Terms And Conditions Server

[bywater]

I am not sure but I read sometime way back that NTL do not allow you to run your own http server. Is this correct. I recently bought a domain name for a few quid and to save myself hosting costs decided to host my home website from my spare hard drive giving Gb rather than Mb to play with. I use the IIS program thats comes as standard in XP. I don't get alot of traffic visitors are mainly family and friends. Can anyone please advise on any issues about doing this. I useally get the same ip address for months at a time and just need to go to the one and one log in panel to update the ip address ocassionaly to point the domain name to ip address.

In anticipation of verification Paul

[Stuart]

I am pretty sure that while it is technically against NTL's terms and conditions, they won't object as long as your site doesn't impact other user's connections..

I wouldn't recommend running a website on an NTL home connection. Your upload will be a maximum of 300K (if you are on the three meg connection), so, even if your site just includes text and few photos, it will be painfully slow with more than a few vistors (by few, I mean less than 10).


If the site will be busy, you are better off renting webspace.

[Chris W]

You are permitted to run a webserver and this is what the user policy has to say about it:

Originally Posted by http://www.home.ntl.com/page/userpolicy

8. Websites


This section applies where we provide you with webspace as part of the Services or if you run a webserver on your own PC.

If you are running a webserver on your own PC you are solely responsible for the security and setup for that server. You are also responsible for all traffic through your server even if you personally did not originate it.

Where the website is held on our servers, you must keep your own back-up copies of any data and files. We do not keep back-up copies of your pages and will not be liable for any loss of your data or files.

You are responsible for the content of your website You are responsible for the content of your website (including any content you link to) which must comply with this User Policy. You must obtain all necessary rights and clearances for the inclusion and publication of anyone else's work on your website. (See section 10 below for more information.)

You must ensure that no adult material is displayed or linked before a clear warning has been given and the user has had the opportunity to decline to view such material.

You may not run a web site where access is subject to a premium rate telephone charge or which redirects you to such a website.

We may remove or request the removal of any material or links from your website if we consider that you are in breach of this User Policy.

If your website generates abnormally high hit levels or generates abnormally high levels of network traffic, we may at our discretion move it and/or restrict access to it and you shall be liable for any additional charges arising from our action. This may include but is not limited to suspending your Internet access.

If you are running the webserver from your own PC we may restrict or suspend your access to the Internet until we receive a written (signed Royal Mail letter) reassurance from you that any breach of this user policy has been rectified.

On termination of your Internet account and/or Interactive Services for any reason, we may delete your website from our server immediately and without any liability to you.

[SMHarman]

So their only concern is security?
I would have thought that for the £10 a year for a basic but well featured web hosting arrangement you would be better off using that rather than have visitors to your web site affecting your web browsing by utilising all your upstream.

[bywater]

Thanks for making that clear. Seems like I'm ok. I just wasn't to be sure as I think I may have read in the orginal T&C's that it wasn't allowed. Thank You very much for the comfirmation much appreciated I can now sleep at night thanks. By the way I've tried it at family and friends houses and it works well and is quiet fast.
__________________

Originally Posted by SMHarman

So their only concern is security?
I would have thought that for the £10 a year for a basic but well featured web hosting arrangement you would be better off using that rather than have visitors to your web site affecting your web browsing by utilising all your upstream.

I don't get alot of traffic really and haven't noticed much difference with webrowsing to be honest. Most of the stuff is only of interest to family and friends anyway. To be honest I'm don't spend alot of time browsing so just putting the connection to good use. The next thing will be VOIP I guess. Vonage is doing a box and as many calls as you like for £10 amonth with a real geographical number. I guess thats why NTL won't unbundle TV from phone. I've got the free line rental for a year so will take a look at this after year end.

[Ignition]

Originally Posted by bywater

The next thing will be VOIP I guess. Vonage is doing a box and as many calls as you like for £10 amonth with a real geographical number. I guess thats why NTL won't unbundle TV from phone. I've got the free line rental for a year so will take a look at this after year end.

Someone starts looking at your website when you're in the middle of a VoIP call and your voice call will go a little 'whacky' to say the least.

[SMHarman]

Originally Posted by Ignition

Someone starts looking at your website when you're in the middle of a VoIP call and your voice call will go a little 'whacky' to say the least.

Depends on the VOIP settings. BTs VOIP lines you set to 64 or 128k. (so you can have a maximum on two 128k lines added to a BT line).
They consider 128k necessary if you are putting a fax on the line, but otherwise 64k adequate, so at 64k you still have a spare 200k of bandwidth so should be fine.

[Ignition]

Originally Posted by SMHarman

Depends on the VOIP settings. BTs VOIP lines you set to 64 or 128k. (so you can have a maximum on two 128k lines added to a BT line).
They consider 128k necessary if you are putting a fax on the line, but otherwise 64k adequate, so at 64k you still have a spare 200k of bandwidth so should be fine.

Not at all, regardless of the VoIP bandwidth being used someone perusing the website will saturate upstream briefly and cause jitter on the voice call. Only way around it would be to limit the webserver's bandwidth. Even then voice call couldn't be guaranteed, there's no need to even saturate upstream to introduce jitter, you just need to eat enough bandwidth to force the VoIP application to wait for a little while.

[hjf288]

Err QOS... Packet shaping.. Bandwidth priorities can be set so that your VOIP traffic is main priority meaning that someone can browse your website (Albeit a tad slower) and your calls will be fine, considering you wont be on the phone 24/7 the problems stated dont seem to be too harsh.

Also people seem to be very anti home webservers - Not everyone has massive sites, some only have text and very small photos/images - considering that buttons, etc are cached then only dynamic sites may have a problem... considering the size of most content though you can hold a good few users without affecting your internet experience.

It isnt as bad as made out by some people - Theory from practise is alot different and this is coming from someone running a home webserver/IM server...

I can still play my games with around 20 people iming (my userbase/clan) such as EVE-Online with no problems on 2mbit...

Give it a go and see how it works for you

[Ignition]

Just playing Devil's Advocate. I have no probs with 2 PCs both playing World Of Warcraft and running Teamspeak on a single 3Mbit connection.

What I described could certainly happen and would without QoS, it's why http://www.packetcable.com exists.

[bywater]

I was amazed how easy the server was to set up. It's a great way of sharing family stuff and photos. About upload I'd have to be using upload anyway to send files to the host anyhow. Now I can save time. Sometimes this took an age so was one of the reasons I decided to DIY. The domian name costs about £2 a year. I was abit worried about security but you can download a lockdown tool from microsoft so you don't need a lot of experiance. Plus I always regularly download all patches anyway.

I have used the BT VOIP service on my NTL broadband connection with no problems the reason I ditched it was mainly cost. Calls where not that much cheaper. Vonage £9.99 all you can eat telephone deal seems great. It is really easy to install VOIP even for people who are not that technically minded. The geographical number of your choice is a real bonus and of course all select services are included in with the price. I think most of the scaremongering is Telco's running scared. You even have acess to 999 now which you didn't get with BT. The reliability of NTL cable connection now makes all this possible. If I can save a few pennies here and there I certainly will.

[BBKing]

Can anyone please advise on any issues about doing this

Yes, patch it, preferably before the patches come out, by then it's too late. I'd really recommend not using IIS. Personally I use apache and apache tomcat for my home site.

Also, make sure you've firewalled off all but port 80. I know you patch regularly but keep antivirus software running and up to date on the server as well.

[Strzelecki]

I run a small testing server on my connection (65 days uptime so far) and have never had any problems from NTL for doing so. As BBKing says, make it as secure as you can, configure the firewall properly and keep it up to date patch wise and you should be fine.

[Toto]

I would imagine that the section of the user policy refered to provides ntl with a course of action should a server cause problems on ntl's network.

In other words as long as its secure, and not doing anything naughty, you should be fine

[SMHarman]

I like the bit that says you can have adult content hosted on your homepages.

"You must ensure that no adult material is displayed or linked before a clear warning has been given and the user has had the opportunity to decline to view such material."