fyi - my experience with Dreamhost - Re: [SGVLUG] recommend ahosting provider

[Charles N Wyble]

> ISP's were quick to wise up about at-home hosting -- At my ISP [prodigy
> -> pacbell -> SBC -> yahoo ->att], it's in the TOS that anyone
> "provisioned after <some date of some year I forget now...>", may NOT
> "host" any services -- as you might guess, I got provisioned before that
> date :)  (Of course, the TOS may have changed again since I last read
> it...)
>   
Hmmm. Its interesting that they state that, but its not enforced. In 
fact SBC Yahoo
has a help page that specifically lets you get ports unblocked. So they 
are quite friendly
to hosting as far as I can tell.

I suppose if you abuse the privilige they will come down on you and 
point at the TOS.
I have had internet with Verizon DSL, SBC/Yahoo DSL, and now Time Warner 
Cable.
I have hosted a server on all of those connections.
SBC/Yahoo was the only one that I needed to do anything, and it was a 
fully automated
process that took about 24 hours to take into affect (probably a nightly 
batch job).

> Some ISP's will let you host.  Others will charge more for the
> "privilege", and still others may do analysis and traffic-shaping/QoS to
> ensure you "play well with others"
>   
Verizon/SBC/Timewarner let you host with the standard packages. By let I 
mean don't actively block it.

> It's also possible that we're talking about usage levels that (far)
> exceed what you can "pump out" from your home in the first place...
>   
Quite true. I host a few websites, and one of them (casts.socallugs.com)
performed quite horribly due to streaming content. Moving it to a data 
center
made all the difference.


> [and/or little johnny wants to play warcraft/soldier of
> fortune/whatever-the-latest-shooter-is and that will chew up the
> bandwidth anyway, not to mention downloading ISO's of the latest linux
> distro...]
>
>   

This can all be fixed with a "real" router (such as a Cisco or Linux box 
running QOS scripts).
It all depends on what you want to prioritize. Upload speed more 
important. Then give it
priority.