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

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

> > 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?
>
> The person doing it for free.  He has very little stake in the
> matter... it's one thing to run a free service which other people
> subscribe to for their personal use (a mailing list) but it's quite
> another to run a service on which other people are going to provide
> services.

True. But I was thinking the idea here was to offer some web hosting for low
bandwidth "vanity" sites. Sure, most people get free web space from their
ISP, but the URL is sometimes a real bear to remember. We could offer more
than you get from your ISP, but less than you'd get from a full featured
_web hosting service_. Now it may well be that some of us decide to go into
the hosting business, but I don't see that as part of ACLUG.

>And what if he decides to move?  I can picture this service
> having downtime involving relocating when the "host" moves, whether he
> keeps it or turns it over to someone else.

Uh, we already know what kind of problem that is.  I think it's something
we'd have to work out if we decide to go forward on this. Of course we could
just mirror the server and the changeover would be nearly seamless. It would
then depend on how complex the served pages are.


>
> > You are right, there an upside/downside to any of the possible
> > 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.
>
> But the responsibility is greater.

Agreed.

> If something goes down and it's just
> my site, my own priorities determine how seriously I take it and when I
> get around to fixing it.  When the services affects twenty paying
> "customers" it's quite a different matter.  (I take my downtime quite
> seriously myself... but I'm still not sure I'd want someone other than my
> own users depending on me as well.)

I suppose such things would have to be spelled out in some kind of terms of
service document.  I wouldn't want to even think of guaranteeing uptime,
only that a good faith effort would be made to keep the server up.

> And there's security... how well would participants be screened?  If
> everyone's using a shared machine (the easiest way to go and probably the
> only reasonable one, since the cost of co-locating a box and maintaining
> it yourself is high compared to just buying web hosting), who's going to
> ensure that every piece of CGI run on the shared web server is secure?

Yeah, that could potentially be a problem.  But if the web server itself is
properly secured and the cgi is run with the proper permissions, the risks
can be minimized.

> I still like the idea on general principle.  I'd love to be able to afford
> more bandwidth based on a coop of some kind... even my 33.6k modem sits
> idle most of the time, but when it's not idle, it's usually saturated.
> It would be great if system administration could be shared... keeping up
> on security alone is a real pain.  (And is really the bulk of what I do
> now days it seems like... watch bugtraq and keep up on security
> updates.)
> Except that I'm not sure I'd trust my machine's administrative access to
> anyone I didn't know real well.

Actual machine administration should be limited to two or three people.
Users could have access to their web areas to maintain as they wish. Changes
to virtual hosts would require the administrator.


> I guess part of my question is what level of service will people want?
> If all people want is a domain web site and email, that wouldn't be too
> big a deal.  But I can't see doing it for less than what SouthWind charges
> for a Virtual Web Site (which has its own IP) unless we had a lot of
> users.

Virtual hosting can be done with a single IP. For a small number of users,
that can be okay.  If there's enough interest, then we can do more
complicated things.

>Consider that ISDN will cost about $360 a month... that's 18 users
> just to bring the cost down to $20 each, and you can get web hosting for
> that already, and on a site with far more than 128K of bandwidth.  That
> seems like a heck of a lot of trouble to share an ISDN line... and if you
> want to talk fractional T-1, it gets even more expensive so we'd need even
> more users to break even.  (At least you can run a heck of a lot of web
> sites off of a single machine.)

But xDSL services should be much cheaper. ISDN is costly because the line
charges are costly.  I'm waiting to find out what DSL is going to cost for
my business account, but I've been told it should be in line with what I'm
currently paying for dedicated dial-up.


> For me, the reason for having a dedicated service is to provide services I
> can't reasonably buy elsewhere... namely, a highly-customized/specialized
> mailing list server with integrated web sites and web-based reading.  (Not
> that *I* want web-based reading, but it's a service that some of my users
> want.)

For me, I decided to set up a domain for many of the same reasons.  I could
buy services elsewhere, but for about the same cost I could have control
over it.  If I factored in what it would have cost to have two different
accounts, it's probably cheaper.

> What reason do others have?  Just to run your own web server or
> similar service?  If that's the case, then those folks won't be satisfied
> with just having a web site on someone else's server when they can get
> that for less elsewhere.

I know. Half the fun is hosting it yourself.  But for those with really odd
or long URL's or user names, this may just fit the bill.

Time will tell if this is a worthwhile idea or not.

--dwh

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Dale W Hodge * dwh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx * dwh@xxxxxxxx * dwh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
             -- www.neuralmatrix.org * www.dnd-automotive.com --
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