Hi.

I have heard a lot about setting up a server at home.

Ther are a lot of pro's and con's out there, but does anyone here have (or is thinking of setting up) their own home server?

Any experience in this field?

Any views on whether it is cost efficient? Better than a rented host? To build your own or buy out of the box?

Any comments would be helpful, as i am very tempted to set one up.

It depends on the scale of what you plan to do. Unless you have a server at home already, you'd be better off monetarily with a paid hosting plan. Also, you'd have to check with your ISP's Terms of Service as some do not allow the hosting of servers.

I would personally pay for hosting because if you find the right host, you'll have low downtime, great service, and a lot of the work done for you. Overall, risk is minimized and power is maximized with this choice.

If you do decide to go with a home server, make sure you have a dedicated line to connect your server to the web. No one want's to visit their favorite site and have it load slow due to your own web browsing and/or downloading. For this choice, you risk of losing customer satisfaction (various issues explained above) but you gain a lot more control (wider array and choice of applications to use).

NOTE: You'd have to register a domain at a company's site, so why buy hosting with them too? It's fairly cheap depending on your needs.

That has some related problems. The main one is allowance from your local ISP

"Also, you'd have to check with your ISP's Terms of Service as some do not allow the hosting of servers"

Hmmm, i wasn't aware of this. Is there a known 'best' ISP provider that does allow your own host?


"If you do decide to go with a home server, make sure you have a dedicated line to connect your server to the web."

How do you arrange that? Hardcharger, you seem to have some good information on home servers......is there a specialist broker for direct lines?


I understand where you are coming from in terms of having a third party host, but i just want to get all the details on a home server and its uses. For instance, even if a home server turns out to be no good for hosting a website, maybe it is good to host you personal (or other peoples') files, or maybe just as a central network server for shared applications/games???

Originally Posted by TagMan

Hmmm, i wasn't aware of this. Is there a known 'best' ISP provider that does allow your own host?

I have not looked into this, sorry. You could probably check the business solutions that your current ISP may offer.

"If you do decide to go with a home server, make sure you have a dedicated line to connect your server to the web."

How do you arrange that? Hardcharger, you seem to have some good information on home servers......is there a specialist broker for direct lines?

That's the only info I have for you. I just picked up a little bit of info when a partner of mine was interested in the same thing.

For instance, even if a home server turns out to be no good for hosting a website, maybe it is good to host you personal (or other peoples') files, or maybe just as a central network server for shared applications/games???

On a local network, sure. If you want to share applications and files with friends outside of the local network then you'll need an ISP without a "no server" clause in the contract.

Comments in bold.

I just do gophers - I like to stick with a clean - no ad style server, and yes it's mine. I share it with the gopher and the penguin tho. It's in my signature below. It's in the building process right now.

Any views on whether it is cost efficient?

Probably not, unless you were keeping that computer on most of the day anyway.

Not only that, but the connection you'll get from your ISP is in the vast majority of cases nowhere near that of a server in a data center.

To all this you must add the time needed to learn and manage the server.

Hosting a server at home is not ideal. Who will replace the hard drive if it fails while you are on vacation or out of town? If you are going to offer hosting to your customers sign up for a reseller hosting account or get your own dedicated server at a data center. This way if something goes wrong with the server the admins are available 24/7 to fix it.

Looks like it is quite conclusive that it is not a good idea to have your own home server.......thanks for the feedback!

that will gives you more troubles with web hosting account from home

I suppose that will be worth to try and then understand that is time wasting

Personally, I do both. My wife deals with large JPEG files that are a pain to upload to clients, so we have a server at home for dishing those out. All of my other websites are hosted on an external provider, however. For me, it all depended on reliability- my ISP doesn't have a 99.9% uptime guarantee.

For what it's worth though, I do have a static IP, and servers are explicitly allowed in the ISP's TOS.

I think it depends on your clientbase, or use of the server. Either way, I prefer to go with a data center. They take care of the hardware, and some manual labor with the software as well. But most important, the power backbone. If your home or office has a power outage, so do your clients. And of course, you'll want to keep in mind the data connection, and it's speed.

If you can afford to deal with random outages, due to the ISP, power outages, and hardware failure. Then go for it, ultimately, it may be cheaper, but not when you include all the labor you'll be putting into it. Servers run 24/7, they will fail, it's just a matter of being there when it happens.

I think is better to have a hosting provider. They are multiple back-up systems: power failure generators, multiple Internet connections etc. You must have more Internet providers for back-up, RAID hard disks, electricity consuming...

It is not a good idea to set up your server in your home.

The ISP, Power system, and security all donot support it.

Its not a good idea.it can create problems for u.

has anybody tried this hosting?

Originally Posted by rumsfo

That has some related problems. The main one is allowance from your local ISP

That's if he doesn't already have his own static ip address. Don't try opening ports through your router, or your isp will close your internet account w/out notice...It's happend to me in the past, they will do it WITHOUT NOTICE because it's the Policy of most ISP's especially optimum online and verizon dsl.

i think it is good idea for own host.
in my experience, it is very fast for load time

Its not a good idea for small and medium size webmaster because of complexity and cost factors. But if you want to launch a big company then you can install your own hosting servers.