I am now thinking of getting a dedicated server at rackshack.

1.3 Ghz Celeron
1 Gigabyte of RAM
60 GB IDE

I will be using this for FTP and Static files by http(movies,mp3s,software. this is NOT a warez server)

How many concurent downloads do you think this machine can take at one time? Fully utilizing the 100mbit conneciton

What things are important things for a server that are important for the performance of these downloads?

I'm not sure if it will handle 100mbps on this box, probably it can if use FTP only and FreeBSD.
I had box, PIII 1Ghz + 1GB RAM + 10k SCSI + FreeBSD on it and it ran ~75mbps of static files with no problems.

I run a popular FTP server for video on a similar server specification. My experience is that you can handle probably 20-30 concurrent downloads with no problem. (some of my users are quite abusive). You most likely won't be able to fully utilize the 100mbit connection, since there are other servers in your subnet as well. My server can usually burst up to 10Mbit or more.

The important thing is to choose your server software wisely. If you plan to serve those files by http, take care to either optimize apache, or get one of those light-weight web server. If you do the serving through FTP, the best there is is vsftpd, which has an even better performance than tux (the kernel web server). It is also great if you want the highest security (I know I do after I got hacked into with wu-ftpd). You can find vsftpd (very secure ftpd) at http://vsftpd.beasts.org/

Peter

I had dedicated 100mbps and didn't share it with anyone, as for software I was running default FreeBSD ftpd - /usr/libexec/ftpd (my favorite) configured to accept anonymous connections.

Miha.

First of all, by http, you will have to worry about those download accelerators nowadays. It is easy to drain your server with just a couple users each using 10-20 threads. You may want to ensure you set your server to limit that. It is also good to put in some anti-leeching controls. (scripts or otherwise)

Other than that, if the files are truly big, you are looking at long download times per user which will translate to sustained downloads over time. From experience, rackshack will probably allow you to reach about 10mbits rather than 100mbit due to the switch on your subnet.

Server resources wise, you should be able to hit 50-100 downloads without a problem. The limitation here is most likely going to be your bandwidth pipe.

what is the best ftp application what will run on Red Hat Linux for anonymous ftp connections?

I would say it is either proftpd, pureftp or wu-ftp.

btw, ftp.kernel.org is running proftpd, and it is pushing aroung 100mbps :cartman:

vsftpd would probably be the best if you don't need lots of feature but require lots of speed and security. Redhat's FTP runs it. From the data on vsftpd's site, it would seems that this is the fastest and more secure ftpd.

Peter

i need an ftp application that will be able to handle quotas and clients easily. If bandwidth throttling is possible i would like that.