DSL at home on a server

[attroll]

I was looking into renting rack space to put a server on. I figured I could buy my own server and rent rack space for cheaper than what I am paying now. Boy was I wrong. It is almost $200 a month and more to rent rack space. Wow. They suggested that I could buy my own server and have it at my house and run it off DSL. I never even thought that I could do this on DSL. So I called my DSL provider. I can do it but I need to know how much bandwidth I need at my highest peek during the day.

How would I find that out? I know what my monthly usage is but I don’t have any idea what my daily usage is. I am sure I can figure out my daily usage. But I have no idea how to figure out what my peak usage would be.

The other question I was wondering. Are there any users out there right now that are running a site off their own server using DSL? If so I would like some feedback on how it is working for them. For example: How many users that have and how big their site is and things of that sort.

I am running a non-profit site now that is right at my server limits. I have a VPS account that I will need to add more RAM and will need more bandwidth soon. I am trying to keep the monthly price down on the server cost since I am paying for this out of my own pocket with very little to no help. So I am trying to look into other options rather then upgrading to what I need and paying over $100 a month.

Can anyone provide any feedback, help or suggestions? No I don't want to put pop-up adds on my site if that is one of the suggestions.

[Icheb]

If your current shared hosting plan is already at its limit, your DSL line will severly limit what you can do. What kind of upstream speed do you have? Do you have a dynamic IP?
There is no substitute for a real provider.

[attroll]

I was thinking about this after I read the response I got from my post and you are probably right. If I am at my limits on my VPS server then I am pretty sure that DSL will not handel the traffic I need.

Right now I have:
128 MB of Ram
50 GB bandwidth
4 Gb of hard drive space

I just don't know where to go from here. I thought I could find a better option if I could host my own server. But it does not look that way.

[Mr. HillBilly]

Get a Google Adsense account and use that to make income. Explain to your members why the ads are there and I'm sure they'll understand.

[poolking]

Also, what happens if a fault develops in your DSL connection? There is no way to re-route traffic so your site stays on the internet, at least with a webhost they have ways of doing this so your site stays online.

[kanezfan]

I hosted my site off of my DSL connection for a while, it's not worth it. you're always worried about someone cracking in, then you're up late at nights because your site just went down, so who you gonna call? And then you can't download all the stuff you want to download because you're worried about it eating into your bandwidth. all kinds of reasons as to why it sucks. I know a guy that offers unlimited bandwidth for $20/month no joke. www.sarcnet.com is the website, tell him kanezfan sent you. He doesn't host my site anymore, because my brother rents a server from planet, so he hosts me for free. but sarcnet is a great company to deal with.

[Icheb]

There is no such thing as unlimited traffic, let alone unlimited bandwidth (bandwidth means how fast your data can move). Either he has some fair use policy somewhere hidden in footnotes or he'll be bankrupt when the first guy comes around who really uses all that "unlimited" traffic.

[kanezfan]

get in touch with him then. I served up 60gb in a day once when 3dmark03 came out.

[Joshs]

get in touch with him then. I served up 60gb in a day once when 3dmark03 came out.

60GB a day is no where near unlimited...and I also tend to doubt that you were eating through almost 2TB of bandwidth for $20 per month.

[kanezfan]

60GB a day is no where near unlimited...and I also tend to doubt that you were eating through almost 2TB of bandwidth for $20 per month.

ok forget i ever mentioned it then. never mind, forget i exist, do me a favor

[RichM]

Running a server and a desktop on the same machine is not a good idea. For a start, when using the GUI it will use up a lot of system resources.
You would also need another IP so that you could run a DNS, these are not free in most cases either.

It is much easier to rent/co-locate the server. Most NOC's will provide you with free technical support too, so if something goes wrong then they will be there to help you resolve the problem.

[Icheb]

Another IP is not a necessity. It may be beneficial, but not necessaire.

[adrianchew]

How much service interruption can you actually live with?

DSL has service interruptions, it is very likely to have less uptime than a hosting provider would be - usually isn't bad but if you have an actual problem in your are it could last a day or two or more if you needed them to send someone out to you.

You also need a higher speed uplink - at least 384k up, if you are going with DSL, and they usually want more $ month for that. And you have to manage your own server anyhow. So a $89-99 unmanaged Celeron (which will definitely beat a VPS) isn't such a bad deal... comparatively speaking, eg. Speakeasy 1.5/768 ADSL is $80/month.

[boutwell]

Check out Server Matrix. They have a Dedicated Celeron box (https://www.servermatrix.com/solutions/sc17_server.html) with a terabyte of transfer for $69 a month. You can get a little faster Celery for $10 more a month. This is about the same as you would pay for DSL account with a static IP...and much more reliable. They of course have more powerful systems as well if your site needs more under the hood.

Check out their forums if you want more info.

Edit: BTW, these are managed servers...and are on one of the best networks available IME. Server Matrix is a sister company to The Planet...they use the same DC and network.

[Joshs]

Yeah, ServerMatrix is pretty good. You can also find some places that will do cheap colo (ie: BurstNet).

[chriswatson]

Did you find any information out about do this.

I am also looking at doing the same but have no idea so if you can help it would be much appreciated.

Regards
Chris.

[Icheb]

There's not much to find out. If your internet connection is fast enough and you are willing to do this, then by all means. My opinion is just that you should host your server someplace else.

[Shining Arcanine]

I was thinking about this after I read the response I got from my post and you are probably right. If I am at my limits on my VPS server then I am pretty sure that DSL will not handel the traffic I need.

Right now I have:
128 MB of Ram
50 GB bandwidth
4 Gb of hard drive space

I just don't know where to go from here. I thought I could find a better option if I could host my own server. But it does not look that way.You could look into my webhost:

http://www.asmallorange.com/

The server I'm on is fast (rarely above 1.00) and support is great. The $20 a month large plan should be enough for your site.

If you sign up, tell them that I sent you.

[chriswatson]

The $20 plan looks good, How many users do you have online at a time ? Do you think they would have a problem with my site having around 80 users online at a time ?

Thanks for the help

Regards
Chris.
You could look into my webhost:

http://www.asmallorange.com/

The server I'm on is fast (rarely above 1.00) and support is great. The $20 a month large plan should be enough for your site.

If you sign up, tell them that I sent you.

[Shining Arcanine]

I have 20+ people online at peak hours on good days however my forums are a section of my site (2000+ unique a day) and the other sections are much more popular attractions.

Right now, the ACP says this about server load:

Server Load Averages 0.11 0.25 0.30 | 11 Users Online (5 members and 6 guests)As for having 80 people online at a time, I can't speak for them but I don't think it would be a problem. You could ask via one of the contact options:

http://www.asmallorange.com/contact/

Edit: The server I'm currently on is full so you would be on the new server they have:

http://alpha.asmallorange.com/

It replaced the older alpha server that was at another data center. By the way, here is the phpinfo() file:

http://alpha.asmallorange.com/phpinfo.php

[chriswatson]

thanks for that, Just sent them an email.

Thanks
Chris.

[Shining Arcanine]

You replied before I could edit my post with a little more information.

By the way, if you sign up, tell them I sent you.

[chriswatson]

Just going to join now what name should i put in the referral box so you'll get your free month :)

[Shining Arcanine]

"Shining Arcanine" should be sufficent.