Renting a server for downloads?

Rainer · 4 Sep 2009 at 20:33

Hello guys, know this doesn't fit perfectly into general hardware but couldn't find anything more appropriate, feel free to move it if necessary.

I'm moving off to uni this month so obviously i'm not going to be able to use bittorrent/usenet or p2p stuff any more.

I know a lot of people rent servers and use them to download onto and then FTP into them.

Does anyone have any experience of something similar?

If so could someone point me in the right direction in terms of good places to rent, what to look out for etc, as I really have no idea what I'm looking for.

Thanks very much everyone!

Conrad11 · 4 Sep 2009 at 20:38

You could have your server at home depending on your upload speed.

Rainer · 4 Sep 2009 at 20:48

Yeah thought of that but to be honest it would mean buying the server from scratch which isn't something I fancy. Mum wouldn't be too happy either because it kills our internet speeds downloading all the time!

LizardKing · 4 Sep 2009 at 21:15

Amazon's ec2 is very useful for this use, not that i condone it

Chris1712 · 4 Sep 2009 at 21:57

Usenet seems rarely blocked at uni's, I'd wait until you get there and see if anything works. Theres always port tunnelling.

blueacid · 4 Sep 2009 at 22:29

All you need is SOMETHING which you can SSH into from uni. Then you can tunnel transfers via that. So any web hosting which has SSH access should* do you. However,yes, usenet is rarely blocked. Which uni are you going to?

*sometimes not!

Rainer · 5 Sep 2009 at 11:08

Am off to sheffield. Thing is, I don't really download an awful lot, never more than 40GB a month really. What's the cheapest server for that sorta usage? I looked at the EC2 thing but a lot of people were saying its a bit risky and likely to get shut down?

Seft · 5 Sep 2009 at 11:51

Hi, OVH do cheap dedicated servers located in the UK under the Kimsufi brand.

www.kimsufi.co.uk

Had one a while back and was fairly satisfied.

LizardKing · 5 Sep 2009 at 12:12

Rainer said:
Am off to sheffield. Thing is, I don't really download an awful lot, never more than 40GB a month really. What's the cheapest server for that sorta usage? I looked at the EC2 thing but a lot of people were saying its a bit risky and likely to get shut down?

I doubt it will be shut down anytime soon, its getting bigger by the day and there are a lot of business's that use them. Cloud computing is the future

SBD · 5 Sep 2009 at 12:52

This would work perfectly for u

http://www.hidemyass.com/vpn/

I lived with the guy who has developed it, I'v tested it for him and it works really well.

Rainer · 5 Sep 2009 at 16:05

Nah I don't mean EC2 will get shut down, I mean my account will if they realise what I'm using it for. Or is this unlikely?

blueacid · 6 Sep 2009 at 00:19

Rainer said:
Nah I don't mean EC2 will get shut down, I mean my account will if they realise what I'm using it for. Or is this unlikely?

I suppose it would; but then you'd just have to go somewhere else. Doubt they'd do more than just get a bit stroppy. A VPN system would be easier I'm sure. I'd say in order of things to try:

1 - First try a VPN service; the 1 month on hidemyass will cost under a tenner. Well worth a bash.

2 - Check out EC2. Don't forget your torrent client will upload while you're transferring things, and THEN you'll need to transfer the completed download from the EC2 service to yourself. Bear in mind disk space used too.
If we assume you'll want to end up with 40gig worth of stuff, that that means your EC2 downloads 40gig, and uploads 80gig (1:1 share ratio on torrents assumed, PLUS a transfer to you), with 10gig of space used. Per month, that'll be:

40x$0.10 for downloads, 80x$0.17 for uploads, and 10x$0.10 for the storage. Makes $18.60 a month. This assumes you use the cheaper US option; you might find that transfers from there to uni are a little slower, but hey I'm sure you'll cope!

3 - Hire and manage your own server, as already mentioned. £20 a month from that provider, not looked around much more!
3 - Finally

Rainer · 6 Sep 2009 at 21:52

Thanks everyone. Hidemyass looks pretty good actually, hopefully should all work at sheffield too. Really appreciate your help, thanks very much!

z0mbi3 · 7 Sep 2009 at 09:26

If you're going to pay for a service you might as well see if usenet works at uni first.

Rainer · 7 Sep 2009 at 10:58

Yeah, my only issue is I think I'd rather pay the small price of getting a VPN or something than having the network admins seeing all the stuff coming through my usenet.

MasterPlan1 · 7 Sep 2009 at 11:26

There is one usenet, I forget which, but it allows downloading via http, my friend uses it.

z0mbi3 · 7 Sep 2009 at 11:27

Rainer said:
Yeah, my only issue is I think I'd rather pay the small price of getting a VPN or something than having the network admins seeing all the stuff coming through my usenet.

They won't be able to see all the stuff, it's just bandwidth to them. Use an SSL usenet server for extra security.

Honeslty if usenet isn't blocked then paying money for a server for VPN or whatever is just needlessly complicating things. Plus you get all the benefits that usenet has over bitorrent.