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Personal Servers And "Commercial" DSL?
Blue Dog Fever asks: "I've been helping a friend of mine look around for a DSL service provider. He doesn't need a lot of speed, but what he does need is the ability to place his own server on the DSL (in his case, it would be Web, e-mail, telnet, and maybe FTP). The only problem is, every DSL service provider we've looked at restricts the use of servers to their 'commercial' DSL offerings, which usually start at $120 a month and go up from there. What I'm wondering is if anybody knows of an ISP that lets people put up small servers for somebody that isn't interested in getting thousands of Web hits or huge amounts of e-mail traffic, but just wants to set up a small server for fun."
I asked a person at flashcom and they said they really didn't care. But from their Terms and Conditions, it looks like they don't like anyone even using NAT, which I find very hard to believe. It's funny that they didn't mention web servers, but I guess they don't want you providing access to lots of other people (their business DSL is $100/month vs $40 for personal).
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
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That's because PacBell charges them so much for the line. Remember that to get IDSL, you have to have an ISDN line. It was a losing deal for them. It probably still is.
PacBell charges less for a "normal" grade phone line used for ADSL/SDSL...
<<I'm shopping around for another DSL provider as I type. >>
I doubt you'll find a better situation. Everyone has to go through PacBell. (or whoever your regional baby bell is...)
<<If you can foot the bill Megapath is nice.. but it's creeping up towards business class DSL pricing that others offer.>>
Didn't they *lower* prices for ADSL/SDSL at the same time that they raised IDSL prices?
-JF
MrJoy.com -- Because coding is FUN!
I really like my cable provider, nyc road runner. My only problem with them is that they have dynamic IPs. I used dhs's 2y.net domain to register my server to a dns name. I created an shellscript to automatically go to dhs' homepage and update their dns name to my IP.
If anyone wishes to have the script, please mail me.
All my internal boxes (including a roommates win98 machine) are masqueraded through my LRP router. I forward ssh, http/https, and smtp to an internal box, so my web server is publicly accessible, and I can receive my own mail (I use Qmail).
I also used the Public DNS service to provide forward DNS for 0xd6.org, which goes to my network at home. One bad thing about Telocity is that because they're swamped with tech support, etc., they won't delagate reverse DNS. For my simple home setup, I don't care.
This setup has been up and running for the last few months, I have also assisted a friend and my mother in getting this going. All you need is Telocity and a cheap 486 with two NICs and you're ready to go.
About telocity:
It took about a month from ordering Telocity to having our service installed. My friend and mother's installation went fine but I had a few minor quirks which were easily solved by Telocity (i.e. they knew what the problem was and fixed it themselves). As I mentioned before, Telocity's one true failing is technical support. Be prepared to spend hours waiting to get a human, this is due to the fact that Telocity has many users in many cities. But as for running your own network, Telocity doesn't care what you do as long as you don't do anything commercial. In fact, we were told that our service was limited to 768k down/384k up, but in actuality Telocity doesn't limit up (I've gotten 768k consistently) and they're rate-limiting software doesn't work as well as they thought, because I've gotten over 900k downloading before my speeds started dropping. The moral of this story is: get telocity and go nuts with your setup. Make sure that you protect your network.
Marcus
They should allow you to put whatever the hell you want at the other end, and just charge for the bandwidth you actually use. Then it wouldn't matter.
CO-LO hosting might be more what you need.
Many places charge for the hosting by the amount of bandwidth you want.
If you just want a little bandwidth then CO-LO will cost you less and be more dependable than DSL.
Plus with CO-LO you don't need to wory about utilities for the computer like AC and power.
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If my facts are wrong then tell me. I don't mind.
Get a cheap DSL/Cable line, keep constant watching of your ip address and run your servers. The ISP will be none the wiser. Most of these DSL/Cable ISP's are run on a shoestring when it comes to technical smarts. I run IIS 5 off of my CM and it does fine. So I shut up and quietly set it up. My web site it run straight off my home machine. I too got the big song and dance about their commercial line. There are lots of places that will do domain rerouting for you. Some for a charge, others for free. Works great in our case. Hope this helps! Kirch
Diligence is the price of Freedom
MegaPath has a distinction between personal and commercial accounts, however personal accounts can be used to run servers. You cannot use the server for commercial purposes however. That means no banner ads, e-commerce, etc...
Even when I had a personal account they were quite friendly helping me set up my domain name and the like...
-JF
MrJoy.com -- Because coding is FUN!
The Road Runner cable modems here in Georgia were great for a while, but soon they started playing tricks with their routers. I'm not an expert when it comes to routing TCP/IP, but here's what I understand: blocking ports is easy (duh... that's what a firewall does), but there is also some way of giving bandwidth precedence as well.
I knew people that used to tele-commute from home because they could get just at much work done telnetting in from their house as they could working in the office. Then RR worked their voodoo on the routing and telnet got so slow that the servers would time them out before they could even log in. It seems the best bandwitdh is coming in... and it is mainly the web ports. Going back upstream is usually only about 100K if you're lucky. Downloading is still extremely fast, but anything back upstream is very limited.
The explanation that was given to the people that I work with was that certain RR customers were operating "illegal servers" in violation of the service contract. Instead of eliminating problem users and/or bandwidth hogs, they just set up the system so that all upstream traffic would be limited to certain speeds and rarely used services (such as FTP and telnet) would also have their bandwidth limited. Okay, my parents my not ever telnet or even know what FTP stands for, but what about someone like me? I guess I'll have to get a business DSL connection just to get decent service.