[aclug-L] Re: High-speed server access

["Dale W Hodge" <dwh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> > I'm not sure how well mailing lists would work with virtual
> domains, if it is even possible.
>
> It's doable.  I still question the practicality... for one, how do you
> divide up the cost?

Practicality is one reason this discussion was tabled. I would think that a
minimum charge would have to be in effect.

>I'd feel inclined to limit or meter bandwidth.

Well, we'd certainly have to restrict the kinds of files that could be
placed on the server.  No MP3's or other high bandwidth files.

> All
> in all, if it were in my basement and I had to deal with the burden of
> systems administration, I wouldn't be letting folks have the service "at
> cost"... unless you consider my time to be part of the cost.  And if it
> were in someone else's basement and they were doing it for free, I'm sure
> that it wouldn't be up to my standards... the primary point being
> "long-term reliability".


running it for myself. I can see where offering services to others could
cause a bit more work. What issues do you see affecting long-term
reliability?

>
> > Dial-in access gets costly in a hurry. I'd be inclined to
> > offer only a single dial-in number for remote administrative access.
>
> Why offer even that?  It's connected to the net, let folks telnet in.

Yes, but you can make dial-in much more secure than telnet. And depending on
where the machine is located, I can foresee a need for remote access for the
system administrators.

>
> > Co-location wouldn't be bad if we had a block of addresses.
>
> I would want to limit it to that... actual machine co-location, so that
> there isn't any "shared" hardware.  But then that is still a pain... I
> wouldn't want to open up my basement to folks I hardly know when they want
> to do a hardware upgrade.  Or be woke up in the middle of the night by
> someone wanting me to do a hard-reset of their machine.  There's a lot of
> responsibility on the shoulders of the guy who has to host the actual
> hardware... he still has to manage the local network and router.

You are right, there an upside/downside to any of the possible
implementations.  Though as long as it wasn't on my primary machine, I'm not
sure I'd have too much problem with shared hardware.  If one was to do
co-location, there'd certainly have to be some kind of rules in effect. But
unless I'm missing something, I don't see the work load in managing the
network being significantly greater with several hosts over just one.

> > Otherwise,
> > we're limited to what can be accomplished with virtual hosts.
>
> Which is quite a bit.

Granted.  Which in my mind makes co-location an unneeded hassle.

>
> > Another idea
> > we might look into is providing dynamic dns services for
> members, including
> > MX backup.  But we have to be careful here, because it's ACLUG that gets
> > into trouble if someone does something foolish.
>
> There's very little reason for it... virtually everyone doing dynamic DNS
> is violating their terms of service with their ISP.

I haven't checked, but that's most likely true.  Another possibility is just
offering an email alias.  There's a definite advantage to a short, easy to
remember address.

--dwh

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Dale W Hodge * dwh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx * dwh@xxxxxxxx * dwh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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