Forum Moderators: phranque
I am thinking of hosting my own domain and website on my own computer. I have a static and broadband Internet connection. I currently have it on another server which is unreliable. I need a lot of space.
Which software would enable me to do this? I heard Apache may do what I want.
What is the easiest way to do this?
Are there any potential difficulties or disadvantages?
I am running Windows 2000.
Your help will be appreciated
Regards Richard.
From what I understand after lots of research and asking about it, this is what we should be able to do:
We should be able to go out and buy a low priced but high speed server computer which we can dedicate to it and leave on 24x7, get a Router, buy a backup power supply, get a business high speed cable acct with a static IP, hook it up to the cable TV line in our homes, purchase the cobalt Linux or Windows server software needed, perhaps hiring an expert to set it up too?
Sure would be better than paying monthly hosting bills forever, and as a great benefit also make you independant of third parties.
Perhaps some expert could offer the home installation and setup for a fee, or at least guide us thru it with easy instructions.
That said, here's what you need in a Windows environment:
Some type of PC or Server running a copy of Windows 2000 Server or 2003 Server (any flavor)
One that is installed you'll need:
1) an FTP Server (I don't use the windows one)
2) a mail server (I don't use the windows one)
3) a good router/firewall (Linksys is good)
4) a good backup system. (Veritas, Tape, etc.)
You would set a fixed IP on the server, and open port 80,21,25 on the router and point it to the server IP.
Then you'll need to work on IIS to set up the website location. That's easy to do.
And POOF, you're hosting a website from your living room. Not the safest config, or the most reliable, but it does work.
Thanks for your letter.
I have a separate computer going all the time and now have broadband so it should not crash any more due to the modem driver. If the computer does work well are there any other disadvantages of setting up your own server?
How long could it take for someone to learn and do it?
Would it be difficult for a person who designs web pages but has not done computer programming?
What software would be needed to set up an FTP and mail server and does it cost much?
I have Zonealarm firewall. Is that good for the purpose?
Your help is appreciated
Regards Richard.
The last time my operating system caused a crash was long ago back in the days of Windows 98 and 2000. If there is also a probem with Windows 2000 Server Edition why not use Cobalt Linux which I hear is better and more popular anyway?
Plus my cable connection is great, only going down 3 or 4 times for a short time in the past several years.
So being away and it going down is really a non-issue for me, especially since I am rarely gone anyway!
***** There are lots of disadvantages to setting up your own production server, but tons of advantages to setting it up for development. For disadvantages, see my post above, which is a big disadvantage. You have to babysit the server constantly. If you are away, and it goes down, no one is there to reboot it. YOU have to know how to configure it and deal with viruses, firewalls, port mapping, NAT, and host of other issues. BUT, it's great knowledge, and in today's worldwide economy, knowledge is the key to success. Learn as much about everything as you can.
How long could it take for someone to learn and do it?
***** That varies on your skill level and ability to learn. I got my home server up and running in about 6 weeks, from knowing basically nothing.
Would it be difficult for a person who designs web pages but has not done computer programming?
****** No. there is no programming involved in setting up a server. You have to be comfortable with networking and configuring stuff. IMO it's easier than web design and tons easier than programming.
What software would be needed to set up an FTP and mail server and does it cost much?
****** I like BulletProof FTP Server - costs about $30. I like the Merak Mail Server which cost me about $200 or so. there are free ones available too, and trials of each.
I have Zonealarm firewall. Is that good for the purpose?
****** Absolutely not. That is a software firewall and will interfere with your server. You need a separate router/firewall such as a Linksys or SMC or Belkin.
...You have to babysit the server constantly. If you are away, and it goes down, no one is there to reboot it.
As I said before, that is a non-issue as I am rarely away. Even if I was gone there are 3 family members all living within 3 miles of me who could come over here and restart it or follow my phone instructions on what to do.
If by chance it goes down late at night like 2:00 AM I really do not care too much since my traffic is very light at that time anyway.
Is there any way I could compensate you (or anyone else) to give me all the step by step instructions on the entire process from start to finish?
My suggestions are as follows:
* Get a robust router
* Get a robust firewall with DMZ capabilites
* Get Production server(s) for DMZ
* Get Development server(s) for inside network
* Get a robust switch with VLAN capabilities
* Get a 19" rack with front & back support bracket beams of your choosing
* Get a UPS to support all of the above for however long you think you will have power outage x 3.
* Allocate space, power, ventillation, and airconditioning
You can get a very powerful 1U server (1U is 1 unit space in a 19" wide standardized rack, or a little less then 2") for less then $2,000 (found one on e-Bay $350 P3 733Mhz CPU,PC133 256MB RAM 60GB 7200rpm hard drive).
¦(Internet)
¦
[Router]
¦
¦ (public IP)
¦
[Firewall] -- (DMZ private IP) --- [Production server(s)]
¦
¦ (LAN private IP)
¦
Development server(s)
I have a static and broadband Internet connection. I currently have it on another server which is unreliable. I need a lot of space.
What's your bandwidth requirements?
I can't imagine you needing so much space with so little bandwidth, most broadband is 1mbps download but only 300kbps uplaod. What's your outbound transmit speed, 300kbps or 1mbps?
If it's anything less than T1 speed that will be one slow web site.
...but once you learn it, pay the money to be hosted elsewhere
Hear! Hear! TX.
It is almost impossible to do it cheaper at home than outsourcing your hosting. The only reason I could conceivably see for this is if you have (say) a resevravtion system where outsiders need to integrate with your internal systems, but even in this instance there is much to be said for you using an external machine on a VPN. The speed with which you recieve data from the web is much faster than the speed that you can deliver it outbound from your machine, unless you buy a connection that costs more than dedicated hosting costs anyway.
Add all the costs that people are talking about, then combine the headaches, and you are doing the equivalent of paying for a Ferrari but getting an antique Ferrari that looks quaint but doesn't actually go and costs twice as much to fix every week.
Listen to the one man here that actually did it - TX says "Don't"!
If that doesn't persuade you, then may I ask why you DO want to try this?
Doesn't everyone have a 1G fiber on their desktop?
The speed with which you recieve data from the web is much faster than the speed that you can deliver it outbound from your machine, unless you buy a connection that costs more than dedicated hosting costs anyway.
Really? I called my cable tv provider and they said if I spend a mere $20 more a month and upgrade to a business account I would get a very high speed business connection (much faster than home accounts) and a dedicated IP address too.
Do not understand why that would be insufficient except for large very high traffic sites which I do not have. Instead I have a number of small sites with low bandwidth needs anyway and therefore speed is not an issue at all.
Do not understand why that would be insufficient except for large very high traffic sites which I do not have. Instead I have a number of small sites with low bandwidth needs anyway and therefore speed is not an issue at all.
Even with a business account I'm not sure the transmission speed is over 300k, double chack.
And speed is a relative term, what you need is typically "burstable bandwidth" as most sites don't use too much bandwidth all day long, they have highs and lows, but during peak times of the day the "burstable bandwidth" you get from sharing a large pipe with a hosting company is when customers maintain top performance instead of the web site slowing to a creeping crawl.
Thanks for your letters.
My broadband speed has a download rate of 512k and an upload rate of 128k. Do you think that could be too slow to host only one of my domains?
An advantage of hosting your own site is you do not need to use an FTP program to upload to another server. It often does not connect to my current host and as a result the pages are not automatically updated.
Is everyone who has hosted their own domain suggesting it would probably take over 20 hours of solid work to set it up?
Your help is appreciated
Regards Richard.
128Kbps upstream might be a bit tight...
Here is a quick way to figure out when the site will choke:
[Bandwidth in Kbps]/{([average page size in KB]+[average size of all images on a single page in KB])*9} = # time page downloaded in 1 secondExample:
Your page is 5KB and the two images total an other 10KB. Total is 15KB. 15*9 = 135 (conversion from bytes to bits plus overhead).
128Kbps / 135 = 0.94814 i.e. 94% of the page is downloaded, or in reverse, it would take 1.05 seconds to DL this test page. no one else could do anything until this is completed.
This is rough. VERY rough, but it gives you the general idea how well this would work. I dropped a bunch of other stuff, like server process time overhead, DB access overhead if there is one, true communication overhead, et al.
KB = Kilobytes
Kbps = Kilobits per second
(I used 9 for the overhead, negotiation, etc. close enough)
As for 20 hours - possible but highly improbable. You will be tinkering with it for the rest of your life...
Thanks for your answer.
A page on the domain I was thinking of hosting on my own computer is at [example.com....] Do you think it would probably load slower if I hosted it on my computer?
What about if two people were loading the page at the same time through the Internet?
Are you saying it would probably take over 20 hours of solid work to set up your own domain on your own computer and there would also be a fair bit of work to maintain it afterwards?
Your help is appreciated
Regards Richard.
[edited by: txbakers at 3:45 am (utc) on April 13, 2005]
[edit reason] no personal URLs per TOS [/edit]
Do you think it would probably load slower if I hosted it on my computer?
What about if two people were loading the page at the same time through the Internet?
Are you saying it would probably take over 20 hours of solid work to set up your own domain on your own computer and there would also be a fair bit of work to maintain it afterwards?
However if its just mostly HTML with perhaps a small logo and the total size of most pages is less than 10k you should be fine hosting on 128k - because with compression (which pretty much any web server and nearly all web browsers support) that 10k of HTML would instantly go down to 2k... so if 5 users accessed pages at the exact same time thats still less than a second :-D
But as for how to do it - it sounds like your site is just a simple low resource (maybe even static html files) site so you should be fine going out and picking up some old 300-500MHz computer that someone is throwing away (yes, they throw those nice servers away!) and put it under a desk or in a corner out of the way.
Just install either windows 2000/2003 server, or linux on it - personally I'd recomend linux, but windows can do the job and if you dont want to learn it might be easier.
Linux: most distro's will come with a web server and it will be all set up for hosting 1 site.
Windows: just make sure to install IIS (or "World Wide Web" as it calls it) and it'll be all set up for hosting 1 site.
If you only want the one site then thats it, its done - put your files in the web server directory and thats it.
But as for connecting it up, the best option is using a router to share the connection (if you dont already have one you can get a cheap one - they aren't overly reliable, but if you dont mind a few small outages then there's no need to waste money) and just forward port 80 to the server. You might also want to invest in a UPS if you have an unreliable power supply (if you have lots of long power cuts dont host yourself unless you have a generator, but short 1/4 second cuts in power can kill a system, and so can a surge) but there cheap is good.
You can go for all the expensive stuff, but it sounds like all you need is just something really cheap to host a low traffic site so you really dont need most of the stuff that a larger site would need - such as expensive servers and fast connections.
Basicly if you 1. have small pages (and no downloads, or a few small ones) and 2. dont have loads of power cuts then you shouldn't have any problems.
In case you're wondering where to pick up a 500MHz computer really cheap, find a local school that has recently upgraded a load of computers. Failing that you can try a buisness thats recently upgraded, but they often want a small payment for it. If all else fails then most places have a small computer shop that takes all the old computers from school/company upgrades and sells them on cheap :-D
One thing to remember if you do start hosting it yourself is you have to be a bit more careful what you do with your connection, for example running p2p applications using all of your upload bandwidth is a serious problem (although running p2p programs with the upload limited a lot should be fine) - not just p2p programs, but they are the most common cause of lag.
...if I spend a mere $20 more a month....
I can get 10 domains with unique domains hosted for $10/per month - even cheaper per domain for larger numbers.
I can understand doing it for the challenge, etc - but please don't pretend that it will save money - unless you value your time in the $.0x per hour range.
The issues of speed, storage and bandwidth is also likely over-emphasised, especially since so many of us have small or static websites with mostly lower traffic and low intensity requirements.
But once it is all setup and running why would it later need so much time? I suspect that issue is being exaggerated by some members in this thread.
Count the number of updates, patches, fixes to the operating system, the web server, the DNS, the DHCP, the firewall, the router, the monitoring software, the backup software, et al.
Then resolve all the competability issues between those updates, patches, and fixes.
You are right. If you are not doing a proper NOC, then by all means you can still be running without all those fixes. As long as you do not connect it to the Internet.
The issues of speed, storage and bandwidth is also likely over-emphasised, especially since so many of us have small or static websites with mostly lower traffic and low intensity requirements.
Uhhmm...I am not sure why you would think most sites are static, or low traffic.
If you look at WebmasterWorld members, most of us run some sort of a dynamic site - a community, news, portal, store, service, etc. It is a rare find to have brochure sites nowadays.
We are (or at least those I know) all strive for more traffic. Having sufficient resources, proactivelly is the prudent thing to do. Unless, as I said before, you do not plan to connect it to the Internet.
I wouldn't recommend you try to run a production web server from your home, unless you want to do that for a living.
Do you think there could be software out there that nobody has mentioned on this thread yet that would make hosting your own domain name very easy to set up?
Your help is appreciated,
Regards Richard.
It's not really that hard.
1)You register a name
2)You modify the A records of that name to point to your static IP
3)You create a directory on your webserver
4) You create a new website in IIS, pointing to that directory
5) You modify the hostheader name of that new website to accept requests for that name you just registered.
If you have a firewall, you will need to open port 80 and point the traffic to your webserver.
That's all there is to setting it up. Takes about 15 minutes if the network is slow.
the issue is NOT in how to set it up, but maintenance and all the other issues involved in running it.
