[Techtalk] Web-hosting dilemma

[Kai MacTane]

At 6/4/05 04:23 PM , Kathryn Andersen wrote:

>Well... here we are, part deux.

Hi. I didn't really chime in on the first round of things, and don't 
remember the conversation all that well. But I do recall that...

>Thing is, of course, two people on this thread, including you, above,
>have said "No, no, don't run your own server in your own house!  Run
>away!  Run away!"

... when I saw people saying, "No! Don't run your own server out of your 
house!", I kind of wondered, "Why the heck not?" That's what I've been 
doing for about 5 years now.

Okay, my situation is probably quite different - I'm in the US, where DSL 
offerings are very different from Australia. At least, that's the 
impression I've always gotten. You say you've got a static IP, and you're 
talking about a reasonable upstream bandwidth, so it sounds like you can 
get everything I think of as critical.

Basically, my setup is like so:

* 1.5Mbsp/768Kbps ADSL from Speakeasy, a very geek-friendly broadband
   provider (their ToS explicitly permits running servers);
* Connection includes two static IPs. (More available for more money;
   I used to have more, but finances got tight, and I can manage on just
   the two).
* ADSL router connects to hub, which has two Linux machines on it: one
   web/email/DNS/etc. server (named Finrod), and one firewall (Galadriel).
* Galadriel does NAT/IPmasq for all other computers in the house
   (various Windows boxen).
* Finrod runs DNS, email, and Web service for about a half-dozen domains
   I administer. This includes POP access for remote users, the whole
   shebang.
* All web service is done using name-based virtual hosting, as described
   in the Apache docs.
* I have arrangements with a few other sysadmin friends to provide
   mutual secondary DNS and MX services for each other.

This gives me a fabulous level of independence in terms of my basic net 
services: I pay my DSL bill every month, and renew my domain registration 
once per year per domain, and *that's it*. No outsourced email, no web 
hosting fees, no DNS fees, nothing. Which also means that if some 
web-hosting provider goes down, or Gmail has a problem (as it seems they 
did earlier this morning...), I'm still online, merrily serving web pages 
and receiving all my email.

I have total power over my domains, but I also have total responsibility: 
if anything screws up, it's on my head to fix it (and pronto!).

I don't recall what other people's objections were to running your web 
service out of your house. I suppose maybe "You don't want to have to deal 
with setting up and configuring Apache", but it's really not that hard. 
Hell, if you're a sysadmin, you already do that kind of thing for a living, 
anyway.

>- I already have a static IP, so setting up a server is fine.
>- I have more choice of ADSL vendors than I do of VPS vendors.

Those two points in particular sound like good arguments for hosting it 
yourself. Assuming, of course, that your DSL provider's ToS doesn't 
disallow it.

>- I'm not going to worry about UPS, blackouts or dropouts -- this is all
>   for fun, not profit, and if I temporarily lose my connection, well,
>   all my friends can share the pain (pokes out tongue).

I've been running without a UPS for five years now, too, and my uptimes are 
distinctly above 99.9%. I'm getting the kind of service I'd get from a 
colo, with more personal control and for no money. (Okay, I pay more for a 
fast upstream connection. But I think it's worth it.)

As far as upstream bandwidth goes: if you're going to be serving more than 
a few pages per minute, you might want to think about getting 384Kbps 
instead of 256. I don't know what the price points are for those two, or 
how many hits you expect to get. It's probably not something you need, but 
might be interesting to think about.

                                                 --Kai MacTane
----------------------------------------------------------------------
"The seasons don't fear the reaper,
  Nor do the wind, the sun and the rain.
  We can be like they are."
                                                 --Blue Öyster Cult,
                                                  "Don't Fear the Reaper"