Running a Webserver at Home w. your DSL or Cable Internet

Has anyone tried this and found it to work for them? If so, what went right and what went wrong for you? I suppose you would need to live in an area where internet connections are fast and not overly expensive. Do you need a static ip address or can you do it somehow with a dynamic ip address?

 

I run almost all my sites from my ADSL connection, as well as primary DNS and mail for them (although I do have secondary DNS and mail running on a server with a better connection elsewhere), and I've never had any problems. You really need a static IP address for things to work, there are services out there that will help you achieve a similar effect with a dynamic IP but it's not a route that I'd recommend.

Speed-wise, I run a reasonably popular forum off my line and I've never had anyone complain about the site being slow. The only downtime problems I've had have generally been down to power outages (anything from the electricity being switched off whilst wiring work is done to someone actually going and unplugging the machine for whatever reason).

 

a small tut here
How-to run a full-fledged server on your PC

 

My cable internet provider has very slow upload speeds, something to check before you set up a server. Also, some providers specifically forbid using servers on home internet connections.

 

Our provider disallows hosting servers on consumer (non-business) connections, and since hosting is generally very affordable for small sites it usually doesn't make sense unless you have very special needs.

 

If you don't really care about uptime and you're just running a test server then a DSL/cable modem connection is fine. If you want to host a website that people are actually going to use you'll need to pay for hosting, whether that's simple co-lo or a managed solution.

If you're on a tight budget I'd suggest you get yourself a VPS initially and then move up once you're earning enough.

 

What does your ADLS connection cost and how much bandwidth / transfer do you have with that?

 

I run my blog off one of my home computers. Speed isn't great but it is very convenient. I love being able to save to a certain directory on my home computer and having it instantly live on the net.

I use AppServ as my server software and Dyndns takes care of the DNS stuff.

 

Will the search engines list sites from home IP's?

Don't most big ISPs block port 80?

 

I am with Comcast and my site appears in google. I think technically I am not allowed to run a webserver with comcast but I have been doing it for a couple years now and haven't had any problems.

 

All my sites hosted on my own connection are indexed in Google, at least the ones over a couple of months old.

Some do, some don't. My ISP is perfectly happy for me to run anything I want on my connection, including a mail server, provided I don't disrupt the service for anyone else or do anything illegal. In fact, that was one of the reasons why I chose them over other ISPs.

 

pwaring, do you pay a premium for this level of isp. If you don't mind sharing how much do you pay?

And Moe, I remember asking Comcast and they said this was not allowed. I suppose however that as long as you don't generate too much bandwidth they won't care?

 

I use my home connection as a server, but only a test server - apache/php/mysql/mssql/perl/etc, although I run a mail server full-time on it.
Current ADSL in the UK is very slow (I mean compared to other countries) at the moment - I'm still waiting for BT to upgrade my local exchange so I can get 8mb connection (yes, still slow compared to other countries) on my ISP.

But paid servers are better, you do not worry about hardware failures, the hosting company does - although youre resposible for backups.... I'm in the middle of renting another server from my company - both Linux natrually

 

I doubt that they even know that I am doing it. I am sure if I started sucking up bandwidth like crazy that they would do something but I am really not to worried about it with the current state of my site.

I am mostly just using it to host pictures, large files, I recently added a blog to it but I don't really get any traffic. The best thing for me has been for when I am chatting with online friends and just being able to quickly put something on the net for them to look at/download/etc.

 

No, I pay more or less the same as other people do. I'm not with a super cheap ISP but neither am I with a business one (although they used to only do business customers only I think, and they seem to treat all customers like that in my experience). I think the package I have is the following, although I'm not sure as every ISP seems to change their package names every six months:

http://www.eclipse.net.uk/index.cfm?id=flexhome1000_res

 

As long as you have unlimited bandwith it is ok to host your site on your server, but having 10GB/Month is not worthed.

 

Well, I currently have Yahoo DSL and I'm sure the connection is probably not good enough to try this. But, I'm thinking of going with Comcast and giving it a try after Moe says it's working for him.

 

With web hosting so cheap, why would anyone want the hassle of doing this?

 

I did it mostly just to see if I could. I liked the challenge of getting it all set up.

It is also a great place to test things out. I find it much easier to work on things locally rather than via ftp. If I want to move something into a different directory I just drag and drop. If I want to share a picture with someone I am chatting with I just put the image in the correct folder and it's available to them instantly.

I wouldn't want to host a serious site doing it this way but it's great for a fun little personal site.

 

I've run from 3-4 sites from my cable connection for years, with very little problems. Like many have said, if you okay with some downtime here and there, small sites should be no problem at all.

Google does not seem them any differently. One thing to watch out for is most comcast "home" ips are probably email list blacklisted automatically for being "home" ip's (due to zombies I guess). Still, this hasn't been a problem as long as you don't try to send out emails from your "home host".

I also use it as a fail over for hosted sites, I keep copies of every site on there, so if my hosts have a major problem, I can switch over and at least be back up and running within 48 hours if need be (DNS time).