Dedicated Server, VPS, and VoIP web hosting solutions Blog | Ping Pipe Power

It’s a guilty fantasy that a lot have people have had: running their own dedicated server from their home internet connection. There are many potential advantages that come to mind when considering “cottage industry hosting”. These have to be considered with the many downsides to home-based dedicated servers.

The biggest upside is that you would not have to pay monthly hosting to a dedicated server rental company, you would be only be using more of the internet connection that you already pay for, and can probably recycle an old computer to use as the server.

Before you go up in the attic to search for that old Commodore 64 or start the task of  untangling that birds-nest-ball of Ethernet cable,  make a telephone call to your internet service provider or have a look at their website and read the Terms of Service. Most ISP’s – usually the cable or telephone company – frown on this behavior.

The bandwidth is probably available. Technically everyone could run a dedicated server from their home.  This possibility usually isn’t included in most ISP’s business models, though. At least not the successful ones.  Internet bandwidth is not limitless, and unfortunately also is not free. Just like everyone, your ISP pays a monthly fee for their  internet connection.

Successful home internet service providers usually base their revenue projections on the fact that most people will probably only use a fraction of their potential monthly bandwidth allotment. If everyone in your neighbourhood was to use all their monthly available connection your  Internet Service Provider would have on spend money on purchasing additional bandwidth from their “upstream providers”. It is unfortunate that there is not a bandwidth tree you can plant and pick more as you need it. If you owned a bandwidth tree you wouldn’t  need to pay your home internet service provider company for anything. You’d save even more  money.

Sadly,  the reality is that your ISP probably won’t allow you to run a dedicated server on your basic monthly internet connection. Even if you could sneak by their Terms of Service the fact still remains that the one piece of wire running into your home for you internet connection is a single point of failure.  If your home internet connection was ever unavailable your dedicated server would be offline too. The possibility of infrequent temporary outages may seem tolerable if you are a home hobbyist, but if you value always-on reliability for your dedicated servers they will need to have at least two separate connections to the internet.  This fantasy is starting to get expensive. That old computer you were planning on recycling for the project isn’t worth the cost of redundant internet connections.

The dedicated servers in the ‘hood fantasy is starting to get extremely expensive.

There are more downsides, too. If you are planning on using an old computer as a dedicated server leave it in the attic if its processor is slower than a Pentium 4.  Technicalities keep getting in the way of this fantasy. Technically you could hook up any computer to the internet and call it a dedicated server. Be aware that unless it has  at least the power of an Intel Pentium 4 processor in it, that old computer from the attic probably won’t be doing much dedicated-server-type-work for you.

There are many great dedicated server hosting companies that  rent dedicated servers together with fast bandwidth for one low monthly price. Most well established professional dedicated server rental companies have much bigger connections to the internet than are offered to home subscribers. Anyone can throw a server in their basement and call themselves a hosting company. Those people are really just home hobbyists running dedicated servers in the ‘hood. Whatcha gonna do ?

The best solution is to rent a dedicated server from a company like PingPipe that can charge you one low monthly fee for both your dedicated server hardware rental bundled together with its internet traffic. Fortunately for the consumer servers have got more powerful over the past few years and have become relatively less expensive, while internet traffic costs have lowered at the same time. The promotion at PingPipe this month features Quad core servers with 10TB traffic.

Dedicated server hosting doesn’t have to be expensive. There are slashed setup fees and Intel Core 2 Duo processor  dedicated servers with PingPipe starting at just $89 per month

There is a wide choice of server configurations available, this makes it difficult when deciding which will best fill your needs. You will need to consider any minimum system requirements of any software you will be installing on the server, your plans for expanding your online presence, as well as your budget. PingPipe offers a wide selection of base hardware configurations, and our highly experienced sales technicians are available to assist you in making your choice. If your site gets a relatively small amount of traffic, or you plan to use your server for backup or fail-over, our least expensive configuration would be a great match for you. We are currently offering a Intel Dual Core 2.4 Ghz server with 2GB RAM starting at just $89/month. If you will be using your server for VOIP, for currency and foreign exchange trading, or as a gameserver or database server (for instance) you will probably need more processor power. Quite a few of our clients start their VOIP business with one of our Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 servers This server works great for a new business, and with a price under $150/month is very affordable. Businesses who need even more power often choose one of our dual processor dedicated servers when they sign up. One great advantage in choosing PingPipe is that you can seamlessly upgrade to a more powerful server at anytime. In many situations it is better to just add another server to your account and start load balancing. We recommend that you monitor your server’s resource usage, and when you notice sustained levels of 50% or more of capacity, contact our Sales team. They have many years of webhosting experience and will help you find the most cost efficient solution.

PingPipe gives you the choice of where you have your dedicated server. For most people who want their servers to be in North America it really doesn’t matter which city you choose on the dedicated server order form Our central US (Texas) location is popular with online gamers who want super low latency to all parts of the US and Canada. Lots of companies with VOIP servers choose our Virginia location. There’s superior connectivity to both Europe and the rest of North America there, due to it’s close proximity to Washington, DC, New York City, and the rest of the US east coast. Our California location (west coast) is in the most populated area of the most populated state in the the US. Our main upstream provider connects from there to network points of presence in Seattle, Chicago, Toronto, New York. Atlanta, and Miami. Businesses in Asia and Australia love this location. The low latency to their home countries is great, and by choosing PingPipe they also have fast connections to North America and the rest of the world. PingPipe only uses premium bandwidth. Traffic within North America is always quick, no matter which of our facilities you choose to host your data. If most of your traffic will be from outside North America, for the quickest downloads choose the PingPipe location closest to your online visitors when deciding on your server hardware.

Choosing your  uplink port speed for your dedicated server largely depends on what you will be using it for. Both choices include our 100% network uptime guarantee.

PingPipe single processor dedicated servers are setup on a 10Mb/s port burstable port. This speed is usually sufficient if you use your server for backup, or if you are hosting a new or relatively low traffic website. A faster port speed means that more your data and web content will be able to reach the internet quicker. We keep our server prices low so you can choose adding optional services such as the port upgrade. Most clients with these servers choose the 100 Mb/s option (just $15/month).

PingPipe dual processor dedicated servers all include the optional upgrade to a fully-burstable 100 Mb/s port for free.

It’s what drives your online presence and how visitors find your site. Keeping your domain name registration current is important. Often it is difficult to remember your domain renewal date, and the last thing you want is for your site to not be visible. When you sign up for webhosting with PingPipe and purchase a domain name (or transfer your existing domain to our registrar service) you no longer will have this worry. PingPipe will automatically send you reminders starting 60 days before the date your domain is set to expire, and provide quick and convenient renewal directly from your client area.


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