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I have 50 demo sites (running on .Net 3.5) that are very resource intensive. So shared hosting or using a Virtual Server is not working out. These sites are not production and do not use a lot of bandwidth.

I can buy a server from Dell for about $600 that will work nicely, however I do not want to pay $100+ for the colocation. How hard is it to configure my router & server to host a bunch of websites off that server from my house over Verizon dsl? It's ok if the url's contain funny port #s. Like: http://demo6.mydomain.com:444

I'm aware that verizon does not allow this - please don't remind me here.

user29266
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    I'm kind of fuzzy on why you're saying that your provider won't allow XYZ but I want to do it anyway...isn't that asking others to encourage unethical practices, breaking rules that end up giving sysadmins more grief? What if one of your sysadmins from Verizon were on this forum...you're asking him how to add to his own headaches, aren't you? Or is this framed as more of a stick-it-to-"The-Man" type of a rebellion? Just asking for some perspective, that's all. – Bart Silverstrim Dec 16 '09 at 14:16
  • Why do you say that Verizon doesn't allow this? Is it stipulated in their service agreement that you won't run internal servers? I used to have Verizon DSL and had no problem hosting my own internal web sites and making them available on the internet. – joeqwerty Dec 16 '09 at 14:47
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    Most do, for residential customers, have it stipulated that you don't run servers. They don't necessarily *block* the traffic but they will use it as an excuse to cut your service off if they discover spikes in traffic or you become a "problem". – Bart Silverstrim Dec 16 '09 at 15:26

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If they're just demo sites do you need them all running at same time? With some hosting companies that host your site on a VM you can pay a little more and have them up your resources. If your current hosting company doesn't offer this you may want to shop around. If these sites are that important to you in terms of them performing then you'll eventually have to bite the bullet. If you're going to do hosting from home and don't want to order the business class internet service (which offers static IP) look into using OpenDNS (http://opendns.com) and configuring your router to use them. That should somewhat help you out.

SQLChicken
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  • There like a gallery of sites. So all of them need to be up. And each site uses like 150 MB of RAM. I'm using kickassvps.com and have a server with 2gb of ram. But at this point if makes more sense to host it locally so I can get more resources since I don't need the bandwidth. The domain is at GoDaddy.com and I'm using their total dns service. So this should make managing the DNS easier. – user29266 Dec 16 '09 at 13:54
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It's not hard at all, you just need to define the external and internal virtual-servers/ports, most routers let you do this quite easily, even with 50 sites.

Obviously performance will be poor but you should give it a try at least, oh and make sure you backup your router config first so you can go back to where you are today easily ok :)

Chopper3
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