Little Server that Could

[rulian]

Hey Guys, quick question
I want to set up a public server for my endevours, nothing for commercial or reselling but for product demo / showcase portfolio and for regular business use

I have a questiona bout broadband, my area where I live I have a choice of cable, dsl, fios and t1

I dont want to have to go to t1 prices just yet,
My cable provider (optimum) blocks port 80, and has inconsistent/crappy upload speeds.
I figured I can get a dedicated dsl line for about 30-60 a month.
I havent really gotten into fios as an option yet.

Do you think cable will be sufficient for running a small to mid web server for minimal traffic. Would DSL be a better option here even though it's download speeds are slower. I do see that DSL now offers up to 3bm download 768k upload with verizon.

How much traffic would it take in terms of hits/day or hits/hour where i would start to bog down my line?

Any other help I would appreicate it thanks

[laserlight]

If you are not willing to spend on a dedicated server, why not just use a VPS provider like Slicehost (http://www.slicehost.com)? It would likely be easier and safer, yet not too expensive.

[rulian]

I wont mind spending as long as I know what I'm spending on.
I want to avoid buying a dedicated dsl only to learn that a standard dsl or cable connection would have sufficed.
I have already investigated rackspace and like services which are fine alternatives however I think that I could benefit alot from developing my own enviroment I can control fully and from home. Again, this isnt going to be for commercial use right now, i can very well be later, or even soon, at that point if I have to shell out 300+ a month for t1 I will gladly, however, I want to take baby steps.

I'm really considering going DSL 3 down 768 up. One year service agreements kinda suck though. business DSL is running at 80-200 a month is again nearing higher prices for better products, but I dont think I will need that much bandwith just yet.

Are any of you guys running your home based web server?

[NogDog]

The one thing to look at if the idea is to set up a web server on a residential connection is that such connections often have much slower upload rates than they do download rates. But when users access your server from the web, your upload rate would be the limit on their download rate; so you probably want to focus on what your upload rate will be, not the download rate.

[rulian]

hello nogdog
yeah that is a big concern of mine, current broadband tests I do on my current line say up to 1.2m/s upload times which would be sufficient I believe at this stage however I am not terribly confident in cable's ability to maintain performance since it is a shared connection.

Which is why I like the idea of a consistent and deciated 768k even if it is half the speed cable offers. I guess I can just take my chances with cable for now

[laserlight]

I have already investigated rackspace and like services which are fine alternatives however I think that I could benefit alot from developing my own enviroment I can control fully and from home. Again, this isnt going to be for commercial use right now, i can very well be later, or even soon, at that point if I have to shell out 300+ a month for t1 I will gladly, however, I want to take baby steps.
Personally, I feel that if you want something for "product demo / showcase portfolio and for regular business use", then you should be using a server in a data centre. Sure, you can learn from using your local computer as a server, but then you can use it as a local testbed.

[bpat1434]

I agree with Laserlight here. Just purchase a dedicated box (you can get a fairly good one for pretty cheap) from anywhere.

I personally love FiOS (we've had it for 3 months now). I was on cable earlier and hated it. But that's because I share it with like 500 houses in my area :(

The other thing you want to look in to is if your ISP will allow you to run a web-server (even if it's a local demo/test-bed) publicly. Most don't let you. I've got mine set up on my home network, but I don't advertise where it is. I test locally, then upload to my real server, then debug further issues from there.

If you can't afford like $60 or $70 per month for a dedicated server with a control panel (Plesk, cPanel, DirectAdmin, etc.) then a VPS is your next bet. Slicehost is a bit expensive, but they are good. JaguarPC is pretty good (I used them years ago) but also look at almost every other hosting company (HostGator, HostRocket, etc.).