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Browse All TopicsHello, Experts!
I'm trying to setup a small home web server to host a number of small sites.
I have a fast 6Mb down 750Kb up DSL connection with static IP.
What Router would you recomand using for such a task?
What features should I consider in a home/web router? - Port Forwarding? What else?
How does a consumer's router (i.e. Linksys) compare to a more robust router? and does it really matter if I only have a 750Kb up connection?
Keep in mind, this is a DSL connection, and the router will have to connect directly to a DSL line.
Thank you in advance for all your help!
-Eyal
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by: JascotPosted on 2008-03-20 at 18:38:00ID: 21177464
If you're just hosting a couple of small, low traffic websites, nearly any decent router will probably do just fine for you. A DSL line, even one with a static IP like yours, is never going to be a high performance connection for webserving, but you probably know that already.
I have a small, personal website hosted on my home DSL line, and I don't even have a static IP, I'm using DynDNS. I'm running a Linksys WRT54GS with the Tomato firmware on it and it seems to do just fine for my light duty needs.
Port forwarding is the most important function you need. Some sort of QoS (Quality of Service) might be helpful too, depending on your usage of the DSL. Remember, DSL can only send OR receive at any given time, so if you are downloading something and filling your download speed, your upload speed for serving webpages will suffer.
A consumer router will likely support far fewer connections than a more professional grade unit will support. Depending on how much traffic you are hosting and your uses of the line that could become an issue. Chances are your limited upload speed will probably become more of an issue than the number of connections. The one exception to that might be if you use bitorrent for downloading. Bitorrent seems to use a LOT of connections and could exhaust the connection limits for a resource limited consumer model.
I would think if you have a router already, you could just try what you have first and see how it performs. If you need to purchase a new router and want to stick with the more consumer level ones, I would look for one that CAN run one of the alternate firmwares like Tomato or WRT because they run a flavor of Linux (Or can with Tomato/WRT) that seems to be much more robust than some of the cheaper consumer routers (Like the Linksys BEFSR41, which seems very underpowered). You can always move up to a more professional grade router later if you have problems. If you're only running off a DSL, I doubt you're working with a big budget.