Gaming World Forums
General Category => Technology and Programming => Topic started by: Dust on August 01, 2009, 04:47:40 am
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I am currently running my website from a computer I have in my room that is setup as a server and it runs fine. However, I am going to college at the end of this month and I have a few questions since I'm not exactly a networking expert.
1. Am I still going to be able to run my site from this computer at college? Lets not get into the whole is it allowed argument, I'm just talking about functionality. Currently my connection is going through a router. This means that I need to forward port 80 to the IP address of the server in order for it to take web traffic (or at least that's how I understand it). However, I'm pretty sure in college our connections aren't going to be hooked up to a router. We get an Ethernet port right next to 2 outlets (each student) in our dorm room. So assuming the connection is not limited, will I be able to do this? What changes will I need to make? And what if someone else in a dorm room is already running a server on their connection? Right now if I type in my IP address I will go to my website. However, on my network all of the computers have the same IP address. I assume that this means all of the computers in the dorm rooms at college will have the same IP address. So what happens if 2 people are running web servers and I type in my IP address? Won't this cause conflicts when accessing my site?
2. (This is kind of unrelated but whatever) At college I will only get 1 Ethernet port. However, I have the web server and my main pc. I have read online that you can buy an Ethernet splitter, but this will not allow both connections to be accessed at the same time. I also read that you can get a network hub to add more connections. So if I got a network hub, I would be able to have more than one device on the internet at once? (I don't want to get a router for various reasons).
I can't provide much info about the dorm rooms because I haven't yet moved in. However, I want to get this all squared away before I go so there is no downtime.
Thanks.
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I have been to 2 universities and both have disallowed this.
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I have been to 2 universities and both have disallowed this.
How did you find this out?
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They tell you that they do not allow it via the information package that is provided with your room when you move in.
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Yeah, I would go in expecting this to not work, so you might want to start planning for that now. At my university we still can't even hook in game systems (they were supposedly making a thing to let you register them on the network but WELP), I have to share my internet to my 360 through my Macbook.
You should go to your university website, they probably have your internet agreement online somewhere (I think mine is in the student handbook). It will probably give you some info on this.
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why can't you leave your server at home and operate it remotely?
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The thing is, those ethernet ports in the wall go to a router, which may or may not feed into a different router, all of which you do not have access to. College/University internet access is specifically set up per-campus according to their rules and regulations, so without knowing what is allowed at your campus, I'll just have to venture a guess like the other posters and assume that you cannot host your site like you would have at your home. Of course, the networking guys at your university would be the one to ask, just don't get your hopes up.
You may have to settle for a solution like K-hos said and just keep it running at a system at your home, or maybe even purchase a relatively cheap hosting service.
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The cost of paying for the electricity to have your PC server turned on all the time, given that it isn't a laptop is most likely comparable to the price of paying for a cheap hosting service. We used to have a 486 running in our basement but we stopped that after a while to save energy.
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The thing is, those ethernet ports in the wall go to a router
I was hoping nobody would say that :(. If that's the case then I highly doubt this would work anyways.
You may have to settle for a solution like K-hos said and just keep it running at a system at your home, or maybe even purchase a relatively cheap hosting service.
I suppose, but I don't make much money from my site and cheap hosting doesn't really cut it. If I wanted to do everything that I want to do I'd probably have to go for a cheap VPS service and that's not exactly "cheap" in terms of web hosting.
why can't you leave your server at home and operate it remotely?
My parents wouldn't go for that.
The cost of paying for the electricity to have your PC server turned on all the time, given that it isn't a laptop is most likely comparable to the price of paying for a cheap hosting service.
I wouldn't be paying for the electricity.
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I suppose, but I don't make much money from my site and cheap hosting doesn't really cut it. If I wanted to do everything that I want to do I'd probably have to go for a cheap VPS service and that's not exactly "cheap" in terms of web hosting.
http://www.lowendbox.com/
If you look around, you can get a vps for as little as 2.50 a month. I just got a vps last month for 7 bucks a month that has 750gb bandwidth, 20gb storage, and 384mb ram.
As for your first question, I would say it depends on the university. At my uni each student registers their computer on the network and is assigned an ip address visible to the outside world. We also can register a hostname along with it, which is just a subdomain within the school's .edu domain. Because no ports are blocked, we are free to host whatever services we want. The biggest limitation, though, is the upstream cap of about 120kbs.