How hard is it to run a server at your house?

[tablatronix]

I would find a host that allows you to park domains with a custom page. Or just pay a $5/m shared hosting and direct all dns records to it..

If you do not pay for a business isp and or static ip, your isp could shut you down or block you, and the port scanners and bots will relentlessly attack you.

[yada]

I would find a host that allows you to park domains with a custom page. Or just pay a $5/m shared hosting and direct all dns records to it..

If you do not pay for a business isp and or static ip, your isp could shut you down or block you, and the port scanners and bots will relentlessly attack you.

Domain sales as I see it are a volume business. That means each one needs to be as cheap as possible. I'm also banking on the fact that one in a thousand might be worth several hundred thousand. I missed registering a site that sold for $1,000,000USD by about an hour. Domains are like land, once its all bought up it will go up in value. There was a useless homestead in califonia that was sold for almost nothing, now called silicon valley. It can get expensive when you have 100+ domains that you are just sitting on, then they try to sell you all this other stuff like privacy, when in actuality you should never give your real details out to whois. Ever since I missed my million dollar opportunity I have been hooked on buying domains.   

[tablatronix]

Thousands of domains, sounds like alot of overhead to keep them registered and private whois.

You can get away with it, I used to run my own email,ftp,httpd server on comcast for years until they eventually sent me a letter. Worked pretty well. But this was years ago, ISPs are pretty much a bunch of aholes nowadays.

Domain squatting sounds so 90s, but With all these new tlds there seems to be a renaissance.

[yada]

Thousands of domains, sounds like alot of overhead to keep them registered and private whois.

You can get away with it, I used to run my own email,ftp,httpd server on comcast for years until they eventually sent me a letter. Worked pretty well. But this was years ago, ISPs are pretty much a bunch of aholes nowadays.

Domain squatting sounds so 90s, but With all these new tlds there seems to be a renaissance.

if you are a brick and motor business you want that yourbusinessname.com. Look how many sites are xyzUSA.com or XYZ.biz. .biz? That's so unprofessional.

[Red Squirrel]

How much did that set up cost and whats your monthly internet bill/plan?

I'd hate to even know.    Most of it started off as one box, then two, then a rack, then more boxes, then more wires etc...   probably like 10-15k of stuff easily in there.  The file server alone (the one with 24 drive bays) was about 3-4k to build then add the drives.  (most were added over time as required,I still have some empty slots)

Since my ISP does not allow web servers, the connection is not really relevant with this setup as it's not really serving anything to the outside other than a game server (which is allowed), but I pay around $160/mo or so for my internet.  It's 50/30 which is super good for here.  They rolled out fibre here a few years back and I was lucky enough to be able to get it.  Only overhead cable plant  areas got it.   I would love if my ISP actually did allow web servers as I'd host all of it here too.  Would just need to invest in more batteries but that's not really a big deal as it's a one time cost vs the cost of leasing an online web server.

[sokoloff]

Would just need to invest in more batteries but that's not really a big deal as it's a one time cost vs the cost of leasing an online web server.

From experience, batteries are also a recurring cost. You either replace them every 3-5 years on a schedule, or replace them after you realize your UPS was not "U" after all and you were just paying the power inefficiency for no (or little) protection.

[ajb]

Domain squatting is a garbage thing to do.  You're planning on deliberately buying up thousands of domains that you never intend to actually use in the hope that maybe one of them will hit the jackpot and be the one that someone with deep pockets really wants.  In the meantime you inconvenience thousands of other people who just want a fucking domain name that they SHOULD be able to get with $12 and a few clicks, but now they have to negotiate with your greedy ass and pay several times as much and take tens or hundreds of times as long just because you want an easy payday. 

At least other forms of speculation, like with physical resources, can provide benefits in the form of price elasticity and supply-demand buffering, but domain squatting provides worse than zero net value to the world.  Fuck anyone who does it.

[jmelson]

Well, I'm probably nuts, but I have been running a server in my house for about 14 years.  I have an elecronics manufacturing business, and sell
stuff online throughout the world.  It is a one man shop, so I have to do everything.  I run a Linux system as the firewall, web server, email server,
FTP server, primary domain name server, etc.  I use an open source web store package that unfortunately has pretty much stopped development.  I used to use both PayPal and Authorize.net as my payment processors, but Authorize.net changed their encryption scheme, and the store doesn't support that, so now I'm just with PayPal.

You really need static IP for a server.  That requires a business account with most ISP's.

The hardest thing to set up was the DNS, there just wasn't a whole lot of docs on how to create the files.

Our electricity is insanely reliable, I don't have a UPS and the system has been running 216 days, even with hackers constantly trying to break in.

I do use a few special things to help:

1.  There is only one net-accessible account on the machine, with a crazy 14-character password.

2.  I run denyhosts with very tight limits.  If a specific IP address has 3 login failures over 2 weeks, they are put in the hosts.deny list for 6 months, essentially making my machine disappear to them.  The botnets keep track of the "horizon" of this blocking.  Exactly 2 weeks to the hour after I put this in, my attacks dropped from 1000+/day to 3/day!  So, the botnets are coordinating their attacks.  Scary!

3.  I set up a cron script to check daily for any altered files on the system.  Just in case somebody DOES get in, I will at least get warned.

Jon

[Red Squirrel]

Yeah static is a must to do it right.  That is the hardest part of hosting at home since most ISPs won't provide that.  For me I have a couple things hosted at home and had to rig together a script to update my online DNS server so it's a bit mickey mouse and I would not run anything important that way but it's just a game server. The web stuff is at OVH.  If I could get static, and also permission, I would host it all at home.      It's a bit reckless to not have a UPS though.  Your power is reliable... until it's not.  Trees can fall on lines, and maintenance sometimes requires power to go out.  I would at very least put in an hour worth of battery backup.

As for batteries being an "ongoing cost" that is false if you take good care of them.  Though I admit I had 2 die on me from shorted cell but I consider that an abnormal fault.  I'm also using cheap Canadian Tire batteries that are actually rated for starting and marine and not true deep cycle (mistake I made originally and then wanted to try to stick to same battery for any new ones), I would hope more expensive solar grade ones would tough longer without a premature failure.  Currently my oldest battery is from 2013, it was to replace the first one that died prematurely.  The other one I never replaced so was running on 3 for a while then brought my shed's solar battery inside and hooked it up.   My UPS is not the best either as it has zero programmable features.  I find it starts to charge at a higher rate than I'm comfortable with after a power outage.  I would prefer it to just float and then have a monthly equalize. 

Downside of these consumer batteries is they change the models all the time so like none of them really match which is not good.  They're all in parallel though as it's as 12v system.

Eventually I think I will upgrade to golf cart batteries and then throw all 4 of these in the shed for the solar once I figure out how to keep the panels snow free year round.

yeah batteries and even servers need to be replaced at some point but that's cheaper than paying per month, or paying MORE every time you want an upgrade. Most data centres for example will add $20+/mo to your bill if you want more ram or disk space.