I have seen several posts from people who appear to be running XOOPS on their own web servers rather than using a commercial host. Most of the discussions are about hardware issues, but could anyone tell me what kind of DSL bandwidth I would need to serve up XOOPS reliably from my home PC? Also, how many users could I realistically be able to have online at the same time?

To serve it reliably with dynamic content you would need at least the same upload as download. But even then with 1.5mb the site would still be slow.

Hosting companies use commercial high speed lines, and residential DSL is not anywhere near those speeds.

The speed of your site will only match your upload speed, and more than a few users will stall the connection.

> To serve it reliably with dynamic content you would need at least the same upload as download.

erm.. no. upload of the host is VASTLY more critical then download.

> But even then with 1.5mb the site would still be slow.

If your getting the traffic of say yahoo.com sure. But for a typical community, news or personal site that never breaks more then a few dozen at a time DSL is fine. And you certainly over estimate the network/connection needed.

I have a community site and online game hosted on my DSL 6meg/768k. My stats thus far (not counting the hits to the online game):

Total Pages: 17527
Total Visits: 4215
Total Days: 37
Average Visits per day: 113.92
Average Visits per hour: 4.75
Average Visits per week: 797.43
Average Visits per month: 3417.57

Have yet to have one person complain about my site being slow.

> Hosting companies use commercial high speed lines, and residential DSL is not anywhere near those speeds.

No they are not. But as long as you dont have your site spammed with flash, large images or video the bandwidth to host a site isnt all that intense as long as you not getting the traffic of microsoft.com or such.

> The speed of your site will only match your upload speed, and more than a few users will stall the connection.

*cough*bullcrap*cough*

I have only just started to look at this so forgive me if I get these figures wrong. As far as I can see, here in the UK DSL speeds are pretty choked. BTOpenworld says it provides upstream speeds up to 512Kbps, but I would guess that's for their premium service. I know I get 128 Kbps upstream with my cable connection, but the TOS prohibits operation of a server. I think a T1 leased line is about 1.5 Mbits duplex?.

6 Mbits sounds like a great DSL service Rhomal! May be some time before we get that where I live I'm afraid.

The answer depends on which DSL service provider the original questioner is asking about. They vary widely, especially the upstream bandwidth for residential services which is, as you say, the important issue for running a server. And there are, too, the questions of terms of service and acceptable use policies which also vary widely.

You're not going to get much better downstream bandwidth than 6 mbps (that's megaBITs/second BTW) from any DSL service provider, even with a commercial service. The more important question of upstream bandwidth can only be answered on a case-by-case basis. It requires more information about the telco operation that is involved.

Individual distance from the CO is also an important determinant of whether you get the full rating of any DSL service in either direction. And that means phone line distance, not line of sight or driving distance, which only your own telco knows for sure.

Bottom line: There are too many "ifs" involved to be able to provide one right anwser for everyone and a good answer for any one individual needs more detailed input.

I host my website on a 512/512 connection and have had no problems. You basically need to be VERY concious of 4 things if you intend to serve your website over your DSL connection

-Minimize HTTP requests
Every image, stylesheet, javascript, flash object, etc produces a http request. These requests are processed every page view regardless of wether the content they are requesting is cached or not. It is very important to keep this number as low as you can.

-Minimise data transfer
Obviously the less data transferred the better your sire is going to perform. Minimal usage of images and caching help a lot here, as to http compression tools for text based content. Also make sure that your site (front page especially) is free of junk.

-Minimize server side processing
Fewer MySQL queries & the script structure for effcient processing will help reduce server side processing time.

-Server processing power
The more power, the quicker your content is served


This should take care of the major aspects effecting the ability to sucessfully serve you website over a DSL connection. Then there are also other things such as each ISP's indiviual AUP agreement which might forbid you from running your own Internet services on your connection. You might aslo find with some ISP's is that while you might have full bandwidth to their network, available bandwidth outside of that is not always at full capacity.

@Brash

Do you use static or dynamic ip?

Hey, Brash ... looks like a primer to optimising your XOOPS website. Remember ????

I have had a look at a few UK ISPs over the last hour or so and most seem to be restricted to 2Mbits/512kbps for now. I have actually found one UK company (Easynet) that can attain 8Mbps with 768kbps upstream. It appears they have achieved this through installing their own equipment at the BT exchange (local loop unbundling). They can only supply a limited area though and I'm not in it, but sounds interesting at £35 per month for people in their area of service. Don't know how that compares to the rest of the world.

I agree there are a lot of variables that need to be considered. The point Brash makes about the TOS is true. I have a friend who I believe runs a server on BT ADSL, but I don't know what BT's exact policy on this is.

It also sounds like you need to know what you are doing (not my natural state)

Quote:

Dynamic

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I'm always playing with optmisation . Haven't actually enabled my http comtression tools again since rebuilding my server though. I must do that.

@ Peekay

£35 for a 8Mbps/768kbps connection sounds great! Are there any data transfer limitations on that? When I first shifted to a 512/512 connection about 2 years ago it was costing me $165AUD (£67) a month with only 2GB of data transfer included. Even now I'm paying $75AUD (£30) a month with 8GB of data.