-address 34.201.20.65:11181
I'd appreciate any input from the other members of the community, especially if there is something I've overlooked. My eventual goal is to create a GUI wallet for Windows which doesn't require a local node. Thanks.