# Be Your Own ISP



## g4m3rof1337

http://www.cbd-hq.com/articles/2000/001214ab_beyourownisp.asp

Does that seem legit?

Is this even possible?


Thanks.


----------



## Tayl

Yes that's more than possible. I have ran various things for people on my internal home servers I have configured however the only barrier you will hit with more than, say, 5 users is bandwidth. Unless you purchase some sort of business line you will run into huge bottlenecks with websites when you host them for multiple customers as if they host large files, images, pages etc and they all get used at the same time, you are going to see your bandwidth get very full on use and with a home Internet connection you are going to notice very slow speeds in comparison to a proper webhost provider. Slow speeds = customers leaving.

Also, what you have to bare in mind is that when you dedicate a server / servers to providing such a service, you limit yourself to how much you can use your own home Internet. Downloading is out the window once you start a business like this ran from your own home as if you clog up your own Internet connection with downloads, you basically give no bandwidth at all to the websites so when people visit them, they take AGES to load due to it. So to stop this from happening, you need to use your Internet as little as possible. 

Very silly idea in my opinion. Running such a thing from your own home. It would be smarter just to purchase your own dedi server in a proper data centre and rent out spaces of it to people wanting to host a website. At least you would have absolutely NO issues what so ever in that sense. Also what you have to bare in mind is that you need to be around pretty much 24/7 to make sure it's constantly running. And if any faults happen, that you can sort them within an hour or two MAX. Then you have to think of power consumption at home as leaving that many servers on will use up a fair amount of power.

In short, yes it will work, but it's a very silly approach to go about becoming a webhost when doing it properly doesn't cost much more and works out better and cheaper in the long run.

Breaks.


----------



## g4m3rof1337

I want to do it cause it sounds fun and I would like the experience and stuff.


Is that guide good?



Thanks


----------



## g4m3rof1337

Would it be my internet. Or just, DSL customized a little.


----------



## patrickv

i'd like to try that out but then again my internet connection is crappy


----------



## g4m3rof1337

What do I have to do?

I got a decent DSL internet connection.



Thanks


----------



## INTELCRAZY

Imagine the profit for hosting ppl's websites

What OS would I use to configure this? And translate what that article just said in English.



Thanks


----------



## g4m3rof1337

Wait.
Is it 'Impossible' to be my own ISP, like, how I have DSL. Could I be that?


And, I not interested in hosting websites, I will though, in a few months. For a school project. Lol.



Thanks.



I just want to host my own internet for myself and maybe a few other people, but that would be on a LAN connection.


----------



## INTELCRAZY

I just want to host a couple of websites, a file server and an email server, is that hard? My Verizon upload speed is 736Kb/s. Can someone help me out here?


----------



## g4m3rof1337

Oh, you asked a question. Lol.

Sorry.


Can I actually take the place of my current ISP?

With a home server? 


Thanks


----------



## The Qban

if anyone is going to host email servers, or file servers, or websites, make sure you have alot of security in place.  way to often have i seen this, where people get hacked because they dont take care of any of this.  if you are going to do some hosting, invest in some better equipment then what comes standard fro your home pc.  Routers, Firewalls, IDS, anti-virus, hardware firewalls, etc...


----------



## Geoff

g4m3rof1337 said:


> Oh, you asked a question. Lol.
> 
> Sorry.
> 
> 
> Can I actually take the place of my current ISP?
> 
> With a home server?
> 
> 
> Thanks


No because you need your current ISP to provide you with internet.  Your DSL provider is basically doing the same thing you want to do, but on a larger scale.  They purchase internet lines (probably some form of an OC line), and distribute it to everyone else.


----------



## tlarkin

This won't work for many reason

1)  your home connection sucks and once you share it to like 3 clients your bandwidth would be equal to dial up or worse

2)  Your ISP probably won't allow it, and could probably sue you

3)  You need a decent back bone, and setting up an email server is usually also not allowed by your local ISP.  I have had my email servers shut down in the past on road runner, they didn't like me running it, and let me know that they would shut off my service if I didn't take it down.

4)  Most ISPs these days block certain ports anyways to their end users, so you have to do a lot of port forwarding

5)  Your customer's wouldn't stay at all, your service would suck.  

You would have to rent some fiber from someone and set up a decent back bone and then have some people who really knew what they were doing to set up your back bone, your routers and servers and then pay them well.


----------



## g4m3rof1337

I would not give out connections to dedicated people...

It would be for my own personal use and experience.


----------



## tlarkin

Your ISP probably does not allow mail servers to be running and also they block all kinds of ports for various reasons.

Sure its nice to learn the stuff but you will run into lots of problems.


----------



## The Qban

you can lease a T1 line, ha ha, thatll be some $$$$ though!!!


----------



## dragon2309

T1 wouldnt get you THAT far either, thats onle 1Mb up and 1Mb down... its only about 3-6 times faster thatn a standard DSL line in terms of upload speed... So even though you will pay an obscene amount for it, it really wont help all that much on anything even remotely large scale


----------



## INTELCRAZY

dragon2309 said:


> T1 wouldnt get you THAT far either, thats onle 1Mb up and 1Mb down... its only about 3-6 times faster thatn a standard DSL line in terms of upload speed... So even though you will pay an obscene amount for it, it really wont help all that much on anything even remotely large scale



No kidding...T1 is targeted for reliability


----------



## The_Beast

sounds like it would be slow if you get too many people


----------



## The Qban

Get something thats dedicated and reliable.  look at fiber lines.  Maybe OC12.  but your looking at money.  once you get to OC12 and up, your looking at what companies use for backbone lines, ISP backbones, etc.  $$$, not really worth it.


----------



## tlarkin

I once read that before google owned its own backbone, their bandwidth costs would be near $10,000 per a day (on a peak day)....just think of that and then thin of how much it costs to lease high end fiber.

Google now owns its own fiber now I think.


----------



## raoul_1101

someone can give me some internet, att is bugging me.


----------



## Cleric7x9

you dont need an OC12 line to run a few webservers lol. if verizon FIOS is available in your area you can get that for not much more money than a cable connection, and that provides around 400kb/sec upload bandwidth which is MORE than enough to hose a couple websites, email servers, or even an FTP server.

not to mention with FIOS you get other things that are necessary for web hosting including a static IP address. ppl dotn realize but cable and i believe DSL as well have dynamic IP addresses which makes webhosting a nightmare.


if you are serious about this, you need a static IP address, a host machine (or more than one networked together), and some decent security measures. after that, its all just software!


----------



## g4m3rof1337

Cleric7x9 said:


> if you are serious about this, you need a static IP address, a host machine (or more than one networked together), and some decent security measures. after that, its all just software!




Is that for a web server or an actual ISP thing? 


Thanks


----------



## Cleric7x9

ok, there is a big miscommunication about what an ISP is. An ISP, or Internet Service Provider is a company that provides a connection from your house to the outside world. That is to say that they run wires to your house so that you can have a connection, and they manage any servers, routers, switches, etc that are needed for you to connect to the internet.

that being said, unless you want to buy millions of miles of wire and connect it up to everyone elses house, or pay huge amounts of money to lease the cables that are already in place, you cannot start your own ISP.

the reason that the guy who wrote that article titles it "how to be your own ISP" is because the vast majority of ISPs (cable, DSL, dialup, etc) offer certain services like email. what he means is you can make your own email address. so, for example, if you have verizon DSL, your email address is probably something like yourname@verizon.com. if you set up your own email service (email is a type of webservice), then instead of your emails being hosted (stored, sent, recieved) on verizon's servers, they are stored on your servers. that way your email address can be yourname@yourIPaddress. if you purchase a domain name, then you can link that domain name to your IP address. so if you buy the domain name whitelights.com or whatever is available yourname@yourIPaddress becomes yourname@whitelights.com so people dont need to remember your IP address.

long story short, you can make your own webservices from home (pretty much anything including websites, email, FTP, or game servers) using the info from that article, but you cannot actually make your own ISP. poor wording on the author's choice


----------



## g4m3rof1337

When he said 'Be your own ISP' I thought of being an actual ISP.

But if I made my own server, could I get free domain support? 


Thanks


----------



## Cleric7x9

no, i dont know anywhere that will give you a free domain name. but you can usually buy them for $10 and then renew them for $10 every year. its not really expensive unless someone already owns it, then they can charge whatever they want for it. its called Domain name squatting and ppl make a living doing it. they buy up anything they can then sell it. like the guy who bought www.goggle.com got a ton of money because it was so close to www.google.com and it got a lot of hits


----------



## Geoff

Cleric7x9 said:


> not to mention with FIOS you get other things that are necessary for web hosting including a static IP address. ppl dotn realize but cable and i believe DSL as well have dynamic IP addresses which makes webhosting a nightmare.


Depends who you have, because my DSL provider uses static IP's for it's clients.


----------



## Cleric7x9

yeah i wasnt sure about DSL


----------



## tlarkin

Cleric7x9 said:


> you dont need an OC12 line to run a few webservers lol. if verizon FIOS is available in your area you can get that for not much more money than a cable connection, and that provides around 400kb/sec upload bandwidth which is MORE than enough to hose a couple websites, email servers, or even an FTP server.
> 
> not to mention with FIOS you get other things that are necessary for web hosting including a static IP address. ppl dotn realize but cable and i believe DSL as well have dynamic IP addresses which makes webhosting a nightmare.
> 
> 
> if you are serious about this, you need a static IP address, a host machine (or more than one networked together), and some decent security measures. after that, its all just software!



Actually verizon blocks standard ports, ie port 80 so you will have to do some tweaking, plus we are talking about being an ISP not hosting web pages.



> ok, there is a big miscommunication about what an ISP is. An ISP, or Internet Service Provider is a company that provides a connection from your house to the outside world. That is to say that they run wires to your house so that you can have a connection, and they manage any servers, routers, switches, etc that are needed for you to connect to the internet.



This is very true, but hardly every ISP actually owns their own fiber, they lease it from giant telecom companies, ie the phone companies.


Static and Dynamic IPs are really no big deal what so ever.  There are dynamic dns softwares and services you can run to keep track of your IP when it changes, and you can also use these same services to link it to your registered domain if need be.


----------



## Cleric7x9

i mentioned that most companies lease elsewhere in the post btw. and you are right, dynamic IPs arent a big deal if you have a domain name. but i know that when i started getting into webhosting with small FTP servers and things i never bougth a domain name, and instead gave ppl the IP address of the machine and i have a cable connection that changes IPs every other week or so. it can be a pain in the ass. having a static IP makes life a lot easier. and what do you mean by verizon blocking port 80? if port 80 was blocked then you wouldnt be able to facilitate any http tcp/ip connections on commodity internet...im not really sure what you mean by blocking port 80


----------



## tlarkin

Cleric7x9 said:


> i mentioned that most companies lease elsewhere in the post btw. and you are right, dynamic IPs arent a big deal if you have a domain name. but i know that when i started getting into webhosting with small FTP servers and things i never bougth a domain name, and instead gave ppl the IP address of the machine and i have a cable connection that changes IPs every other week or so. it can be a pain in the ass. having a static IP makes life a lot easier. and what do you mean by verizon blocking port 80? if port 80 was blocked then you wouldnt be able to facilitate any http tcp/ip connections on commodity internet...im not really sure what you mean by blocking port 80



When you set up and install a web server (be it IIS or Apache, or a flavor of apache like tomcat) you set the port for HTTP requests when they hit your IP/Domain.  By default it is port 80, however your ISP has most likely blocked all incoming requests for port 80, thus you would have to change your webpage's port to 8080 or another alternative.  This does not effect your browsing because they never filter out going connections.  This is very common, they also block ports for email servers, and sometimes other services as well.  They don't want you using the consumer level broadband service, they want you to pay for business class or premium if you are going to host things.

Also, having a dynamic IP is not that bad because there are free or nominal fee services like dynamic dns that give you a domain

www.dyndns.org


----------



## Cleric7x9

oh ok, you didnt specify on incoming requests. i wasnt aware that verizon did that. comcast (my cable ISP) definetly does not. when you said blocked port 80 i was wondering how any http requests were made and how anything got done. i guess it seems like a smart strategy for verizon to do that, but it seems kind of unfair. i would tell them that i pay for all ~60,000 ports or however many there are and i want to use them all!


----------



## tlarkin

according to google comcast does block port 80

http://www.otweb.com/blog/index.php?p=401&t=Comcast_blocking_incoming_port_80

http://www.webmaster-talk.com/web-hosting-forum/61644-comcast-blocking-port-80-a.html

Then again, it could be security on their end.  Easy way to find out is set up a simple web server, toss it on DMZ on your router and see if you can access it from the outside world.

Firewalls and network security play into this, but blocking port 80 is a very common thing ISPs do these days.


----------



## Cleric7x9

i have an FTP running on port 80 (i dont use 21 bc 21 gets spammed a lot) and it works fine from elsewhere


----------



## tlarkin

well comcast is a large company and they probably have admins locally who set up things differently.  I doubt it is uncommon that comcast in the south and comcast in the north part of the US allow/block different ports.


----------



## Cleric7x9

yeah, i definitely agree with you


----------



## tlarkin

just get a linux box and run nmap to see what ports are open on your wan IP.


----------



## rbxslvr

this is the perfect place to tell my story...

anyway, I've said this twice already, but I'm sure most of you have not seen it yet... I'm only 14 years old.

My mom works for Anthem Life Insurance, but works from home.  Since it is a big company, they sent her home with THEIR router that I have no admin access to (security reasons).  It MUST be the first router off of the modem.  I have to forward HTTP port 80 for Apache (windows version), Halo servers, and other stuff.

I really wanted to host my own ASP.Net 2.0 pages and sites from my home computer.

This makes me very sad.


----------



## tlarkin

you should look into other ways over asp.net.  Most web developers I know are going away from asp.net and all moving away from cold fusion and crap like that.

PHP and MySQL are huge on the internet now.  Toss that in with some of the fancy stuff, like flash, java, and css, etc and you have yourself a nice little web site.  Though flash and java may not be around for long I know a lot of devs who are sick and tired of the crap they have to go through.  

I personally hate all microsoft web based things, especially active X


----------



## rbxslvr

tlarkin said:


> you should look into other ways over asp.net.  Most web developers I know are going away from asp.net and all moving away from cold fusion and crap like that.
> 
> PHP and MySQL are huge on the internet now.  Toss that in with some of the fancy stuff, like flash, java, and css, etc and you have yourself a nice little web site.  Though flash and java may not be around for long I know a lot of devs who are sick and tired of the crap they have to go through.
> 
> I personally hate all microsoft web based things, especially active X


Well, I find ASP and PHP very similar in capabilities, but ASP seems to have a little more "freedom", I use SQL Server Express databases.

Perhaps ASP will dominate over PHP someday <shrugs shoulders>.  I just prefer ASP


----------



## Cleric7x9

rbxslvr said:


> Well, I find ASP and PHP very similar in capabilities, but ASP seems to have a little more "freedom", I use SQL Server Express databases.
> 
> Perhaps ASP will dominate over PHP someday <shrugs shoulders>.  I just prefer ASP



i have never used ASP, ive always used PHP, what do you like better?


----------



## tlarkin

I hate all MS web based products.  I hate IIS, ASP and I hate active X with a huge passion.  Its so chunky and slow and performs like crap.  PHP and MySQL are streamlined and run like a champ.


----------

