Hosting a website at your house. Good/Bad idea? Hardware questions as well.

[TheOtis]

I've been kickin around the idea of making a website and I want to host it at my house. I don't expect many hits realistically, I can't see their being more than 10-30 hits a day at it's peak. I'm not too concerned about bandwidth and upload speed. It's not going to be more than 1-3 pages with mostly text with some pictures, so I won't be hosting any downloads.

Do any of you host websites at your house? What are the major security concerns? I plan on using Ubuntu 9.04 for it. This is the hardware I was thinking of using, I didn't think it needed to be that powerful and I wanted it to use the least amount of energy possible since it'd be 24/7.

Newegg.com - Winsis Wi-01 Black SGCC / ABS Mini-ITX Tower Computer Case 200W Power Supply - Computer Cases
Newegg.com - Intel BOXD945GCLF Intel Atom processor 230 Intel 945GC Mini ITX Motherboard/CPU Combo - Motherboard / CPU / VGA Combo
Newegg.com - Crucial 2GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 667 (PC2 5300) Desktop Memory - Desktop Memory
Newegg.com - Seagate ST9120817AS 120GB 5400 RPM 8MB Cache 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Internal Notebook Hard Drive - Laptop Hard Drives
Newegg.com - Sony Optiarc Black 8X DVD-ROM 24X CD-R 24X CD-RW 24X CD-ROM 2MB Cache SATA Slim Combo - CD / DVD Burners

I would assume an Atom would be sufficient.

 

[H4x3r]

really to host a website it isn't difficult at all, grab a good copy of ubuntu server edition and apache. the only thing that really limits you is bandwidth. Also if you don't plan on getting many hits then hardware is a minimum. The atom processor would do just fine in that case, but if you ever got a lot more traffic then it might become a problem.

I used to host a website from my house on a modded xbox...worked fantastically.

 

[Kharn]

While possible bandwidth will be a issue, your upload speed will be the major bottle neck.

 

[TheOtis]

Thanks for the replies

While possible bandwidth will be a issue, your upload speed will be the major bottle neck.

I'm surprised something as simple as what I described hosting would make upload speed be an issue, enough to make it painful for someone to access?

 

[KSoD]

It would be troublesome. If you have a bad upload speed of less than 1MB/s that means that it will take someone that much longer to load the page.

If you have all 30 people on at once and all of them want to view a paeg that is 30 instances of the page that have to be uploaded all at once. Now take your 1MB upload and divide by 30 since that will be the limit.

Not to fast to load then. Now if your upload is even slower you get the picture. It will take a long time for the site to load for anyone who accesses it at any time.

Now if you are also using the net at the same time then it will be slower as well. say your gaming and someone is trying to access your site. You could end up getting kicked from the server for not being able to respond to the game server in time.

 

[TheOtis]

Thanks for the input, I'll have to check what my upload speed is for sure, I know recently the DL and UL speeds increased for us. I just don't want to have rely on a company to host it for me.

 

[Kharn]

Still won't be enough if you have more than say 2 users on there at a time, not to mention most ISP's don't like people hosting servers on home connections an the moment you have any kind of seriously intensive web application on there your speed will suffer even more.

 

[KSoD]

Saxon is dead right. Unless you get a small business package or work something out with your ISP they could very well terminate your service as well. I know that Time Warner around me would do this if i decided to host my own website.

You will have to read the Terms of Use for your ISP very carefully. Some of them will say right in there that this is not allowed. Others will say that multiple connections to your home can be grounds for termination at any time.

Other ISP's may also have a cap on how much you can upload or download. the TOU is going to be a valuable resource for knowing what you can and cant do in this situation.

 

[H4x3r]

with the amount of money you're willing to spend on the server box you could get a good web host for pretty long time, with a lot of bandwidth, that and a good domain name.

i use this site to host my family's site...been really good so far
Web Hosting Services and Domain Name Registration : 1&1 Internet Inc.

 

[Harper]

It's not a good idea due to bandwidth issues. The problem with most hosting is that your Uploads speeds are slower that your Download speeds. Therefore the slight will be rather slow to view.

And unless you are planning on having a dedicated internet line (cable or DSL) it means that you browsing/online gaming/torrenting will be competing with what ever traffic that is viewing your website.

Backup stategy? UPS are cheap enough to buy when the power goes down. But what if the telephone lines get effect too because some hoon pranged there car into a telegraph pole up the road from your steet. And this is not including act of god that might take out both your power and your phone lines for a few days.

Security. What happens if some one hacks into your website and on to your private network? My friend that I out source SEO work too does hire himself out to hack websites for these sorts of vunrabilities. And with some of the stuff he tells me (No, I am not repeating them here, so don't ask or PM me.), you will be thinking twices about hosting a web server on the same network as your other PCs.

With the price that is costs for hosting these days, unless you are running a business where your E-Commerce is directly linked with your accouting / inventory control package, you are better off just hosting your site directly with a hosting company.
The only other reason why I would host as home is just to see if I can do it for my own educational benefit. But I would not be keeping any thing there for long term.