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G0meZ

macrumors regular
Original poster
Aug 9, 2011
180
0
i want to host a site with my own dns name on my home connection running with dynamic ip addresses...
is there any free dynamic dns service you know of?
 

SeaFox

macrumors 68030
Jul 22, 2003
2,619
954
Somewhere Else
Not sure where you're located, but on most residential broadband internet service providers in the U.S. running a web-server on your connection is a TOS violation, and many providers block incoming requests to port 80 on their customers' connections. Not to mention you will need to leave that computer on 24/7.

Might be cheaper and a lot less headache to just get a regular domain name and a cheap hosting package somewhere. Should be able to swing it for less than $10/mo. I have a friend who runs a VBulletin board on a host for $5/mo I believe he told me (he recently had to change hosts over a censorship issue and found a new one that was also cheaper than what he'd been using).
 

G0meZ

macrumors regular
Original poster
Aug 9, 2011
180
0
I wouldn't unless its to access internal resources

you wouldn't what and why not?

----------

You could try No-Ip at no-ip.com

ain't free no more

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Not sure where you're located, but on most residential broadband internet service providers in the U.S. running a web-server on your connection is a TOS violation, and many providers block incoming requests to port 80 on their customers' connections. Not to mention you will need to leave that computer on 24/7.

Might be cheaper and a lot less headache to just get a regular domain name and a cheap hosting package somewhere. Should be able to swing it for less than $10/mo. I have a friend who runs a VBulletin board on a host for $5/mo I believe he told me (he recently had to change hosts over a censorship issue and found a new one that was also cheaper than what he'd been using).

yeah...hm...you may have a point there...
 

assembled

macrumors regular
Jan 12, 2009
116
0
London
If you just want to put up a website, pay a hosting company for a virtual host on a managed server

If you want more, get an AWS account and run an AWS Micro instance which is free for the first year

By all means setup a web server on a hime machine as a dev/stage server before you deploy, but running on a dynamic IP on a residential service is more pain than its worth.

I run several web accessible services from home so I can stream TV etc, but I have a 40mb down 10mb up connection with 5 static addresses on a business account.

All of the web servers that I have are either on free AWS accounts (very easy to just setup a new account every 11 months and migrate everything on it) or a paid VPS with Plesk panel so I can run 10 sites on a server that costs me £15 per month and I charge £25 per month per site £250 per month income) to manage their site and backing it up etc, while also providing them with access and

Running something from home on a dynamic address was worth it while hosting was still expensive, but these days, why bother...

If you really want to do it, and your ISP allows inbound port 80, there are several free dynamic DNS providers. I use one that also provides free IPv6 tunnels...
 

switon

macrumors 6502a
Sep 10, 2012
636
1
RE: hosting your own web/wiki sites...

Hi all,

I know several have indicated that some ISPs do not allow hosting web sites on residential accounts by blocking incoming port 80 requests, but I just want to point out that this is not the case everywhere. I have lived in two different parts of the USA and at both locations my ISPs allowed web hosting from residential accounts. Basically, the residential accounts are limited in upload bandwidth, but if that doesn't bother you or your web site visitors, then there are no issues with hosting web sites from residential accounts from the point of view of the ISP, at least in the two locations I have lived. The TOS contracts said nothing about not allowing web hosting from residential accounts. If you need faster upload speeds, then you can purchase a business account, which provides higher bandwidths, to host your web sites. Perhaps I've just been lucky with my ISPs.

Web Hosting services, which cost anywhere from $3/month to somewhat over $30/month (even out to considerably over $100/month if you require high bandwidths), depending upon exactly what services you require (such as MySQL, eCommerce, PHP, Credit Card, PayPal, Joomla, VPS, LAMP, Windows Server, 10 TB of data files, etc.), are excellent alternatives to hosting your own web sites. Indeed, when friends ask me about setting up a web site, I typically recommend that they use one of the numerous Web Hosting services, as these services require a minimal amount of computer expertise. On the other hand, if you wish to host your own web sites from home, this is not a difficult thing to do ... you may wish to do this for educational purposes in order to learn about the apache2/PHP/MySQL servers and services, or just because you want to host your own simple web site/wiki site for family and friends to have access to whenever they wish. You can run your own web-based Calendar so that the whole family has access to it from anywhere in the world, to hosting your own blog/photo portfolio for the family, especially if you have an extensive family living around the world, say perhaps with members in the military. Things like Google and Dropbox can replace many of these, but you still may wish to "run your own". If you are hosting your own servers then you typically won't run up against data limits that you often find with the cheapest Web Hosting plans.

I also find that running your own jabber server (iChat, Messages, XMPP) for video conferencing can have its own advantages.

So, in a nutshell, I agree with "assembled" that using one of the Web Hosting services is the way for most people to have an Internet presence, but I also think there are still reasons for hosting your own web/wiki sites from home. Of course, this is just my opinion, and it is clouded by the fact that I currently run several web/wiki sites from my home Mac mini server and before that ran my own Linux (LAMP) web services.

Regards,
Switon

P.S. Mac OS X Server makes hosting from home extremely easy with a minimal amount of setup required.
 

G0meZ

macrumors regular
Original poster
Aug 9, 2011
180
0
thank you all for your valuable feedback, greatly appreciated
 
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