Server at Home...???

[AYU]

I need large space for my website, because I am planning to add streaming audio-video media. So I thought to by a server and place my whole site into the server.

Can any body offer me good solution? What shoud I do to redirect users accessing my site, which is in Powweb now, to the site placed in the server at my house?

Or is it better to buy more space from Powweb???

[fcsnc]

If you offer very much streaming media from your Powweb site and it is popular (i.e. lots of people access it), you will use too much bandwidth and run into your 12GB / month bandwidth limit with Powweb.

I have seen some sites which do the following kind of thing as a cheap alternative:

(1) Get a good high-speed "always-on" connection at home with DSL or Cable. Make sure your ISP does *not* prohibit running a server. Some ISP's may let you run a server for a price, but still cheaper than, say, a T1 or bonded ISDN connection.

(2) Bring up the server on your home connection and get a real IP address, and figure out how to manage things if / when it changes.

(3) Let's say for the sake of argument that your IP address is 10.2.15.15 (it won't be).

(4) On your Powweb site, you could reference a link on a web page that points to--e.g.-- a .ram file whose contents is http://10.2.15.15/newsound/mysound.rm

Boom! now you incur the bandwidth.

Again, this sort of thing can be complicated, but people do this kind of thing. Even with dial-up connections. You can get shareware to stream live video, and this is the way that a lot of "live webcam" sites operate.

Just as an example, I sometimes visit a "kitty cam" website for cat enthusiasts. There is a "live cam" area where you can watch all 5 cats lie around and play, nap, or eat. It's on a dialup connection and is fairly slow, and only available for an hour or two a day. But, it's fun.

I'll stop rambling now.

[Starr]

FYI, you will need to install and run some sort of web server software to make this work.

You can run apache from either Win32 or UNIX/Linux systems, http://apache.org

[AYU]

Tom and Starr, thanks for the replies.

I already have DSL connection (8Mbps). Tom you told "get a real IP address". How could I get it? and... F.e. if my site address is www.ayu.com what should I do in order to send users accessing my site to automatically redirect them to my IP (lets say to some index.html that is saved within my PC or Server)???

Thank you in advance

[fcsnc]

By "get a real IP address," all I meant was that the hyperlink to a URL referencing your IP address would only exist if your IP address is on the Internet at the exact same moment when someone clicks on it.

Your ISP may provide a fixed IP address to you. In that case, you can just configure your server to have that fixed IP address. However, a lot of ISP's will no longer provide you with a fixed IP address for any price. In that case you get a "dynamically assigned" IP address. Even though theoretically you are "always on" the Internet with your DSL connection, there is no guarantee that your IP address will stay the same. In that case, you must configure your server to obtain a dynamic IP address and keep renewing it via DHCP or whatever assignment protocol your ISP specifies. Then, when your IP changes, you will have to go and change all your links somehow. You might want to write a script to do that.

[esccanada]

Here's another way.

Set up a CNAME to point to a Dynamic DNS account (I use DynDNS.org (http://www.dyndns.org)) and then make sure your running an appropriate client on your system to update DynDNS with your Dynamic IP.

i.e.:

You own www.acme.inc

Get a DynDNS account such as acme.dyndns.org

Install and configure a DynDNS client on your home system.

Enter your Powweb control panel and configure a CNAME such as media.acme.inc to point to acme.dyndns.org (Please follow the appropriate naming convention and wait the appropriate amount of time for it to be enabled).

Then any links on your web site that you wish to point back to your home machine can be referenced using media.acme.inc as the FQDN.

Hope that helps and isn't too confusing. I use this setup for FTP with the exception of the DynDNS client (since my NetGear router handles this internally).

[fcsnc]

esccanada,

Great info! Thanks for your post. Very well explained!

[AYU]

Thank you guys... It is hell of helpful informatiom.