Your advice needed!!

Need help installing PHP, configuring a script, or configuring a server? Then come on in and post your questions! We'll try to help the best we can!

Moderator: General Moderators

Post Reply
danpage
Forum Newbie
Posts: 2
Joined: Tue Aug 16, 2005 5:01 pm

Your advice needed!!

Post by danpage »

ok im in 2 minds of purchasing another computer... basically its come down to one thing that will determine whether i go ahead or not... using it as a server, i will be using apache but what i want to know from you is that i have a 1mbps internet copnnection... i will not change this anytime soon so i was wondering will it cope with a fairly active website.... say 10gb bandwidth a month? the computer will but its my net connection... i though you will know i dont know if the connection really makes a difference with a server?

anyway your advice is greatly appreciated :)
danpage
Forum Newbie
Posts: 2
Joined: Tue Aug 16, 2005 5:01 pm

Post by danpage »

hmm, i looked at my LAN and it says its speed is 12.0mbps

dont know how i missed that
User avatar
Trenchant
Forum Contributor
Posts: 291
Joined: Mon Nov 29, 2004 6:04 pm
Location: Web Dummy IS

Post by Trenchant »

If you were just running on website I would say it could run it however you would probably be better off just getting hosting at a datacenter.

When you look into running your own server you gotta think about how much extra resources your gonna be using. A computer takes quite a bit of power to be running 24/7/365. If your site is getting a lot of constant traffic you also gotta remember that if your power goes out so does your site. Whereas in a datacenter they have backup generators.

I personally have my own server at my house but it backs as a workstation and I mainly just use it for programming.
User avatar
m3mn0n
PHP Evangelist
Posts: 3548
Joined: Tue Aug 13, 2002 3:35 pm
Location: Calgary, Canada

Post by m3mn0n »

If you have a 10/100 network and you're connected through a Cat5 cable then you'll always get 100 mbps between the network but what outside visitors will get things transfered at depends entirely on how quick your broadband connection is.

And even then, if you download anything from a computer on the network then you're draining resources from your server.

You see, I thought about doing that too but the overhead costs and such make it too expensive to do with the same quality as a datacenter.

For example, to have the same quality connection as a datacenter in my house, I'd have to pay $250-$350 a month. Yes, I would get unmetered bandwidth and as much space as my server could hold but add onto that a $2,000 server and a Redhat ES ($1499) and your 1 year total is ~$7,700 ( or ~$642/month).

There is ways to reduce costs. For example, if I was thinking about that setup above and wanted to cut costs significantly (and quality of service) I'd get a $1,000 server, Fedora (free), and I'd keep my enhanced DSL ($50/mo.). That's only about ~$133/mo. total. But the quality would be horrible compared to what you'd get for $10-$40 a month at a web host's datacenter.

Unless you plan to start a hosting company, I'd recommend just buying shared hosting. Or a VPS or dedicated server if you need more resources. Co-location is an option also if you want physical access to the hardware.
User avatar
John Cartwright
Site Admin
Posts: 11470
Joined: Tue Dec 23, 2003 2:10 am
Location: Toronto
Contact:

Post by John Cartwright »

I usually just make friends with people with dedicated servers :lol:
But seriously your going to have to weigh quality versus cost. As Sami said, no matter how you reduce cost, there is always a reduction in performance. So your going to have to ask yourself what kind of performance and assurance that your site will always be available to the public is needed for this website?
User avatar
Chris Corbyn
Breakbeat Nuttzer
Posts: 13098
Joined: Wed Mar 24, 2004 7:57 am
Location: Melbourne, Australia

Post by Chris Corbyn »

Your 1Mbit internet connection... is it ADSL or Cable? Either way, it's not going to be ideal for active web hosting since the upload will only be a portion of that (Maybe 25% - 50%) and if you're using it for browsing/downloading from home too it's going to be even slower (Contention ratios with ADSL kinda make hosting poor).

It'll be fine for a quiet website or just to play around with though ;)
Post Reply