newby isp questions

[RH Lists]

Hello Juan, and welcome.

>From your questions, it sounds like you don't want to be an ISP, but a
hosting company (HSP). 

I doubt you can run an effective hosting business on an ADSL line, for two
reasons:

1. you will limited by the UPLOAD speed of your line.  ADSL is generally
fast in one direction only. The fastest anyone will be able to download is
the upload speed of your line.  Is 512kbps enough?  Not usually these days.
(Then again, I started in 1995 with a 128k fractional T1, and it lasted me
about a year - times have changed!)
2. Around here at least, ADSL connections use PPPoE protocol, which limits
the MTU to 1492 or lower.  This can *sometimes* cause problems when running
a server.

You can probably run a test server from your home this way. If you need more
bandwidth, it's often best to lease a server or collocate it in a high
bandwidth secure environment.

You will be able to run all of the required services on FreeBSD - all but
one box in our network is FreeBSD (routers and switches excluded).  However
for hosting more than a few sites, we found it easier to stop configuring
sites manually, and bought a hosting control panel. Ensim doesn't run on
FreeBSD, and doesn't work with private IP addresses. It does however support
domain aliases - I like that feature a lot.  We use it on a Fedora box.  I
use Plesk for my own websites, on a FreeBSD (5.3-SECURITY) box, in private
IP space. It is also very nice.

It comes down to what you want to do - have a box to play on and learn, or
have a viable business.  Rarely do the two objectives collide.

Regarding your questions,

1. no, they don't have to be separate.  Personally, I believe in hardware
firewalls. 
2. see my warning on adsl. But if you can get FreeBSD to see the usb network
device, have fun.
3. no, every domain doesn't need its own jail.
3a. unless you are using ssl (https), each domain doesn't need its own IP
address.

Where to start learning?

www.webhostingtalk.com
http://www.oreilly.com/
http://www.devshed.com/c/b/Apache/
http://www.isc.org/

Depending on what mail server you use,

www.sendmail.org
www.postfix.org - personal favourite
www.qmail.org

Good luck!

Rob


-----Original Message-----
From: owner-freebsd-isp at freebsd.org [mailto:owner-freebsd-isp at freebsd.org]
On Behalf Of DSA - JCR
Sent: January 3, 2006 9:39 AM
To: freebsd-isp at freebsd.org
Subject: newby isp questions

Hi all in this list and Happy New Year !!!

I am New to FreeBSD but not to OSes and UNIX and would like to became in
an ISP, in a very first moment only with my own domain, and after we will
see ... ;D

I would like to know if the configuration in which i am thinking is right
or not.

I have and ADSL modem (1Mb by now) connecting to an ISP.

This is what I am thinking to do:

- I must have a fix IP from my ISP.
- The ADSL modem will connect to a Firewall box (FreeBSD or m0n0Wall?). I
am thinking in an old PC I have. Can this be made without Hard disk, only
with CD?.
- This Firewall connect to a PC with FreeBSD 6.0 and web capabilities
(Apache, mail...).
- In order to protect my network, I would use NAT, in the Firewall, and
connect my PC to it as a gateway.

Questions:
- Must I separate the Firewall/Nat from the Webserver box or can be the
same?
- My ADSL modem uses USB to conect to PC, can I use it or is better a hub
adsl type?
- In the Webserver box, if I want to have diferent web domains,must I put
each one in a jail? and what about the IP of each domain, only one NIC?.

Where can I learn about this? books?...

Sincerely and thanks in advance

Juan Coruña
Desarrollo de Software Atlantico



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