Community webserver?

[michael d hoskins]

You know, I've thought about that, too.  However, I'd rather have true
hosting capabilities, daily backups, backup power, RAID, my own domain,
my own IP, my own account, unlimited POP/mail forwards, listserves,
ability to vend, Linux 2.2, Apache 1.3, PHP, Perl 5, MySQL, 24 by 7 tech
support and monitoring, extremely high speed (100's of Mbits/sec.)
connections, rack mounted, in a raised-floor data center, etc, for a LOT
less money.  This solution, of course, is more "professional," plus
there are no disputes to resolve with others sharing equipment wanting
this package or that package installed.

I already get all this for $9.95 a month at Hurricane Electric.
http://www.he.net/  (I saw their ad in Linux Journal several times.)
The bad thing is that I only get 5M of storage and 500M/month of
transfers.

Now, I'm thinking to moving to http://www.dibby.com/ after seeing a
Slashdot post.  They're $14.95/month, but I could get even faster
connectivity, unlimited transfers, and 300M of web space.

If you're still interested, I know four different people who might
consider it, since they already have a SWBell DSL here in KC and one has
already offered this as a possibility.  DSL's main rate, of course, is
384K-1.5M downstream and only 128K upstream.  I assume that the business
rate is 1.5M-6M down and only 128-384K upstream.  I am impressed by
DSL's download speeds, but it's upload rate is horrible, for hosting,
from what I have seen.  I have seen small pictures crawl across the
screen time after time, for uploads.

Sprint ION is 8M down and 1M up, but starts at $160/month.  There are NO
static IP's, according to information I've been looking into, unless you
pay a LOT extra for a business line.  (Of course, ION includes 1-4 phone
lines and 750 minutes of long distance.  I know somebody here at Sprint
who uses it *just* for the phone lines and long distance and they have
*never* surfed on it!  They use a 28.8 or 56K MODEM on one of those
lines!  However, they have reasons I can understand....)

-----Original Message-----
From: thammitt [mailto:thammitt at kc.rr.com]
Sent: Thursday, April 20, 2000 11:20 AM
To: kclug
Cc: thammitt
Subject: kclug - Community webserver?

Hello,

I just had a strange thought.  There are some people here in town who
can actually get business-class SDSL connections to their homes.  There
are other people like me who would like to but aren't in an approved
area of town.  Would it be possible to get together and drop off a box
at someone's residence that we could all use?  I'm already paying $30/mo
for various web hosting services.  That's a good chunk of what the
service would cost.  I've also got some usable hardware for a server.

The only problem I could see is getting the other server parts and
reimbursing the homeowner for power.  Does anyone else think that this
is a good idea?

I'd love to have a box I could actually configuremyself.  Right now my
web host doesn't have a decent database, etc. so I'm having to work
three times as hard hacking together a search engine.  If I just had a
box I could install software on, I'd skip all of that.

Love to hear what you all think,

Tony