Hi All,

I have a home connection that is 100Mbps enabled and am seeing 20meg download and 15meg upload. I can also upgrade to get a true 100meg to the internet.

What could you do if you had a connection like this? I'm working on setting up some hosting from home but my main thing is going to be trying to sell this service.

Would there be any demand? It would be a work from home and/or run a business from home proposition. Static IPs no problem. What do you think this service is worth?

TIA,

Simon

This is my opinion only, and may not mean much, but I think even if you have the fastest connection possible running through your house, it's still not a good place to host from. Too many things can go wrong that would ruin your entire business. Like I said, it's just my opinion and you're free to do whatever trips your trigger, but I don't think it's a great business decision.

I'm thinking of the D-I-Y kinda guy. Your point is well taken though. I think for the savings of doing it yourself, some people may be interested.

Erm, may I ask how and why you have a 100Mbps line running through your house? Its not everyday that I hear of something like this =) Its actually pretty cool, however when you consider that for only 200 bucks or so monthly you can get a dedicated server at rackspace.com with security, 99.999% uptime, etc etc... its more worth it to host with a professional company.

Lets just say I used to work for my ISP. I'm trying to see if there is demand for this sort of connection speed and what it's worth. Preliminary thought is ~$200/month. The uptime is better than average IMO, I know it's a major issue when doing it from home. Obviously this is no rinky-dink dsl or cable modem service, it is fiber in the building running Fast Ethernet.

I figure if uptime is not an issue, the low cost of the connection might just make the numbers work.

What do you think?

you don't have redaundant connections do you?

or a power generator in case your power fails?

or a climate controlled room for your servers?

I would say go with a dedicated server, or just co-locate.
I like to be the do it yourself kind of person and it would be fun to do this, but it's really not worth it :)

Redundant connections: No. The fiber network supporting this is rock solid though. Good point!

Backup power: Nope, you run your own UPS if your building doesn't have emergency power. Part of the DIY thing.

Climate control: I don't see this as an issue unless you run a lot of devices in a small confined space. We're talking about your own home. How hot does it get?

Thanks for the critique. I need to know all the issues and how to respond.

Running a server non-stop at room temperture is not good, no matter how big or small it is. However you could biuld a small room in your home and air condition it.

This*smells*of*Cogent to me.

Cogent? Whats that?

Personally, I would never in a million years buy hosting from someone running it out of his or her home. Unless they had guaranteed 99.999% uptime, armed personnel, biometric security, cameras, ups and then diesel backups, backups, etc etc etc.

It’s impossible to do. If you want to host a rinky-dink website I'd say sure. However, even if you have that much bandwith, it doesn't sound like a good idea.

BTW: Where are you getting this bandwith? Is the local area network 100mbps or is the actual connection that speed? The connection that I know of that comes close to that is either two paired DS-3/T-3 lines or an OC-3, which is a bit overkill.

Brian

There is no telco T3/DS3 telephony nothing to this. It's all ethernet running on fiber/cat5e to the portal. My port on a fiber fed switch is enabled to 100Mbps. Yes, it's all overkill.

You guys make some really good cases for not hosting at home and maybe it's not a viable concept commercially. But this for the guy who has a few of his own websites and wants to do it cheap.
Especially if it only costs $200/month or thereabouts.

Still this is good feedback for me to work on. I'm also thinking of targeting the people who run a Home Studio for Graphic Arts, Digital Editing, Web Designers, Gamers, practically anybody for whom 1.5Meg is not nearly enough.

Keep the posts coming. Thanks.

Rackspace.com whom is hands down the best hosting provider has a linux box for 250 monthly. With all of those extra add ins like security and UPS I'd go with them for the extra 50.

Brian

Wait, you want to charge me $200 a month to keep my server at your house? Or you want to give me a 100Mbps line for $200.

I can't tell what your talking about.

If you are talking about $200 colo, your crazy. I wouldn't give you $10 a month to host anything in your house.

If you are talking about giving me a line for $200, i would gladly pay you for that! When can you install it? Sign me up!

100Mbps your not making much sence, how exactly are you supposto get the fiber to these people your talking about, or, are you just refering to hand running fiber to tenates in the same building as you?

Once you leave the building and start talking about running fiber elsewhere, then say hello to loop charges.

100mbit fiber line? Count me in aswell. When can we set an install date =)

Brian

i am by no means an expert,
but i was told that a foot of fiber is $1,000

of course this was a couple years ago how much is it now

and i dont know if i trust something like this

i mean you are a guy who used to work for an isp doing this
kinda like the guy who goes around that used to work for the cable company that will give you ALL your cable chanels for 10 bucks a month

is what this sounds like to me

Man, you guys are hard bunch. Let me clear a few things up.

1. I am talking about a 100Mbps service which will normally get you 20meg download and 15meg upload off the Internet. This is a speedtest I use from Speedtest.net. Within the ISPs network, and off the ISP's own speedtest, I see 90meg.

2. The ISP I used to work for has about 60 buildings fed by fiber. Anyone living in these buildings can have the same as I've got. I don't have to run fiber anywhere, it's already in place. This service is available only if you live in these buildings.

3. Indeed, the price for this service will be about $200/month plus about $2.50 - $3.00 per GB over the first 10Gb for traffic depending on volume.

4. Yes, it may not be viable to run a Web Hosting business from home with this connection.

5. Yes, it's not for everyone.

If this service was available to you, could you use it? What do you think it's worth per month. I'm doing some research to see how I can market this. Yes, this service is for real but only available in one city, and in the Downtown Residential area only.

If you want more info email me s_phang@yahoo.com

ps. That was a low blow..."cable guy.....all channels...10bucks a month"...you hurt my feelings:bawling:

well for those speeds id say 200 a month is worht it
i could definetely put it into use

hehe any in omaha nebraska ?

If I had that connection I would use it, but I would not try and resell it.

BTW: You're only giving 10 Gigabytes of transfer monthly?

Thats skimpy for 200 bucks monthly.

3. Indeed, the price for this service will be about $200/month plus about $2.50 - $3.00 per GB over the first 10Gb for traffic depending on volume. OK, this is silly!

There are hosts on this board who have 155 Mbps fully redunant (which muliple providers), multihomed, BGP routed pipes in world class datacenters that have clean backup power, cooling, on site techs, etc for the same price.

Which would you choose?

Man!
Where do you live?
I wanna move in your building!:D


Chris

Heh, rackmy.com you read my mind.

However, what everybody seems to be missing is there's only 60 apartment buildings lined up like this, lets assume 20 tenats per building, thats 1200 possible customers total. Now, you can knock off 70% of them right there for the fact that their not going to be half way even remotley intrested in something like this because they have cable/dsl and are casual surfers and are doing just fine. So now your down to 360 customers. Out of those 360 your looking @ a few heavy surfers, and maybe out of the bunch you've got 1 or 2 that might be intrested...... Unlike the population represented on these forums most people could care less about the speed, espically when you start talking $200 a month. Your #1 question shall be, "Why do I want that crap for $200 a month when I can get cable for $60 a month (or less) or DSL for $50 a month (or less). Then try to explain to them that they only get 10gig. Did you know that 20mbps is about 6,320 gig a month, so why even give them that much capacity if your going to charge them out the rear end when they go over 10gig, thats less than 0.16% of the line capacity before you charge them. So you are going to go around and tell them "Oh Yes, you have this big massive line that can do over 6terabytes worth of transfer but you can only use 0.16% of it before I can charge you, or you can go get a 512k cable modem and max it out and transfer 158gig if you max it out for less than 60 a month"

Your logic is not making sence except for a select few, so out of those estimated 1200 tenates your going to make less than 5 sales. Even then its going to be very hard since in todays economy everybody is very slow to spend money on things like that unless they actually NEED that kind of speed which is rare for private users who don't already have an office somewhere.


Now lets go deeper shall we.

You say the line gets "about" 20mbps down and 15mbps up.
Have you even tried to get a sustained transfer, half the time those speed tests are so off its not even funny.

Lets go even further, I assume you have to pay for the bandwidth as well, or because you use to "work" for the ISP your just stealing their bandwidth on that port they don't know about?

Also, why in the world is this ISP going to let you use their fiber without a charge anyhow. Or again, do they just not know.

Of course also do they know their going to have to be buying fiber cards to even get this thing patched into their computer? Are you prepared to provide such cards, because, ya know, they can rent that cable modem and network card from the cable company for $3 a month....

Personally I smell bad idea written all over it, its too small of a market and WAY too specialized of one. Espically since cable modems and DSL have been around long enough.

Originally posted by RackMy.com
OK, this is silly!

There are hosts on this board who have 155 Mbps fully redunant (which muliple providers), multihomed, BGP routed pipes in world class datacenters that have clean backup power, cooling, on site techs, etc for the same price.

Which would you choose?

With more bandwith I may add.

Brian

Where is 100Mbps's reply to DanialP's logic?

Hey DanialP,
You rushed "100Mbps" away.
You bad DanialP, you!

Just kidding:D

I'm sorry, I've just been in the industry for close to 7 years now and some things you just *have* to reply to :)

DanielP and all of you who are following this thread,

Thanks for your input. I gives me good experience in dealing with hard-nosed customers.

I cannot reveal my business arrangements with the ISP because they are not finalized. However, I would not be posting this if I could not offer the service for ~$200/month. There is NOTHING shady about this so I take exception to suggestions that I am stealing anything.

From the response I've had, it's becoming clear that it's probably not viable for hosting from home but there may be other uses for it. The connection and supporting network is carrier class. As far as I'm concerned, I provide the connectivity at the stated speed, what our potential customers do with it is up to them. The customer is advised that our responsibility ends at the wall plate. The traffic limits imposed and usage rates are not in my domain. I have no control over that. If you have a big pipe, use it wisely or it'll cost. The usage rates compare well with other ISPs around here although I concede that there may be a need to re-think this aspect.

For the record, there are ~6000 potential customer in those 60 buildings. This is a home service. The speeds I've quoted have been tested from two separate terminals in separate buildings on the same network. I use speedtest.net and stand by my claim.

The question remains, if this connection was available to you, would you take it? And how much would you pay?

Let's get away from using it for hosting. Use it for whatever your imagination can come up with. Is it worth it? If not, what do you think I should price it at?

Your input is greatly appreciated. I can understand the skepticism. After all, a residential connection at that speed is unheard of, until now. The way I see it, within 2 years, cable and DSL will become like dial-up is today.

Please keep the responses coming.

Thanks,

Simon

Why would I pay $200 for 10gb transfer I can get a 1.5Mbps dsl likne and get about 500gbs for $150 a month.

No, i would not pay $200 a month for a 10gig pipe. Sure, I can download a 600meg file in a few mins, but is it worth 200 a month? No...

Right now I get 512k down and 256k up cable connection for $30 a month, I can MAX it out and not get charged a dime extra, I generally get well under 50ms for anything I do including online games on the net.

So now hypothetically speaking, If i were to max my cable out 24/7 for 30 days i'd use 158gb that month. Now if i were to use 158gb with you, i'd end up paying $644 a month. Sorry, thats more than any home user would even dream of paying. Now lets take it a step further.

For 60 a month I can get 1mbps down and 512k up, so now I can do 316 gig for $60 a month or for $1,148 a month with you, if i'm paying 1,148 a month I might as well add another couple hundred and get a reliable T1... Unless you offer something realisting nobody will want it the first big bill they get. Or as tetraboy said, the people with DSL can get even more bandwidth than some of the cable users. Oh also, on my bandwidth, i'm on the outskirts of town, almost 60,000 feet from the cable companies main hub and I get these speeds. So I can't get DSL but I still get some nice cable.

Ok so 6000 potential customers. So your potential half way even possibe customer base is only 1800 people, and even then, and well really ESPICALLY if theirs cable AND dsl in the area then you don't have a chance in hell. If you can't convince US why its better, then how do you think you can convince a person who's never known you before, doesn't know what fiber is , and is extremly happy with their cable service to switch and pay you more for less?

DanielP,

This service is obviously not for you. You've got a good thing going there, not paying for extra usage. Hereabouts, the ISPs do have usage limits and customers do have to pay for overuse. I wonder if you've read all the fine print on your contract. That said, we're not doing anything out of the ordinary. Don't you charge for usage?

I really can't comment on your cable modem speed, I've never had one. You seem happy with it though. I was happy with my dial-up until I got high speed. Still, if it does it for you, then it does it for you. I think some may want more, if for nothing more than bragging rights.

You seem incredulous that we are able to put something like this together. I would think that with your 7 years experience in the industry, you would have heard of fiber to the home and scalable ethernet. Let me assure you, the network is in place and running.

Finally, I am grateful that you take the time to respond. It is a great exercise to try and convince someone who doesn't know what fiber is.

Regards,

Simon

Why did you even come here if you are going to ignore any comments given to you? I dont know of many isps that charge usage. I payy $15 for 384/128k dsl. I can host servers, download all day all night and network between multiple computers and share access. I can upgrade to higher speeds for more money... But cogent is selling a 100Mbps pipe for $1,000 a month. Why go with you. They have no usage charges. You're buying 100Mbps pipe to the internet not paying by GB. What you're saying is they are hooked up via ethernet and get charged by how much they transfer.

Originally posted by Tetraboy
Why did you even come here if you are going to ignore any comments given to you? I dont know of many isps that charge usage. I payy $15 for 384/128k dsl. I can host servers, download all day all night and network between multiple computers and share access. I can upgrade to higher speeds for more money... But cogent is selling a 100Mbps pipe for $1,000 a month. Why go with you. They have no usage charges. You're buying 100Mbps pipe to the internet not paying by GB. What you're saying is they are hooked up via ethernet and get charged by how much they transfer.

$15 for DSL?

Whoa:eek:

Is that your local area ISP?

That's amazing!
Never mind the Fiber. I want your DSL:bawling:
Yeah, I got Cable, but, I pay $40.00/month

Well lets see, I did state that there was a usage limit on my cable did I not? Oh yes I did it was the 512k down and 256k up, gasp, one solid standard rate for a whole pipe!

I'm quite famillar with fiber, and with housing complex's pre-wired with fiber as well. Your more than welcome to go ahead and try to sell this service, but your not going to get many bites. Have you even gotten demographic reports for your area? You know that nifty little thing that calculates living costs, how much people actually make in that area , what type of jobs the average person around there has?

Its not going to do you any good to try and sell fiber to people who can't even afford it. Sounds like you've got a lot more research to do, so go do that, come back with a few more details, then try and talk ****.

Yep they sell dsl/dialup same pirce. Course you still have to pay the phone company for an adsl line we got a speical normally its $20 a month. And they are high quality :-)

Daniel, Daniel.....let's stop sparring. I cannot tell you more without giving it away. As I've said, it's not finalized. If this sounds like a cop out to you....so be it. I think it can be done, especially if I drop the price to $150 or even $100/month.

ps. I also sell dark fiber. Want some cheap?



Tetraboy,

Cogent's line is $1000/month? No usage? Not that I don't believe you but maybe that's why they're going bankrupt. That would be a hell of a deal. Where I live, everybody wants money for traffic.

Over here, bandwidth is cheap, traffic not so cheap. That's what I'm working with. If you can get free traffic, great. I think what you're seeing is maybe a dying trend. Like you say, if you have your DSL 1.5meg maxed for the month for about 500gig transfer, then your provider will eventually go bankrupt. 500gig is going to cost your provider way more than your monthly service charge. I don't see your provider subsidizing your service for too long. I may be wrong but I certainly don't want to make the same mistake.

Where are you at? In here they dont sell usage based. You get dsl or cable or dialup but you pay for whatever the max line can transfer. and I now personally I download tons..and my isp has never said anything. Ive ran server and my isp said nothing. I thought you did not know what cogent is? Hm... Can you give us an ip to trace.. Seeing as you already have it.

If you haven't figured it out already, sorry buddy. I can't tell you where I'm at. Business.

Usage is a very funny thing. Most ISPs never expected file sharing or gaming to take off the way it did. Suddenly it's not just emails and small video clips anymore. Usage went waaay up for some users. Fortunately, the average is still below their breakeven point, they can continue to operate but on a slimmer margin. As usage continues to climb, ISPs start implementing usage limits and charge for overuse. I think thats where it's at now; some are further ahead than others. Usage stats converted into billing info is no easy thing to implement, especially if you never had to do it before. The cable companies come to mind.

I was not aware of Cogent until you mentioned it. I looked it up only to find that it's in deep trouble.

On my connection, my current limit is 4gb/month. But you know, to a heavy surfer it's not too bad. Think about it...

4 gig = 400 songs @ 10meg per song.
= 8 movies @ 500meg per movie.
= 40,000 jpegs @ 1meg per jpeg
= 400,000 pages @ 100k per page
= 222 mins of streaming video @ 300k/sec

How much stuff have you downloaded? I'm curious to know what your usage is.

Sorry, ISPs also start to choke off bandwidth to control traffic. Easier to do and easier to get away with trying to bill for it.

4gb for a heavy user? home in the states i have a 768k sdsl line that i do about 2 gb per day. and i consider myself a heavy user.

however, when i'm at home in europe, i'm on a 512k adsl line that limits to 1gb per month and charges for overage. it's horrible. i'm certainly going cable asap.

2gig a day? Wow. What do you do with 2 gig a day? What do you think you consumption is for an average month?

2 x 30 = 60....

2gig a day every day? I guess there are heavy users and then there are HEAVY users.

I would try and market it at people who would otherwise go with cable or DSL. Offer whatever service you can for comparable prices and post notices in the apartment buildings that will encourage tenants to support your local business instead of the big cable/DSL companies.

I could see it turning out well if marketed right.


Andrew