Possible to host a - very - small site on home router?

The title is what it says, I'm not asking about hosting a web site from home on a computer, I'm asking if it's possible to host a web site on the router. My guess is the answer is a straight up 'no', and when trying to search for it I can only find results relating to using a server.

Or even hosting from an external hard drive connected directly to the router via ethernet.

Of course I understand some of the limitations, router's lack of space (even say, 5 megabytes) and being that an external HDD is a HDD and nothing else.

My theory though is that there has to be somewhere to store the firmware (flash memory?) and the router must have some sort of 'processor' to operate, and also that you access the administrator settings via your web browser, so the ability to do so is definitely there.

 

possible? yes.

but

NEVER DO IT

 

Hmm...just a router I don't think it would be possible unless you are a computer engineer and know how to rig the router with a hard drive via re-wiring the circuits.

Attaching a portable drive to a router? Hmm...that one I'm not sure about. You could certainly serve content from it, but having the software in place to manage serving it might be difficult to setup. Apache won't run without a CPU. So unless you want to set it up as just a public drive that anybody can use on the internet, I don't think this will work.

What you would need is a device that has a CPU, some ram, and a hard drive. Maybe if you really know what you're doing you could convert a printer into a web server, but I think that would be a stretch.

 

Thanks for the replies guys.

Why? I'm curious. Not to actually do it, but if it can be done, and now that you've said that, why not to do it.

For just a small site, or even a single page, there would be no need for a hard drive. Not trying to argue or anything, just explore every possibility.

Would be funny using a printer but I can see the logic behind it. Even better if you could keep the printer's functionality, even moreso if you're into pointless b.s. like eprinting.

 

Yes its possible to host the site using your PC but your PC must be using static IP.

 

What the hell is wrong with you? Yet gain you come in to one of my threads and don't even read what I have said before posting. The very fist thing I say in OP is:

Stop making useless posts just to get your post count up, which is obviously what you are doing when I see your posts all over these forums. If you're going to make a post in a thread such as this, do read the actual discussion. I'm sick of spam posts such as yours.

Oh, and though you likely won't read this, you can in fact host a site using a dynamic IP, it's just not as straight forward.

Please refrain from posting in my threads in the future.

 

Yes it is possible but ... harder than hosting it on a stable hosting server.
you will be needing more softwares...etc
also you should find a good hosting provider there are a lot of them who provide cheap prices and good services.

 

Okay I don't think people are completely understanding this, or are just not reading my entire post. I'm not looking to do this for hosting, I have a reliable provider. I'm simply asking if it's possible. If I was so determined to host my site from home then I would simply use a server.

 

Scoty, I would imagine it's very "possible." I think every router in existence has some sort of web server built in to the firmware. That's normally how you access those snazzy menus to change the settings of the router. I know you can upload your own firmware to many routers out there (i.e. Tomato). How you can go about coding and programming it for your own webpages, I haven't a clue.

 

What do you expect? This is DP. Most people who post here are just trying to whore their sig links out lol.

I think you got your answer though - yes it's possible, but it would require a very specific skill set to be able to do it.

 

This is exactly what I'm saying.

Christian Little; I know, but it doesn't make it any less annoying. Especially when that knob mentos comes along.

 

Yeah...I can actually read. Ha ha!

If it is something you are seriously looking to attempt, you might want to get in touch with the guys over at Tomato, or one of the other alternate firmware programmers out there. I haven't seen any of them that do anything "web hosting" related with the routers, however they all overwrite the router's default menu and replace it with their own, which is pretty much exactly along the lines of what you are trying to do, since you can normally access that menu over the Internet. I know I can with my router. So it might actually be something that is pretty simple and easy to do.

Good luck, and don't let the signature whores get you down! ha ha ha!

 

It's not a serious objective I would like to achieve, I just think it would be cool. Being that there's already straightforward ways of doing this I doubt they would look at it with much enthusiasm (after all it's not something really "new") then again you never know. One obvious benefit though would be power consumption, most people leave their router on 24/7 anyway which doesn't consume much electricity at all, whereas a server is going to use up a lot more, but of course you have the freedom to install whatever you want with a server.

 

Why stop at a router? Why not a mobile phone, or a managed switch, or even a modern PBX? I guess they are all technically feasible if you have the skills, know-how, and time. But, while they may be interesting technical challenges you have to ask, "why bother?". It would be of little practical value, wouldn't be particularly gound-breaking in that no-one would really want it, and would take a lot of your time to implement. With the costs of modern PC's I'd just buy a cheap one, plug it into the router, and then have a much more flexible platform..but hey, that's just me.

Some of the new small form-factor PC's might even let you turn the whole thing around. They're physically not much larger than a router and hardly consume any power, so why not make your PC a router too? Then you could plug your PC straight into the telephone socket, have it act as a router AND a PC, and you get the best of both worlds. Don't know how you'd do it, but I'm sure someone could implement this, then you'd have the "ultimate" router.

 

Possible, but why do you need it?

 

Would simply be because I find it interesting. It's not as if I'm looking to host a web site with PHP and SQL with hundreds of images on a router to avoid paying others to host for me.

I never said I did.

 

Why not a toaster?

Seriously though, it can be done, but you would be limited to the RAM the router has (which is very little to begin with) and also have some knowledge of programming the firmware.

 

You know, if you were able to do something like this, I bet you could get one hell of a viral campaign going based around it. You're get featured on Digg and the other major bookmarking sites, but I bet also the big tech sites like Wired.com and TechCrunch would cover it too. Of course, figuring out how to monetize it might be a trick..."Buy our kit to convert your inkjet into a web server!" lol.

 

Look, you can use your home server as a main server with all content including the service Apache, PHP, MySQL or any service you need to run a http web site. But if you want to be sure that the site it's always online without slow request you must to use a proxy that cache all common requests.

By example, buy a VPS that cost no more than 4$ month (looking for 100mbps if possible) and install Nginx on the VPS that proxy all requests to your main home server that are online using a dynamic host because your IP will change every 24h according with DHCP of your ISP.
So if you put a video (10mb)by example on your site and there are 200 people that want to see this video on the site, the first send the request to see this video, Nginx will forward the requesto to your home server and cache it on local disk of VPS so all others 199 people that want to see this video will see it without download directly from you but using the connection of VPS. This is valid for all content except for dynamic content like comments, posts..

If you have a good computer, solar panel for energy, good internet connection (like 1Mbps of upload) this can be a good system to build your site in a dedicate and secure server on your home. Also much better than buy a expensive dedicate server at 100$ month!

 

your isp will most likely stop you but otherwise it should work unless they have port 80 blocked, you should just get a reseller or dedicated plan somewhere to start your hosting company