would it even be worth it to try hosting out of my home? Has anyone tried it?

I am talking about something small.

I have a 1.1mb up dsl line and soon to be 2.2mb up (ISP is upgrading all users). There is no cap on BW here. Would this even be worth trying? How many sites could i theoreticly (sp?) host on this connection?

As for hardware? If it were possible what would you recommend for server hardware?

After Thought: What would be a good way to test "reliablity" of my connection?

Well for one thing some ISP's block specified ports on customer connections (unless this is a business line of course). So, in many cases you wouldn't be able to do website hosting on the traditional 80 and 81 ports. First step to all this would be to actually test is out first with a rudimentary web program and put a page on it and actually use http://ipaddress/ and try and see if it works, or the alternative simply ask your isp if they do any port blocking on their modems (most isp's well the good ones will actually tell ya or not).

Then along with your other question... If these are plain websites you could easily do quite alot of hosting with 100-200KBps speed seeing websites take relatively low usage (1-10KB/page). So in all reality I would think a 200KBps connection could easily host around 30-75 websites without a bad speed decrease unless you are planning on hosting alot of pictures and things which are larger sized.

As for hardware building something from spare parts and throwing FC2 (Fedora Core 2) on it would be a good start. I usually prefer FreeBSD myself but I presume you don't have alot of unix experience at present. In any case you'd want a unix based OS on the server as it would optimize your performance for page load times rather easily running Apache 1.3.x or Apache 2.x.

As for reliability of connection I'd google and find yourself some dsl reporting tools with regard to connection speeds that you can actually see yourself getting on your line(s). www.dslreports.com should work... I have used their tools in the past myself.

Regards,
Justin S.

dont bother

Originally posted by jschurawlow
Well for one thing some ISP's block specified ports on customer connections (unless this is a business line of course). So, in many cases you wouldn't be able to do website hosting on the traditional 80 and 81 ports. First step to all this would be to actually test is out first with a rudimentary web program and put a page on it and actually use http://ipaddress/ and try and see if it works, or the alternative simply ask your isp if they do any port blocking on their modems (most isp's well the good ones will actually tell ya or not).

Then along with your other question... If these are plain websites you could easily do quite alot of hosting with 100-200KBps speed seeing websites take relatively low usage (1-10KB/page). So in all reality I would think a 200KBps connection could easily host around 30-75 websites without a bad speed decrease unless you are planning on hosting alot of pictures and things which are larger sized.

As for hardware building something from spare parts and throwing FC2 (Fedora Core 2) on it would be a good start. I usually prefer FreeBSD myself but I presume you don't have alot of unix experience at present. In any case you'd want a unix based OS on the server as it would optimize your performance for page load times rather easily running Apache 1.3.x or Apache 2.x.

As for reliability of connection I'd google and find yourself some dsl reporting tools with regard to connection speeds that you can actually see yourself getting on your line(s). www.dslreports.com should work... I have used their tools in the past myself.

Regards,
Justin S.

Thanks for the info. I am currently hosting several small websites for my self on port 80.

The machine's i run my websites are on freeBSD 4.9 :).

The relieablity of my connection is the only thing i would have to worry about besides the electricity being out for a long period of time.

Thanks for the input.


dont bother

Maybe next time you could explain why instead of throwing some half cocked answer to raise your post count?

This has been asked many times and the general consensus is "don't bother."

This site has been mentioned many times so you may want to check it out: www.dslwebserver.com

I ran a webserver on my DSL line for couple years and it was OK (but only OK) because I was hosting ONLY a few a personal sites. When I compare it to my ded server with about 20 sites now, it pushes 100 KB/sec with peaks of 1 MB/sec on MRTGs (so they are even higher) -- no way my DSL line could handle that. With some QOS (see htb for Linux) you can get decent interactivity and downstream speed even when your upstream channel is rather flooded. Just NEVER max it out, your latency will go up to 2000 or 3000 ms.

My DSL provider was very reliable (I think 1 hour of downtime per year on one or two occasions); electicity for a PIII-800 ran about $3/month in the US (per UPS the server, DSL modem and router pull about 60W, so about 43 kWh/month). Having a good UPS is very helpful, although I didn't have one during my first year (hint, hint: it was needed, otherwise I wouldn't have gotten one).

Last but not least, make sure you actaully can run a server on your DSL line. My provider allowed personal servers, but nothing for business. Others prohibit servers all together.

But overall... don't bother to provide commercial, mission-critical hosting this way. You virtually no redundency. It's a great way to learn and explore though :)

Originally posted by luki
This site has been mentioned many times so you may want to check it out: www.dslwebserver.com

I ran a webserver on my DSL line for couple years and it was OK (but only OK) because I was hosting ONLY a few a personal sites. When I compare it to my ded server with about 20 sites now, it pushes 100 KB/sec with peaks of 1 MB/sec on MRTGs (so they are even higher) -- no way my DSL line could handle that. With some QOS (see htb for Linux) you can get decent interactivity and downstream speed even when your upstream channel is rather flooded. Just NEVER max it out, your latency will go up to 2000 or 3000 ms.

My DSL provider was very reliable (I think 1 hour of downtime per year on one or two occasions); electicity for a PIII-800 ran about $3/month in the US (per UPS the server, DSL modem and router pull about 60W, so about 43 kWh/month). Having a good UPS is very helpful, although I didn't have one during my first year (hint, hint: it was needed, otherwise I wouldn't have gotten one).

Last but not least, make sure you actaully can run a server on your DSL line. My provider allowed personal servers, but nothing for business. Others prohibit servers all together.

But overall... don't bother to provide commercial, mission-critical hosting this way. You virtually no redundency. It's a great way to learn and explore though :)

Yeah im not talking about running a site like www.microsoft.com or even www.webhostingtalk.com i am talking about hosting a few small websites just for friends and people that ask me to do it.

Small friend's and fam sites are fine. Just make sure you are not breaking any rules by doing so through your DSL line with your provider.

Originally posted by kur1j
Maybe next time you could explain why instead of throwing some half cocked answer to raise your post count?

yes, because i care about my post count on a internet forum.:rolleyes:

I'd advise against hosting at home, at least if you are trying to run any dynamic content. Also, security on your own computer is always an issue. Make sure you are very protected before you try anything.

Yeah im not talking about running a site like www.microsoft.com or even www.webhostingtalk.com i am talking about hosting a few small websites just for friends and people that ask me to do it

Man, so if they aren't "mission critical" websites feel free to host them on your own line. 2.2 mbps is very good speed, in fact there are still many hosting companies running on such connection in countries that don't have big datacententers. THe only problems that you can find with such solution is network reliability -> SLA for home connections aren't too good for home connections.

z280 Hosting: well, I think that having webserver at home is better than remote dediacted server - in case of any troubles you can always reinstall system in matter of minutes (or one hour), you can make backups to the second computer/ cd/ dvd, you can try different operating systems to find this one with easiest uppergrade procedure etc. And it's always more confortable to sit in a front of physical machine than operating via ssh.

you might be right in some aspects their pozmu, but what about security and power supplly,etc that come with a data center, if you want something reliable, you must get those things available as well.

Ofcorse if your going to host simple sites, with low hits(non mission critical sites) then yeah you might be able to pull it of @home, other wise a VPS or a reseller can also do fine for such sites.

Regards

Pomzu: Possibly that could be true for a site or two, but if you are doing anything serious shared hosting or a dedicated server is the only way to go.

Dactyl, z280 Hosting: kur1j specified that he will eventually host some his and his friend's websites on such server... So he is not going to provide commercial services on such server.

We (or at least I) know. I'm just making sure to highlight that commercial hosting from home is a sin. :P