What do I need to run a website out of my house?

[maniello]

I want to run my Vbulletin messageboard but the bandwith charges on all hosts are too steep. I'd rather just have my own linux box running apache and mysql and do it that way.
Anyone know what I need to do this? How many servers do I need? Networksolutions asks for 2 ip's so do I need 2 servers?

who do i register my servers too (For dns?)

what about connection? Do I need a t1 or can i just use a dsl line?

thanks for any help

[tubedogg]

With your DSL line you could probably get away with 10 users. With a T1 you could maybe have 40 users.

It is not worth doing it yourself, trust me. You need a ton of experience with both network infrastructure and server maintenance and a ton of bandwidth into your house if you plan to have any decent amount of visitors. (We're talking multiple T3s.) For the monthly price of 3 T1s you could pay for a host and bandwidth that would support many more concurrent users than you could hope to have with those 3 T1s.

[Joe]

How much bandwidth are you using? There are alot of virtual hosts out there that can support vB with 20 concurrent users, and prices are under $30 a month! Most of these plans come wiht 10gig free, thats quite a bit of bandwidth to pay with when using vB.

This discussion has come up a few times in the hosting forum on this site, try searching for "hosting from home" or something on thoes lines, you will find alot more info. frankly, self hosting is not worth your time, unless your site is "just for fun" and you dont expect more then a small handfull of visitors a day, the costs are outragous, and then you have to worry about uptime, connections, servers, dns issues ect... go virtual, its not as expensive as you may think.

[JamesUS]

You'll need at least a T1 connection with a static IP.
DNS servers can be registered via the domain registrar. But hosting at home is something that most people strongly discourage - why not just let a host handle it?

[maniello]

I really had no idea how expensive it would be. I just figured that if I ran the server out of my house then i would only pay a small monthly internet connection fee.

looks like i'll have to go with a host.

thanks all

[Joshs]

I am hosting all of my sites out of my host... I have a cable modem (its really fast & $30/m so it made sense to host it at home) it goes on average at 3.5mbps down & 1.5 mbps up (that is faster than a T1). I have a pretty large network, currently with one dell poweredge server (just ordered another server), and many clients. I have a router, switches, hubs, etc. If you dont know that much about setting something up like this, then I strongly suggest you go with a host. check out www.interland.com and www.datapipe.com for hosts...

[adrianchew]

Originally posted by tubedogg
With your DSL line you could probably get away with 10 users. With a T1 you could maybe have 40 users.

Hmm somehow the math for this logic doesn't fully match up. It might be true, if you those users are using all of a 56kbps dial-up, sucking 40+kpbs a piece constantly. But as all boards go, not everyone is doing the same thing at the same time.

I'd say 75-150 simulataneous users hitting the site at the same time (not just logged on to VB) are possible on a T1, with decent enough performance/response, as long as the site isn't filled up with tons of avatars, graphics and banners. And the bandwidth is totally dedicated to VB.


It is not worth doing it yourself, trust me. You need a ton of experience with both network infrastructure and server maintenance and a ton of bandwidth into your house if you plan to have any decent amount of visitors. (We're talking multiple T3s.) For the monthly price of 3 T1s you could pay for a host and bandwidth that would support many more concurrent users than you could hope to have with those 3 T1s.

High-speed ADSL/cable can still be had for under $100, with anything from 90kbps to 1.5mbps upload speeds. No performance guarantees however... so it will work, for non critical hosting, and is definitely cheaper.

Eg. say you get 40GB of traffic a month for a host. Let's average that out over 30 days, 8 hours per day, 60 minutes per hour, 60 seconds per minute = 139kbps. I use 8 hours instead 24 hours, since traffic is not all constant and there are peak periods. 139kbps ain't exactly a ton of bandwidth either... and if you get a dedicated server for $150, plus extra Gigs, etc... it definitely works out to more.

The distinction I'll make is that its ok for a 'hobbyist' type site, but not for any 'commercial' grade site. Personally, servers, network infrastructure, etc are much easier, if you ask me, than doing decent PHP and mySQL.

I'd be interested though, if 1U co-location space can be had pretty cheaply with a 10MB Ethernet, and no bandwidth charges, in a hosting facility.

[TurboFC3S]

I'm running multiple sites off a single T1 and it isn't anywhere near maxed out pushing about 200GB of bandwidth/month. The forum is just one of the sites, and it's usually around 100 people online.

A T1 can supply a surprisingly large number of connections.

[DrunkenStud]

I to run my site myself, host everything myself, all off a cable modem.

Ive had 50 users online at the same time with no slowdown whatsoever, and i have 768kbps upstream speed and much much more than that downstream probably around 6mbps.

Im figuring I could probably have around 100 users online at the same time before upstream bandwitdh is completely saturated and things start slowing down.