Set up a personal server or use a free one

[wrigh_g]

Hi,

I dont know weather or not to set up a personal server, or just use a free one.

any ideas, i have no money!

[chromate]

What exactly do you mean by a "personal server"?

[Mike]

I think he means to set one up on his machine.

[wrigh_g]

Yes, one running on one of my 5 machines.....

[MarkB]

If you can maintain a connection to it, at a reasonable speed, then I don't see why you couldn't run it on your own machine.

[wrigh_g]

My machines specs are:

Machine 1 - :
P4 2.2GHz
256MBs Ram
40GB HDD

Machine 2 -:
P2 266MHz
256MBs RAM
4GB HDDs

Both can have a connection of 512KBs, and will be on all day (which i am normmally). These are the only two which i think are worthy of setting up a server. Tothers are a laptop and two VERY old machines.

I was thinking of setting a server on a seperate partition on machine 1. Any ideas?

[MarkB]

Put the entire machine towards running a server, otherwise you will do your site/s a disservice.

[wrigh_g]

i am hoping to get a dedicated one in the new year, but i need a quick place to store a start up site. Thanks for you help though

[Mike]

Are you running it off your ISP account which you use for normal use? If so, checking with them may be an idea.

I think I read somewhere to do something like this is against some ISP's TOS.

[wrigh_g]

Already checked...... its seems ok but i had better make sure

[incka]

BT says in the agreement that you cannot use a server throught their ISP...

[wrigh_g]

What?


Where

[incka]

It does in mine...

[wrigh_g]

ill cheack it out later

[incka]

Got to go now :(

[chromate]

Yeah, I'm not allowed to run a server over my ISP's broadband. (NTL).

[Mike]

So if you want your personal one how do you connect it? Anyone know?

[incka]

You have to buy one from a business broadband company/service.

[MarkB]

You could talk to your ISP about running one, they may have a business option that would allow it. (with a higher rate, I'm sure)

[incka]

If you are in the USA you can get a dedicated 10mbps line for $300 a month. That's what murmurs is on.

[Mike]

What about if your in england though?;)

[chromate]

You would have to get a leased line from BT that would run into one of the major net backbones like JANET. It'd be way cheaper just to buy a dedicated server though.

[MarkB]

Or, buy a server and colocate it. Or just get a box from Rack Shack (the exchange rate right now means you can get a cool server for about £60 a month).

Otherwise, call BT and find out how much a direct data line is. Or call your local ISP (or whoever you use), as they may also provide ISDN services.

Ultimately, though, running a server in your spare room will mean if it gets unplugged - or the power goes out - that's your site offline. Host it in a proper data centre and someone else can worry about downtime (and compensate you if it happens).

[Mike]

You can get a £29 a month server from oneandone.co.uk. It's pretty good as well.

[MarkB]

What're the specs?

[wrigh_g]

Remeber that i have no money......

So now i dont know what to do

[incka]

Gareth, just get a good value host like I've found with hostony...

And if you don't need much space or bandwidth you can always host yourself on my websites (If you need a domain it will cost you $4 a month plus domain)

[kdb003]

if you want to know the 1and1 specs, they are here:
http://oneandone.co.uk/xml/static/product_root_server;jsessionid=D4AB5357B59AE4F6A07 D63E964C55102.TC33a?__frame=_top

Hardware:

* Intel Celeron 2.0 GHz or higher
* 256 MB DDR RAM
* 40 GB hard drive

Connectivity:

* 10 GB traffic/month
* Additional traffic £0.005/MB

Domain names:

* Manage all your domain names under this package

Other features:

* Plesk 6 Webserver
* RedHat Linux 9
* Advanced recovery tool

Support:

* Complete 1&1 support package
* 60 day Money Back Guarantee



IMO their control panel that they offer sucks and im not sure if they let you use anything else

its also kinda wierd they have bandwidth limits on dedicated servers

[incka]

Easilys bandwidth is half that price...

[MarkB]

I don't know why anyone would get a dedicated server with only 10GB allowance...

[Mike]

As it's cheap maybe Mark.

[chromate]

Yeah, If you have a few low bandwidth sites that are processor intensive, it may be worth it.