hi,
my friend runs a webhosting company from his home computer on a dsl line.im posting this because i want to show him other peoples view of hosting on your own computer heres teh following specs of the pc he uses (bear in mind he also plays his gamers off of it e.g css, half life 2):

single core amd athlon (939) 2.5ghz
1.5gb ram
2 x 80gb sata
1 x external 360gb hdd
1 x 80 gb ide hdd
windows vista ultimate

inet speed is 2.5mbps (thats stupid for webhosting)

he uses apache2triad.

please back me up on this when i say that its a **** idea and the funny thing is that i have given him a cpanel vps with a quad cpu access and 1gb ram for free and he still insists of running of his home pc)

his excuse is he wants it to be in his hands as in physical

I'll take it.

without going into too much depth...its normally the uploaing speeds that makes using your home connection a bad idea.

why doesnt he just get some rackspace if he wants to be "physical" and hands on?

without going into too much depth...its normally the uploaing speeds that makes using your home connection a bad idea.

why doesnt he just get some rackspace if he wants to be "physical" and hands on?

Upload is important. Stay away from cable internet, use DSL. You can get up to 3X faster upload.

Upload is important. Stay away from cable internet, use DSL. You can get up to 3X faster upload.

use DSL?

he shouldnt be using a home connection full stop!

home webservers are good for testing out scripts locally thats about it to be honest.

So hes uses the server as his main PC aswell?

How many websites is he hosting?

I feel bad for his clients.

And what happens when a game he plays crashes the computer? Or anything goes wrong for that matter? What happens when hardware fails and brings down the whole machine?

What happens when the power goes out? The DSL connection dies?

Is his business a legitimate registered business? Does your friend pay taxes?

People buying hosting-related services expect their data to be protected and on reliable machines in a secure, well-maintained facility. Your friend is a disservice to this industry.

There is so much wrong in this situation....

1 he cant afford rack
2 not many clients
3 he uses it as main pc
4 his upload is 256kbps
5 no he isnt a registered company
6 christopher i agree totally as for this post to point the info out.
7 ive even offered him a free vps with cpanel

256kbps!!! :O

Most ISPs actually include rules about running servers in their TOS. If found, its likely that they'll pull the plug on his connection.

Besides, 256kbps isn't enough to run one website, let alone "not many clients".

I used to do this, but i had a dedicated server i did this from.
Plus i had a 12mb line.

I now use rackspace at the local datacenter.

Upload is important. Stay away from cable internet, use DSL. You can get up to 3X faster upload.

I'm assuming you only like DSL because it's what you use, but in reality it's far inferior to Cable or other solutions both in terms of latency and throughput in many situations.

I'm a VZ FiOS user and do some hosting from it, but I would never host paying customers or anything critical on this line.

To the OP - if your friend's customers understand completely that the server is physically at his house and have no problem with it, then I suppose it is fine. However, if any of his customers are hosting something critical they likely won't appreciate this.

I would recommend that you tell your friend to use the VPS you've provided him and do daily or weekly cPanel backups to his desktop, if that makes him feel any safer ;)

it's sound crazy, running hosting on his own pc. did his client ever complained? I don't think he will survive long, slow unstable connection. unstable server loads etc etc

Bad idea, his ISP would block port 80 or disable his connection if they found out its being used commercially.

Your friend should just get a reseller account.

It's possible to host on a PC at home, but not realistic for a serious hosting business. It's very unreliable and unprofessional (he's playing games on the hosting server?!?)

What your friend has is a hosting hobby, not a hosting business.

I totally disagree with you as it is entirely situational. I have been a cable user for many many years (at least since 2000) in multiple cities across Texas.

I loved cable to death, although I had some problems, until a few months ago. I was using Suddenlink and my ping got insanely high (one night I registered a 1000 ms ping to houston - 50 miles away - before I got disconnected) and my download speeds got < 100 KB/s from its usual 250.

I switched to ATT Yahoo! DSL and get great pings and a solid 320 KB/s. In this situation, DSL is clearly better.

I'm assuming you only like DSL because it's what you use, but in reality it's far inferior to Cable or other solutions both in terms of latency and throughput in many situations.

I'm a VZ FiOS user and do some hosting from it, but I would never host paying customers or anything critical on this line.

To the OP - if your friend's customers understand completely that the server is physically at his house and have no problem with it, then I suppose it is fine. However, if any of his customers are hosting something critical they likely won't appreciate this.

I would recommend that you tell your friend to use the VPS you've provided him and do daily or weekly cPanel backups to his desktop, if that makes him feel any safer ;)

I totally disagree with you as it is entirely situational. I have been a cable user for many many years (at least since 2000) in multiple cities across Texas.

I loved cable to death, although I had some problems, until a few months ago. I was using Suddenlink and my ping got insanely high (one night I registered a 1000 ms ping to houston - 50 miles away - before I got disconnected) and my download speeds got < 100 KB/s from its usual 250.

I switched to ATT Yahoo! DSL and get great pings and a solid 320 KB/s. In this situation, DSL is clearly better.

That seems to be a very extreme scenario.

I'm using two cable providers alongside Verizon at the moment. In the Boston area I have a Comcast line where I've experienced near 100% uptime for several months and the best part, I'm not paying for the highest plan, yet I'm able to reach 20mbit/s downstream without any issues. Upstream is around 1mbit/s which is perfectly reasonable. I hardly see any fluctuation in speed. It's 3-4ms away from Harvard or MIT VPN gateways.

Out here in NY I use Optimum Online (Cable Vision) and Verizon FiOS. Both are excellent - no complaints. The OOL line gets me about 10mbit/s downstream, 1mbit/s upstream. I never see any fluctation. Latency wise it's 6ms to our kit in NYC .

Exactly. It is situational.

Here, everyone I know in this town is having problems with Suddenlink and DSL is great.

At your place it seems Cable is great.

It's possible to host on a PC at home, but not realistic for a serious hosting business. It's very unreliable and unprofessional (he's playing games on the hosting server?!?)

What your friend has is a hosting hobby, not a hosting business.

I totally agree, He is being careless and single minded,

his hosting site should be blacklisted as this is no business,

and i would be pretty certain that his customers dont know the situation or what they are actually getting for their money.

Yea not a smart idea because what if his computer crashes? What happens to his clients' sites? CRASH AS WELL!

I wouldn't want to buy!

Well, i would be fooled since I wouldn't know he's hosting inside his home :P

the above post is the reason to do a traceroute on a webhosts site before signing up! if it seems to be a home internet provider...RUN... back to wht and warn everyone!

i wouldnt recommend it. i used to do it and once you get more than a 5/10 visitors at any one time, the connection speed for them is VERY slow, and they WILL leave your site. to be honest when you can now get hosting for as little as $3 a month, there shouldnt be any need to want to host off your home computer

How does he gonna charge his client anyway, Paypal?

yes paypal or cash

:rolleyes: :rolleyes: this sounds very bad... I think you should do everything you possibly can to convince you friend to use the VPS you have offered him, show him this thread if you need to, or even get him on here to explain his side of it.

i have shown him this thread i told him to create an account on here but he doesnt want to

Hmm... do you know any of his customers? Maybe you should tell them if you do :)

Not to mention he's more than likely got a dynamic I.P. and would continually have to make sure everything is pointing to his pc. Like has been said, it's ok to test but that's it. I'm willing to bet he doesn't even have a battery backup power supply either. I know it's been said but he needs to at least get a reseller account somewhere before something goes down.

Depending on what he told (or didn't tell) his clients about his hosting service's features, he might actually be sued for fraud, since a gaming PC at home on a 256 kbps upstream simply doesn't qualify as a legitimate webserver. Calling it "webserver" or "webhosting" in any way can be easily pinpointed as false advertising. If all the other arguments didn't work on him, try this one - if one of his clients sues him, since he obviously doesn't have any cash, his beloved gaming computer will be taken away as first step.

And what happens when a game he plays crashes the computer? Or anything goes wrong for that matter? What happens when hardware fails and brings down the whole machine?

or his mum unplugs the computer to do the hoovering ;)

I can sum up why he shouldn't do it in one sentence: Because he doesn't know why he shouldn't do it on a home based computer & internet line.

I agree completely. A 20mbps connection wouldn't run our servers, It is completely unreasonable to even think of running a serious hosting buisness on a computer, Expecially not on cable internet and playing games at the same time.