Techie Question

[lostcarpark]

For people who know stuff about routing and that sort of thing, I could use your help... everyone else might want to ignore this!

Okay, I'll be getting DSL soon (hopefully), and I'm thinking why should I pay for web-hosting when I've got a permanent connection to the internet, with a fixed IP address, and a computer that is always switched on?

The DSL gives me 512K down and 256K up. I'm guessing that most of my usage will be on the down channel, and most of the web usage will be on the up channel, so they shouldn't interfere with each other too much.

So I'm wondering... what are the issues I'm likely to face if I do this? Will I have problems with availability? Is it likely to all go horribly wrong? Is the telco likely to screw things up on me?

I'm also wondering what I should do on the server side. I have a slightly elderly PC running Red Hat at the moment, but I have a somewhat less elderly machine available, and have no problem spending some money to upgrade where necessary. I'm not crazy about some of the quirks of Red Hat, but not quite sure which distro to move to. I have a reasonable knowledge of what's going on under the Linux bonnet, but I'm a little vague on some of the specifics.

Now if I want to keep this thing up and running 99% of the time, it would be nice to use the extra box as a stand-by server. Even better if the two could cluster and share the load, but have either take over if anything goes wrong. However a stand-by server that the main one automatically backs up to would be fine.

If you think there's a book or two I should have, please make your recomendations. I usually get the information I need off the web, but if I'm running a live web server, I don't want to have the thing dead for a day because I skimped the price of a book.

There is also the issue of DNS serving, but I think I have a plan for that one.

Thanks for any help. I know some of you can do this sort of thing in your sleep. Oh, and don't be afraid to tell me if this is a very bad idea, and I should just stick to paid hosting.


Thanks guys (n'gals)!

Comments

[dougs.livejournal.com]

DSL is not a guaranteed service -- it'll dip occasionally, for example, you might get frequent outages for as long as the line takes to go down and up again. If that's acceptable, then fine.
With any always-on connection, you want to seriously consider installing a firewall.
This will additionally allow you to have one or more servers and one or more workstations on the "inside" of the firewall and sharing the same IP address.
You want to check carefully with your provider that they won't get stroppy when you put a server on your side of the connection.
And you should keep your DNS somewhere which is connected more reliably than a DSL circuit can offer.
Finally, a redhat web server isn't going to be terribly hungry and ought to run fine on a PC that's a few years old.
The diddy Vigor that I linked to won't handle the failover for you.

[hddod.livejournal.com]

Wot Doug said.

Most DSL providers won't let you run services or will at the very least only allow you to run them if you're on their Business plan. I'm pretty sure that NTL are nice and let you do that kind of thing, Blueyonder allow you to run 'servers' but each one must accept 5 *passworded* connections maximum, BT need you to be on the Business plan -- iirc, anyway.

Firewall definitely -- but remember that a firewall's only as good as you are at admining it.

When was the RedHat install last updated? Was it ever tied down with the intention of being connected directly to the Internet? Older RedHat installs were notoriously full of security holes. It can take literally minutes from first connecting a server to the Internet to it being discovered and getting hacked!

[lostcarpark.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the info, Doug.

DSL is not a guaranteed service -- it'll dip occasionally, for example, you might get frequent outages for as long as the line takes to go down and up again. If that's acceptable, then fine.

Well, I'm not hosting anything particularly mission critical, but if people can't get into it, they're likely to stop coming back. How frequent and how long are the outages likely to be, or is that up to the provider?

With any always-on connection, you want to seriously consider installing a firewall.

Definately. I've had a look at the Vigor, which is cool, but if I can get something similar from a local provider, it would make life easier. The supplier I usually use will sell me a DLink DSL-604G+, which has DSL Modem, Firewall, Switch and Wireless base station for €306 (about £200). Would appreciate any comments on it, or if there are any major advantages to the Vigor.

Finally, a redhat web server isn't going to be terribly hungry and ought to run fine on a PC that's a few years old.

Yeah, I assumed that. Do you have a preference for Linux distro?

The diddy Vigor that I linked to won't handle the failover for you.

No, and neither would the DLink. But having a standby server that I can log into remotely and reconfigure manually should be achievable.

[lostcarpark.livejournal.com]

Most DSL providers won't let you run services or will at the very least only allow you to run them if you're on their Business plan.

I'm actually looking at the "business" plan, because the "home" plan has a rather comical 4GB monthly download cap.

When was the RedHat install last updated? Was it ever tied down with the intention of being connected directly to the Internet?

No, no and no. It's an ancient setup I was just using for playing around. I would definately wipe it and start again, which makes it a good time to decide if RedHat is the distro I want to stick with. I would probably configure one box as a dedicated web server, with minimal other stuff like GUIs to keep it lean and mean, and minimise possible security holes.

The second box would be my "playing around box", but would be set up in such a way that it could be swapped in as the web server in an emergency.

Appreciate any thoughts on this would be appreciated.

[dougs.livejournal.com]

I've seen BT ADSL connections that are rock solid for days at a time, and others nearby which yoyo constantly -- a couple of half-second dips every couple of hours. Same provider, same carrier, same area. Makes no sense to me -- and rioting with BT seems not to accomplish anything.

I can't believe there are huge differences between the Vigor and the Dlink -- but I don't have any history with Dlink. Read around, see if anyone else has a view.

Distro? My view is that the distro with which you are familiar has to be a good bet -- but read what Poppy said about security, not RedHat's best feature. The apt-get mechanism which comes with Debian and similar distros makes it easy to keep your server up to date with the latest patches.

[lostcarpark.livejournal.com]

Well over here we have EsatBT, who are owned by BT, but not necessarily the same or Eircom, who put caps on their lower-end business plans as well as the home plan, which puts them out of the picture. What kind of impact will a half-second dip actually have on a web-server? If someone is downloading a page during that time will it fail altogether or refetch to missing packets when the connection reappears? Isn't IP designed to cope with that?

Debian is one I've heard good things about, alright. Was going to badger lproven about it, as he seems to have tried them all!

[dougs.livejournal.com]

This is exactly what higher-layer protocols like TCP are designed to cope with.
You'll get disconcerting pauses but nothing else.
UDP doesn't cope so well, and IP not at all.
having a static IP means that application-layer stuff works better.
And yes, Liam is a good source of many kinds of knowledge.

[hddod.livejournal.com]

I'll give another thumbs-up to Debian -- it's what I use at home if I'm not using Solaris...

[lostcarpark.livejournal.com]

Okay, consistency of recommendations is encouraging.

I don't think Solaris will work on my hardware.

I was intending to set up:

Basic shell (no GUI)
MySQL database server
Apache web server
PHP hypertext processor

Anything obvious I'm missing?

Thanks.

[hddod.livejournal.com]

sshd? -- then you can disable ftpd/telnetd.

You'll basically need to disable everything that comes with the base install -- rpc, the lot...

[lostcarpark.livejournal.com]

Yes, yes, I forgot about that one. I'll work out my configuration in more detail and email you Linux gurus!