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Making an Independent Web Site?
KinsmanCa asks: "Lately I've been thinking of opening a website - but looking over what web hosts provide, I don't like the idea of having a bandwith limit of so many gigabtyes per month, or having to be mindful of what the provider considers community standards. How can I create a website that's as independent as possible? By which I mean, pay as few bills to as few people as possible, and have to answer to nobody but the law itself as far as my content goes? Assume that I'm willing to pay a lot as far as hardware or initial setup costs go.
How much autonomy can a regular person get on the Internet?"
Well, the obvious and most straight-to-the point answer would be to get your own T1 or other high speed line, a router, and server(s).
Only through this method will you get the control and administrative capabilities you seek.
heyitsme
Colocate a server somewhere.
Hint: You won't avoid bandwidth fees one way or the other. Bandwidth costs money.
You won't avoid them *especially* if you want to be left alone to do what you want to do.
Buy a server, colocate it somewhere, and set up what you want. Do your own mail, dns, everything.
Or... lease a cobalt raq somewhere, that might be a good start. Quick, easy, your own machine.
Try Netmar
It's $10 a month for 100 megs, no bandwidth limits (within reason). No porn allowed, but other than that, they aren't trying to censor you.
Other than that, I'd recommend co-loc or a T1. The only real way to get totally free from any restrictions is to get a real T1 from a first tier provider.
No, I don't work for Netmar
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
It sounds like you're looking for a great new car, regardless of price, that has no or fixed fuel costs no matter how much you drive it. You're not going to find one. You can't have a web site without some kind of bandwidth limitation, be it physical or financial.
Bandwidth is the primary cost of every web host on the Internet. The backbone providers allow a specific amount of bandwidth for a specific price, and resellers carve up that bandwidth for sale to you (or to other resellers) at smaller prices for smaller amounts of data transfer.
As you might imagine, it's usually a good idea to avoid any provider who promises "Unlimited Bandwidth". They're lying. Anyone who says that really means, "Unlimited Bandwidth, Unless You Use More Than We Think You Should".
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Join a Linux User's Group. Get to know the people there who run ISP's. Pay for pizza and beer activities. You may find the friends you make have an affinity for creating community website opportunities.
Next thing you know, you have a box on a T3 line. Try to get the thing slashdotted. That's pretty much the goal in life as I've seen it.
HavenCo
J
That's simply not true. Many providers can provide you a fixed-rate setup, where you have a maximum transfer rate that you can sustain constantly and pay nothing more. While the "X gigs of transfer" is popular among many web hosters, most colocation providers offer based on sustained average usage. IE, there is a base price for 1 Mbps/sec, and if you only average that, you pay the base. Then there is a surcharge based on your average for the month being >1Mbps/sec.
It could also be pointed out that colo isn't for the "average joe". Not everyone wants the hassle of running their own box.
I don't see how that solves the problem of potential content control. The T3 cable has to be connected to an ISP at the other end. And that ISP is just as likely to have content "standards" as any other. Just because you're using a T3 line instead of a cable or telephone modem doesn't mean you don't have to deal with an ISP. It would solve the bandwidth problem as T3's have a fixed, well-defined bandwidth with no total monthly limit on gigabytes, but there still might be content standards.
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
Before signing up with any ISP or host or whatever, make sure they're clean and not on any spam blacklists. Dejagoogle for the company name in net.admin.net-abuse.(email|sightings).
I used to be very optimistic about the role of the internet in combatting censorship. I was naive and silly. The internet resists goverment censorship, because it's difficult to enforce laws and regulations against such a decentralized entity. But as long as the key networks are owned by a few media monopolies, you will play by their rules, or your plug will be pulled.
No, he's using a P90, so I wouldn't exactly call it demilitarized ;-)
I suffer from attention surplus disorder.
Phpwebhosting offers "unmetered" bandwidth transfer. They have a few restrictions on what they'll tolerate (frowning on porn, warez, large file archives, etc.), but outside of that, they don't seem to mind bandwidth surges as long as they're not sustained.
(I'm not a customer of theirs, but may probably become one in the future; the above is my reading of their terms of service)
iSKUNK!
As you might imagine, it's usually a good idea to avoid any provider who promises "Unlimited Bandwidth"
Unlimited bandwidth, but everyone else on the service trying to get the same unlimited bandwidth acts as a pretty effective throttle.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
No provider of services is going to take on any customer they see as a potential liability. This is why almost any provider you see is going to have restrictions on use of their services, especially thanks to the DMCA.
The few providers that have a completely "hands off" approach to their customers tend to have customers who traditionally deal in spam, pr0n, copyright violations, or some combination thereof. Those are sites you likely wouldn't want to be associated with, and those kind of providers also tend to get blackholed and/or sued on occasion.
Co-location is also an option others have mentioned, but the same basic rules will likely apply (no spam/pr0n/warez, pay by the byte) with any solid provider. It's also not for the beginner, and definitely not for anyone who's not incredibly serious about their site.
Adult freehosts are in business to promote specific pay sites, not to provide free hosting for you to use any way you want (duh!!). They will pull non-porn pages, or porn pages that promote non-approved sponsors.
Want no bandwidth limit, no fees, no hassles on "community standards"? Just upload your page to Freenet. And it's anonymous so you won't even have to answer to the law. Sure it's a painfully slow to access most pages, but what do you want for free?
You need to pay for the bandwidth one way or another. There are three basic ways:
;-)
1. Buy a circuit and pay for the bandwidth yourself (DSL, T1, etc).
2. Rent part of a circuit and (possibly) computer, and pay someone else to host. Most services cap bandwidth or charge directly for bandwidth. You can either go hosted or colocation (their computer or yours).
3. Go on a hosted service that is advertising supported. Everyone I'm aware of caps bandwidth.
The decision should be based on how much you have to spend and how much bandwidth you really need.
As you can see from the above options, there's no free ride - bandwidth costs *someone* and usually those costs are passed down to you.
Of course, I shouldn't preach.... I share a T1 speed SDSL with folks in my building and only pay $20/month
Though mentioned several times before, I feel that no one mentioned the most important aspect of colocation: redundant connections. T1/T3 lines probably won't fail, but there's still the chance, and if they do, you're screwed for however long it takes the phone company to fix the problem (and if you've ever tried to get a Baby Bell to fix something, you'll know why this will be a problem).
A redundant connection will keep your site up and running even if the primary connection fails. Ideally, the redundant connection should be able to handle 50% of peak capacity and should be leased from a different provider than the primary line (so that an entire company outage won't shut down both lines).
Now, you CAN get redundant lines into your house, but it won't be cheap and you'll end up paying for a redundant connection that you may never use. Colocators already have redundant connections set up, which means you won't have to worry about any of this. You may have to pay a dollar amount per Gibibyte of throughput over a certain amount, but this is unavoidable when using anyone else as a host. Just be sure to agree on a deal that will provide you enough base bandwidth so that you won't wind up paying thousands of dollars in excess bandwidth fees.
With the right colocator and the right agreement, you'll end up getting the right amount of allotted bandwidth and you won't have to bother yourself with all the things that make hosting your site from home troublesome.
build a little server, buy the network administrator eight or nine beers, stick your machine in the server room, and go to down. (the beer trick works especially well if you happen to BE the network administrator.)
i haven't paid for server bandwidth in probably seven or eight years (i.e., "ever"); the downside is that you may have to move it around a lot, as you might change jobs, your company might fold, that sort of thing.
DSL works nicely for low-impact serving, too.
Two words: Cogent Communications.
From 1 Mb to 1000 Mb, if you find a lower price, we'll beat it by 5%. It's that simple.
I don't think they guy wants a web page with other people's porn banners on them. And he said that cost isn't really an issue...
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Adult hosts are used to getting calls about anything from trademark infringement to libel. They know the rules and when to call BS on a C&D letter.
I work for one myself (obligatory NationalNet link) but you can find your own if you need at many review sites. Good luck!
Hammer of Truth
You're ISP will dry up once that Powel kid manages to deregulate DSL...
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Sounds like my site, only mine gets less traffic (or else my outbound connection would be pegged) and I'm running Linux.
Been there, done that, wasn't able to do much with my connection for a day or so when it happened. :-) The server didn't mind at all (dual P!!!-500 with 256MB of RAM and 8GB of SCSI RAID-0 disk), but the cable modem stayed lit up like a Christmas tree.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
How is that redundant? I havn't seen anyone else mention it.
Sealand may be overkill though, and there is a pretty strict bandwidth limit.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Also, there is no getting around the legal problem. The DMCA is written such that anyone that provides bits to you is an ISP, and they can be provided notice of your copyright violations. Once they receive that notice, they must either remove the content (i.e., by getting you to do it via threats, or by cutting off your service), or they are held legally responsible. Since you probably pay them thousands of dollars a year at most, and willfull copyright violation is $25,000 per occurance, your ISP will not back you, and will pull the plug, because it's not worth the risk.
/. would disagree with (preventing spamming, for example), but many of them there might be some controversy (prohibiting un-PC speech). Again, you're not going to be able to avoid these unless you become a backbone provider. Which is probably a bit over your budget ;).
Theoretically, I suppose, you could be a backbone provider and not have anyone upstream. But unless you're planning on buying Sprint or something, you will have to deal with the fact that there is someone upstream who can pull the plug on you solely because your content has been complained about by a copyright owner.
Also, realistically, every provider has some terms of service. Some of them no one on
dyndns.org is your friend. :-) Even after switching from dynamic to static IP, I'm still using their services...with a dynamic IP, you just run a program that checks your address periodically and sends an update if it changes. It's a free service (though it'd be nice of you to send some of your burrito money their way) and it's been fairly reliable.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
He did get one thing right, though--if you want as little to-do over content as possible, take a look at where some of the more "extreme" adult sites get their bandwidth. I'm sure a little research could pull up several potential service providers who probably won't object to your content since they host rape fetish porn and such.
Of course, this is assuming you want to be free of censorship but aren't going to be violating copyrights. The DMCA is unfortunately a powerful enough club that even hosts in Taiwan can be forced to concede to it.
Aside from breaking copyrights, child porn is the only other deal-killer I can think of if you choose a provider who already sells bandwidth to extreme fetish porn sites. Although, from what I hear there are a number of "borderline" child porn websites that get hosted in Russia for a long time without getting pulled, but I won't get into that issue.
Also, if I were looking for a non-censorious service firm willing to host controversial content, I'd look up whoever hosts Xenu, the anti-scientology website--those guys get harassed *a lot*.
So, unless you're looking to violate copyrights or to post child pornography, there should be plenty of potential choices you could look into based on the type of content already hosted or already being given bandwidth.
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws"-Tacitus
2) @Home, ATTBI, etc... don't want you running servers. They aren't too strict, but if they see you sucking up much bandwidth, it's perfectly legal for them to ask you to shut down your server or be disconnected. This pretty much rules this solution out due to the "don't have to answer to anyone" requirement.
... buy a backbone. Last I checked they only cost around $625 million.
Miko O'Sullivan
Cable modems usually have (very) different upstream and downstream speeds. You can download quickly, but people can't download quickly from you. RMN ~~~
Also, there is no getting around the legal problem
Yeah there is. Not every country has laws as fucked as those of the US (remember, johanson's code was legal in Norway) -- if an american accesses my website, it's no more under the DMCA than if they were offended at a sign in my garden they could only see with a spy satellite.
From the Netmar web site: "Our Linux server is a 1500 megahertz Pentium 4 processor, equipped with 128 megabytes of RAM to handle computation-heavy facets of your site."
I don't think it is possible to buy less memory than that. Do I mis-read that? They have ONE computer?
The reason many companies have no limits on bandwidth is that they are very, very small, and don't have much bandwidth for their entire company. They expect to host mom's family fotos website.
I highly recommend Zone Edit. Nice web interface to change anything you want, and you can update the dns when it changes by having a wget command in your ip-up.local (I'm on DSL) or in a cron or something. Plus the first 5 domains are free. Otherwise $11/year or something like that. Unlimited sub-domains etc. Check it out for yourself.
"More organs means more human." - Zim
Depending on what options you have in your area...
Set up your own servers, and get a broadband ISP with an account that has no restrictions. I pay $200 a month for a 1.54m/768k dsl account with 16 static ip addy's and NO restrictions. I can resell the bandwidth if I want to and its permitted, the TOS even says so. The law is my only restriction.
Then you run your own servers. You put whatever you want on them, and you can use all the bandwidth you need, up to the physical limits your service allows. I'd imagine that any company will offer comparable services. Where people get caught and start whining is they believe the $39 a month rate they pay for the same bandwidth should offer unrestricted services for that price.
Now, if you can find a host, you'll probably be better off in the long run, at least for the amount of money you'll be spending. More than likely, you'll get either a total bytes transfered limit, or a bandwidth cap rate. Any service that offers unlimited on both always has a disclaimer in there somewhere.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
Our $87 per Mb rate is multihomed burstable bandwidth with a 99.99% guaranteed uptime. Currently, this includes 250 Mb of Level 3, along with Epik, and Cogent. Verio and Global Crossing will be included within 30 days.
Yes, Cogent is mixed into our blended bandwidth plan. No, we won't charge you more for you to use the other carriers.
If you want non-cogent bandwidth, we can offer you pure Level 3 bandwidth with 100% SLA for $250 per Mb. I challenge you to find a better deal on Level 3 bandwidth anywhere.
We are not just another Cogentco outfit.
Several years ago I wanted to run a small web database app for parents of kids at my daughter's school. The only relevant server-side technologies I knew were ASP and MS Access. I was pretty much stuck with Win98 on my home computer because we had tons of kid games that wouldn't run under NT, and we couldn't afford a second computer anyway.
So what I did was use Personal Web Server, a free mini-version of IIS that does about everything IIS does. To get to my machine from the web I hosted a domain on a cheap host (HostSave, $7.95/mo) and did redirects to my home IP address. Although I wasn't paying for a static IP, it tended to stay the same for months at a time. Whenever it changed I simply fixed the links. The small number of users (parents from my daughter's school) were mostly hitting my site one at a time, and my DSL line was fast enough to give them decent response. Bandwidth was not an issue, but I bet it isn't for most people. This solution worked just fine, was dirt cheap and was perfect for a non-Unix person.
I was surprised Microsoft abandoned Personal Web Server. To run a server now under XP you have to upgrade to Professional. They have drawn in so many kids with Visual Basic, providing an easy and accessible way to play webmaster seems like a great idea. I guess it's part of casting the home Internet user as a consumer rather than a peer.
This part of the DMCA is about the only part that's intelligently written (IMHO). It says that somebody who thinks you violated a copyright must send a letter to your service provider certifiying that they believe you have violated a copyright.
The provider, to avoid taking on the liability for contributory copyright infringement, must remove your site unless you certify that you have not violated their copyright. Now that's the thing though, you have to be willing to take the chance in a court of law that you did not violate their copyright. If you aren't, then an ISP will, wisely, remove your offending content.
Now, I say not ENTIRELY true, because I'm sure that a number of providers will be more than happy to shut down your site completely regardless of what you say because it's not worth the hassle to them. That is a risk you take when you walk near the legal grey areas (and boy haven't those grey areas increased in size lately). I mean running any site today that allows for some sort of public user posting runs the risk of them violating copyright on your site. Then you get to have the choice of eliminating their posts or taking a moral stand. Moral stands are expensive...
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
You could always host your own server on a phone-line connection. You leave it on and connected to some no-name dial-up service and use something like deerfield to broadcast your ip. Then go register a domain. Not the prettiest way of doing it, but revolutions were never pretty
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
Moderation Totals: Troll=1, Redundant=1, Interesting=1, Total=3
That's the current moderation total for the above post. Now I haven't seen anything about using iTools yet so it would appear to me that it wasn't redundant, but I'll let that slide. The one that bugs me is the Troll. How is the above a troll? He is simply informing the person that if he has a mac, then he has a wonderful set of web tools availible to him. Admittedly, it's not the best option, but it works. He could at least use it till he finds a better alternative. So how does it qualify as a troll? Personaly I think we have some rather biased moderators here (more so than your average slashdotter) If you're going to be a biased jerk-off, don't moderate.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
You need to buy your own high speed line to your house from a large provider. By highspeed I mean T1 or better and by large I mean like AT&T, Genuity or UUNet. If you buy a line like this you will be able to get it unmetered, meaning you can use 100% of it's capacity 100% of the time and noone will complain (metered version are also available). Also generally there are very few things that are prohibited, mostly only things that are illegal. Further, your provider isn't going to monitor you and will only shut down your line if someone with enough clout complains. Finally, you'll have an actualy, legal contract with them gaurenteeing uptime and such, and perhaps a clause that they have to contact you with any problems. The larger a line you buy, the more clout you tend to carry.
The downside? Cost. For a full T1 you can probably expect to pay between $1000-$1500/month between local loop and bandwidth, and that's just 1.544mbps. You want some serious bandwidth like fractional DS-3 and you can get real expensive, real fast.
The only real thing that having a line like this gets you over doing co-lo at a good facility is that you'll have direct control over the hardware and generally speaking the telcos are more wary of cutting off a big bandwidth line (due to contracts and the like) in the event of a problem, thay'll usually just pass things to yout NOC (in this case you) or people call that in the first place.
1: Why don't you actually have any plans listed?
2: Why so much flash on the index site?
3: Why a clock?
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
Netmar has been in business since 1994, they are no fly-by-night. This policy has worked for them apparently.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
1. Find a country where laws don't care about distribution of information, and which has a reasonable amount of connectivity. Perhaps some of the countries in eastyern europe have decent connections.
2. Find a co-location facility there.
3. Have a machine installed and sort out domain registration etc.
4. Stick up whatever dodgy content it is that you are dealing with to have such requirements in the first place.
5. If it's pr0n then wit for the money to roll in. Otherwise find a day job.
"The new wave is not value-added; it's garbage-subtracted" - Esther Dyson, Dec 1994
Get your DNS and mail service from one provider and web hosting from two others. Many providers will squirm at not getting everything, but tough.
.com anywhere. Even if the country is WIPO friendly, you'll still get more delay in anyone acting against your site.
If you keep your mail seperate from your website, you should avoid mail interruptions if a web hosting provider pulls your site.
By keeping your DNS seperate, you can control which IP requests for your site get sent to. Make sure you DNS zone file records expire frequently so that a change in IP is propogated quickly. If your provider will let you manage the DNS, even better.
Setup a scheme to keep your site backed up. Running the site in two locations, plus maintaining a backup would be ideal.
Here's how it would work: If one provider pulls your site, you change your DNS to the backup provider and secure a new backup provider. Unless your being persecuted by someone with serious clue, you can shuttle your site around indefinitely with only brief interruptions.
Of course, as someone else has suggested, consider off-shore hosting. You can have a
One last thing: Anyone who wants your site down bad enough, may be able to simply get the domain pulled if you use a domestic registrar. Consider going off-shore with that as well.
So, my advice is this: Split up services; Maintain backups; Consider off-shore hosting; And consider off-shore registration. In general terms, don't keep your eggs all in one basket and hide the baskets.
Some people have a way with words, and some people, um, thingy.
Read the FAQ.
I'm a systems administrator at Netmar (I'm Will, for those of you who use us).
Specifically read the part about "What does bandwidth cost? / Is bandwidth really unlimited? / How can you offer unlimited bandwidth? "
I made the website (..you shoulda seen the old one). I put that in the FAQ SPECIFICALLY because of people who ask questions like this.
Lately we've had a guy using a lot of bandwidth, and our Sprint link has been up and down more times than I can count (i've received 135 pages today, from 3 monitoring systems, as of 9PM est). So we've ordered more bandwidth. We try to stay ahead of what people are using.
It's a fact, however, that BY FAR the most common cause of spikes in our bandwidth is illegal software. We don't tolerate it, because it hurts our business and because we can't afford to get sued by the MPAA RIAA Microsoft, etc.
I'm one of the guys that makes the decision about who stays and who goes based on TOS violations. It doesn't happen often. You have to be clearly bad. The whole satanic thing is cause the guy that owns the company is a strong christian dude (call and listen to our hold music 540 951 9404). But we don't censor people. At all. www.fredrock.org (my site) is there, and there's "swear words" on the front page.
Anyway, if you, or anyone, has questions, just email staff@netmar.com - we'll be checking it all weekend (we always do).
The difference between us and rackshack (ask www.web-xperts.com dude what he thought about them) is that they don't care. He said he asked a question about some problem he was having or other and they were like "that sux, good luck".
He asked us a question about qmail (plesk uses it) and my co-associate was like "never used it, lemme read about it" and spent the day learning how to use it, so he could help the guy.
We may not know everything, but we know a lot, and if you have something you need us to know, let us know =). We do personal service. We're friends with our customers. We work for you.
~Will
sig?
You can get a lot done on EZpublishing at the $14.95 per month account level.
Support is strictly via E-mail, but it's quite good. They assume you know what you're doing, but if you report some obscure problem, it gets fixed.
I am member of a club which is a fully fledged ISP including its own independent IP address space, high bandwidth, backup connections, enough room for co-located servers, and even commercial customers which help to finance our toys. We do not just offer dial-in via modems or ISDN but also plan to provide DSL (not an easy task in Germany). Interesting projects like voice over IP are also supported. All this works thanks to volunteers. They payoff is that we have a great freedom and services that are not to be found everywhere like static IP addresses (if necessary, in connection with CIPE tunnels), incredibly cheap co-location, and the option of sharing. What's more, we meet each other every week in our own cellar and enjoy some beer :-)
www.dnsmadeeasy.com handles my domain name. I've since upgraded my PC but for just a hobby site, my original set up will work fine for you. I needed to upgrade simply for more disk space and because I'm not just running a web-site. I also do some indie game development and occassionally test my MMORPG servers on it.
If it's just a hobby site there's no need to spend a large amount of money. It took a year to get a 1 million page view month. I currently do around 800-900 unique IPs a day on my 256K line. Until you get to at least that level, there's no need to even consider putting down a large amount of money for your site. I've considered upping my bandwidth but at this point it isn't needed.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
Just look up the hosts for some of the most extremely unpopular and controversal sites out there, like www.godhatesfags.com or www.freespirits.org . You can bet your life people have been trying very hard to shut these sites down, but they're still up. So whatever ISP hosts them must not only believe firmly in free speech matters, but also have the legal horsepower to fight the prudes.
This is the way it works. The more bandwidth you get, the less it costs on a per mb/sec basis. Otherwise, there'd be no real incentive (other than latency) to get a large circut over a ton of smaller ones.
What we usually do when a customer is using (or about to use) more bandwidth than they're contracted for, is to give them three options:
- Update your contract for more bandwidth
- Keep the contract where it is, and we bill you for the overage
- We put a bandwidth cap on your connection to keep it at or below what you're paying for
As you can see, there are options. Which one you choose depends on whether your site is making money, and how much.Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
Actually, even if you host from your home, I bet that you'll find that your ISP will cut your service if someone complains.
Check out the Terms of Service. Most big ISPs cover their asses by saying they;ll boot you for objectionable content, just like any hoster.
evanchik.net
Right now FreeNet is slow mainly because there aren't that many people on it. Read some of the documentation at the site. More people = a better cache and better responsiveness. Now, given its current state, I'd say the relative (very high) anonymity of it makes it drollingly appealing. So START A NODE, people!
A FreeNet with millions running nodes globally is our goal, according to my wishes and yours, as well as both our economic means.
The cardinal rule of finding a web hoster is to make sure that you can CALL THEM ON THE PHONE.
If you can only get in touch via email, you will find yourself up the creek when something goes wrong.
Many of your cheaper hosters don't offer phone support, and it is indicative of an unprofessional operation. It means they either don't speak English, are a very small shop without adequate resources, or know that their service stinks and just don't want to be bothered by the large numbers of irate customers.
You may pay a little extra to know you can speak to an actual human being, but even if you never need the phone call, its availability is the first good indicator that someone is on the up and up.
Also, calling them is a great time to make sure your site won't be objectionable for them to host.
evanchik.net
Lately we've had a guy using a lot of bandwidth, and our Sprint link has been up and down more times than I can count (i've received 135 pages today, from 3 monitoring systems, as of 9PM est).
Sign me up! Sounds like a nice reliable service. Have you refunded your users for this month of intermittent service?
ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
Our boss is a pretty devout christian, and as the owner of the company it's at his discretion. However, to my knowledge, the only reasons we've ever taken anyone's site down is pirated software and because it was a fradulent order.
Basically, this is a legal issue, not a moral one. Whatever's illegal in Durham NC (where the company is incorporated) is forbidden by the TOS, plus porn. We can't afford to go to bat for someone who hosts a website with questionable content. Questionable is intentionally left vague because we basically have to leave it vague in order to anticipate the unknown. If we explicitly set out the limitations (You can have pro-Nazi sites, but not Anti-African-American sites) etc, first it would make the TOS rediculously long, and second, someone would find a way to break the spirit of the rule while staying within the letter of the rule. And as previously mentioned, we can't afford to go to bat legally for someone who hosts questionable content and comes under question from law enforcement agencies.
Seriously, though, if you have questions about content limitations or policies and issues with the TOS, feel free to email us:
staff@netmar.com
Regards,
Will
Netmar Staff
sig?
No no no, our network is multi-homed. We haven't lost connectivity for more than a coupla minutes total, while all our BGP AS route announcements get switched over to Cable and Wireless.
We have a ticket open with sprint, and they're doing thorough line testing, finging out where the bad link is comming from.
The pages are because everytime any machine goes down and back up, I get paged 6 times (2 SMS and 1 numaric for the down and 2 SMS and 1 numaric for the up). Mostly, it's dedicated server customers resetting their servers, which is their perogative. Today's been especially busy, that's all.
Regards,
Will
Netmar Staff.
sig?
Our boss is a pretty devout christian, and as the owner of the company it's at his discretion. However, to my knowledge, the only reasons we've ever taken anyone's site down are pirated software and because it was a fradulent order.
Basically, this is a legal issue, not a moral one. Whatever's illegal in Durham NC (where the company is incorporated) is forbidden by the TOS, plus porn. We can't afford to go to bat for someone who hosts a website with questionable content. Questionable is intentionally left vague because we basically have to leave it vague in order to anticipate the unknown. If we explicitly set out the limitations (You can have pro-Nazi sites, but not Anti-African-American sites) etc, first it would make the TOS rediculously long, and second, someone would find a way to break the spirit of the rule while staying within the letter of the rule. And as previously mentioned, we can't afford to go to bat legally for someone who hosts questionable content and comes under question from law enforcement agencies.
Seriously, though, if you have questions about content limitations or policies and issues with the TOS, feel free to email us:
staff@netmar.com
Regards,
Will
Netmar Staff
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It seems like the most hassle free way of doing it would be to start an ISP. Take on a small number of dial up accounts just to look legit and help out with the bills. Then put your web sites up under fake user names. If someone complains about content...you lock out a fake user, remove the material in question, and shoot off an e-mail to the person that complained that it has been taken care of. Then you create a new fake user and do it all over again. Warrants and subpoenas? Why yes officer, I'll do everything I can to help you find this bad person!
usurper_ii
Thank God I live in this quiet, little, piss-ant, redneck, po-dunk...white trash, kick ass retirement town
Ron Paul
You just need to shop harder for your hosting. There are plenty of good deals out there. You can get "burstable" bandwidth deals, averaged bandwidth deals, whatever. It's still cheaper than a co-lo or a leased line (T1/T3). You don't pay for what you don't use, you pay a surcharge when you do, and you don't keep your users waiting.
Frankly, I think you have delusions of grandeur. If you can really generate that kind of traffic, you can find a way to capitalize on it- directly or indirectly- that the cost shouldn't be a problem. We should all be so lucky.
- Buy your own servers... preferably SUN. First, you have TOTAL CONTROL... second... they are not so virus prone as microsoft etc..., third... more open source... don't have BSA breathing down your neck
- Do NOT go with companies like RACKSPACE. MAIN reasons are as follows... first, you would prefer to admin your own server. By relying on OTHERS to admin you, you rely on OTHERS to make you secure. Great until you get hacked... then it's *hope they fix me soon*. Second... control control control control control
- Pick your COLO carefully. If you can't afford being your own tier... you need to colo. OBVIOUSLY you have to pick your colo carefully. Prefer to stay away from east/west coast because of bandwidth clog. Personally, we've found the southern US (texas, etc) to be pretty good at not being clogged with bandwidth and having international channels open.
- Your comment about *do anything I want*... well gee, if your going to do *bad* things, like pr0n, or war3z, or hax0ring... then you should probably NOT be on US servers... in that case, go off continent... cause any main haul here will eventually ban your ass. But if your legit (as you SHOULD be)... than you have no problems hosting anywhere. Try to go with the highest tier you can.
- of course of course of course... OWN YOUR OWN DOMAIN. And if at ALL possible... own your own IP block (in old speak... Class C or better). By owning your own IP block, you can easily move from machine to machine and dictate your own configuration. Moveing is easy and painless.
- GOOD COLO... the bigger the colo, the less time they have for you if a problem occurs. However, terribly small ones are also prone to inefficiency. You want a good sized, but not too big, colo with GREAT redundancy. AND YOU WANT TOTAL CONTROL OF YOUR CONNECTIONS!!!
- Bottom line... you GET what you PAY for. You can't be a good host for no money. Good rack space and bandwidth (assuing your buying your own server) should cost you a MINIMUM of around $500 a month. Paying less than that, and your probably ending up with a shitty deal.
- Obviously, any COLO situation can get you shut down if your doing *bad* things. But... that's true period unless your 4th or 5th tier. The more tiers you are removed, the harder you are to track down... but that implies that your doing something you shouldn't be doing... so don't! - because you want to be the highest tier possible - for the best possible bandwidth
Bye bye now!Now it's DHCP so no DNS possible.
Not neccessarily. I have Road Runner with DHCP, and I've had the same IP address for more than a month. Check it out, it's my url below. I'm just wondering how long it will take before I'll need to update my DNS with a new address.
I have a D-Link DL-713P router/firewall thingy. It has a 'renew IP forever' option, which renews my lease on my IP address. I've even unplugged my D-Link, just as an experiment, and I've gotten the same IP. I think RR keeps their subnets pretty small, so I'm choosing from a small set of IPs.
Whatever it is, I'm enjoying the benifits of a static IP without paying for it. I just know that something will happen though at the worst possible time. We'll see.
My Karma was at 49, then they switched to words. All that work for nothing!
Sounds like your network monitoring system is as cleverly designed as your Slashdot username.
How do you know that "Hackers" didn't steal it from him? Or from someone else who did?
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
So you're so happy with them that you're NOT going to give 'em some good word of mouth?
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
If you really, dead f*cking serious here folks, want to get an INDEPENDENT line;
:) ) , you would be home free from anybody f*cking with you.
:)
go find your self a gigapop and pay the per foot fee to run lines to a router which you will pay VERY dearly for; buy rights to an old office building someplace in town, run yourself a line between the Gigapop and the office building, host your data at the office building (assloads cheaper, trust me on this, I do not even think that Gigapops LET you have server machines there, other then load balances and such), and then set up a peering arrangement with the other backbones.
It will run you in the grands per month minimum (hell lucky if you break under a million) but hell, unless the law manages to get EVERY damn last backbone provider to cut your ass off (which pretty much never happens) and you have your server located in a country with 'suitable' legislation (though quite frankly with the price of satellites constantly dropping . . . . heh, any day now, right? Sure the latency sucks, but hey, the legal situation would be fun to play around with.
Please note that Gigapops technically refer to the new I2 POPs, but that Internet backbones tend to come together at them any ways.
Basically what you want is a direct relationship with a Tier 1 provider, which is VERY hard to get and VERY expensive, especially since you would not have a backbone of your own to deal with, but I am sure that if you offer them enough money, and especially if you do it a bit 'underhandedly' with one of the smaller tier 1 providers outside of the US.
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
Wrong!. They offer unmetered bandwidth, not unlimited bandwidth. Their FAQ says you are limited to 5 GB/month.
They also don't allow adult sites, and they don't allow sites that are primarly for downloads (even if the material is perfectly legal).
In other words, they don't meet any of the requirements of the original poster.
No, the DMCA doesn't presume guilt. While the accusing party may be presuming guilt, the courts make no similar assumption. All that the procedures set out by the DMCA do is provide a way for copyright owners to bring anonymous posters of pirated materials out into the open. Basically, if you post something and it was legitimate, you simply assert that it is legitimate to your accuser and then it's up to the accuser to take you to court.
The only presumption really made here is that if the materials are legitimate, you'll make the effort to certify to that they are in response to the accuser.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Some co-los also do it based on transfer rate if you like. Instead of giving you 500GB/ month they give you 1mbps. They just throw a rate limit on your port.
What you have to remember is that the higher up the scale you go in terms of lines, the more they care about you and less they'll fuck with you. If you have $50.month DSL they could give a crap what you think and will terminate you at the drop of a hat. However if you are spending $2500/month on a couple of T-1s they are going to be nicer and more cautious, as you account for a significant amount of cash. If you sepnd $15,000-$20,000 on a DS-3 each month, they'll make sure not to piss you off as that is a significant amount of money.
Also you must remember that T1s and up are bussiness lines. Even to your home, it is assumed to be for bussiness use. You have an actual, real, legally binding contract that promises things from them to you. Also, being that this is a large amount of money, the terms of the contract are negoatiable to a degree. IF they have a clause you don't like you may be able to get it removed. The bigger the line, the more true this is. At the university where I work, we are basically dictating the terms of our lines to the providers, and they are then going to bid on providing us that.
Additonally, they don't thend to care what you do with lines like that. Consumer grade lines they don't want servers, VPNs, etc on because the low price is based on the assumption that you won't be using all your bandwidth all teh time. ditto for most hosting companies outlawing porn (it uses tons of bandwidth). However when you buy an unmetered T1 line, they mean it. You can use 100% of your bandwidth 24/7 and noone will bitch. IT's built into the cost. Generally they just say "don't do anything illegal" (in more words) and that's it.
Finally, as you get bigger lines and become a bigger operation, the problems jsut get refered to you, not to your provider. Noone ever calls our providers at work and if they did, they'd just get refered back to our NOC. They have us deal with it since the onyl way they could deal with it is to pull the pulg, which would violate contract and piss us off. Now granted, we are on the extreme end having several OC-12s that demultiplex to a bunch of OC-3s for voice (local and long distance), internet and data to off site locations, however the general principle is still true: The more money you give the phone company and the bigger you get, the less they'll mess with you.
Constructive criticism follows:
The clock needs to have an AM or PM, or use 24 hour format.
I wondered why your homepage was taking so long to load. 3 minutes later IE pops up with a question about installing Flash 6 and I could view your site.
Do you *really* need the clock and the pulsing computer? Can't go back a version or two of flash so that people don't have to get flash 6?
If i'd hit your site via a search engine, I'd be heading on back in 10 seconds if I don't see anything interesting. As your menu's don't show until the flash loads, and it takes 3 minutes to get the plugin (for me, anyway. Damn modem), I'll be clicking that 'back' button quick.
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
I have a leased line into my home. It isn't high bandwidth, and it isn't cheap; but no-one controls what I publish (or what I mirror) except me.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
I'm not sure if you're aware of this or not, but Cogent does not provide 100 Mbps Internet connections; they simply provide 100 Mbps connections between offices. It's up to you to somehow connect that to the Internet. (I may be mistaken, but I know that this is how it was about a year ago.)
________________________________________________
suwain_2
I am a user of DynDNS, and I'd say they are more than fairly reliable. With four nameservers in different netblocks and different geographical locations they have more redundancy than most hosting services I have seen. Since running DNS is just about the only thing they do, there is not much chance to fsck things up too.
They are also scrupulously honest about things like privacy. They don't need the EU Safe Harbour provisions, as their privacy policy fully satisfies the EU Privacy Directive, and they seem to hold themselves to it too.
Add to that a friendly and approachable staff (One of their admins popped up on a newsgroup when people were talking about them), and the fact that they will handle Dynamic DNS for a full domain if you become a donator, I'd heartily recommend them to anyone with a good Cable/DSL connection.
Mart"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
Besides the point that freenet just barely works at this moment:
Freenet it is meant to only serve static content. If you want some website with some database behind it, like for a forum slashdot, Freenet is not an option. There are ways to run forum like software on top of freenet, but this is an other category than hosting anonymously.
The other product mentioned here, bittorrent is only going to be scabale for fixed files download.
www.penguinhosting.com Offers unlimited space, unlimited bandwidth, for very reasonable prices. PHP and Perl and mySQL are included.
www.abac.com offers 500mb, unlimited bandwidth for $10/mo. Just Perl.
Oh, believe you me, there's nothing like slashdot to point out EVERYTHING that's wrong with one's webhosting company, philosophy, gender, habits, etc. =)
We'll be changing a few things on the website shortly. That is one of them.
Thanks though!
Regards,
Will
Netmar Staff
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SOMEONE has to give these guys credit that they are actually /.'ers and that they are taking the time to respond!
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following my instincts not a trend...
Yeah, but that's the presumption in all of law. I mean keep in mind, the reponse letter to the DMCA isn't going to cost you a substantial amount. It's only if you have to fight something out in court that it'll cost you and that's an entirely separta step.
Although I do tend to favor the system where the loser pays the legal fees. Eliminates a lot of these issues in law.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
flossie
Write now. Defend liberty
Late last year, I decided that I wanted the ability to execute .ASP scripts within .htm
files. You can do that, but only by tweaking
IIS so that every .htm file is interpreted as
an ASP file. That would represent a huge change
and would slow down a shared server.
So I decided it was time to re-establish colocation service. In the past, I have had my own servers colocated at Above.net (now MFN), and later at Maxim.net (later merged into another firm).
I bought a 1U Compaq server at the Webvan auction ($1,830, including tax).
The benefits of colocation are that the colo firm takes responsibility for making sure you have power (usually with UPS battery and generator backup), and they usually sell you bandwidth (though some colo facilities require that you contract for bandwidth directly with the provider, and the colo facility runs the wire from your box to your bandwidth provider's equipment at the facility. Another benefit, is that you can generally add bandwidth, or add more servers, very quickly (you can always add more servers at your own location, space permitting, but adding bandwidth may be more troublesome if you rely on a T1 or DSL line with inherent limits of 1.5 or 1.1 mbps).
When you sign a contract for colocation services, you pay for a specific level of bandwidth -- currently I am paying $200 per month to host a 1U server at Hurricane Electric (he.net) with 95% usage not to exceed 128Kbps of bandwidth. I am actually plugged in to a 10mbps ethernet connection, and I can spike my bandwidth (I often see spikes to as much as 640K in my traffic reports), but I pay no surcharge unless my server is using more than 128Kbps more than 5% of the time. (Currently I run from 75K to 100Kbps at the 95% average.)
Freedom is pretty broad, but of course each colocation facility has its own restrictions and each bandwidth provider also has its own restrictions -- spamming is always prohibited by all backbone providers (since the demise of AGIS), and or course nobody wants your server to be doing damaging things (like launching DNS attacks, distributing viruses, threatening the president's life, etc.). But most colo facilities will allow things like porn (though I'm sure there are companies that will draw the line short of what the First Amendment allows). Probably the most troublesome area would be "file sharing," if you operate a service that allows (or encourages) people to illegally download copyrighted works (free copies of Microsoft Office, click here!).
No matter what promises you may get, don't expect any colocation facility to stick with you if there is a substantial threat of litigation. You may be in the right, but the colo facility or bandwidth provider doesn't want to get sucked into a Napster-style lawsuit, nor branded as supporters of child-pornographers.
In addition, my experience is that you rarely get what you pay for, when buying colocation services. At Above.net, I paid a premium because they promised fast response time -- for example, someone could run out and cycle the power within 15 minutes. After a few months, however, Above.net was overwhelmed (too many promises, not enough staff to fulfill) and I often had to wait 40 minutes and talk to 3 different people, before finding someone who could just walk out and check if the power was on to my server! The final straw was when I began experiencing multiple outages each day, and Above.net simply denied that there were any outages. It took more than a month before they conceded that my mountain of proof was adequate, and then they simply agreed to let me terminate my contract early -- no credits or adjustments in my favor. I was mostly pleased with the service at Maxim.net (until they merged and announced a huge rate spike, which was justified by new service levels but wasn't worthwhile for me). I've been very pleased with the service at Hurricane Electric so far.
-- http://www.MarkWelch.com/ Pleasanton California
May I suggest that you specify "liquid propane" at least once in the FAQ. It is best to define as many acronyms as possible to save me a trip to Acronym Finder. Very interesting nonetheless, and impressive redundancy. Do you know how long you can store gasoline before it goes stale? Have you considered Sun/wind/water power supplements? How about manually cranked generators attached to stationary bikes?
If you do find yourself hosting objectionable but non-sexual legal content, how do you respond? Block access to the specific page, delete the offending resource, cancel the account?
How do you respond to accounts that have links to content not approved by Netmar? You make valid points about conserving bandwidth by avoiding porn and contraband media. Taking the bandwidth issue out of this discussion, this is still an important issue for an "independant" web site. Would there be an issue if Netmar were to host an Indymedia type site, which hosted an article criticizing menbers of a Baptist group who allegedly mutialted an accused satanist; If the article contained explicit photographs of the remains; if the photo was hosted by another site? Do you prefer grape jelly or strawberry jam? How long is the regestration for the "free domain name registration?" Another important question for an independant site... what happens to that free domain if the account is terminated, for whatever reason? Would finding a less restictive alternative host mean sacrificing community name recognition?
Not yet seriously considering a year's commitment, this does seem to be a fairly worthy resource you offer. Instead of emailing staff@netmar.com, posting here offers a chance to answer these questions for posterity - of course until you get a chance to update the FAQ page. I can't wait until I am one of your customers, because I could really use some friends. Maybe we could go see a movie or something.
-castlan