[warniahs]

I am getting cable soon and I was wondering if there is a way to host a website off my computer.

Thx.

 

[Regicide]

http://httpd.apache.org/
Download Apache2

 

[brendandonhu]

That depends on your ISP. Most of them will not allow you to run a web server on a residential connection.

 

[cj_white]

i know someone that ran a webserver off of comcast for a year. comcast finally caught him and now he is banned for a year.

 

[AbvAvgUser]

Running a server is not only about a always-on connection and apache. It needs mail server and a few other things. It also needs quite a bit of processing power as well. The servers where I host for my clients' sites has Pentium 4 2.6 Hyper Thread Processors with 1GB RAM and other things to boost speed and power.

 

[brendandonhu]

Your webhost probably has a few hundred sites on that box too. A Pentium 166 can easily serve static pages to a small-medium number of people.

 

[AbvAvgUser]

It can, but what all the different types of servers? Apache, mail server, ftp server, etc. and what about security? I really wouldn't make one on my PC.

 

[brendandonhu]

I wouldn't run a serious server either, because there is no backup power or guaranteed uptime. I often run Apache and FTP on my 700mhz/128 RAM system and it runs perfectly (then again, there is almost no load on the server).

 

[AbvAvgUser]

Exactly. That is what I wanted to say. An occasional downtime may result in lost emails and also some disgruntled visitors. What warniahs is trying to do is possible but not practical.

 

[Snake~eyes]

Agreed with above, also it will probaly be pretty slow too, especially if you have high amounts of traffic. You'll be better off spending some cash on a real webhost. You can spend around 5 bucks a month for a decent host.

 

[AbvAvgUser]

Or even less than that. I have been giving my clients 25 MB linux space with a domain for about Rs. 1500 a year. That means about US $ 33 for a year with domain. That is less than US $ 3 per month!!

So far I haven't received any complaint that I haven't been able to resolve within a very short time and most of the time it has been about Outlook Configuration for mails. So nothing wrong with servers.

For such small amount, hosting on your own PC is not worth the trouble.