OT - Free web hosting recommendations?

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Thanks. Now, money...

[Gandalf Parker]

OK I will try to use shorter phrases rather than a (complaints received)long pitch. Feel free to ask.

It takes FAR less computer to server something, than it does to create it. Whether its web pages, graphics, sound, even game files.

A server is mostly a network card, CPU, and memory. The rest can be the absolute total minimum that any shop will put in and it will probably do you well.

Administrating any server for any reason is 90% find the answer online and cut&paste the answer into a file. If you are an above average user, then you can move up to admin. If you are comfortable with directorys, files, editing, moving, permissions, etc of files on windows, then you can consider windows admin. If on linux then consider linux admin.

IMPORTANT: for the statements above, admin does NOT include installs and compiles. Thats a WHOLE different headache. But it falls ABOVE admin (as in, it can be put off as the NEXT step up for you). I have no shame whatsoever in paying someone to do the installs on systems that I admin for years after that.

[Ed Kolis]

Well, so much for using that old machine as a server... it has only ISA slots (no PCI), and I haven't been able to find any ISA network cards anywhere...

[dogscoff]

Go through the personal ads at the back of your local newspaper- You'll pick up an old 486 or P1 for peanuts.

[Gandalf Parker]

Sparc servers that my old ISP managed 30,000 users on can be snagged off of Ebay nowadays for under $200. If I didnt already have a garage full of "in lieu of severance pay" from the dot-com crashes Id be tempted to bid on some.

[Thermodyne]

"Garage full of Sparc servers"

Turns green with envy and greed.

I have a porting of FreeBSD that will run on Sparc systems, that could be an adventure worth the time it took

[Gandalf Parker]

heehee. That does read wrong. I think I have 3 or 4 sparcs, then a bunch of multiplexes and routers and mux's. All stuff that wants to have a T1 pipeline plugged into it.
If I wanted to invest in a T1 feed Id be all set.

[Thermodyne]

T-1’s Yuck.

Frames, ATM’s, relays, svc’s, pvc’s; its all so simple until the phone company screws it up to maximize billing. Every time it blows up, it’s from one lata to the next. And every time you turn around, there is a new lata that has to be crossed, for a fee of course. I think we have 46 T-1 circuits and a pair of T-3 at work now, and all in all they work well. Other than weather related problems, most of the outages are because the phone company changes the provisioning at one end and never gets the word out to the other end. Have to watch the actual through put too; they tend to try to sell 3mg on 1.5mg circuits.

I live out on the fringe of the DC urban area, just a little past where the endless city stops, so back in the day it was dialup at about 20k actual, or ISDN. So I got a 128k ISDN line pulled and it was not too bad. Then the beast from New York bought out the local phone company. The ISDN bill was an inch thick! ISDN is timed, so I had it set up to drop the connection if idle for more than 90 seconds. When it negotiates a new connection, there is an 8 step handshake and authentication process IIRC, well to make a long story short, they were billing me 11 minutes for an 8 second connection negotiation. They billed me 34 hours in one 24 hour period. I had the server set up to connect on demand and lots of stuff running off the scheduler. I almost died when I got that first bill from them! It went from about $60 to over a $1000. I could have had a T-1 for what they billed me! Then I put a dish in, and regretted it from day one. I needed good weather here and good weather in Atlanta too. Then the county made me buy a license, because the dish was over 4 feet in diameter. Then they made me mount it 14 feet off the ground, because it was a radiation hazard. The damn thing never was reliable, every time they had storms in Atlanta; (every damn summer day and night I think) it dropped off line. At first, it wouldn’t work if it was just heavy clouds here, but I had a guy rework the transmit horn and he solved that problem. He suggested that I never ever stand in front of it after that too. It’s still up there and can still track the satellite. Every now and again I find a transponder that I can use, but with the cable service I seldom need it.

[dogscoff]

He suggested that I never ever stand in front of {a satellite dish} after that too

Cool! Have you tried cooking sausages, marshmallows etc in front of it?

[Gandalf Parker]

Thermodyne said:
T-1’s Yuck.

Frames, ATM’s, relays, svc’s, pvc’s; its all so simple until the phone company screws it up to maximize billing. Every time it blows up, it’s from one lata to the next. And every time you turn around, there is a new lata that has to be crossed, for a fee of course. I think we have 46 T-1 circuits and a pair of T-3 at work now,

OW! OW! OW! you use terms I wanted to forget. I didnt want to know them in the first place. I was pretty good at avoiding it all. When they brought me in it was to convert them from a BBS to an ISP. All the way thru to their growth to national coverage and T3's/D1's I fought their efforts to "spread" me across to the networking side. "Im happy handling all these servers with every OS anyone has ever heard of and every toy you keep throwing on them but once it leaves the machine its NOT MINE!" Its pissed em off but they werent paying me enough to change my mind.