I’m considering hosting my own Web site. I’ll have to use a service like DynDNS.com or some other dynamic DNS service, but I’m wondering, how much traffic could my Web site handle?
I’ll give some details of my equipment and Internet connection.
PC:
[ul]
[li]CPU - Pentium 4 3.2GHZ[/li][li]RAM - 2 Gig[/li][li]HD - 40Gig with 20 Gig free[/li][li]OS - Windows 2003 (Got it from MSDNAA)[/li][/ul]
Internet - 1.5Mbps (cause they don’t offer 7Mbps or higher where I live yet :mad:)
OK, so, if I went ahead and tried it would it work OK as long as I had light traffic? (I know, I have to define light, but I can’t).
The limiting factor will be your upstream data rate - most internet connections (cable or ADSL) are asymmetric (the quoted rate is your downstream rate, the upstream will be considerably less).
That said, as long as your site is relatively light (ie, not too many media files or graphics), you should be ok. I run a business website on an ADSL connection with a 1.5mb upstream, and that is fine (but we don’t get much traffic, to be fair), and the server is doing heaps of other stuff as well. The actual server is ok, too, but I would not run too much active content (IIS/ASP) on that box, unless you shifted to LAMP (linux, apache, mysql, php) or added additional memory.
Is that 1.5Mbps downloading? Because that probably means that you will get less than half that bandwidth on the upstream side.
ISPs tend to throttle uploading speed, and i think part of that is precisely to discourage people from hosting websites on their home account. I seem to remember that some ISPs also used to have conditions in their Terms of Service specifically prohibiting this, although i’m not sure if that’s still the case.
Even if you don’t run into that sort of problem, and even if you can sort out the IP address issues, you’ll really have to have very light traffic in order for your site to work. For example, what if you’re downloading a big file to your home computer while someone is trying to view your site? What if you have even three or four people viewing your site at the same time?
I’m not sure why you’d want to bother with the hassle of hosting it yourself, unless this is some sort of personal tech challenge for you. There are perfectly decent hosting companies that can give you what you want, including things like email addresses, PHP, MySQL databases, control panels, stats tracking, etc., for about 5 bucks a month. If you site is going to be small and lightly-used enough to be considering hosting from your home computer, then a very basic hosting plan should be perfect for you.
The limiting factor is going to be bandwidth. My current server has similar hardware specs to yours and runs Gallery, JIRA, and a few other things off my cable service, mostly accessed by just me wherever I happen to be. A few years ago I ran pretty much the same things off a Pentium 90 with not much difference from the outside. Provided that not more than 1 or two people were trying to download photos at the exact same time, any number of people could access it.
You might end up with a problem with your ISP if it ends up being popular; most contracts specify that you can’t run servers of any kind.
Or you could upgrade to a commercial account, but the cost of this will probably be greater than using a server farm. In my area, I can get a commercial account for $60 (more than a consumer-grade one) per month, but I can get a domain hosted with incredible storage and bandwidth at a server farm (like godaddy.com) for $100 per year. And the server farm handles backup and maintenance, not to mention tech support and features like SQL and merchant cart services.
And if your 1.5Mb/s rate is your download rate, forget it. If it’s the upload rate, it would only handle VERY light traffic. In my area, the ratio of upload to download rates is typically 1:10, and they usually quote only the higher number unless you ask.
Whoops, sorry that I wasn’t more specific. I have a DLS connection and yeah, it would just be download only. Going to SpeedTest.net gives me .67Mbps. I’ve gotten slightly higher speeds before.
And my ISP is QWest.
Also, I have no downloads so that wouldn’t be a problem.
Aaaaamen!
5 bucks a month (at places like 1and1.com, etc.), and about $10 a year for the rental of the domain name (unless it’s included in the $5 a month).
If your site will have any sort of heavy graphics (video, photo galleries) then you’ll want to go with a hosting company rather than the woefully slow upload speeds you’ve got at home.
Yeah, I was thinking I should have some free space, but logging into our account (my wife’s and mine) I don’t see anything, but maybe I’ll E-mail QWest anyway.
Thank you all for your responses. I appreciate it.