IS This Possible........................

[tamashii]

I was wondering how to get your own server up so i can host my own amvs and not have to pay for a host. I have cable ( broadban, whatever you wanna call it, anyway constant connection as long as my computer is running ). I could leave my computer on almost all day not 24/7 bout 10 a.m to 10 p.m. So if anyone knows how to set up a server please tell me how in detail cuz i tried it once but it was way to confusing. Also how do I know how much bandwith I have???

Well PLeaze reply someone

This really didn't fit in any other forum catagory so I put it here???

[Koopiskeva]

ya... uhh.. run an ftp server... umm.. thats all i know..

/me runs..

[darkyre]

cable runs at a highbandwidth, to figure out ur exact bandwidth is complicated, involving information that you may not be able to obtain.
or atleast, thats the impression i have been given.

[Aetherfukz]

Well, this could go into the "General AMV" also... I don't think that people read this forum that often (well I do only occasionally).

Anyway, what you need for your own server, first is the server-program. I like apache the most (www.apache.org). Get on the site, down to the HTTP server, and download the one for Windows XX, whatever you'll need.
After you've installed Apache, you shouldn't have to do much configuration, normally apache does a got job at auto-detecting such things. There should also be a few docs on the apache site, about how to further configure the server.
Another way would be to run just an FTP server. There you can't put up such things as a web page, but just for distributing files it would do. I don't know right now if apache has a FTP included, but if you do a google-search for "free ftp server" I'm sure you will find something.

And last but not least, you said you have cable, so I figure you have a static IP. If that's so, good. If not, not that bad
There are sites out like www.dyndns.org or www.dns2go.com that point a site like aetherfukz.dyndns.org to a changing IP.

Oh yeah, and for the bandwidth test, I think I've found something while googlin': Just go to http://home.cfl.rr.com/eaa/Bandwidth.htm - there are lots of links to free online bandwidth test pages, and also some tools for testing it to download.

Peace & Respect
-- Aetherfukz

[MOD467: Good call about the correct category for this thread.]

[Ashyukun]

Just as a bit of a warning- the previailing opinion is the cable isn't quite sufficient to take a serious load of people downloading things from you. Specifically, in most cases your download bandwidth is greater than your upload, i.e. while you may be able to download a number of things fairly fast, it would take you longer to upload those same things to someone/place else. Also, you should probably be aware of whatever your cable provider's policies on this sort of thing are. If they forbid this sort of thing and you start eating up bandwidth with lots of people downloading your vids, they could either throttle back your bandwidth (so everything would be slower) or completely cut off your connection.

Whether you end up doing this or not, is entirely up to you- but it's probably a better idea to look into some reasonable-priced hosting (or submitting the vids to Moobies.net or the likes), especially if you're expecting your videos to get downloaded a lot. If you run a search for new downloads on the search page, it's not too uncommon to have over 50 downloads in the first few days- several hundred if it's really popular. For an average AMV (pulling this out of my head, may not be quite right, but) I'd say is about 40 megs- fifty downloads is roughly two gigs... That's a lot of data to be uploading over a cable connection.

[trythil]

I was wondering how to get your own server up so i can host my own amvs and not have to pay for a host. I have cable ( broadban, whatever you wanna call it, anyway constant connection as long as my computer is running ). I could leave my computer on almost all day not 24/7 bout 10 a.m to 10 p.m. So if anyone knows how to set up a server please tell me how in detail cuz i tried it once but it was way to confusing. Also how do I know how much bandwith I have???

Well PLeaze reply someone

This really didn't fit in any other forum catagory so I put it here???

A number of problems that you must get around before you even think of using a cable connection for serving data:

- Cable upstream throughout is usually VERY low, unless you have it uncapped by legal (or illegal) means. Maximum theoretical bandwidth for a capped connection is 128 kilobits per second, which means that you can except to see 8-10 kilobytes/second upstream on a good day. (You will, of course, never achieve the full 16, due to shared bandwidth, line conditions, laws of physics, and so on.)

- Most cable ISPs do not assign true static IP addresses to their clients. They usually use DHCP with long lease times, or they configure their DHCP servers to assign IPs based on MAC addresses. Regardless, neither of those situations result in truly static IP addresses.

- Some cable ISPs _do_ give true static IPs, but they assign IPs in private IP address spaces (e.g. 10.0.0.0/8, 172.16.0.0/12, 192.168.0.0/16 are the most prevalent, see RFC 1597 for the authoritative list). These are NOT routable to the rest of the Internet, and therefore cannot be used for external servers. You can, if you have the necessary software, use network address translation on your router to pass traffic on a certain port to an internal address. However, that assumes that (1) your router is capable of such a thing, and...

- ...some cable ISPs have become paranoid, so they do the following: In their customer IP pool, they disallow any TCP connections that have not been previously established. Since server software is responsible for establishing TCP connections, this effectively disallows a lot of server software from operating, even if you meet all of the requirements listed above. Some are less restrictive, and only block certain public service ports from accepting non-previously-established connections (e.g. HTTP port 80, FTP port 21, TELNET port 23, and a few other old-but-for-some-reason-still-in-use services like CHARGEN, DAYTIME, and ECHO). These kinds of blocks are fairly easy to get around.

You'll know if your ISP blocks non-previously-established connections if you (1) meet all the qualifications listed above and (2) people cannot connect.

---

Now, if you CAN serve, you have a number of options. You can use a Web server, as some people have mentioned. You can use FTP servers; for Windows, look up WarFTPD. ProFTPD also works, if you are willing to use Cygwin.

[Zarxrax]

Hmmm, when I was on cable they gave me 50kb/sec upstream, which was plenty sufficient for distributing my AMVs. If you are running at only like 10kb/sec then you will definately have trouble meeting the demand, but as long as your cable provider gives you a decent amount of bandwidth, you're set.
As far as ftp software, I use Bulletproof FTP server.

[trythil]

Hmmm, when I was on cable they gave me 50kb/sec upstream, which was plenty sufficient for distributing my AMVs.

Whoops. That should have been "Usually, the maximum theoretical bandwidth is..."

Funny how those kinds words slip out from keyboard. I need to pay more attention to what type, I guess.

[Ashyukun]

One other thing I remembered... if you use a firewall/router between your computer and your cable connection (i.e., to use more than one computer on the one modem), you may have to do some fiddling with the router's firewall settings. I still haven't gotten mine to let me send/receive files over ICQ (though I admittedly haven't tried excessively hard...).

[Aetherfukz]

- Most cable ISPs do not assign true static IP addresses to their clients. They usually use DHCP with long lease times, or they configure their DHCP servers to assign IPs based on MAC addresses. Regardless, neither of those situations result in truly static IP addresses.

Well, but as long as one doesn't change his Network card, the IP will remain "static". Of course, only if the ISP doesn't use the first method...