Home Server - A Cheap way for Hosting
Written by nadz on July 21, 2008 – 5:00 pm -Please rate this article
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Loading ...Some of the internet users who own blog site or a small personal website run their web server from home. You may misunderstand the statement that you just read. No, they don’t have server class hardware for hosting their website or a high bandwidth connection to the internet. They just have an old personal computer which is not fast enough for everyday usage and an ordinary ADSL connecting to Internet. It is true that this setup cannot cater for thousands of concurrent users, but it looks like this is sufficient for some purpose.
If you ever consider running a blog site or a personal website at home using some old hardware, then you need to go for a light weight web server. Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS) and Apache are two of popular but light weight web servers. Apache also has a lighter version called Apache Light purposely built for old hardware.
Before you start hosting your own web server at home, you need to check with your ISP. Most of the ISPs do not allow regular Internet users to host web servers using the connection provided. This may be due to various reasons including bandwidth concerns. Usually you won’t get a static IP from your ISP if this is the case. Even if you get a static IP from your ISP, traffic through standard HTTP ports to your IP will be blocked by ISP so you cannot publish your website. Therefore most of the users who host web site from home use alternative methods such as using “no-IP” web sites to route traffic or publish the website through non –standard ports.
Last but not least, the security of your home server should be maintained strictly especially if you use the same computer for other purpose as well. This is due to the vulnerability it creates by exposing the server to thousands of users. If your operating system and the software are not properly patched and secured, then there can be hackers coming in to your system and perform various harmful acts.
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