Web Hosting in the Office / Connetivity Questions

Frank_Rizzo · 22 Jan 2008 at 21:53

I ask the same question at exactly the same time every year. The reply has always been the same: it's too expensive and not worth it

What are the latest connectivity options for hosting a webserver in the office?

The webserver is database intensive but has light users and traffic. At peak around 30 users a time are performing small to medium queries. The rest of the time it's just casual browsers and search engines.

1. Are leased lines still ridiculously expensive?

2. Is SDSL a feasible option?

3. What kind of bandwidth would be required for light us as stated above?

4. If an ADSL / SDSL solution is inplace what kind of downtime can be expected per month due to faults? How long do faults take to rectify.

4b. I seem to notice that the BT line here has never gone down AFAIK since it was upgraded to ~5Mb. Are lines now more reliable?

5. If bandwidth is an issue what about this new bonding technology where you can have multiple lines tied together? This I believe also multiplies the upload speed (and thus gives more bandwidth for those accessing the webserver).

I doubt much has changed so I guess it's another year of me renting dedicated servers.

bigredshark · 22 Jan 2008 at 22:00

Dedicated server make far more sense, similar money overall, clean power, air conditioning and decent connectivity.

Leased lines aren't available for DSL prices but depending where you are they can be reasonably priced (we're talking starting at 6k a year or so).

SDSL could be feasible for you, it's pretty reliable and suits the use you're describing, latency will be pretty nasty compared to datacenters though.

Depends on the line regarding reliability and the provider regarding fix times (also whether you have enhanced care). Get it from BT it could be out for an entire week if it goes wrong.

Lines aren't substantially more reliable than they were a few years ago, a little bit but not much.

Bonding is possible but bear in mind you need upstream speed, which is where ADSL struggles, so you'd be better with SDSL. Also bonding just gives you more to go wrong in the end.

I wouldn't look at hosting servers outside of a datacenter to be honest. It's not worth the hassle unless your on some stupidly small budget.

mejinks · 22 Jan 2008 at 23:25

1. Not so bad now they have to compete with SDSL, Les and other products. How much of a budget do you have?
2. Depends where you are. www.samknows.com has a checker you can enter your exchange into to check if sdsl is available.
3. YMMV. The limiting factor would be the bandwidth to return results. If its a simple webpage then ordinary ADSL will be fine. How many users per day?
4. Depends on where the fault is really, if its with the line, BT usually repair in a day, if its with the ISP, you are at their mercy. I've not had more than a couple of hours unplanned downtime with my ISP.
4b. Depends on things like quality of the line etc. If you have a new line, that rules out things like excessive noise.
5. Your ISP will have to support bonding for this to work (think Enta net) which means the cost of the ADSL/SDSL line will likely outweigh the benefit of a leased line, which has an SLA of something like 99.9% uptime.

What sort of budget are you looking at?

Caged · 23 Jan 2008 at 00:05

If you're renting dedicated servers, why do you not know exactly how much data they're pushing? Then you can decide on bandwidth requirements.

Still, to create a server room which is temperature controlled, secure, and put in redundant power etc will cost a lot more than several years worth of external hosting. I'd stick with your current arrangement.

Frank_Rizzo · 23 Jan 2008 at 10:30

Budget: Not really a problem but value is. I only buy if something is value and this is what currently prohibits me from going with office hosting.

I checked on the BT site for ADSL and it says I can have 512K for £170pm (plus £600 setup). That is obviously not good value as I could actually co-lo for less than £50 with free setup!

There has to be a time in the future where the costs of office hosting comes down to a more realistic level where the cost / facilities pay off is good.

I've asked this question every year for 8 years now and I guess there will be another 8 years before the value target is reached.

I guess the best option is to stick with dedicated but I tell you, i really hate the way webhosts treat customers as suckers with their pricing plans - just don't get me started on this

Co-lo is an option but the nearest decent one to me is 2+ hours away. Local ones just seem to be small leased line facilities themselves such as cottage industry hosting providers.

In summary: I'm surrounded with test servers here in my own office and I'd really like these to be in production here, where I can reboot the darn things at will or swap out a disk in seconds. But the costs of wiring up to the www are ridiculously expensive for what you get.

Unless someone knows an alternative I'll leave this until next year

tolien · 23 Jan 2008 at 11:08

It's not just the internet connection, but the conditions: DCs have condition power, air conditioning, fire suppression, "decent" security, that isn't ever going to really become any cheaper.

Frank_Rizzo · 23 Jan 2008 at 11:23

Sure, but I have an air con unit, UPS, halfords car fire extinguisher and the office admin staff is fiercer than any doberman pincer

I don't think those things would apply in this case. Not wishing to host 1000 shared accounts, and not wishing to host an online banking cluster.

stoofa · 23 Jan 2008 at 12:48

We host our own website/webservices etc.
However we are on the end of a leased line.
Leased lines are expensive, in fact they are too expensive.
However if you want an 8mb/8mb 1:1 contention link then unfortunately you do have to pay for it.

We actually moved from 4mb/4mb about a year ago.
As it meant putting in fibre rather than simply bundling together more ISDN connections it cost us an awful lot.
In the end we had a 45mb line put in and we're currently tired off to 8mb.

On ADSL products it is always the upload which is the killer and remember when people are getting data from your server it is this upload which will govern how fast they can get that data.