[PLUG] Website hosting at home

[Eric House]

> If I want them to assign a static IP address to me, I do think I
> must get a business license from them. I'm assuming that if you want
> to host a web site you need static IP address.

This isn't true.  You can use a free service like zoneedit or dyndns
to bind a dynamic IP address to a domain name that you own.  Use
something like ez-ipupdate to update the binding every time you're
assigned a new IP address.

I've been doing this for years, and hosting low-volume websites
(though not on port 80, which might be why nobody's complained).  I
think that as long as you're a paying customer and your bandwidth
usage is below the point at which your broadband provider wants to be
rid of you they'll leave you alone.  I can't see a good business
reason for them not to.  Just don't wind up on slashdot.

The DNS-binding process triggered by ez-ipupdate is pretty quick.  On
one machine I have a script, run every five minutes, that compares the
current IP address assigned to my DSL modem with the address dig finds
for my domain name.  When they're different it calls ez-ipupdate.
>From the logs it seems that it never runs twice in a row: dig starts
returning the new address before five minutes have passed.

In all, I see no reason to pay extra for a static IP address.

--Eric
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