What should be the minimum connection speed to host my site at home

[priyaa161]

I'm thinking to host my website at home. I've tried to find out the exact procedure for this but there is nothing information on the Internet.
Can anyone here is able to answer my few questions:

(1) What should be the minimum connection speed

(2) How many computers I'll need. (I've three at the moment, one desktop and two laptops)

(3) Best Operating System this purpose.

(4) Any special environmental condition

[lukoot]

i ran a simple website from home for a short time just for my family but it was mainly to educate myself a bit about websites

(1) What should be the minimum connection speed - your upload speed will be more important than your download speed

(2) How many computers I'll need. (I've three at the moment, one desktop and two laptops) - i ran mine right from my main desktop computer but that meant it could only be viewed when me computer was switched on

(3) Best Operating System this purpose. - i used windows vista ultimate and set it up using the Microsoft IIS but like i said it was just a simple website so family could view pictures and listen to songs i also moved it to windows 7 ultimate and did the same thing with ISS maybe not the best operating system to use but it works

do a web search for how do i host my own website at home I'm sure you will find some help

[Smith6612]

Having run home servers back in the past off of very old PCs and having a Linux PC here running as my router with custom software, I can answer all of this for you.

(1) What should be the minimum connection speed
Back when I first started up on my home server, I ran a fairly active forum and a small site easily off of 128kbps of upload. You could tell when many people were on as the site would low faster or slower obviously due to the upload speed of my connection at that time. If it wasn't the connection, you could also tell if the site was busy by looking at the page generation times. The web server at that time was a Windows 2000 PC running a Pentium III Processor at 600Mhz. Did a wonderful job. It later got Linux installed over it later on and used that as my router up until several months ago where I rebuilt that machine with Intel Atom hardware.

But to answer this directly, you can host a website on any form of upload given the site is "optimized" for the speed. The key to loading is not just speed but also latency. As your upload and download begins to "saturate," latency will start to occur. 384kbps will handle a fair amount of users with a small website, nothing image heavy. 1Mbps and higher will be even better.

(2) How many computers I'll need. (I've three at the moment, one desktop and two laptops)
All you need is one. It just needs to be a PC that can be on all the time or that can at least be on most of the time or whenever you want the site online.

(3) Best Operating System this purpose.
Any operating system of choice will do. Many of us here including myself will suggest Linux however.

(4) Any special environmental condition
Nope. Nothing too special.


To add onto other notes, be aware that many ISPs do not allow access to Port 80 which is what is used for HTTP access. They block the incoming access at the edge network on their end. You can tell the web server to listen for HTTP traffic on other ports which are not blocked for incoming traffic. Also, many ISPs don't like commercial servers being ran on non-business accounts, so keep that in mind too.

At this moment, my headless Linux router running an Intel Dual-Core Atom under 64-bits has been online for 5 Months, 1 day at this time. RAM usage is 96MB out of 2048MB total. Running Fedora 12 with routing software on at the moment. I have Apache, PHP and MySQL loaded up on it at the moment as well.

[lemon-tree]

(1) What should be the minimum connection speed

Basically, your upload speed has to be roughly equivalent to your user's download speed if you really want your site to be responsive. I would recommend having it a little bit larger if you are expecting multiple simultaneous connections. You will also have to watch your bandwidth usage, as media heavy sites could cost a fortune. The connection should also ideally be reliable and not have any dropped packets. If you have a very popular website you will need a very quick connection and that is when it becomes more financially viable to use a hosting solution or a co-location service.
You should also know how to setup port forwarding on your router so that your content can be viewed from outside the local area network. A firewall may also be necessary to setup if you believe your internal network could be targeted, but that depends on how big your website will be and how publicised it is.

(2) How many computers I'll need. (I've three at the moment, one desktop and two laptops)

You will only need on and I would recommend it be a desktop as they are better designed for extended uptime. I have an Apache webserver on an old PowerBook but it is a lot more hassle than I desktop, hence why I only use it for internal testing. I also hear that Mac Minis make great servers in a tiny package, but that is probably not what you are looking for.
Also note though that some computer are really not designed for extended uptime, but that shouldn't be too much of an issue.

(3) Best Operating System this purpose.

If you intend to use the computer solely as a server I would recommend a flavour of Linux due to its reliability and low resource consumption. You will have to install Apache and MySQL on it, but there are plenty of tutorials to help you along. If you still intend to use the computer for daily tasks then it may be that Windows may be better, but remember that if you are running any resource intensive apps on the machine it will slow your user's experience right down.

(4) Any special environmental condition

The best environment would be cool and with plenty of airflow. The space should also not be confined as it is likely that your server will be putting out a fair amount of heat, even when idle. Finally, ensure that your setup is somewhere out of the way if it is noisy.

[priyaa161]

(1) What should be the minimum connection speed
Back when I first started up on my home server, I ran a fairly active forum and a small site easily off of 128kbps of upload. You could tell when many people were on as the site would low faster or slower obviously due to the upload speed of my connection at that time. If it wasn't the connection, you could also tell if the site was busy by looking at the page generation times. The web server at that time was a Windows 2000 PC running a Pentium III Processor at 600Mhz. Did a wonderful job. It later got Linux installed over it later on and used that as my router up until several months ago where I rebuilt that machine with Intel Atom hardware.

But to answer this directly, you can host a website on any form of upload given the site is "optimized" for the speed. The key to loading is not just speed but also latency. As your upload and download begins to "saturate," latency will start to occur. 384kbps will handle a fair amount of users with a small website, nothing image heavy. 1Mbps and higher will be even better.

Thanks Smith for sharing your experience and giving me estimate of the required connection speed for what I was searching for.

To add onto other notes, be aware that many ISPs do not allow access to Port 80 which is what is used for HTTP access. They block the incoming access at the edge network on their end. You can tell the web server to listen for HTTP traffic on other ports which are not blocked for incoming traffic. Also, many ISPs don't like commercial servers being ran on non-business accounts, so keep that in mind too.

I asked to one of the ISP in my area about connection they can offer and they replied

Can we have your contact details, and your address, so that we can arrange
for a feasibility to connect to your home etc. We can offer internet connection starting at
2mbps and going right uptill 1000mbps (1gbps)

All connections above 45mbps are delivered to end users via fiber connections.

Once we can get the feasibility checked we will give you the commercials
for the connection

Regards
Support Team
Honesty Net Solutions (I) Pvt Ltd
Mumbai, INDIA.

I think any connection above 4MBPS in our country is business connection. But they abruptly stopped replying when I told them that I'll host my website on their connection. So is there any special connection to host websites.

The best environment would be cool and with plenty of airflow. The space should also not be confined as it is likely that your server will be putting out a fair amount of heat, even when idle. Finally, ensure that your setup is somewhere out of the way if it is noisy.

I'm on a very hot country and it will be very difficult for me to maintain temperature between 10 to 15 degree Celsius (which is your normal average temperature). Is it possible to shift computers after every 6- 10 hours but without any downtime during this shift.

[masshuu]

I think any connection above 4MBPS in our country is business connection. But they abruptly stopped replying when I told them that I'll host my website on their connection. So is there any special connection to host websites.

no. Most ISPs don't like it when you host servers on there network as it puts more of a load on it than if you were just using it to browse the web.

I'm on a very hot country and it will be very difficult for me to maintain temperature between 10 to 15 degree Celsius (which is your normal average temperature). Is it possible to shift computers after every 6- 10 hours but without any downtime during this shift.

probably not. Theres no reason why you can't keep the same computer running. All i can suggest is more fans. If you need to, get a bigger heat sink to allow more heat transfer. Computers generally can safely run in fairly high temperatures as long as you have airflow. If the temperature was high enough to affect the colling of the computers( i would say above 40C), then i would worry about the health effects, and seriously consider an AC unit.

Though theres no reason why you should risk breaking the TOS of your ISP. You can get cheap reliable web-hosting from many companies, without the issue of power, bandwidth, upkeep, or environmental concerns.

[galaxyAbstractor]

Have in mind that you need to run the computer 24/7 and pay for the electricity, which may not be cheap depending on computer and where you live

[priyaa161]

Though theres no reason why you should risk breaking the TOS of your ISP. You can get cheap reliable web-hosting from many companies, without the issue of power, bandwidth, upkeep, or environmental concerns.

I like to host my website on home because of following reasons

(1) To learn something about the working of internet services
(2) No Restriction
(3) No dependence on others to have my problem solved
(4) Fun

One more reason is that it is difficult to upload every time and everything on a host and mostly in the case of big files. I need high upload speed to do and that what I need to host my site so why not I choose to host it my self and all the pages on x10hosting.

Have in mind that you need to run the computer 24/7 and pay for the electricity, which may not be cheap depending on computer and where you live

Electricity bill isn't a problem here. I don't think that computer consumes lot of electricity. I run my computers 24/7. It only increases the bill by 1-3$. Yes AC can make a high electricity bill if I'll use it to keep my computer cool.

[Livewire]

One more reason is that it is difficult to upload every time and everything on a host and mostly in the case of big files. I need high upload speed to do and that what I need to host my site so why not I choose to host it my self and all the pages on x10hosting.

If I'm reading that right, you want to host the pages on x10 and the big files locally? If so continue, otherwise skip this entire post


Most ISP's aren't big on upload and in the case of big files, to put it lightly it'll suck trying to download them off your system. It makes it easier for you as the web admin, but if more than a few people are trying to download, say, a 100mb file at once and their transfers are all going at 10kb/sec due to the number of hits on it, that'd be somewhere around 170 minutes (>2 hours) to download. Even if it's going 50kb/sec for each user we're still talking 34 minutes, and as far as I know it -is- faster when downloading it off of x10 (even on free it seems to be faster than 50kb/sec).

For what it's worth I'm on a 1 megabit upload line; that equates to about 128kb/sec. That same 100mb file would take me 13.33~ minutes to upload to x10 where it'd be faster to download for my users.



My point is pretty moot though if you're not talking "big" as in 100mb but even a high quality image that's a few megabytes can drag like no ones business off of a local system. Run a check at speedtest.net to see what your upload speed is, then run that through google calculator (1 megabit in kilobytes, for instance) to get what it'd actually be in kilobytes per second -maximum-. Have to stress maximum; I've had mine reduced in many cases just because my ISP's having issues. Once you know that speed, take the size of one of the files you're thinking of as a "big file," get it into kilobytes, and divide by the upload speed from earlier to get how many seconds it'd take to load that file if there was only 1 person downloading it. If it's something like a 4mb image and it's coming up 60seconds, it ain't gunna work - it'd be faster for the users to just have it on x10 with the pages.


Edit: Run the test at speedtest.net and post the results for the upload speed actually; that's gunna be the best way to figure out what is the maximum upload, then we can go from there and figure out what's safe to keep there (safe as in "not so slow my users click to a rival site")

[Anna]

I have ran a small site of my computer (only have one and I use that for other things as well), windows system. ADSL connection, round 1mb up speed.

I found it fairly easy to set up with mysql and php. Never got apache to work though so I did chose abyss webserver (free for use in the light version, which can not do separate domains).

The problem I ran into that made me go hunting for a host was the fact that during bad weather (thunder storms) I often had to turn the computer off to avoid risking a fried computer, if there's an electricity outage, the site is not accessible. If for some reason router and/or ISP had problems the site went offline.

Simply I chose a hosted solution to get better stability, and faster connections. At that time I did host a clan forum for a travian clan where the users came from various places around the world, they wanted access at all times naturally.

Yes, for the most you can control the uptime, and yes it is by far easier when it comes to editing your site, as there's no upload step involved. And yes, you can control the php config completely which give you greater freedom.

Note that you also need to deal with securing your web server, I learned that the hard way, luckily they did no harm other then screw my site up.

I didn't notice any change in electricity cost, although that could be because nothing really did change, computer has always been on more or less 24/7.

In the end I did find a hosted solution more reliable. I still have a local server setup for testing, and could if needed make it available and point my domain(s) to it with information if the server would fail.