Setting up your own webserver

[Brainer]

Hello everyone. :)

I bet this topic is pretty commonplace but I'm a little confused and would like to set up my very own webserver in order not to depend on other web hostings - whether paid or not.

Most people suggest to give up on setting up your own at home, and go for a paid hosting plan, which is better because {megatons of gibberish}... Well, I cannot disagree with them, because it's a matter of fact that those services are offered by professionals. But you know, the perspective of paying money for them is just killing me inside (not that I'm a miser or something :lol: )...

In my opinion, the most important thing is connection - upstream speed to be precise. Most of Internet offers here, in Poland, is no good for me - there are mostly ADSL connections here (more download bandwidth than upload). I have a 2mbit one, which is around 48 kB/s upload. That sucks, but that's why I wonder, how is it possible to provide the same transfer to everyone who connects to my server? How is it done in free file hosting services?

And these are my questions. I hope there's anyone who can answer them clearly enough for me. :lol:

[efilnukefesin]

i'm not quite sure about the division of your upload, but i know some providers make it possible to switch your up- and download for a day, means you log in on a site from your isp and say "the 16 of january i want up- and download switched" and then you have your 48kb download and 2mb upload.
i don't think it costs extra, but i'm quite unsure if something like that is offered in poland...

[Chesso]

If money is not too big an issue, some ISP's provide more business like internet accounts (ones that might need to used in a multi level building for instance, or an internet cafe etc etc).

Try talking to local ISP's about this.

[Brainer]

efilnukefesin, I've already asked my ISP and this is not possible in my case (I wanted to do it a long time ago).
Chesso, those "business-like" ones suck too, because just like I mentioned, transfers are comparable.

Hmm... I really wonder how it's done in Rapidshare. Let me do some calculations here (later, you can tell me whether they're right :wink: ).
:arrow: Let's say RS has 7 servers, 100/100 mbit each (around 13 MB/s).
:arrow: There are 100 clients connected simultaneously who are downloading at 256 kB/s each.
:arrow: Overall servers connection speed is 7 * 13 = 91 MB/s.
:arrow: Overall transfer of clients is 100 * 256 = 25600 kB/s = 25,6 MB/s.
:arrow: Let's increase the number to 300. So it's 25,6 * 3 = 76,8 MB/s.
:arrow: That's still not enough. Let's say there are 600 clients connected. So it's 25,6 * 6 = 153, 6 MB.
That exceeds the overall connection speed of Rapidshare, but still you are able to download at 256 kB/s. :| How is it done?

[noeska]

you could take a look over the border in germany for getting hosting: e.g. have a look at http://www.strato.de
what you want is something like a vps aka v-powerserver

[Brainer]

noeska, I'm not looking for offers, I just want to know how certain things work. Besides, I'm not really keen to pay, especially in a foreign currency. ;)

[noeska]

Ok then have a look at wikipedia about what adsl is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ADSL
So what you want if you want host from your own server at home is a real dsl line. And these are hard to find even in the netherlands. So you have to settle with slower speeds.

Those 48kb are per second. So try calculation the bandwidth per month from that.

PS: Try to visit http://thuis.vanderhoning.net it is on my home adsl connection.

[Brainer]

Yip, DSL lines are very hard to find. :? Well, I've got a fileserver on my mind, so the topic title is misleading, but still, I was thinking of a solution that can partially solve my problems. What I mean is I could set up a queue system, so that you reserve tickets before you can download. It's not a really good way, but I can't think of anything better now.

And there's another minus of paid hosting plans - you have limited hdd space. And besides, I still would've to upload files there, which is completely out of question.

I really wonder, is there no way for a normal user to set up his own file sharing server? I've got tons of stuff to share with others (mostly anime and e-books), so I guess it'd be worth trying to set up such a server. Too bad it seems too distant...

[Pyrogine]

http://www.dslwebserver.com/

if you need to solve dynamic ip problem:

http://www.no-ip.com/

[Brainer]

Pyrogine, thanks for the website, I've come across this one before, but it's not really a matter of configuration or something. I just wanted to know if it's possible to have your own filesharing server set up on a 2mbps connection. I can run my server (actually, I did it), but it's pointless if you have too slow connection - no one'd be able to download anything from it.

Nevertheless, it was nice to learn a little about networks and such. I hope of one day to be able to launch my own server.

By the way, everyone, even if I bought a dedicated server, how would I transfer data there? I can't imagine uploading over 200 GB of data with my connection. :lol:

[fragle]

Why do you prefer a home-webserver, instead of using the now-abundant free file hosting services on the net? With the webserver, you'd need to keep the pc up all the time, and if you were to also use the same connection for your daily browsing/torrenting/gaming/whatever, anyone downloading from you would get very poor download speeds to boot. And i don't think a separate line for the server is cheaper than hosting services :)

If you're accepting alternatives, maybe you could try sharing through irc file servers? They have a more established community around this "from home" file serving with persistent queues, bandwidth caps and stuff. Or maybe try something with torrents? ;)

As for filling the dedicated server storage, i think you could initially just copy files disk-to-disk by connecting the server disk to your own pc, and after that uploading through the net whatever new stuff comes out. And when you get some followers for your web site, you could ask them to upload stuff for you ;)

[Brainer]

fragle, nice idea! :) How could I forget about IRC? Silly me... :S And torrents... Hmm, that may be a good idea, I could seed every torrent to three complete downloads and then just disable it. That'd do the trick. :)

Yip, you're right there. I'd need to establish another line, which is pretty expensive. It's not that hard to cover electricity costs, so it won't be a problem if the PC run 24/7.

And how could I possibly connect the server disk located in fx. Germany with mine? :S

[Pyrogine]

If you do get your server up and going (or any server for that matter), be sure to secure it well. A friend had one setup some years ago (win2k I think) and it was his first attempt. After about 3 days, someone hacked his FTP, changed the passwords so they could get back in any time they wanted and began to transform it into a warez site. Sigh. He found it early because he just happen to be working on the server that day and noticed all those folders that he did not make. So, make sure you secure it well.

At every moment you can pretty much assume that someone is trying to find a unsecured port or back door to your box. And I can not stress the important of having a good backup scheme because at some point you WILL have to use it.

[noeska]

yes it always fun to read login attempts in my server log files. They just throw in a bunch of random names and just try to login.

[User137]

...
:arrow: That's still not enough. Let's say there are 600 clients connected. So it's 25,6 * 6 = 153, 6 MB.
That exceeds the overall connection speed of Rapidshare, but still you are able to download at 256 kB/s. :| How is it done?
It is not possible to exceed the maximum capacity the connection has due to technical limitations, and service provider of Rapidshare. They can however reduce speed first on user connections that are not paid members, adding queues etc.

What comes to my ISP, i have a 2mbit/512 cable connection from them, and they say in rules that using that connection as public server is not allowed. It is however a extra service for was it 10 euro per month...

And i'm sure you may have more options in reality than your ADSL. Its true though that major connections are around big cities. The lines that connect your country to other world hold possibly for terabytes per second. They split to numerous IS providers.

What i mean, to hold server you may need a connection that is not one of the commonly used but fast and unfortunately more expensive ones.

And question; where do universities and other schools go asking when they need to be lined up to internet? Generally those speeds are very very high, especially universities in my country go through gigabytes per second.