DSL Info Please

[Laust]

Webmin (http://www.webmin.com/) is one Linux control panel-type program that can handle, not just web browser settings, but your entire system (or most of it anyway). I'm not too fond of it myself, but that's more because it's not my style of admining. It's been more than a year since I tried it too, so I have no idea what current versions are like.

[Tom]

Thanks...I'll check it out.

[Firfy]

Choosing between FreeBSD or linux for a server OS isn't that big of a deal - both have their quirks, but hopefully if you're just setting them up as a server, you shouldn't have to worry too much about the differences between kinds of Unix, as they both feature most of the same software.  One advantage of linux is it does feature a billion different distributions, so you might try visiting distrowatch and searching for one tailored specifically for setting up a server.  I personally prefer linux as an operating system, as my experience with FreeBSD 5.2 was less than stellar, however both should be adequate to your needs.

As for Red Hat, their situation's a bit confusing.  After Red Hat 9 (now out of date) they divided into basically two products: Red Hat Enterprise Linux which is designed for the enterprise and sold on a subscription basis for rather a hefty amount of money, while red hat provides services and support, and Fedora, which is their community-centred and "free" distribution.  Of course, if you really have your heart set on Red Hat Enterprise Linux, there are distributions such as White Box Linux or Lineox which basically provide a clone of RHEL without the branding, the support or the cost.  Such is the power of free software!

Anyway, whatever you pick, expect to spend some time accustoming to the operating system as well if your only experience is Windows.  Unix has its own quirks and idiosyncracies.  Something like Fedora might be easier to start with than FreeBSD if you don't have prior experience with a Unix shell, or aren't willing to learn, as if I recall correctly FreeBSD dumps you straight out to the command line after installation.

[Tom]

Thanks, Firfy!  When I first got started on the 'net, I had learned a bit of Unix; all of our interaction with our old ISP's server was via Telnet, and though markedly different, it reminded me a lot of our glory days using DOS.  So, I don't feel intimidated with it.  (In fact, my wife still feels more comfortable using DOS commands than using's Windows graphical interface.)  Our first year on the 'net was basically all via a shell account, and I still have a book around here somewhere on using Unix; since we were using Unix commands all the time, we had to do some learning.  But I've forgotten just about everything now that our hosting services use CPanel and Ensim.

FreeBSD's support is extensive.  I like that.  But, it's still a toss up at this time.  By the time I finally do decide between Linux and FreeBSD, maybe I'll be able to understand a bit more about their differences and feel more comfortable.  I'm planning to 'experiement' a lot before going live.  We have an old domain that's not in use anymore, and it doesn't expire until the fall; we'll use it for our training.

I really appreciate your RedHat explanation.  I was totally confused on what became of this 'free' operating system.  Also appreciate your comments on using FreeBSD and Linux.  Thanks!

[Marten]

Tom,

I'm not sure if running your own server rather than using a hosting service will be the greatest of ideas.

Currently, treeweasel.com is itself hosted under genetikayos.com, which is on a machine owned by an ex-co-worker and is co-located at a hosting facility.  According to this friend of mine, QS's bandwidth needs are a drop in the bucket compared to all of the other (mainly open sourcE) projects he hosts on the system.  This is why he's been perfectly happy to host it, and why visitors fetching files off of treeweasel for the past two years have enjoyed fast file downloads with no queues or download limits.

If you run your own server, you'll end up providing service similar to what I /used/ to have before shifting those files to the genetikayos system... where visitors were limited to downloading one song at a time, and at slower rates. Back then, I had a 128k upstream limit on an ADSL connection.

Speaking of which, I haven't seen you reply whether you're getting ADSL or SDSL.  As mentioned before, with ADSL, your upload rate would be slower than your download rate, and with SDSL, they would be the same.  When you're hosting content over your own local connection, your upload rate is everyone else's download speed.  Contrast that to a hosting service, which usually provides 1.5Mbps service or better (3x the 512k service, or 6x the 256k service) and may even "burst" to higher speeds.

With my old 128k upstream service, I found I was able to provide adequate service to roughly 2 visitors simultaneously (with "56k" modems)... and also at that point, my service was degraded to where it was unusable for myself.  So, I took advantage of some of the Apache webserver's configuration options to limit bandwidth to one file per person, and a total upstream limit of about 100k so I had a little room left for myself to download and upload things.  At times, I still had as many as 4 people trying to download files.  When you post a new file, you'll see a surge of activity as people want to hear it.  It can be very taxing on a personal DSL connection.

With 256k upstream, you could handle 4 users at 56k; with 512k, 8 users.  But bear in mind that many users of your website these days also will have their own DSL or cable connections, and they'll suck you dry of your full bandwidth per connection (with a click, I can pull 512k/s from you from my own home DSL connection) ... because again, your upload speed is my download speed, and most ADSL and cable connections provide around 1.5Mbps down (just not up).  And while I'm sucking down that full 512k/s, I'm going to be thinking even so, "This is much slower than it used to be" if I'm used to downloading from your hosting service which would happily provide me the file at full speed.  It'll take me 3 times as long to download the file.

I just want you to be aware of all this, for as you know that your site's popularity is still growing, not shrinking, and moving your hosting to a machine on your own property could be a step backward.  A better solution would be to rent your own U1 at a hosting service similar to how you're doing things now... you can even buy your own U1 rack system so it really is your property, but by putting it into a data center with a nice "fat pipe" the quality of service to your visitors will be much higher.

Linux, BSD, etc...

Next subject:  Both are good.  BSD is perceived by many to be more stable than Linux in terms of being bug-free, less prone to security attacks, etc; it relates back to the core philosophy of BSD, whereas Linux distributions tend to be more "cutting edge".  Also, as Linux is more popular, there are more hacks for it (in fact, it is Windows' own popularity that is its own downfall - it is attacked not merely because it is so insecure, but because it is so prevalent and run by "average folk" that it is easier to find a vulnerable Windows system than a MacOS or Linux system).  Stability and reliability come at a certain cost though - BSD may not run on the most cutting edge hardware because drivers may not be available.  It is "slow" waiting between releases of the BSD operating systems.

Within Linux, the different distributions also show a degree of variation in their cutting-edgedness versus security-mindedness as well.  I would personally recommend avoiding Red Hat's free version, Fedora, because it is really Red Hat's "testing sandbox" - running Fedora is like testing a beta for them.  Fedora is where Red Hat tests out unproven software that they may later roll into their commercial Enterprise releases.  Fedora Core 2 was an unpleasant mess, and while version 3 which recently came out has received better reviews, I was soured by my experience with version 2.

On top of that, I never liked that in order to upgrade Red Hat to a new release, you have to "take the system down" and boot the next release's CD.  There's no "live upgrading."

My home system now runs a variant of Debian, which is more security focused than Red Hat, but for which it is still very easy to upgrade software.  Debian names their releases off of characters from Toy Story, and "sid" is the unstable branch - remember that Sid was the destructive kid next door ("does not play well with others.")  That's their way of warning people that you shouldn't mess with Sid unless you know what you're doing.  The current stable release of Debian is "woody", and the testing release (soon to become the new stable - and it is pretty stable now!) is "Sarge."

The variant of Debian I run is a commerical release which makes older versions freely available.  Libranet (http://www.libranet.com/) version 3 is supposed to be out soon, and it will have a nominal fee, but 2.8.1 works great and is free and you can easily configure it to add patches from the standard Debian release site, so you can add patches and keep it upgraded.  Debian supports live upgrades, so you can upgrade between releases painlessly, only requiring reboots after changing the "kernel" - the core of the Linux OS.

[Ari]

I was about to write the same thing.
At this point, I can d/l from QS hosts at 750kbps and faster. I doubt you'd be able to match that speed, Tom. especially when there are several users trying to d/l simultaneously.

I'm curious, though.
I've got an ADSL connection at home which requires a dial-up service. Because of that, it's impossible for 2 computers to connect simultaneously if I just use a HUB, for instance.
will a router, should I get one, act as the dial-up connection with the rest of the computers simply acting as LAN connections to the router?

[Tom]

Thanks for your insight, Marten.  Experience is the best teacher and I value your experience a lot.

Our DSL service is ADSL.  It doesn't require an existing dial-up account, though they offer it as a "backup" if you wish.  We also get a price break because Dianne has an additional business telephone line in addition to our regular telphone line.  Wonder why you (Ari) need a dialup account, too?  We can connect as many PC's to our DSL line as we want, provided we have hub or switch ports available.  We bought a D-Link DI-604 router, with 4 switches.  We're using three of them.  We can connect another hub to that to give us more ports if needed.


We've been discussing this for the past week; what's the best way to handle having our own server.  What we decided on doing is this:  

Keep my new hosting service at Canaca.com, with 10 GB's of server space for $60/year.  This server will host all our large files; basically, anything over 100kb's, which is digital music and video files, pdf's, large MIDI soundtrack files, that sort of thing.  Our home server would really only contain the web pages and forums.

Our average total monthly combined bandwidth usuage is less than 2 GB (that's 5 websites), but increases to 6 GB when I factor in digital file downloads stored on our primary hosting server.  But these will all be moved to the Canaca server.  I haven't factored in bandwidth to Treeweasel, Be-hosted, or Shaftnet; since all of these files will also soon be located on the Canaca server, where my monthly bandwidth usage allotment is 20 GB's.  

Our home server is a PIII 1-GHz 512MB dedicated system.  The server will be used for nothing else.  

We've decided on the RedHat Fedora 3 core for our server O.S.  From what I understand of Fedora is, yes, Marten is right in pointing out that this is kind of an experimental release of RedHat Enterprise Linux, but the core releases are virtually the identical software as RedHat.  Other ongoing additions are available for Fedora that are not necessarily stable or thouroughly tested -- and not included in the Enterprise editions of the software; but it's up to the user whether they want to incorporate these untested additions or updates.  Fedora seems to have good user support via forums and online documentation; (and lots of reference books at Banes & Noble. )  It looks very similar to the support I now get for the phpBB system.  I've seen both pros and cons with Fedora and FreeBSD that lead me to think it's a matter of user preference for the most part, or six-of-one, half-dozen-of-the-other.  The only way to know is by experiencing it.

If and when I would need to update our server software, we're not put off by the thought of having to shut down the system to do it.  I've gone to Netflix.com and have been greeted with the message, "We're temporarily closed for server updates" -- five or six times in the past year, and it doesn't bother me to have to wait an hour or two before I can access the website.

I don't really look at Quest Studios as a business.  It's a hobby site.  If browsing Quest Studios may slow down slightly from our home server, I'm not going to fret it.  

Ari mentions downloading from QS at 750 kbps; are you downloading MP3's from my server, or other servers used by QS?  I don't really host many digital files on the QS server, and most of the MIDI files are very small.  But say you were limited to 256k to view web pages....or even 128k...would you even notice a difference?  Since web pages in themselves are quite small (even with images), adding a fraction of a second doesn't seem like an issue.  Our DSL fluctuates a lot at work.  The only way I can notice speed differences is when I'm downloading a file bigger than a few hundred kilobytes.  I can't notice at all with typical web pages usless they are loaded with java or flash applets, or something like that.

Dianne's site is another story, but it's a very small business with far less traffic than Quest Studios.  Her sites, however, are all HTML-based except for the monthly 4MB pdf's she posts -- which will also be moved to the Canaca server.  We don't foresee a bandwidth problem, but we'll watch closely once we get setup.  We'll also test the system using an abadoned domain (that we'll be getting rid of this fall) and enlist the help of a couple dozen users to simultaneously use the test domain, which will include a php forum.

Quest Studios typically maxes at six or seven simultaneous users.  That can fluctuate a bit, but it's usually half ... or less ... of that.

Now let me finally explain the PRIMARY and most important reason we want to run our own server:  ENJOYMENT!  We enjoy working on projects together, and learning new things together.  It adds another piece of the foundation to a marriage and brings us even closer together.  This is why we compose music together, learned HTML together, designed and remodeled our house together, and want to run a server together.  If running our own server doesn't work as well as we'd like it to, that's okay.  We'll go back to what we were doing, and have still gained some knowledge and additional closeness in the process.

[Marten]

Sounds like a plan!  If you run into troubles with anything though, you might consider getting direct contract information for a few of us who know Linux a bit better so we can help you out.

[Tom]

Sounds like a plan!  If you run into troubles with anything though, you might consider getting direct contract information for a few of us who know Linux a bit better so we can help you out.

 :smt017 That's a given.  Reading a book and trying to apply it to reality is one thing; actually succeeding in doing it, is another.