Own Web Host allowed?

GoingLinux

Hi,

I hav never had broadband, but I would like to tentatively roll out a business idea on the web.

So what I want to do is set up my own Linux Web Host and email server at home, instead of using eircoms hosting service or any other hosting service. Then i can start messing with M2M projects, java sockets etc from there.

Can I publish to the web in this way (web host on my side of the plug) on a basic cheap eircom 1mb home connection, assuming i can overcome the fact that they wont give static ip addresses anymore (there is a way around this i think), or what is the cheapest eircom or non-eircom package i need? I don't mind slowish uplink speeds of a cheap connection, I will code with that in mind. Also, there are download limits on some packages, but are there upload limits (my host is serving uploads) the isp blurb is normally silent on that point.

Please help! Anyone tried this and been sent to jail by eircom?

corkie

Not really a viable option in Ireland due to quality of broadband packages here.
You could use your own box to develop on but your better off then mirroring your setup online.

Advise going down the VM route here.

Getting on-line hosting is relatively cheaper than home-based/hosting in Ireland. Or talk to your local internet cafe, about putting your server in there?

Regards,
J.

GoingLinux

corkie wrote: »

Not really a viable option in Ireland due to quality of broadband packages here.
You could use your own box to develop on but your better off then mirroring your setup online.

Advise going down the VM route here.

Getting on-line hosting is relatively cheaper than home-based/hosting in Ireland. Or talk to your local internet cafe, about putting your server in there?

Regards,
J.

VM = Virtual Machine?

Can it be done though, 128 k upload speed would do. Anyone actually suceeded in doing it?

watty

No, not for years.

It's pointless and a security horror.

HAve your own test server and upload changes to hosting service (< 30 Euro a year gets you MySQL, JAVA, CGI, Perl, pear, email server, Apache etc).

Many packages forbid self hosting apart from it's stupid.

Don't even consider an Internet cafe. Go to a Professional Hosting company such as Blackknight, Digiweb or hosting365.

You don't even need a VM for home testing. We have a Win2K RAID server (old Celeron ) with IIS & MSSQL for WSUS (Automatic updates). We have Apache & MySQL and SAME apps as running on our hosted linux servers. Simply add 2nd IP address to the network card and bind the MS servers to one and the "windows versions of Linux" servers bound to other. We tried the VM route, but far more CPU and memory intensive. I have 2 domains on one hosted service in USA and 4 domains on one hosted service in Dublin. All less than 100 Eur a year. Not just web pages like basic eircom webspace.

JHMEG

Yes, but not in a big way. Keep an eye on your server. It is do-able. I did it for years without any problem.

Cabaal

You'll find that hosting a ftp, www, irc etc server on your connection is actually against your ISP's T&C's, in addition to this it'll be pretty slow when compared to a proper hosting provider.

Personally your much better off with the likes of blackknight.ie

Hagar

Don't you need to have a fixed IP address to host a site?
Maybe I'm wrong but wouldn't you get constantly changing IP addresses otherwise from your ISP ?

Dravokivich

Hagar wrote: »

Don't you need to have a fixed IP address to host a site?
Maybe I'm wrong but wouldn't you get constantly changing IP addresses otherwise from your ISP ?

there's solutions out there that can handle the re-config of your IP Address... such as no-ip.org.

- Drav!

watty

Or dyndyn and a client on your network that detects change and updates. But I'd not bother even though technically all the problems can be solved. Remember if 4 people connect at once their download speed is on average 1/4 of your UPLOAD speed, for them it would be like dialup to ISDN.

Security issues are much harder than the sorting of dynamic DNS, firewall port forwarding (80 typically and optionally 443). Only connect via a router with NAT/Firewall. At least then only the HTTP port is exposed.

GoingLinux

JHMEG wrote: »

Yes, but not in a big way. Keep an eye on your server. It is do-able. I did it for years without any problem.

What kind of connection did you have? Did you have static IP?

GoingLinux

I was also considering a three tier solution hosting the web part but with an open source database at home on a linux server.

How does it work when hosting...you log in like a LAN network? Do you have to use their supplied software and OS or can you run what you like?

also anyone got an experiecne with hosting a sales web business abroach, say in the caymen islands, as a means of avoiding headaches like sales tax etc?

watty

Then your EU customers pay customs duty and how do you spend the money?

There are many levels of hosting. With the cheapest shared hosting it "looks as if" you have a preconfigured Linux with sendmail/exim, Apache/CGI/Perl and MySQL that you can administer using a web interface and FTP web applications, data etc to.

At the most flexible level you "co-locate" where you supply a server yourself and pay for space, electricity and fibre bandwidth. Or one or more racks in a cage with your own lock.

All the possibilities in-between exist. Including Windows. Talk to the three companies I mentioned earlier and they will help you, then you can choose the most suitable for your needs.

Unless all your sales are outside EU and/or you live outside EU and/or you are a huge corporation don't even think about "offshoring".

If I sell stuff to outside EU I don't have to charge VAT. If I sell stuff to EU I do have to charge VAT. Doesn't matter where the website is hosted. It's where my business is based that counts. If you actually live in Ireland (or Generally in the EU), you'd find it very awkward to trade as if you are outside of EU. Where is your product going to ship from and how will you get paid and how do you pay your bills?

If you are running a business, don't at all consider self hosting. Self hosting is only for sharing to a friend and experimenting. Not for public access.

vibe666

i set up a site on a server at home that I used with my BT broadband and then with my UPC broadband when I moved. nothing fancy, just using apache in linux with a little wordpress blog on it to see how it was done. i used a dyndns sub-domain and set up a dyndns updater on my router to keep feeding it my current IP address so i didn't need to worry about that and just made sure i kept everything up to date and it was fine.

i was going to set up a mail server too, but i just never got round to it.

but, now the BUT part.

i have a mate who did the same thing long before i ever even thought of it (he actually helped me a lot to set it up in the first place) and unfortunately something went a bit wrong and he was left with a vulnerability and ended up with his wordpress install getting hacked and having someone set up a fake paypal site to harvest peoples credit card info. unfortunately paypal found out before he did and it caused him an awful lot of grief that i won't go into here. lets just say that my site is down now too and i doubt i'll be setting up a new one any time soon.

you'd be amazed at the sorts of bad things that can happen to you if you try and set something like this up and then it goes wrong.

so don't do it ! (in case you didn't get the hint!)

GoingLinux

watty wrote: »

Then your EU customers pay customs duty and how do you spend the money?

There are many levels of hosting. With the cheapest shared hosting it "looks as if" you have a preconfigured Linux with sendmail/exim, Apache/CGI/Perl and MySQL that you can administer using a web interface and FTP web applications, data etc to.

At the most flexible level you "co-locate" where you supply a server yourself and pay for space, electricity and fibre bandwidth. Or one or more racks in a cage with your own lock.

All the possibilities in-between exist. Including Windows. Talk to the three companies I mentioned earlier and they will help you, then you can choose the most suitable for your needs.

Unless all your sales are outside EU and/or you live outside EU and/or you are a huge corporation don't even think about "offshoring".

If I sell stuff to outside EU I don't have to charge VAT. If I sell stuff to EU I do have to charge VAT. Doesn't matter where the website is hosted. It's where my business is based that counts. If you actually live in Ireland (or Generally in the EU), you'd find it very awkward to trade as if you are outside of EU. Where is your product going to ship from and how will you get paid and how do you pay your bills?

If you are running a business, don't at all consider self hosting. Self hosting is only for sharing to a friend and experimenting. Not for public access.

Hi,I want to manufacture a product and sell it to Germans and outside of the EU as well. I live in Ireland, but what I was planning to do was set up a shelf company in the caymen islands. So the legal personality that is selling is located outside the EU in a tax haven, and selling through a website also hosted there. The legal personalities doing the selling are not in Ireland, so should not be liable for Irish VAT, and are outside the scope of the EU for tax collection (in that items are merely posted to the customer, who spent there money outside the EU electronically), so is there a problem with that approach? I am new to biz so sorry if that is a stupid question, please humor me!

GoingLinux

vibe666 wrote: »

i set up a site on a server at home that I used with my BT broadband and then with my UPC broadband when I moved. nothing fancy, just using apache in linux with a little wordpress blog on it to see how it was done. i used a dyndns sub-domain and set up a dyndns updater on my router to keep feeding it my current IP address so i didn't need to worry about that and just made sure i kept everything up to date and it was fine.

i was going to set up a mail server too, but i just never got round to it.

but, now the BUT part.

i have a mate who did the same thing long before i ever even thought of it (he actually helped me a lot to set it up in the first place) and unfortunately something went a bit wrong and he was left with a vulnerability and ended up with his wordpress install getting hacked and having someone set up a fake paypal site to harvest peoples credit card info. unfortunately paypal found out before he did and it caused him an awful lot of grief that i won't go into here. lets just say that my site is down now too and i doubt i'll be setting up a new one any time soon.

you'd be amazed at the sorts of bad things that can happen to you if you try and set something like this up and then it goes wrong.

so don't do it ! (in case you didn't get the hint!)

Hi,There are books such as Linux Security Cookbook and the two inch thick "Hacking Exposed" which detail all the weaknesses in Linux. I was going to read these and deploy. A straight deployment without these tips would be asking for trouble. Can I ask you: Was your service performance to site visitors really slow?AndWhat grief did paypal cause your friend exactly? Mounting an interface to paypal on a machine should be no proof of liability, the liability should arise from whatever i.d. documents are submitted when setting up the account to receive the money…a hacked i.p is not a theft of his identity. So this is why I am curious.

croo

GoingLinux wrote: »

Hi,I want to manufacture a product and sell it to Germans and outside of the EU as well. I live in Ireland, but what I was planning to do was set up a shelf company in the caymen islands. So the legal personality that is selling is located outside the EU in a tax haven, and selling through a website also hosted there. The legal personalities doing the selling are not in Ireland, so should not be liable for Irish VAT, and are outside the scope of the EU for tax collection (in that items are merely posted to the customer, who spent there money outside the EU electronically), so is there a problem with that approach? I am new to biz so sorry if that is a stupid question, please humor me!

I'm a techie rather than tax specialist but I know from projects I worked on it will depend to an extent on what you sell. The 2003 E-Commerce Directive, for example, requires companies trading in "electronic" services or product who exist outside of the EU to register for an EU-wide VAT number to trade with customers within the EU. http://www.euroconsulta.com/ecommerce/european.vat.trading.htm

If you manufacturing that will hardly apply but that directive was a surprise to me and there may be other such rules... if the product is actually being manufactured and shipped from within Ireland then I suspect you will be liable somewhere in the EU ... checkout the rules governing VAT & "Triangulation"

Needless to say, it is a must to get real tax advise from a specialist on subjects like this!

watty

GoingLinux wrote: »

Hi,There are books such as Linux Security Cookbook and the two inch thick "Hacking Exposed" which detail all the weaknesses in Linux. I was going to read these and deploy. A straight deployment without these tips would be asking for trouble.

A straight deployment using them is asking for trouble too.

Books are quickly out of date and often are poor to start with. YOu need a lot of IT backgound and experience even to understand the implications.

GoingLinux wrote: »

Can I ask you: Was your service performance to site visitors really slow?

If you host on DSL, and have two or three users, their experience could be close to dialup. Basic DSL packages have very slow upload speed (= their download to access pages)

GoingLinux wrote: »

AndWhat grief did paypal cause your friend exactly? Mounting an interface to paypal on a machine should be no proof of liability, the liability should arise from whatever i.d. documents are submitted when setting up the account to receive the money…a hacked i.p is not a theft of his identity. So this is why I am curious.

This is the wrong place.

You seriously need face to face technical, legal and financial expert advice. Your approach to this is very naive, the fact that you ask these questions here means you really need to approach professional companies (Solicitor & Accountancy firms versed in business area you are launching and the three hosting companies I mentioned.). Unless this is all a pin money toy/hobby don't consider doing this on your own and certainly not on advice received on this site (excellent as it is).