[kwlug disc.] Re: sdf gossip

[Unsolicited]

Cedric Puddy wrote, On 6/11/2007 1:42 PM:
> 
> On 11-Jun-07, at 9:49 AM, Paul Nijjar wrote:
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.
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>> the rent for their server rooms is enormous, and they keep buying
>> these really expensive machines.
> 
> I'm not sure I know what you mean, Paul

I suspect I know what he means. If you look at
http://sdf.lonestar.org/index.cgi?faq?MISC?08, near the bottom, costs
went from $4,878 to $18,276 in one year, then to $16,328. Which is
rather startling.

Mind you, that's the year they started paying rent. And rent includes
circuit costs (which are typically enormous, or at least feel that way).

And I'll take an intuitive leap ... I've heard news stories where cell
costs are _much_ cheaper in the U.S. than Canada. Assuming this is
typical of communication costs, then these circuit costs in Canada
would be many, many, thousands of dollars more.

> To put in perspective, and standard hosting company these days
> (ourselves included) can give you the ability to add/remove/self manage
> email, etc -- typical prices range from $5/mo and up.  SDF will do it
> for less than $2/mo for email alone (their webhosting price is more
> typical).

You do hosting? Sorry, silly question. (-:

What I really mean is when I thought about this / SDF, you didn't come
to mind. Going to your web pages, I get where you're coming from on
the pages, but is there a blurb / (service) description you could you
could post to the group? My budget is _very_ limited.

In thinking about this (own e-mail domain), and what all I'd like to
do, I've concluded I could host my own sftp server (file sharing with
friends). If I shoot myself in the foot and it's down for some time, I
could live with that.

But for e-mail, being down for some time would be unacceptable. Being
hosted in a redundant data centre would seem appropriate. If I can
bear the costs. If 150MB of space for e-mail, web, files, etc., comes
along for the ride, bonus. e.g. My one web page, non-index.*, is a
page of links I frequently use and can reference from any internet
connection. e.g. Anyone memorized the city codes they care about for
theweathernetwork.com?

One issue I'm running into though is John gave an excellent list of
elements to look at with respect to mail. Sendmail, squirrelmail,
anti-spam, anti-virus, and so on. It's not clear whether, or how, one
accomplishes these on a hosted site. i.e. Every site is different. In
SDF's case, there are clear mechanisms for sendmail, procmail,
squirrelmail, but for the rest it gets a little fuzzy.

Which is all to say, those elements and their learning curves must
still be overcome. At least the (redundant) hardware / OS elements go
out of the equation initially, and one doesn't have to try to swallow
the whole in one initial overwhelming gulp.

-- Bill