Enough for Home Data Center? Verizon Business DSL 150MBit/35Mbit ...

Verizon Business DSL 150mbit/35mbit @ $209.95/month Block of 5 IPs @ $19.99 I was considering using the stack of old Dell Optiplex desktops I bought as a lot a few years back(ranging from P4-2.4ghz to P4-3.2ghz) as cheap, unmanaged dedicated servers, my only concern would be the electricity bill. Seems very enticing as it would only take a few sales to break even with the cost of the line (7 dedicated servers @ $29.95 per server..) Any thoughts? Originally, I was going to use a business cable line (Optimum Ultra Static which was 100mbit/15mbit) b ut I was told by the company that they could only sell me a maximum of 5 IPs per line ... if I wanted more, I'd have to purchase *another* service line..

Very good, upon further inspection of posts, doesn't seem your posts contribute much anywhere else anyway. Thank you for the motivating comments on not letting anyone stop you from doing anything, keep your Corporate Member WHT badge as your positive light shines through it. Your problem is, you're expecting someone creating a data-center that is based at a residential location to automatically fail, and to be honest, you have to be pretty stupid to just say it will fail without considering somene MAY HAVE the resources to create a GREAT datacenter that MAKES money AT their home. If I came on here with 0 posts but had a $150k 1gbps datacenter in my basement that would blow the socks off many of the webhosting networks here on WHT, you'd have your foot in your mouth. It's about MONEY.. the bandwidth needed is about MONEY.. the redundancy, cooling, is all about MONEY.. even the failover IPs are about MONEY.. so don't you damn sit there and say "Home data center automatic fail.." That's TOOL talk, and WHT should be ashamed to house anyone here like you.. You're the same type of person that sat there when it would have been BLASPHEMY to even consider ANYONE having a connection that was over 1mbit in their RESIDENTIAL HOME.. now look at how fast technology has come. It's okay, some people think outside the box...

Some people still hae servers on 10 Mbps ports *shrugs*

You sir, are an idiot. Why come to WHT asking for advice, then ignoring all of the advice you're given? On that note, if you want to make money, in your case, I can think of a much quicker/easier/better way. You keep boasting about your education, and how expensive it was. I can think of at least one host, fairly well known to WHT old-timers, who got started by suing his university/college for the craptacular education he received, perhaps you should look into it. [/unsubscribing, because I suspect the OP is just a troll at this point]

If you're just hosting some stuff for yourself/friends and its not critical to have guarenteed uptime, redundancy, etc; If you're trying to learn more or something... go for it. However long run i think it'd be cheaper, safer, and overall a better business to just rent a rack from a nearby DC and do everything from there. At some point, you're going to need to bring more power to your home 'dc' room, more cooling, fire proofing and fire protection; Not to mention, what happens when that 35mbit (or 65, whatever) is used up?

You said it all right there! I knew this thread would be interesting.

FiOS puts TV, internet and voice on separate wavelengths from everything I've been told by their techs.

This has been posted so many times over on WHT, I can only suggest that it will immediately fail. Why? Because it's been posted so many times over on WHT, and clearly you haven't read the previous posts on this exact subject (including, but not limited to power calculations that have been gone over a million times with that older hardware).

I'm just thinking, Do you have any datacentre's close to where you live? If so, Why don't you get maybe 2u of space and have a dedicated line put from your house to them. and just peer with someone like Arbinet its £350/month for 100mbit eased line with unlimited traffic in the UK. That is what I have in my server room at work. Setup could be pricey though if the DC is far away though. Or, If Verizon deliver to your home, then just see if they will do you a dedicated line, I'm sure they will have presence at your nearest datacentre. Verizon also offer sip trunking so you could also offer comms services.

Bratny, You seem to be a smart person but what I am seeing is: You have an idea which you posted to get feedback on. A lot of VERY smart people (in this field - perhaps not so smart about others) have given you some advice. The advice started off kind of flip as they have started from a basis of "this is not a good idea and should be obvious to you". This is based on over the years this coming up and every time turning out poorly. You in turn feel the need to defend yourself and I don't think you are listening to all the good advice you are getting. I have done most of what you are referring to and the same issues that you had 10 years ago remain. Bandwith while there is more, there is more demand. You had slower links but also less need for bandwith 10 years ago. Fundementally the problem is that you are about to run hosting which could be a key part of someone's livelyhood on sub par infrastructure. The sub par compenents include: Power - residential has little or no SLA. Also prone to degraded power. Also homes are typically wired with insufficient power coming in to feed a lot of machines. Cost of power is likely higher as the density to residential is less. Need uninterrupted power which means Server -> UPS -> Generator/Feed from power company. Bandwith - Need some kind of failover. Even business class service has outages or degraded service so what do you do when that happens? Cooling - Given the low number of servers are you looking put in there, you should be ok to add sufficient cooling but it does drive up costs and some care should be taken to ensure the air you are ciculating is relatively clean. You know those computers that you have seen over the years that are filled with dust and overheating.. Support - if you are not around/ on vacation will your college geeks walk into your house to support things. Security - I don't know where you live but there is only so much you can do to secure your home and adding valuable equipment makes it a more attractive target. Environmental - Dust, water, dog, cat cousin's kid can all cause you problems. Those have been around for a while will recall the girlfriend that took boyfriend's servers from his home datacenter. You really don't want to leave pizza in the oven or have a grease fire and need to explain that to your customer why you can't get in to reboot his server. Most of all, reputationally, would you buy from someone with servers in their basement? You may have all the right background and setup but will customers think you do? When I did it, I ran my own site only never a customers but I had access to some other DC's for redundancy. Like you, I did it to just understand the entire technology stack end to end. In hindsight I could have learned and got a better education in the industry by using a colo facility. All of this is meant to guide you and I am sure your MBA taught you to listen to experience. You may ultimately chose to ignore it but at least listen to it and go into things as educated as you can.

I never ignored any of the advice given. If you read between the two types of posters, the ones contributing and the ones that are repeating the same thing, you'd see that every idea has came from posts. The options and limitations of bandwidth and speed? From WHT members. The essential hardware, power, cooling, redundancy? From WHT mmebers. The cost of home datacenter vs. facility? From WHT members. The alternatives to dedicated/colocation for a home datacenter? From WHT members. The only advice I haven't taken is the advice of close-minded people who obviously believed a datacenter is impossible to be residentially housed, and my only answer which seems to clarify to you that I am somehow boasting my education and am idiot is "The power, the cooling, the security, redundancny, is a matter of money, and cleverly maintained hardware.." Is there a problem with that? No. I am simply stating that ANYONE who would be looking to start a datacenter would NEED these necessities, and they have already been put into consideration.. geesh, man. You sir, can't read, so before you butt your head into the business of a thread, read through it thouroughly. Are you that blind to even notice that every advice I did take I actually even thanked the poster? Please, my friend, even if you don't want to read the comments I have posted that pertain to people repeating the same negative comments rather than saying, "Well, that's been covered, but what about this.." and contributing with additional information left out, don't bother posting that what an idiot I am when I have spent the entire time saying Thank you, I have now added that to my list of considerations.. You see, the funny thing is, if you actually read the comments, you wouldn't be sitting there poking fun at a degree, and calling someone an idiot. Obviously, when people are frustrated for whatever reason they are, it's easier to read 1 page of a thread and go "This guys an idiot.." than actually READ the progression of a thread. As I already said before to another unsubscriber, I'd continue to this battle of wits, but I can see you are completely unarmed..

Yep, because it's comes with dinamic IP adress which changes like 2-3 times per year. I have haproxy installed with varnish-cache and a domain name on Amazon Route53 with 20/60 seconds TTL. I do have UPS, so uptime is good, less that two hours downtime per year

Now here's a question for those that are so much against hosting from home: What makes it impossible for a server that is colocated or rented to go down? Nothing! Even colocated and rented servers can go down too. When they do, it will take much longer to fix too due to lack of physical access. Even if their techs are fast at restoring service, in the case of a disk failure, you still need to rebuild the OS config. You can just acronis a home server. If the home environment is well managed there is zero reason for there to be more downtime chance then a leased or collocated server. As long as you have good UPS backup, standby generator, and two internet connections, and other redundancy I may be overlooking, you have no more of a chance of going down, then a collocated/rented server. In fact if talking about rented servers, you normally have to pay extra for any kind of redundancy. At home, all this is essentially free. If I had the connection, I would host all my stuff at home in a heartbeat. There is so much more freedom when you have full physical access to everything. You can get a generac standby generator for a couple thousand bucks, a few APC 3000VA UPSes for about 1k each. About 10k (probably less as you don't need to go big right away) will have power redundancy taken care of, so that part is a no brainer. AC? Just use pex tubing and a radiator, pump water outside and back in. Have a split system as well for summer time. Another 5k maybe. Initial costs are a lot, but you save so much in the long run. The only major factor in some places is the connections. Like where I live, the highest end connection you can get is 5mbps/512k so that would not cut it.

I've never seen a GPON ONT that pushes multiple wavelengths. That would be too expensive. I wouldn't be surprised if they're on a different VLAN, but I'd be shocked if they're on a different wavelength and uplink port.

Possible? Yes Wise? No Main thought is that 35mbit isn't a lot and that most people wanting a server will want at least 2 IPs. If you wanted to use this for your own hobby, non serious hosting, sure. But I wouldn't think about selling this as a service.

Well being as you're from NY - at least AC won't be much of a problem just open a window during the Winter lol. Power is a concern. You will most likely need another 110 service line to your facility. Sounds stupid but you can only put so much amps on one circuit before you start blowing fuses. My guess is that $50 will cover 1-2 servers maybe 3? Connection wise, 35Mbit is decent I guess - you could put 2-3 servers on it but it won't go very far without some help from other providers... Don't forget routers, switches, cabling, PDUs, etc that is required. My advice would be to tour a local facility to see how things run there, and even consider racking a few good servers there as a backup plan Best of luck and hope things work out for you!

O almost forgot, you may have problems with licensing for things like control panels. Cpanel used to not allow you to install on ranges it viewed as home IP ranges. To be honest I haven't tried it in some time but little things like this may bite you in the bum.

For sure. I'd also ask if they have business packages that can guarantee you the bandwidth. With residential, you may not always get to use all the allocated bandwidth.

In the US, residential-internet is really really held back technologically by ISPs that hate endusers having any form of choice or access Just saying.

You can't do that at a datacenter, in person or remotely? Don't tell that to my staff, since that's exactly how we handle bare metal recoveries. (We use an Acronis competitor, but it's basically all the same.) A well-engineered network has exactly the kind of remote management that makes those things a non-issue. Hot standby servers with bare disks (awaiting an image) make restoration from 10 miles or 10,000 miles, a total no-brainer. Spend a little time with a knowledgable facilities manager, and pick his brain. There are a lot of metrics you're overlooking. And how do you secure the equipment? Chain a pit bull to your rack? What about natural disasters? A tornado or hurricane will reduce a house to splinters. A well engineered datacenter facility can withstand it, often without even going offline. Your 10 kW Generac will be out of propane in a day or two. After a catastrophic event, your Cable or FIOS connection could be down for days or weeks because "consumer grade" connections are not a priorirty. There is so much to say about this topic, but this feels like I'm feeding trolls and I don't want to be "that person who got sucked into a joke post".

http://www.answers.com/topic/fios#Technical_details I was close; two waves for data (up/down) and a third for TV.

No, this has not been posted many times. The 150mbit/35mbit line just recently came out in December of 2010. And regarding hardware it is very typical for a budget-minded hosting company to use older hardware.. hell I still know companies using single-core Opteron servers for their dedi's. Limited power calculations? A P4-3.2ghz HT with 4GB RAM is well more than capable of playing with the dual core brothers that are built off the same base archetict.. I would have proposed you meant power consumptions if anything. Tell me where the immediate fail is with a 150/35 line and a few 2-3ghz servers.. I'd even sell them like VPS, $10-$15/month

Thank you both for the quality responses. Haha, yes, opening the Window would definitely work for the winter lol Yes, I guess I will have to +add to the cost numerous equipments.. Regarding asking Verizon if they would put a dedicated line to my house and I'd peer with another company, I'll have to look into that. I think my best bet at this point would be as Matt suggests and visit a local datacenter and discuss with them more of what I am going to need and costs.. Thank you all for your help! Maybe I'll get the 150/35 line and start off small.. and if it actually gets to the point where it is no longer sustainable from my home.. either relocate to a datacenter or put some of the capital into getting a better drop at my home!

I guess you are building your idea of a home data center around the premises you can buy cheap bandwidth and you have servers available. However IMO these items are marginal in the costs structure of a data center and should not be different running a home data center. One of the most important cost, more than electricity I could say, is the cost to acquire a new customer. There are many data centers offering underpowered dedicated servers for prices as low as $20. To get customers you will have to burn serious money and you will not want to lose these customers (read high investment) after a few outages due a poor infrastructure. It seems to make a lot more sense to sell your old servers (I know, I know, btw I love the old PowerEdges too) and buy inexpensive Atoms D525 as these new Barbie's servers use <0,25A and need a lot less cooling, and then colo a lot of them at a rack from a reputable data center -- There are providers putting 80 Atoms on a rack! Don't give up your dream, but implement it professional way.

I'd also like to say one more thing, I think it's incredibly funny how those that are as opposed with the same arguments that have already been discussed and dealt with are majorly webmasters/server administrators, as opposed to to those contributing with actual information, personal experiences, and an open-mind, seem to be those with "lesser" credentials here. I thanked everyone for contributing, whether it was positive or negative, but to repeat the same information, that's just poor netiquette. 50% of the thread is a repeat and I find it even more obnoxious that those that repeat seem to just automatically jump out of the box and say, "You're an idiot.. dream on.. /sarcasm", and such. Are you really that self-conscious of your business and possibly losing customers to a guy with a basement data center that you don't want someone else to succeed? Did I really need to just come on the board and say "Money is not an option" so then you could just say "Okay then.. here's how you do it.." The nerve of some people.. thank you everyone who added informative information..

I just don't see how you're paying so little for bandwidth. I'm in total agreement with you.

Since this thread has turned into a stupid flame war where the op disagrees with everyone yet everyone still gives the same input. I personally would not host servers as my vps is running a steady 20mbit at all times. Two people with dedicated servers that do this will saturate that link. BUT I do think if you are able to make a proper profit off this idea, free SHARED hosting would generally be a fine thing to do if you can handle abuse reports and make an application process to get accepted.

Well, when I'm wrong, I'm wrong! :-)

That is fine with Verizon and fine with me. You can purchase as many IPs as you want with Business DSL service, it costs $20 for 5 usable (so you're paying $4/IP), however, you can buy bigger blocks at a discount. 35mbit isn't enough? I'm not sure about that.. maybe if I'm hosting 1000's of clients (which I'm sure I'd aim for), but even 100-200.. I don't see many clients constantly pushing the bandwidth limit.. ?

How do you get wire from DC to work place? I dont think VPN isnt practical because of price!

Every time there is a big storm you lose power for a entire day . Glad that everything is in the ground here where i live. Never had a single power outage.

Oh, and just to let you guys know before I depart from this thread, based on the responses from the thread, I am most certainly looking into getting a 50/50 or higher line from VZ with maybe a 10-15 IPs, I will start out with shared/reseller hosting, and branch off into high-end VPS... and as more business requires more hardware, I'll either make the financial investments, or move the servers on to a _real_ datacenter.. sounds like a plan, right? Thanks everyone again.

My personal opinion would be to not do this in terms of cooling, sla, redundancy etc. But if you do go ahead. Best of luck!!

I guess you could use DRACS, KVM over IP and other such devices but then you are also exposing an IP and reducing security, not to mention paying an arm and a leg compared to at home when you can just walk to the console. Same way you secure a data center. Locks, cameras, possibly even card access. Metal doors, etc... Depending how serious you are, even get a security guard to be on duty while you are gone at work, or sleeping. A couple pitbulls could work too. Data centers arn't immune to this stuff either. Remember the data center explosion at the planet? It does not really make them incompetent that it happened, these things do happen. As for hurricanes the house would probably have to be rebuilt or reinforced with lot of concrete. Best to just not do it if you live in an area that is prone. This is also where offsite backups come in, fail over etc... Any company that hosts their stuff in one physical location is vulnerable to this. We can add terrorist attack to the equation. The WTC was a very well built building, but I'm sure those that did not have offsite backups lost everything that day. Does not need to be a terrorist attack, what if a demo company is imploding a nearby building, and it goes wrong? Lot of things can happen. No matter what type of building, it's something to at leave have in a disaster recovery plan. As for the generator, you can get natural gas ones too, or just stock up on propane the same way a DC will stock up on diesel. Also have to remember a home server operation will have less servers. Maybe 10, 100? So it's not like you need a nuke plant. Once you hit over 100 servers it's probably best to look at just building a DC and upsize on infrastructure. Now if you live near a colo, then yeah there is no reason to host at home since you can be escorted to your rack and it's close to the same convenience as being hosted at home. But the biggest thing is the connection, you want at least two providers that can give you a big link. Personanally I would not really host anything but my own stuff at home, but that's just me. I think it's a viable startup plan to grow big and move to colo if you have a decent connection.

Just to be clear, the 150/35mbit service is verizon FiOS not DSL. FiOS has a limited coverage area. Of course this is a bad idea.

And gordonrp, you know what, I can understand your quickness to shoot down ideas of a topic that has been discussed over and over again, but I think its quite possible to rethink the idea of a residential data center. Speed availability and affordability can now be in the range of someone who can afford the cost of investing in a retail store. You can cut the overhead of rent and put that towards your data connection.. I am sure with $1-$2k/month you could have a RELIABLE drop in your home.. and some people have that capital as an investment. There's 1gbps residential on the west coast and 150mbit residential on the east coast, this is bandwidth that most certainly can be utilized in new ways... A 1gbps line to your home in Tennessee for $350/month is beautiful..

Correction: as low as $15 Take a look at http://www.leeware.com/services.html

Here is the device I am using: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16882170143 Hooks up to a comp directly and has temp/humidity sensor built into the base as well as a wireless sensor (also temp/humidity). I use a simple daemon (wmr100) which logs the data to a text file and I have a script that parses the text file (averages the last 5 minutes of values) and MRTG runs that script to put the data into its own format and create the graph. It supports 3 wireless sensors (including the built in one) so it can have up to four sensors at once. I use two wireless sensors and the built in for three monitoring my server room, my bed room and outside my house which is: http://fios1.houkouonchi.jp/weather/outside.html unless ur getting transit or something the best upload package VZ has is the 150/35 (its really 150/65) package. The next best (in upload) that doesn't require gpon is 35/35 which is why I have that (two of them). There is a 50/20 package but it has inferior upload.

Not specifically with FIOS 150/35, but the notion of running a "datacenter" from home has been discussed many (..many, many, many..) times on WHT. As others said, if this is a hobby venture where nobody cares if their server is down for a day or two, then go for it and have fun. If this is an actual business venture with paying customers who expect uptime, it will fail. Yes, it will. Power will go out, whether you think you have enough UPSes under the desk or not. FIOS will go out. I have a FIOS Business Class circuit at the office, and it went down for several days before VZ sorted it out. Fortunately we had the sense to know it can happen, and have 3 (yes, 3) ISPs at the office. Seriously, don't do it. My I.T. career spans 28 years, but am not your Papa and can't tell you what to do. Accept the fact that given enough time, you WILL learn the hard way that we are right and you'll be much better off saving that $200/mo. FIOS payment and get a couple dedicated servers. Cost of sage advice: $0.00

This is definitely one very interesting thread. Even though I agree and disagree with some of the comments made in this topic we have to give this guy a chance. You never know? Maybe he can pull it off, but no one will know until he actually tries. Bratny if you have the money to spend go ahead and try it. It would also be nice to put a disclaimer on your website letting them know that it's a home DC. - Daniel

Okay, even so, it is still a dedicated line -- are we at least in agreement on that? I understand FiOS has limited coverage, but its 100% readily available in my area (Long Island NY, by the way.) You can further substantiate a bad idea, if you wish. So far, I can only see: - Don't use old hardware (which doesn't really substantiate much, that's the choice of the provider) - 35mbit not being enough upstream.. Anything else?

Reminds me of the old days!

The DR solution you would need will cost more.

The question shouldn't just be can it be done... but also can it be done profitably. Sure, you can solve all the various problems of trying to run a DC in your basement... but can you do so and maintain profitability? Congratulations, you have a basement DC. Doesn't mean you have any chance at success or returning a profit on your investment. What people have been trying to explain is that you're not the first or the thousandth person to come here with, "the will to learn" and "failure is not an option" attitude. If you think that it is enough... do a search for all the others before you who've had the exact same idea or said the same thing and see if you can find their DC and how they are doing. You're not the only person whose had money to burn and a desire to start a basement DC. Presumably you could find several successful ones. We'd all love to know. Or did you really think that you were somehow the first person with the drive and money to attempt this? Frankly, we don't care if you want to throw your money away. It just gets annoying to see the same question and attitude. Unfortunately, you're about 15 years late for the idea of starting a hosting business in your garage/basement and expecting it to go anywhere.

I totally disagree. The OP has clearly thought things through, and realizes correctly that datacenters are a SCAM. Thanks to innovation in fiber to the home technology, residential ISPs are finally able to offer better service and lower prices than those darn incumbent internet carriers. The OP has correctly figured that because he has some extra space in his home, there is no reason to pay extortionate rates for datacenter space. After all, if you can rent an abandoned warehouse for $0.50 / sq ft, why on earth would you pay $1000 / mo for a rack that only takes up a few square feet? He also correctly figures that the only thing holding back home based datacenters to this day has been the availability of home internet lines capable of a 30 megabit / second upload speed. To think that a rack of servers would need more bandwidth than this is ludicrous. Furthermore, when you consider that, as recently as 7 years ago, Cogent was charging as much as $1000 / mo for only a 100 megabit connection, getting 30 megabits for just $200 is a downright bargain. I have no idea how a datacenter could hope to match, let alone beat, this pricing. All of the money saved on this connection, rackspace, etc, will go straight into finally making dedicated servers affordable. The OP has a genuinely innovative business model that will finally allow quad core servers to be rented out for just a few dollars a month. This is completely revolutionary since most datacenters are charging as much as 10% or even 20% of the hardware costs *every month* just for the privilege of operating a dedicated server. Since we all know that computers retain their value for 7-10 years before they become obsolete, there is no reason a datacenter should expect a 5-12 month return on investment for their hardware. It's refreshing to see that someone has finally exposed the web hosting industry for what it is: a blatant rip off. Our only hope in continuing to ride the web hosting gravy train is to discourage anyone who might try to set up a home based data center. Once the general public figures out just how much we've been overcharging, there will likely be riots in the street. As was said best by a bank (who will remain nameless), when I tried to get a bank account for my web hosting company, "Why would people rent your computers to run their website, instead of running it on their computers at home?". Why, indeed? These are clearly wise words from a wise woman, and using exactly the same reasoning, I keep my money in a shoe box under my mattress, rather than at her bank.

i dont see anyone besides people looking for $30 servers trust a home DC so unless you lie to people i dont see you doing to well.

What are you going to do for redundant power, and cooling? As well, 35Mb just isn't enough. On my own personal server I spike to well beyond that at times.

So what are you going to do when your FIOS connection drops without an SLA on it?

Thank you, I am taking your advice to heart. I have been incorporating the responses in between defending, and as a previous poster pointed it, the other costs involved of running a data-center are marginal and should be expected to be ~equal to what I would expect to running a datacenter, and I think that would include the cooling, redundancy, failovers, bandwidth and support. For anything needed, money and knowledge how to properly integrate and use it can make anything attainable. My attempt is to, as you said, try and go out about it as educated as possible. But as I stated before, I just refuse to listen to people who are just going to say "too much money, not worth it, automatic fail." If I had the same capabilities, speed, and bandwidth as any other reputable datacenter in a room or basement, I don't see any problems as a customer would feel they are being shortchanged if the service was good. After reviewing my options (and my capital), it seems the 150/35 (or 150/65 as shown before) will suffice to begin operations. UPS, generator, switches, all the peripherals necessary will be implemented, and if a 110 line to the home must be installed it will be done. I have purchased VPS from reputable companies that are only 10mbit switches, so I feel starting out with a 150/35 line is much more than sufficient. We shall see what happens. The first step is spending the $99 setup, $209 month, extra hardware, and additional IPs. I don't plan on starting service with 100 dedicated servers with customers ready to go, so I figured "upgrade as you go" might be the best way to do this. I could even start with a smaller line, even 50/50 if necessary to minimize my losses, but in the end, I figure hell, if it DOESNT WORK OUT, I'll still have the dedicated line to myself. Works out I guess, right? Thank you all for the contributions!

Presumably, your going to be honest in your communication with clients... Who do you expect to want to be a client when you explain your DC setup? Your marketing point is you pass on the savings of running a sub-par operation to the customers? The only customers for who the risk:cost ratio is worthwhile is people seeking hosting for a hobby. Even then... as soon as someone under prices you (ie through economy of scale) at a properly built DC... you're screwed.

Please let us know once you get this up and running, I'll have some customers to send your way!

For a decent company 100mbit is what is used on the low end equipment.

Fire prevention? Cooling? Security? Insurance? You may be able to pull this off, but the moment a small DOS attack happens you're helpless. You can get budget colocation that would make this non-economical.

Just to add the 150/35 package is actually 150/65. Its not available in most areas where FIOS is served though (you have to be on GPON). Even if your area is GPON if your neighborhood isn't u get screwed (like me). FIOS does have good upstream capacity/stability though. I have two 35/35 connections for 70/70 and I have no problems saturating that just about 24/7 if I feel like it Also I would add that I think FIOS is good enough and reliable enough that you could certainly host some web-sites and business based hosting off of it for your own business. I dont know if I would be comfortable or consider it good enough to provide hosting/colo/whatever for other people though.

Thank you for the suggestion, yes, I am now looking into VPS as I am sure if I could offer some nice packages with a smaller investment in hardware and electricity

If you're saying SLAs mean nothing then you don't understand the purpose of an SLA. An SLA is whatever the terms of your providers SLA says it. Not all SLAs are the same any many give much greater protections than others. One 99.99% SLA is probably not the same as another 99.99% SLA. if the SLA allows for 1 day of downtime due to maintenance, then that is allowed, and you need to plan on it possibly happening. An SLA is NOT an uptime guarantee, it is an assurance from the provider that if you have a certain amount of downtime you'll be compensated on a certain schedule. If that downtime costs you more than what the SLA gets you, then you need to look at backup/redundancy options. And bratny, the entire point of what everyone is saying is that it simply isn't worth doing it in your home. Yes, it is certainly possible, but the problems and costs will be higher than doing it in a data center. A data center will be CHEAPER, so why not do it in a data center? Since your costs will be higher, will customers really pay you more to host with you, knowing it is on a limited connection inside someone's home? If you're thinking there are going to be substantial cost savings doing it from home, you're just fooling yourself. Now, if you have ways to overcome those issues, good for you, but 99.9% of the people asking these questions do not. The main issue I see you having is getting any sort of network redundancy. I don't know of any carrier that will give you a BGP session or allow you to route another carrier's IPs over their network for a standard residential type circuit (And yes, even though it is business FIOS it is a residential grade service).

Took me a minute to catch on to the sarcasm in your post. For a minute I thought you'd crossed over to The Dark Side. Nice post. Hopefully others who are considering the folly of a home datacenter-- no matter how noble their intentions-- will read this.

Unbelievable that this is still going on. I have oficially unsubscribed from this nonsense and wish I had done it sooner. bye bye now...

No need. Customers having bad experiences with a host like you propose is what makes them understand the value of using a reputable provider with a decent network and enterprise hardware. Sure it's fun to setup network, and play datacenter, just make sure your customers know that this is a home network and is not suitable for anything other than personal projects. $209 + power ($270 total?) is plenty to get a high quality server, on a high quality network, from a big provider like theplanet.com.

Let's sit back, relax, enjoy our popcorn and watch the show.

If 50/50 is cheaper then certainly go with that, outgoing is going to be your main concern, by far, than incoming. You'd be getting 50 Mbit/sec instead of 35 Mbit/sec for less money.

I wouldn't recommend going this route by running all of this out of your home, but if you still choose to do so Verizon FIOS for Business is not the best product to select if you have bandwidth concerns. I would recommend looking into their Verizon Internet Dedicated Access Service Options which is for those that are running servers on site. They offer more internet bandwidth options from T1 all the way up to OC-48 and if you need more access lines I am sure they will provide you with as many as you need. You can also use their shadow service if your using BGP/MEDs and bring in lines from other providers if you like besides Verizon to offer you network redundancy. The best thing to do is click on the Business->Medium Business section on their website and call them up to find out the actual prices and requirements for the services. For the routing, switching, racking, power, etc. do you have enough space to house all the equipment and will you be physically blocking off access to this equipment using steel cages, access cards and other physical security methods? As there should be no way anyone but you can get access to this equipment if someone broke into your house or you have friends and or family over. You might also need to look into sound dampening your basement and I am sure you will need to have fire protection to protect your home and your equipment. Since you do have the money to burn, I would recommend also while your doing this venture to look into and start planning on the costs for moving things into a datacenter for the future. As your bottle necked by your home unless you can expand it but it's good to keep your business and personal things separate when you've outgrown the home environment and can no longer sustain hosting your IT infrastructure in your home. If it gets to that point, I would recommend using your home for storing encrypted backups, staging and testing of your business applications and sites before you move them into production at the datacenter. This way if you mess something up it doesn't affect your business and you can try out anything you like at home. It will cost you more money in the short and long term if you still choose to do this from your home, but if it's mainly for a learning experience then I would say go ahead and do it. Be sure to have a backup plan and make sure if you start offering services to the public that you let them know the type of infrastructure you have at home.

Mine's over 37 years; my experience is that whether something will work or not depends on the details. And further, most people, even highly experienced people, don't actually understand the details, but are guided by advice, rules of thumb, etc. that they've received from others. Well, no. Many or most people who need uptime use two data centres; so maybe the marketing proposition is to hire out pairs of servers, one in each of two home data centres run by different people. After all, if the servers are cheap enough, why not install them in pairs?

I gave up reading after page 3 and skipped to 10 ! lol Are your servers/DC up and running yet ?, i am in the hunt for a good server deal !

Fire Prevention/Insurance - I do have home owner's insurance with fire coverage.. if we're talking business wise, I have a New York State registered business (since 2007) that is fully insured... Security - as in security to my facilities (my home?) I don't have creepers coming in and out and a fairly good security system, plus a registered firearm (lol) Redundant Power - http://www.directron.com/redundant.html (not too expensive) Cooling - Have a spare room that I don't mind running an A/C @ 65 degrees for the +$50/every month.. Hmmm.. it really only seems bandwidth is of concern... I just don't believe EVERY hosting company is running on symmetrical 100mbit+ connections..

Hi there brat, I live on Long Island as well. Where I live, whenever there is a bad storm my house loses power...sometimes for over a day. You mention you could get a generator, but you also need to factor in the cost of getting UPS units as well to hopefully give enough time for you to turn on the generator. Noise factor is also an issue (if you live with other people). Whenever I work on servers in my basement...higher end server with higher rpm fans, you can hear the fans all the way on the 2nd floor and that's only from a single server. I can imagine with 10 or more going at the same time. Would never get any sleep, hehe. If you are looking to go the budget route, Long Island really isn't the best place for datacenters. The ones that are here aren't really up to par and the couple that are, are very expensive. Do you have any networking experience at all with switching/routing? Do you plan on having any redundancy at all at the network gear level? I.e. switches/routers...vrrp/hsrp, etc? Surely this can probably be done...maybe buy a small 21U cabinet, put it in your basement, setup the network, get some good cooling, enough power, UPS units, a generator, and simply hope the clients you get don't use a lot of bandwidth Or you can rate limit them... Another route to take which would probably be a little easier to start with? High end VPS's. Not as many worries with cooling, etc and less hardware in your house causing so much noise, hehe.

SLAs mean nothing when you are down . We had a business grade private link from RCN - with a full 99.99% SLA - between two NYC area datacenters, which we used as private transport. One day they sent us a notification about power maintenance in one of their buildings over the weekend. The building would be without power for 24 hours and as a result, our links would be down during that time. Luckily we were not relying on that connection for any customer-facing services and we had a 2nd line in place to failover to. SLAs mean nothing when your only connection to the internet is down because of a planned maintenance, an errant backhoe, a transformer fire, a drunk driver running into a pole, a failed piece of equipment at your provider's end etc. Here's my question: If Verizon came to you with the same notification, and even incredibly said "we're breaking our SLA, you'll get 50% of your money back" (which won't happen) - what are you going to tell your customers? "I'm sorry, you're going to be down for a day"?. Network redundancy : With no disrespect intended, either something was lost in translation with your professor or he didn't understand exactly what you were intending to do (technology wise and budget wise). I had networking professors in college talk about "pier-to-pier" networking and mess up many basic networking principals. I had a job applicant who I interviewed who did not know what BGP was even though he took a Networking class in college. No matter what anyone tells you, you cannot have Layer 3 IP failover between 2 links from different providers without using a Layer 3 routing protocol . I think everyone here on this board will back me up when I say that Verizon will not allow you to use BGP on your 150/30 line (heck, they won't even give you more than 5 IPs). *You will not have network redundancy* Environment : In NY suburbs it is not unheard of to be without power for days after storms - due to falling trees etc. You mention that you will buy a generator. My questions are: 1) How much fuel will you keep on hand? A few hours worth? A few days worth? A week worth? Will you have an agreement with a fuel company to resupply you as a priority customer in the event of extended outages? 2) Having a generator isn't enough - you'll need UPS/batteries to handle the load between the time that your power goes out and your generator turns on. 3) Is someone going to manually transfer to generator or will you have an automatic transfer switch? If it's not automatic, what happens if you're at the supermarket and the power goes out? 4) What type of power conditioning will you have? Power brownouts and surges can kill or reboot your hardware. 5) What kind of air conditioner are you going to use? How many BTUs? What happens when the room gets too hot because the AC cannot keep up? 6) What kind of cooling redundancy will you have? 7) What kind of environmental monitoring will you have? If your window air conditioner stops working at 2am and the room temperature soars, will you know or will you wake up at 8am and walk into a sauna? 8) Is your electrical wiring up to code? Can it handle the additional load that you're going to put on it? Did you know that it's against fire regulations to daisy chain power outlets? 9) Legally, is your house zoned for commercial use? 10) What happens if a fire breaks out? Do you have non-damaging fire suppression? Do you have any automatic fire suppression? Do you have an EPO (emergency power off) switch? 11) What are your security plans? Homes get robbed and broken into all the time with no rhyme or reason. Just because you don't think your home is a target does not mean that nothing will happen. 12) Have you asked Verizon if they will allow you to run a hosting service on the line? 13) Have you truly factored in the cost of running your hardware 24x7 (ACs, generators, power conditioning/ups/batteries, networking equipment and servers)? It's nice to think 'ah, I'll just leave my AC on and it will be $50/month' but you should really sit down and do the math. Each 16A that you use (20A at 80%) is 1760Watts (1.760KW).. at 744 hours in a 31 day month that is 1,309.44 KWHs... @ $.20/KWH you're going to be paying $262. The air conditioner alone can take 10A or more depending on your BTUs. I think that the nail in the coffin is that you have a limit of 5 IPs per line ... that means you can only have 5 dedicated server customers - each with 1 IP address (well... you probably need to use 1 of your 5 IPs for your gateway). 5 customers * $30/month = $150/month income which won't even cover your internet costs... Lastly, are you going to be honest and tell your customers that their servers will be placed in your house? Instead of spending ~$100/month on AC costs, $230/month on Verizon, $XXX/month on a backup line, $XXX on a generator, $XXX on power equipment (power conditioning, UPS/batteries etc), why not rent half a rack at a datacenter?

When Verizon Fios takes notice of the bandwidth, Watchout !!

Thanks

C'mon it's very entertaining! - Daniel

I truly beg to differ, is there a business that you can point me out to that has failed running a home-based hosting services? What the hell does "Customers having bad experiences with a host like you" even mean? I don't have a hosting service.. I think what you're problem is, you're stuck thinking of a kid sitting on a 10mbit/1mbit cable connection trying to sell UNIX shells on IRC. We're talking a 150/35 dedicated line.. I am not sure how you propose you could only run "personal projects" off a line that? Please. Break down the difference between someone with a +Quadcore 8GB RAM system on a 150mbit/35 dedicated line and a +Quadcore 8GB RAM system on a 100mbit shared line.. you have no substance to your argument. Would you prefer purchasing a PC made in a factory that costs $1000 more from a person who could provide you the same computer for $1000 less? No. Listen, I'm not knocking down anyones argument about it being a hefty-priced and well-crafted (and budgeted) idea, but to say you'd have to disclaimer out "OH MY ITS FROM A HOME DATA CENTER.. DON'T THINK OF RUNNING ANYTHING BUT A TEST BLOG HERE.." That's just ridiculous. If it was a 1mbit/1mbit shared cable line I'd be agreeing with you, you can do MUCH more with a 150/35 line

Are you on business class? I can't imagine they would let that kind of sustained usage on a residential account go for very long.

Yeah the power company here really sucks when it comes to fixing things.

Take look at my network totals: http://fios1.houkouonchi.jp/bandwidt...otal.2010.html I have done 10TB+ each month for the last four months and I haven't heard a peep from verizon. My average out over the last 2 weeks has been over 70 megabits. I have never heard of anyone, anywhere being contacted by Verizon due to bandwidth usage on FIOS.

Also one thing you might keep in mind is email.. Depending on the IP range that they put you on some of the RBL's will blacklist you based on your IP address residing on a residential IP range. This is designed to stop spam emails that originate from compromised PC's on a home network. If you get their business plan then they may put you on a IP range that may not be affected by this so it might be a good idea to clarify that with them also otherwise you would need to relay through another server to get around the RBL's. Also you will need to be able to change your rDNS to match the hostname of the sendmail server otherwise spam filtering will flag your mail also. DomainKeys and SPF won't be a problem because that is controlled by your DNS records. If your going to host at home I would also look into some decent size battery backup systems. Unless you have the room wired for more power the best you will be able to pull would be 15 Amps and even then you would not want to load it to full capacity as it may cause fire or if you turn a server on and it spikes amperage it will cause the breaker to trip. These days it almost cheaper to colo than it would be to run from the house.. You have DC's like Joe's DC or ColoUnlimited that will colo a box for $49 with power, cooling and 10mbs unmetered bandwidth and 5-8 IP addresses. Good luck in your venture... P.S. to the guy who posted up the photos of his home DC... Very nice looking setup you have there..

You're clearly a newbie. That doesn't mean you are a bad person, but you do need to expand your horizon of thinking. We run extensive remote management, but none of it is exposed publicly. (cough... VPN gateway... cough) It's called the cost of doing business. You can spend the money and do it right, or you can cut corners. Yes, there is room in the marketplace for deep-discount budget hosting and I don't have a problem with that, AS LONG AS the host doesn't try to pass himself off as a high quality provider with false claims about infrastructure. Seriously, you would go to all that trouble to secure your house? But that issue aside, one cooking mishap in the kitchen could burn down your whole "datacenter". Using insurance jargon, datacenters are built as either "Masonry Non-Combustible" or "Fire Resistive" construction. There is virtually nothing to burn inside a datacenter other than electrical components. Most everything else is metal-- racks, servers. About the only time you ever hear of a fire in a DC is if a battery string or transformer explodes-- and even then, the physical damage is localized to the blown gear and surrounding objects. If that happened in your basement, your home would probably have burned down. For customers of The Planet, it simply meant downtime while temporary power was rigged. And all that extra engineering costs money, eliminating the savings of doing it at home. Face it, you're clearly acknowledging that datacenters need to have high-stress, high-security, fire-resistant features, so why not do it properly and use a facility designed for the purpose rather than trying to put lipstick on a pig by retro-fiting a dwelling? Now you're sounding more realistic. Again, there's nothing morally wrong about hosting at home AS LONG AS you don't pretend to be something you're not. Don't boast about redundant power, cooling, security, on-site staff, or anything else that would lead a potential buyer to think you're in a carrier-grade facility. As long as it's billed as, "At Joe's Super Cheap Hosting, we slash our costs to the bone and pass that savings on to our customers", then I don't have a problem with it.

My mistake, you're right it's a great idea. I look forward to hearing more about your service! For some reason I was thinking that redundant power feeds, a diverse network, redundant cooling, etc were important factors to consider for a hosting/server company. It looks like you've got all the bases covered, the next Richard Branson in the making! /sarcasm

it seems that the first thing you do is to contact your Verizon provider, be very honest and ask them straight whether running commercial "hosting" on this type of connection in residential setting is "allowed" or not? as far as I know most cable providers won't allow it at all, but I could be wrong... the last thing you want to see is that Verizon shutting you down cold in few days or few weeks of operation after you invest so much equipment and time in this venture.

Only one of my connections is business, the other is residential (which is pushing about the same amount of traffic). The residential connection is actually a bit faster than the business one because I have a video circuit on it and they over provision it. The residential line is about 45/37 and the business line is about 37/37 if completely saturated. I also setup VPN bonding through a box in the DC so I can get the full speed on a single connection: http://www.speedtest.net/result/868194348.png As I mentioned earlier the business connection is overprovisioned so the upstream is actually 65 megabits which is not bad at all. I would get it if it was available to me as its a little bit more than I am paying for my two 35 connections which I would not have to do bonding/load balancing and i would get double the downstream. I dont see why VZ would mind on the usage all that much even on residential. They don't have caps or anything in their ToS about excessive usage AFAIK. Also they are a tier1 provider which pretty much everything goes through uunet/alter.net. Since they have settlement free peering the bandwidth only costs them on infrastructure which because the way FIOS is designed has tons of free capacity. Actually I might at some point be uploading to a customer of theirs that pays them for transit and thus they could possibly be making money off me pushing a lot of traffic.

Are you on the Fios residential plan or business plan?

One type of hosting business that might work very well for a 'home DC' would be off-site backup. The 150 meg down would work very nice for that and it likely wouldn't be the end of the world if there was some downtime here and there.

Why pay $1000 a month for a rack in a datacenter when you can take out a second mortgage on your home to add security, fire and nature (earthquake, fire, hurricane, etc), and power upgrades.. possibly even security personnel and support staff? (maybe throw in some enterprise class network equipment too) I kid i kid.

I'd like to thank you all for the comments, and any more are appreciated. Maybe I'll just go build 5-10 powerful Quadcore servers, offer them as dedicated servers with 2 IPs, and charge $29/month + $99 setup, for fun. I feel very inclined to disprove anyone thinking a 150mbit/35mbit wouldn't be able to sustain any type of legitimate, well-run business.. realistically, you're looking at $209/m for dedicated line, $50/m for power, $50/m for cooling, and whatever it is going to cost you for keeping those servers up in-case of a power outage (I'd prefer using a generator..) So all in all, it seems you could run a home-data center for about $309/month+taxes.. Ciao everyone. Comments appreciated.

"Verizon Business DSL 150mbit/35mbit" isn't most "advertised" IO rate a "myth" or in "burst" mode at best? in real world connection, you rarely rarely get the "full" IO rate in "sustained" fashion, 25%~50% the most? what about network latency for web hosting? isn't residential line or dressed up "business line" notorious for high or inconsistent latency? don't these potential issues prevent most folks running even a simple web server directly from their homes or places of business in the first place? if yes, then commercial hosting from these lines seems fruitless at best. if you are serious serious this venture, don't assume anything, be iron sure you can address these fundamental issues first before you even start.

#1 You're post regarding SLA's are rhetorical, and server no purpose. If someone comes to your house and pulls a gun to your face and blows your head off, what are you going to tell your customers? Nonsense. #2 Already spoke with Verizon, IPs are available in blocks of 5 for $20, no matter how much I need, I have already verified that. #3 Regarding network redundancy, have you actually called Verizon and asked? Didn't think so.. you can have the backup of the entire board, that means nothing, show me that it can't be ALLOWED, because it obviously CAN BE DONE. The burden of proof is on you, not me. #4 All the rest of your responses, have already been dealt with. Are you going to ask someone the same question who is looking to start a datacenter? If you want to run into my house and try to rob it, you'll be met by two pitbulls and two firearms, and that's if you can get pass the security system. To be quite honest, cooling, security, and all the redundancy, ALL of this is money, and as I stated before which you don't read, I am not speaking of ITEMS that any datacenter would need -- these are ALREADY covered with capital costs of running any DATACENTER. Anyone who has taken any Master's Level course understands that if you DONT HAVE THESE necessities you won't be able to sustain a GOOD connection.. MY questions pertain to the ACTUAL network. MONEY is not the issue here. I know PLENTY of people that run their own datacenters in the city, and I just would rather not have to pay the $4-$6k/month to be located in a building.. ANY connection that can be dropped INTO a commercial location CAN be dropped to a residential location, and THIS is what I have found through the thread and MY own research.. My OTHER question was whether a HIGH SPEED DEDICATED BUSINESS LINE like Verizons 150/60 would be sufficient, and THIS is the only issue I am dealing with now. So I've already found the answers I've needed, all you are repeating are things that have already been discussed that EVERYONE ALREADY KNOWS ARE PARTS OF A DATACENTER. If you DONT have the money for it, don't attempt it.. I HAVE the money for it buddy

I don't think they actively cap/monitor anyone yet... but if someone files a DMCA, they'll put you on a ACL that blocks any of the ports you're using -- if you don't mind random and permanently blocked ports over time then have at it.

Yes, you can with FIOS business run a very alright web service company. Get the business package and you are ready to go. Need reverse DNS setup and allocated more IPs which you pay for. All the other costs to build out redundancy are do-able. Auto transfer generator powered by natural gas would be best idea for power. UPS units can be made, hacked or something pricey installed. You really need a second provider for backup bandwidth. A cable company like Comcast in our instance has good enough pricing on large enough packages. Basements are ideal, but need to deal with air filtration and dust or regularly (quarterly) vacuum equipment inside and out. Basements are where everything settles and depending on form and finish will be where you find mold and other nasties. Verizon's FIOS network in my experience is as good as nearly anything out there. Routes were quite nice and better than a majority of colocation companies selling services on this very site. We used FIOS like this for several years before going to colocation exclusively. Mainly, due to relocating to an area without FIOS The down side is a major incident like someone hitting the pole with your utilities on it can/will take both connections down and you are dead then. It could happen. Sourcing a third internet connection via wireless can mitigate that outage. At that point you are looking at monthly bandwidth of cost x 3 = $600 roughly. Plus your electric and HVAC and depreciation of everything. Still very reasonable all considering and nice to have gear hands on and no need for expensive latest rackable units. Can use towers, raw boards, etc. Home based data centers certainly can be done and have certain advantages. If you are a home based worker it's the ultimate setup - especially where you have ample space in home to spare. I use to like the byproduct heat output from our servers for greatly reducing winter time heating bills.

Total nonsense, why? Whats the point/matter if a box does less than 70Mbps to put it on a gigE interface? Not everyone is a WHT addict who must have servers on gigE interfaces and push 10Mbps. Be more realistic.

One thing I agree with is that you should never let anyone tell you that something can't be done. If you've got an idea that your passionate about, give it a go (just keep an eye on the cashflow)!

So you're wanting to pay MORE to host at home, with unreliable power, unreliable Internet (single homed on a circuit with no SLA) and with less bandwidth/capacity than you could get in a real data center. $230 (not including any taxes or fees) for 35 Mbit/sec capped (not burstable) is not any amazing price, I'm sure you could get better in a data center. In addition, if you're on Long island you're looking at some of the most expensive power rates in the country, at about 20 cents per kwh (all in) http://www.eia.doe.gov/electricity/epm/table5_6_a.html To power and cool 5 servers (say 200 watts each) you're looking at an extra $250 a month. We're not even counting additional costs for UPS, additional HVAC, networking gear, diesel generator, your work/labor in getting everything setup, etc. What is the reasoning, what is the point? If the goal is strictly as learning for yourself, hosting some friends, etc. go for it, it'll likely be a good learning experience. If you're actually looking to turn it into a real business, don't.

Just thought I would point out that this is actually incorrect. From what I heard VZ will give u as many IPs as you are willing to pay and I have heard of people getting an entire /24 on business FIOS.

I'd bet your professor has half the knowledge of some of the people who have replied to this thread. cool story bro.

How are you going to allocate the same IP addresses over both uplinks? What use will the backup provider be when all IPs on the primary uplink are inaccessible? DNS failover doesn't really seem ideal here.

yeah, but you'd be surprised how many people don't realize how "unbursty" normal web traffic is. even people pushing 500gb / mo or less seem to think they need at least a 100 meg port. If you'd run graphs on these users, you'd see their traffic never goes over 2mbit. The cost of the ports is certainly not an issue though, I would provide everyone a gig port if it was just a matter of having gig switches, but for me, giving everyone 100 meg is a hassle because I don't want to deal with metering, and giving everyone gig isn't going to happen because then just a few users could go and congest the network for everyone else without warning. This point of view has made me lose some business, but springing for the ubersmith datacenter edition ($500 / mo) which can do metering doesn't seem like a good investment to me right now, and I haven't found anything else I trust to properly do metered billing.

Ha. That's a funny one. Listen, I'm from the era where you spent $1999 for a T1 line that's pulling ~1mbit/both ways, running hundreds of thousands of sites. I've been around the block way longer than a post number could tell.. I'd continue with this battle of whits, but I can tell you are completely unarmed. I have well more than $309/month and a few thousands on servers to throw around... the only argument holding back anything is the 35mbit upstream being not enough..

FWIW FiOS is a full-on FTTH connection, with latency to match. Maybe it's a few ms greater than a DC in the area but that's about it. Latency is stable and you're effectively running on UUNet (see another thread for info about that). Kinda hard to get 35 Mbps of UUNet for $210 per month *anywhere*. Heck, I know of a few small ISPs that use FiOS as their "backbone" provider. Of course that's only one piece of the puzzle, though an SLA doesn't guarantee that your connection won't be down, only that you get compensated for downtime.

I think if you can actually get that kind of bandwidth at home, go for it. It will serve as a stepping stone to a more serious setup such as colo or building a real datacenter building. Start small, go big. I wish I could get good bandwidth here because I'd host my own stuff at home. WAY cheaper even when considering the hydro costs and it's easier as you have full physical access to everything. Also look into getting a standby generator that runs on natural gas, with an automatic transfer switch, and some good UPSes such as APC 3000's. But again, start small. Maybe go without the standby generator at first, then if you see the business is working out, then buy those things. A security system is a must too, as well as flood protection. (multi sump pumps in case a pipe breaks, some kind of monitoring system too, etc). Lot of "small" things you have to look into but you can add those over time.

And now you want to start a home data center and sell a couple of $49/month servers? Will Rogers said it best: Everyone is smart, just on different subjects.

Well the simple solution is to put the DNS servers on the various bandwidth links. Then as we transition to the various bandwidth providers we revise the IP address info we send out to fulfill DNS lookups. This is to say, we only advertise the IPs for the currently up bandwdith. So in essence if you have three providers, you have three sets of IPs. A single server technically has three IPs and in theory all work at all times, but only advertising one for the DNS lookup response. This is how companies like Peplink do it within their bandwidth aggregation / failover devices.

Roll your own, using RTG as a base and data collector.

Well hopefully this isn't a sarcastic post, I accept your position on never letting anyone tell you it can't be done. So far as I have learned, the only two obstacles that stop anyone from doing anything are a) money and b) physically impossible things. You can't make money without having money.. and you can't turn fat into muscle.. neither just aren't going to happen. Maybe I just needed that sarcasm as a boost.. Verizon calls so much to annoy me to switch, I might have to answer the next time. And gordonrp, I promise you'll be the first one to receive a free dedicated on my non-redundant, trash home network. /nonsarcastic

Well with FiOS you do get the full speed 24/7. It does not throttle down thread speeds after a few seconds/minutes like Cable does, at least not yet anyways. I am with Karl on this; the power to feed those servers (plus cooling during the summer) is going to you cost way more than anything else...

There are people like me who look like they are running a hosting service out of their home if you looked at my network graphs: http://fios1.houkouonchi.jp/mrtg/ And the rack I have in my house: http://box.houkouonchi.jp/rack_pics/dsc_7586.jpg But its all for my own personal usage. HAHAHA. I myself would never consider providing hosting/colo running off FIOS. Oh yeah.. I even monitor the temps (with my bedroom) in my server room: http://fios1.houkouonchi.jp/weather/room.html As well as power usage of my rack: http://fios1.houkouonchi.jp/power/ hehehe =)

I don't see any Verizon Business DSL with that level of throughput, but it does match a Verizon FiOS plan. My experience with FiOS has been that the actual performance will vary depending on overall network load and the routes leave much to be desired (eg. there have been reports of traffic from Tampa to Orlando being routed through Dallas). This type of thing is standard practice with FiOS. Even traffic between the Verizon Business and FiOS networks usually have to backhaul to a major POP.

You keep the TTLs low to mitigate that somewhat or alternatively, you can normally advertise resolution on two different IPs on two different connections which is common: www.whatever.com 1.1.1.1 www.whatever.com 2.2.2.2

Yeah, what he said...

Just my 2 cents... 35 m/bit is just not enough upstream, If one of your customers wants to stream media or has a relatively busy website then that can go before you know it. I'd expect my datacentre to have multiple layers of redundancy connection wise and automatically fail over to a secondary connection with another provider if the primary one died. The noise in your house will be annoying as hell running all those pc's. I don't know you but I guess you work and on that basis who is going to be available to do remote reboots

I noticed you plan on using a generator for backup power. You will ideally need a UPS and certainly need a power transfer switch. No use in just having a generator as everything will go off in an outage until you turn the generator on. Again with 35mbit bandwidth, again this really isn't enough. A server simply uploading a daily offsite backup will likely saturate the line. You said you wanted to invest in decent spec'd machines, anyone requiring a decent spec machine will likely require a decent amount of bandwidth. Lets remember that 35mbit if utilised 24/7 for a month will only get somewhere in the region of 10TB, though its unlikely usage patterns would be consistent. You mentioned getting a second provider for backup connectivity, this is all good thinking but you won't be able to utilise the same IP addresses that you get from Verizon. Ideally you want 2 BGP feeds or (2x) layer 2 connectivity to a common network (a datacentre would be ideal) for redundancy on the network.

Thank for your the response. Yes, it seems my plan is going to be try and go for a smaller line, probably 50/50. Setup a few servers that will be used for VPS, see how the network handles, see where improvements need to be, etc. I don't think I'd have ANY problems starting with 4-5 high-end servers split into 4-5 VPS... it's when business starts to take off and more bandwidth is required that I am weary about... To MaB, I just want to make it clear that most, if not all the items, you listed are simply dealt with by money. I am not saying that it doesn't take careful planning, but to go and tell someone "Yeah, who cares, SLA means nothing.. what about this.. what about this.. what about this.." Would you rather me just say "Money grows on trees for me and I can hire workers no problem and pay them out of my pocket and it won't hurt me one bit?" No. I never came on the board and said Hey I'm made of money!! But the things you mentioned, someone like myself with a decently strong IT knowledge plus the will to learn, those obstacles ARE nothing but clever thinking and capital to back it up. My concern was SPEED and BANDWIDTH at a residential location and it seems that there's enough discussion here to learn the route I want to take... failure is not an option.

Jeff: FiOS routing is great in the northeast and it is very easy to max out your port - latency is great, with only about 4-5ms to Verizon's NYC POP. In any case, bratny - this would be a waste of your time IMO, but do as you wish.

Tell me you're kidding.... With reputable budget providers like Joe's Datacenter doing colo for $50, or dedicated servers for $45, why would any thinking person monkey around with a home datacenter? For $600 you could get a dozen servers in a real datacenter. If you're filling up 12 servers, you are certainly generating enough revenue to "do it right". Doing it from home with residential-grade internet access, power, and cooling, with no fire suppression, physical security, etc., is nothing more than foolish risk to cut corners. Explain to your customers why the servers were stolen while you went out for dinner one night, or out of town for a few days. So it's for the convenience of the owner, not the quality of the service. I hope you said that as a joke and I'm getting punked or feeding a troll, because I'd hate to think your post was serious.

he could also bundle free ipv6 I dont use 2 ips per vps, just one ( and no, I dont use my boxes juts for web hosting )

that being said.. if your offering servers for $29 ill take 2 :-)

My comment had nothing to do with your circuit speed. Nobody really cares about that, and only people with little else to discuss are addressing that. The topic of "I can totally run a home DC" has come up endlessly on WHT, and thats the relevant topic here. I can see you have no shortage of replies, and clearly you're asking for advice, then not listening to their answers, so enjoy your new cash sucking venture, it's just like big lego's kiddo . I laugh when somebody's "been around the block", yet can't spell "wit", that made me crack up. Same with this, you don't even know what people are talking about when they bring up redundant power?: Either way, go give Verizon a call, and ask if you can run BGP over this circuit (you know, for your failover plan), or maybe ask them how much it costs to trunk multiple circuits. I'd love to hear the answer.

Correct. I have already spoken with a Fios tech, $20/5 ips and as many as you need.. not the greatest price, but there's no limit. I was also very clear I'd be hosting clients websites from my servers, and they told me NO PROBLEM -- they don't actively monitor anyone's ports or bandwidth usage unless it starts harming the network. I was told, and I quote, "We have alot of other residential customers doing alot worse than running a few web-servers for their clients.."

I suppose everything in the NE is close enough together geographically. Forget about it anywhere else though. In Virginia Beach all FiOS traffic has to go back to DC, even if the destination is another Verizon customer in Virginia.

How many of you folks reading this have changed DNS records with short TTLs, only to see resolution on some providers (like Comcast) still providing old cached responses for much longer than your TTLs? ((..raising my hand..)) And let's not forget that Windows does its own caching. So if you get a DNS response seconds before it expires from your ISP's DNS cache, your PC will have that old record for many minutes longer still. Relying solely on DNS is a poor solution for failover.

I'm pretty confident this is only a WHT thing in regards to the port speeds, most/normal customers don't care as long as it works. We have ubersmith DE and we love it, we pay a substantial bit more for ours due to the amount of devices and is well worth it. It controls and runs everything for us and keeps things organized, if all your looking for is a metered system so you can bill people than don't bother with it, if your looking for something to monitor, use for support handle billing and manage devices etc, including utilizing its new features such as its puppet it makes management much much easier.

Thank you for a valued response. I actually work from a home office, IT consulting services, and PC repair (I have ~7 college 'geeks' that work under me 24/7 on-call for field repairs..), so I'd be there for remote reboots. The failover situation, well, that adds to a second problem. The other cheapest solution would be a T1 line @ $199/month in case of the Verizon going down, but I'd assume I'd need a line that would be equal in speed.. the closest other would be a 100mbit/15mbit line @ $199/month but that's from a broadband business provider.. I now see how 35mbit upstream might be a problem.. but my real question is, how do hosts that are on 10mbit lines or less survive? I also see many hosts FORBID 100% (unless its on dedicated servers) running ANY type of streaming media scripts or software.. is there a way to calculate how much realistic bandwidth per user I would actually be able to sustain?

You've been here a few months, Myles has been here since Dec '01. He (and most of us) have seen this same thread pop-up weekly. His response: Don't. Your response should be: Not doing it. If you're doing it for the sake of learning something or two, and for personal use, go for it, and then emigrate the arrangement into a proper facility & make something out of it. Or, do the latter first and you're at least off to a right start. The folks here aren't saying don't do it because they all offer colocation or operate good chunks of their own gear themselves, it's because they've been doing this for years and know better. Hell, *proper* setups can even manage to be unreliable with nasty outages once in awhile, and that's with all (or most) of the 'layers' of the arrangement being solid. Consider the multiple layers involved, and understand that cutting it short on any of those layers will result in failure or downtime. Don't. Go get some colocation somewhere or bum a U or 2 & start from there. You'll pay a few hundred a month, gain some experience in a real facility and learn quite a bit more for it. In the end there's far too much that can go wrong in a real environment, attempting to emulate it in your basement is just going to be a waste of your thought processes and money.

HAHA, indeed. Your looking at one right here.

Both. I have two 35/35 connections, one is business the other is residential. Traffic is split pretty evenly between the two. Also never heard of this happening either but I don't *ever* get DMCA's.

Like a lot of posts here it's the gospel according to the merchants in the church. Folks are in the industry selling hosting and colo in datacenters, so why would they endorse any alternatives? I can think of datacenters who have been arm robbed, fires, big failures. A datacenter is only as good as it's owner and their pockets to regularly invest in such. Joe's datacenter like FDC and a lot of other budget providers might meet the cheap comparative costs to an at home project, but aren't too much ahead of such. Most are one man operations (Joe's) or are utterly incompetent (FDC). They all cater to folks who aren't some 24x7x365 99.99999 uptime folks - realistically - as the customer isn't paying to justify such. There are very few places where you can get a full rack @ $600/mo and even fewer when you say 35Mbps of upload side and 100Mpbs of download side. Most that would offer such are resellers, many won't be in business next year at those numbers either. I can think of quite a few companies that run their data operations in house on less quality connections than a FIOS line. FIOS is a no joke high performance fiber offering, not DSL, not cable or a mere T1 businesses continue to swear by. Many of the buildings a number of datacenters are in aren't much more than glorified block garages (heck a number of datacenters aren't much more). As for the wirelesss 3rd link, yes I said that. I use to run a 25 mile 5.8Ghz connection that was rock solid and 5ms end to end. In many places I see that much latency from my switch to facilities router in same building. That 25 mile link was in mix of three providers and it outperformed the wired ones -- it wasn't impacted by weather either. Years prior in Seattle we ran a wireless laser connection at 50Mbps plus and the fog, rain, snow, etc. didn't impact it. Quite solid and low latency. I know of several datacenters and ISPs who were home based for several years before growing into commercial space. Folks have to start somewhere, right? Home colo isn't for everyone or everything. There are a number of consulting type businesses where in-office or in-home colo can make sense. Not everything is easy to work on from remote. High end database optimization and tuning is harder on a remote server where you can't physically at times see what is occurring.

Unless they do something special for FiOS business customers, it's not dedicated. Like cable, FiOS is shared, since it's a passive optical network.

Haha, I promise YOU ALL, if I ever go through with this, I'll keep my promise on cheap servers.. as long as my electricity bill isn't $2,000/month

I am glad this has sparked good discussion. I think the main difference between the "old days" and now is that we have much better connections and more bandwidth available for residential installations. I'd attribute this mostly to being in the 21st century where it is more than typical for successful businesses to be run from your home, I'm included in that statistic I had a long chat with one of my old networking Professors at my university (Dr. John Hardiman, Hofstra University: http://www.hofstra.edu/Faculty/fac_profiles.cfm?id=628 ) From our conversation I gathered ANYTHING is possible, we had a FULL DATACENTER WE BUILT (our class) in the basement of a building (311 Weller Hall, zip code 11549) that put many datacenters to shame.. I have the full blessing from him with any support needed when setting up the network. Yes, I know this will be more intense than just setting up routers and switches 6 years ago in college But I'd take my chances having the push from someone who has 40+ years of knowledge that is a successful Professor and corporate business owner! Regarding cooling, redundancy, security -- I am told that these are the elementary items of the data-center, one way or another even if you stiff on one of them (go cheap on redudundancy for example), you'll end up removing, adding, and replacing hardware as you go, so it is possible to start with the bare minimums. The whole "is 150/35" enough (or now someone is saying its actually 150/65), is not much of a concern unless you're already going to be hosting many, many media streaming sites, or if you're clients are going to be constantly transferring data OR abusing your network. With the correct hardware on BOTH ends (your provider and YOU), 150/35 is without a doubt sustainable for starting a service... it's the SLA.. I am looking into Verizon's SLA options. There are no SLA's for residential packages, I will be looking into the business packages. Also, an alternative might be Optimum Lightpath with a 99.9% SLA with credit-back based on the amount of minutes down, however, we're talking $2,000/month for 20/20..

That's awesome man.. now you've given me even more motivation.

bratny: What you want to do is entirely possible... We were actually thinking of it at one point (though an issue with failover to a second provider was the let down)... 1a: Verizon FiOS for business IP allocation is limited to a max of 125 IPs for $190/month. They stopped giving out Class Cs a few years ago. The 125 IP max is listed on their website, you just have to search since their website is horrible for finding information. If they are able to give you a Class C today, please let me know who you spoke to @ Verizon since it would be nice to know we can still get it for the office. 1b: Multiple FiOS connections may or may not happen depending where you are... I've read posts on other forums saying they'd had luck, while others have reported that Verizon won't do it. 2: Backup generator w/automatic transfer isn't expensive at all - you can buy relatively inexpensive ones at Sams Club or Costco and get it installed. Just like many of the DCs in LA, your UPS only needs to last a short while before the transfer happens (15 seconds or so). Though having a good UPS just in case the generator fails isn't a bad idea... Depending on the generator, they start at about $2700 or so for one that will last a number of hours. A number of posts here mentioned you're better off going with a DC (usually because they either work for one, own one, or advertise for one). I know many people that ran their own data centers out of their homes for years on T1s. Don't let the data center guys scare you. That 35Mb uplink can be more than sufficient for hosting a number of sites (depending on the sites, of course). And even then, as others mentioned, many colos or dedicated servers have a 10Mb cap (or you pay insane overage charges), and they are capable of running lots of websites (again, depending on the sites). From personal experience, I can say that with our business FiOS, the most downtime we've ever had since we had it installed in 2008 was 15 minutes in February 2009 around 1:45am. We've never had issues saturating the connection (50/20) for extended periods of time.

As for the DNS issues, there are many sites that are feeding you multiple IPs on lookup. Forgive me here, but I thought where you have multiple IPs for resolution and a site fails to load on that IP it attempts the other IPs. Isn't that the reason for spitting out more than one IP at resolution time? For instance Ebay: www.ebay.com canonical name = hp-core.ebay.com. Name: hp-core.ebay.com Address: 66.135.200.27 Name: hp-core.ebay.com Address: 66.135.200.145 Name: hp-core.ebay.com Address: 66.211.181.11 Name: hp-core.ebay.com Address: 66.211.181.15 Name: hp-core.ebay.com Address: 66.211.181.19 Google: www.google.com canonical name = www.l.google.com . Name: www.l.google.com Address: 209.85.225.104 Name: www.l.google.com Address: 209.85.225.103 Name: www.l.google.com Address: 209.85.225.105 Name: www.l.google.com Address: 209.85.225.147 Name: www.l.google.com Address: 209.85.225.99 Name: www.l.google.com Address: 209.85.225.106

If you can get 150/65 then it means you are on gpon. Gpon is 2.4 gig down and 1.2 gig up shared between a maximum of 32 customers. There is really no way that other traffic from the other customers sharing the connection would cause slowdown or saturation.

LOL. I wonder how the failover of IPs is going to work exactly on your home connections.... Going to unsubscribe from this thread at this point.

Best of luck, just glad you're the one with the time to waste Back to work for me.

This thread needs to be book marked, while its fine to run some things out of your home sure, thats fine. But please do not let people put their company/critical/life in your hands that is being ran out of your basement. I really don't want to read about you being down/outage on the outage section of this site.

AFAIK this should be possible in anywhere that can get residential FIOS. If you get residential and then add a business account VZ has no issues running a second ONT for the business service. I don't know if you can get static IPs on the residential service though. Also to my knowledge my FIOS has never gone down so its been very reliable.

Joe's is not a one man show, to the best of my knowledge, and if you're comparing it to FDC, you're not close to the pricing on bandwidth, you can get 100 Mbit/sec from FDC for less than the 35 Mbit/sec here, so ~3 times lower cost isn't really apples to apples. Then yes, there is a small number of places, but in this case, the OP's costs are higher than $600 a month, so why are we picking that arbitrary number? He'll need two network links, at least, so say $400 a month there, and then he'll use ~$400 a month in power for 16A 120v (which is what you'd get with a full rack anywhere). That is $800 a month there, and we're not even to the point of amortizing the thousands of dollars in costs for the rack, networking equipment, generator, UPS, power circuit installation, etc. If you're looking for $800 a month or less for a 20A 120v circuit and 35 Mbit/sec, there are a lot of places that can get you that, that have a real N+1 UPS configuration, a truly redundant network, and 24/7 on-site staffing. If he wants to do it himself and is looking to get his return on his own learning, etc. then I am all for that. I am not saying it isn't possible, I just don't see it as a good business plan if it is something he is trying to make a profit on. For getting a start, learning the ropes, etc. it may be a great opportunity/decision. Then, I agree, there are some "datacenters" that are really no more than a garage, and I disagree with that configuration as well, especially if it is being sold as a truly mission critical data center configuration. That some people do it doesn't mean it is right/proper, and when that has been found out it makes big news on WHT, I can remember several instances of that myself.

digg effect: http://www.uploadscreenshot.com/image/219607/6696465 Edit: better example, a site of mine that does a constant 3mbit/sec burst past 100mbit for many hours (again digg like effect) http://www.uploadscreenshot.com/image/219611/4933631 If that were a 100mbit port that would of been a slow running site and lost revenues. I know we don't disagree on anything specific here, or probably anything at all. But the web can be "bursty" and I think it's best to plan for that.

Well, first none of these are home connections. You need a registered business to have any of these services installed at your home (I am NOT talking about residential broadband/FIOS/or anything that relates to HOME.) Even to install a SECOND LINE of service, you need to show proof of incorporation AND the address of your corporation MUST match the address of installation.. If you are referring to "HOME" as in where the servers would be, yes, you are correct. My original thought was to incorporate 2 more businesses and rent out 2 MORE offices with 2 SEPARATE dedicated lines.. but that does nothing to help with the failover issues at the "HOME" datacenter.. Now, that's two problems. Failovers and 35mbit... now we're getting somewhere..

Haha Yes, will, I'll be honest, I have no wife, no kids, I live on my own in my own house.. income wise I am definitely not in the higher tax bracket but I have spare capital accumulated from years of saving and smart investing. I have trying to find something to keep more active but I just don't want to go "Here Datacenter, colocate my system and let me start making money.." I have a Bachelor's of Business Administration in IT, and a M.S. in IT, so far that did nothing more than set me back ~$150k+ in education (Hofstra is $14k/semester, $28k/year, and grad school was $58k flat.) I'm looking for something I could invest my capital in and be active in maintaining it as many hours as I can...

It was not rhetorical. I mentioned that because you mentioned a business line from Lightpath with 99% uptime SLA. I was just saying that an SLA doesn't stop the line from going down and isn't a replacement for a backup line. An sla is just for billing refunds if you have downtime Not sure what that has to do with the SLA issue. I mentioned that because you wrote "but I was told by the company that they could only sell me a maximum of 5 IPs per line ... if I wanted more, I'd have to purchase *another* service line.." - but it looks like you were saying that about another provider, not Verizon - if so, I apologize for the mixup Will both of your lines be terminated into different Verizon telco buildings? Will the backup line take a different physical route to your house and conduit into your house? Yes, those questions should be asked to and answered by anyoen who is looking to start a datacenter. And if the house is robbed while you're at the supermarket you'll tell your customers "Sorry, the robbers got past my pittbulls!". Yes, even a datacenter can get robbed but there's a difference between datacenter security and your home security. Of course everything can be solved with money. That's what a datacenter is - spending money on solving these problems. And if you're ready to throw money at these problems, why not pay that money to a datacenter operator who already has the expertise and trained staff who have already addressed these issues. You can find racks and bandwidth for $700-800/month - no need to spend 4-6k/month. Yes, as you said it comes down to money. But, on your expected bandwidth budget you'd have a hard time of getting someone to run new connections to your home just for you (without $xx,xxx building costs). Verizon will do this because they are probably upgrading your whole area to Fiber or they are using their existing copper. It's *much* easier to get access to more providers in business buildings because major players may already have a presence and it's a matter of running the connection to your floor - not running new fiber or copper into the building. What's throwing me off here is that you seem to want to throw a lot of money at this problem, so that you can sell low-end dedicated servers @ $30/month, but you are insisting on spending all the money in your home instead of a professionally engineered datacenter. You seem to already have made up your mind (and only respond properly to words of encouragement).. if your only question is about the quantity of bandwidth that you're buying then the answer is what you've already seen - that no one can tell you for sure. It depends on your business model, the types of customers you attract etc. This is obvious, but if you are selling cheap servers with a of bandwidth then you'll run out... if you get stuck with a few customers doing media then you'll run out... if $30/month servers attract spammers/hackers/ddos'ers then you'll run out... if you cap each server to 1mbps out then you should be okay... we don't have a magic ball and there's no right answer - you won't get a 'yes' or 'no'. Since this thread is obviously going nowhere, it should probably be closed as it's gotten you upset and a lot of other people either scratching their head or repeating themselves.

#1 - he would have redundancy and other staff to take care of things in his absence and a business plan with recovery stuff #2 - $20 for 5 ips lol #3 - good luck running bgp on dsl #4 - yes pitbull - they're normally the first to die 150/60 is not going to be sufficient - if anything, it should be 60 down 150 up - hosting pretty much always uses much more up than down

Try to speak on things you actually know about. I have a very good reputation here and 24/7 staff that are on site. I am not a 1 man operation as you wrongly assumed. I do not appreciate being used in your example when you obviously know nothing about my company or the infrastructure I have. Just because your a budget provider does not mean that we don't take this serious and don't build a reliable facility. Trust me when your down nobody cares how much they pay and I would not be able to keep my reputation if I was not reliable as a host.

houkouonchi: That's still a ~2:1 contention ratio if everybody has the max speed. I'd agree that it's unlikely, but I still wouldn't try to run a datacentre on anything but dedicated fibre. gordonrp: The first one is a bad example since it's a site that looks like it should *ordinarily* have more than 100Mbps (it looks like its typical is breaking 80Mbps). The second one is a much better example... I don't think it means that a site needs to be on a gigabit pipe, only that the option to easily expand available bandwidth is available. Most dedicated server providers cap you at 10Mbps, and many will bump you up to 100Mbps for free if you can justify the need. In my case, my VPS (Linode) is capped at 50Mbps upstream, but a ticket to Linode can get that raised as much as necessary (the VPS being on a gigabit pipe with low contention). So if I get such a scenario, a trouble ticket and 5 minutes later I'll be pushing hundreds of megs. Of course, the bandwidth costs would add up!

I think 35mbs upload is not a problem. Many people on WHT talk are selling budget servers with 10mbs and people buy them. Your problem connection reliability and electricity. You have no backup if your electricity or Internet goes down.

Yeah, I remember talking to Optimum Lightpath a couple years ago. They wanted some ridiculous rate for 50Mbps. I think it was upwards of $3k/month.

For your safety and peace of mind, I'd make sure you get that in writing in your agreement.

This dude want's to 'build' home data center , _there is nothing bad_ about it as long _you do not host_ mission-critical or projects in production or whatsoever. In my toilet I have like few old servers and I'm able to get 380 mbps up/down, the router comes with dual port intel nic, so I'm able to get 100k+ states with open bsd pf . So I'm happy with it, using it as a backup streaming for CDN which costs me 60$/month (network+power) in total

Two things. First, if a visitor is given an IP address that is not accessible, they will not be able to browse. Their PC does not automatically try the next IP(s) available. Second, how are you connecting these different pipes, with different IP assignments, into your network? And how are you assigning the IPs to hosts? 1:1 NAT? Or are you assigning the public IPs directly to the hosts? If the latter, then you are going to run into default gateway problems on the hosts. The whole notion of different public IPs for the same hosts/sites/services on the SAME server, is just bad practice all around. When companies advertise different IPs for the same hostname, it's because they're in different locations (logically or physically). You do not assign different public IPs to the same host in the name of redundancy-- that is what proper multihoming with proper BGP announcements are for.

Unlikely? No, completely improbable and damn near impossible for a couple of reasons... 1: Its a maximum of 32 users, many will be split between far less than 32 as usually all the ports are not in use. 2: Even if you had 32 people on it they would all have to be maxing their connection at once which with a 150 meg connection would pretty much be nearly impossible. 3: Everyone would have to subscribe to the max speed (As you mentioned). There is almost almost no way this would happen. There is just no way that the 2.4g/1.2g would ever get saturated... NO WAY. If there was saturation anywhere down the line it would likely be the CO because they don't have enough transit to satisfy the demand of their customers. 3:

Electricity can be kept with running a (Diesel) powered generator... not too expensive. No SLA with Verizon could pose a problem.. but thank you, as you're the first person to see outside the box that 35mbit isn't the worse upstream that's ever been offered...

Was just thinking, everyone sees having more bandwidth at home meaning you can host more at home, but even though you have more capacity at home, everyone else does as well. What happens when someone else with one of these 115/35 connections tries to download data from your data center? They'll congest your entire circuit and still only be able to get 30% of their download speed. Millions and millions of people now have 30 Mbit/sec+ at home, how is 35 Mbit/sec of upload going to give them all fast and reliable connections? Then, as was already brought up, you're NOT going to be able to BGP multi-home over a standard FiOS circuit. Even if you could, your 5 IPs aren't going to be globally routable over the redundant paths and I doubt Verizon will agree to announce someone else's IPs over that link either.

That's awesome! How do you monitor the temperature? I would love to be able to do that and be able to graph it like that.

You pay $60 for 380Mbps of bandwidth and power, I find that hard to believe.

Do you plan on telling people your running a datacenter from your home? I can tell you i'd never buy hosting from you for anything serious. Even if technically you have all the basis covered, I still wouldn't trust it. But perhaps there are people who would and/or you don't plan on disclosing that info.

Not always. I've seen 64 customer PON ports - I'm actually running some out in Eastern Washington (converting them to active ethernet, though - GPON is nasty). The older GPON systems also operate at a 2.4/1.2 optical bandwidth, but only offer 1Gbps uplink capacity (usually out of a quad PON card), making all that extra optical capacity meaningless. The end result? You're looking at a hardcore potential bottleneck at the provider end - especially if they start doing HD-IPTV with IGMP.