Internet Hosting

[Viscosity]

Most specifically for wyrmmage and his all known smarts on Internet and games. I see the internet as a space of nothing, just computers linked to one another to form this. That said why pay for a host? Could I not make it on my personal PC? All I want is a site to embed my games into the page and let people play, kinda like an MMO but not quite.. Can this be done?

Could you even do it to the Awkward site if we wanted that?

[wyrmmage]

*bows*

ty, ty


You can host things from your own machine, but there are some reasons you might not want to.

One of the problems with hosting on your own PC is that your ISP changes your IP address every once in awhile. Depending on the situation, your IP could be changed every six months, or every week; it's essentially random. In order to get around this, you either have to buy a dedicated IP address from your ISP, or you can us software to try and get around the problem. I've never used any of the software that's supposed to help with this, so I don't know for sure how well it works.

Another problem is that your ISP limits how much bandwidth you can use per month, and it's not normally a straight cap; you get to use a "reasonable" amount, and then you get shut off. This, combined with the fact that if anyone is accessing anything on your computer, it's probably going to be either somewhat slow for them, or it's going to slow down how quickly you can do stuff on the web.

Of course, you may be fine with that, and as long as whatever you're hosting doesn't get too popular, then it probably wont be a problem. Then you're just left with getting a dedicated IP, which I think is usually pretty cheap

awkward-games.com uses a surprisingly large amount of bandwidth, so we probably wouldn't be able to do something like this. The last three months we used 670, 900, and 886 megabytes, and this month we've already used 149 megabytes. Our craziest month so far was June of 2009, where we used 1.58 gigabytes of bandwidth ^_^

[Derfmancher]

awkward-games.com uses a surprisingly large amount of bandwidth, so we probably wouldn't be able to do something like this. The last three months we used 670, 900, and 886 megabytes, and this month we've already used 149 megabytes. Our craziest month so far was June of 2009, where we used 1.58 gigabytes of bandwidth ^_^

Wow.. I didn't know we had hit that high. TY Google Analytics?

As to your other points.. all valid.

Another point is getting listed on a DNS server. If you are behind some ISPs.. that can be an issue.

A lot also rides on if your local internet is wired or not.
I would not want to run a server on "Clear" or satellite internet. (Or your next door buddy's wifi.)

[Viscosity]

I had a feeling there was going to be major issues..I figured it was possible but not pratical.. And that it is.. I actually have a dedicated IP address *I am supposed to have* anyways due to the fact I got charged with Federal Bank Fraud they traced an IP and turns out it came back to me..Now I really didnt do it and they know I didnt. Because some how another I walked away with a 180$ fine.. How fishy did that sound..

But ya, I guess I wont be doing that anytime soon..

Has anyone thought about getting in on the MMO games? People pay good money to play these and most are so simple to code and create. Hell some are Flash games..I think the correct term is like an Idle MMO.. Where its free to play but you also put in some extras they must pay money for to get..

Myspace and Facebook are loaded with these..

[Giggleanthropisticon]

Actually, the only problems I know of private hosting is, what wyrmmage said, your ISP will likely not like you using a lot of bandwidth (if your hosting uses a lot, so if it doesn't, you're good) and the fact that you have to make sure your host machine stays on 24/7. I know from experience that you can very easily host things such as a website or downloadable content. All you have to do, is create your own domain and server (preferably 2/3 servers, one for the domain controller and/or one for the gateway and one for the website/downloadable content). Make one server a web server and keep your website/download content on it and make the domain controller server a DNS server (the DNS service is so people can visit your website by the website name and not the IP address) and configure the domain controller to use the web server's website publicly. Give each server static IP addresses, so their address won't change and all that's left, is to pay for the operating systems (idealistically Windows Server 2008, but Server 2003 works just as well). You don't even need 2/3 separate computers. Just get a fairly good computer and you can host all 2/3 servers on virtual machines! Heck, my teacher and classmates used to race to see how quickly we could set this all up practically once a week (usually took us about an hour, mostly from waiting for the operating systems to install and all the restarts required during the setup process).