for keeping track of my digital experiments

There are many different ways to go about creating your own website or network of sites. Here are a few of the options I have gone through.

• For those of you who want the most control, you can run your own web server/email server from home. I recommend an “always on” connection such as Cable or DSL. The important part for this option is that you have enough upload bandwidth to serve your content to multiple users. This works just fine for a small site, but if you are expecting lots of visitors, have your website hosted by a hosting company. I’ve done this before and had good success with Debian Linux. For more instructions on setting up a variety of software on top of Debian –> check out the ISPConfig set-up tutorial for Debian 4.0 (Etch). The full ISPConfig setup takes about 1-2GB of hard drive space and at least 50-100 MB of RAM so don’t do the full set-up if you don’t need ISPConfig.
• The next best option is free hosting. Yes, there are such things, but many of these “freehosts” require you to display their ads. Most free hosting plans give you: 1-10GB per month of bandwidth, 100-500MB of space with a file size limit (so you can’t stash all your copy-infringing mp3’s on their server and link them to your MySpace account), PHP scripting enabled with sendmail turned off, and 1-5 MySQL databases. A conclusive list of free hosting providers can be found at free-webhosts.com.
• You then get into shared hosting. It’s called such because the hosting provider rents out space on the server and hosts many different accounts on a single server. Consequently you are restricted on how much control you have over the server and how much processing and memory you receive. Shared accounts can cost $3-20 a month, depending on what is all included. Shared hosting accounts include: email hosting (10-100 email accounts), web hosting (10-100GB of space with full PHP and sometimes Perl installations), and database hosting (10-20 mysql databases).
• A Virtual Private Server (VPS) is a method of partitioning a physical server computer into multiple servers that each has the appearance and capabilities of running on its own dedicated machine. I managed to get my VPS for $10/month at cheapvps.net, but most VPS plans run from $30-70/month. You can also find cheap unmanaged VPS deals at vpslink.com.
• If you truly need all the power and a whole lot of bandwidth you can pay out $30-200/month for a dedicated server. Serverpronto.com has some of the lowest priced deals that I have found on entry level and medium range dedicated servers.

Now that you have your hosting set-up, it’s time to create and put up your content. For starters I suggest having a basic knowledge of HTML and CSS markup. What I have done with most of my sites is find a good XHTML/CSS template and add my content in on top of the tweaked template. If you are also looking into having a “dynamic site” I suggest reading up and having a running knowledge of PHP, MySQL or PostgreSQL, and Javascript. I also suggest using an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for web development such as ActiveState Komodo, if you are going to be creating web content on a regular basis. It has saved me from quite a few scripting errors before I experience them server-side.

To get your content up on your host, you can use a web-based file manager that most hosts provide, or an FTP (File Transfer Protocol) client. An FTP Client I suggest for Windows is FTPSurfer by WisperTech. If you are using Linux, Unix, or OSX here are a few suggestions I found.

After you got most of that down, then there is the issue of financing all of this, I’ll be getting into that with some information on advertising in an upcoming post.

As with all material in this area, I must provide a few disclaimers.

1. This article is meant for educational purposes only, and any use of this knowledge for any purpose is the choice of the reader.
2. Jason Zerbe, his hosting provider, and any person with any relation to Jason with not be liable for any negative choices of readers.
3. I, Jason Zerbe, do not condone the illegal applications of the knowledge presented. For more information on the hacker legal system from Agent Steal’s perspective, you can read a write-up he did in 1997 while incarcerated.
4. This article may be freely reproduced, in whole or in part, provided acknowledgments are given to the author. Any reproduction for profit, or law enforcement use is prohibited.

That said, now for the goods. ;-]

I was exposed to computers as a user, first when I was four, but I never started investigating how they worked until my 13th birthday. I was granted one of my dad’s old computers to indefinitely borrow. For my 16th birthday I bought my own computer, with my own specifications, and my own money. In those three years I mastered the Windows API, gotten into Unix/Linux, worked through much of the Java API, experimented with C++, mastered various networking principles, and have an in depth knowledge of PHP, MySQL, the Apache and Lighttpd servers.

A few suggestions to get you started, taken from a (mostly) complete hacker howto created by Eric Steven Raymond.

1. Learn how to program – From what I’ve heard and experienced it is best to know a combination of the following: Python, C/C++, Java, Perl or PHP, LISP. I still have zero experience in Python and Lisp …. ah more projects.
2. Get an open source OS (operating systems) and know how to use it – My personal favorites are Debian, CentOS, and OpenBSD.
3. Learn how the Internet functions and how to script HTML and now CSS – Do you know what http, ftp, imap, pop, and smtp are? How you are connected into the internet and how that technology works? HTML is the all encompassing mark-up for the internet. Learn it or become dependent on pathetic Microsoft-type generators. CSS is also vary handy to get the look and feel of your Web 2.0 creation just right.
4. If you don’t have functional English, learn it – All of the source code that I have laid eyes on to date, is written in English syntax, the code and comments.

Once you are “in”, the status symbols of hacking culture are surprisingly counter-culture to the mainstream American thought process. To excerpt from Eric, “Specifically, hackerdom is what anthropologists call a gift culture. You gain status and reputation in it not by dominating other people, nor by being beautiful, nor by having things other people want, but rather by giving things away. Specifically, by giving away your time, your creativity, and the results of your skill.”

In the upcoming posts, I’ll probably be getting into a tutorial/how to phase of actual hacking.

On this week’s show, Jason Zerbe learns about the technology behind DSL.

The topics for R&D are:

1. Do DSL soft modems exist and how do they work?
2. Is DSL soft modem the source code available?
3. Can an end-user create their own DSL links?

According to the Wikipedia article on DSL soft modems, the current lack of DSL soft modems is because of SOHO (small office/home office) networking. Hence the embedded DSL gateways take care of the modulation and networking. I’ve found out that speed of the DSL service is directly proportional to the modulation type. In order from least efficient modulation to most efficient: T1413, GDMT, GLITE, ADSL2, ADSL2Plus. Then there is also MMODE modulation (multi-mode) that automatically detects what type of modulation is being used. In my area (central Woodbury, Minnesota) QWest is using GDMT modulation that is auto detected by the MMODE setting on their DSL gateways. For a list of DSL modems supported by customer service, you can check out this page.

There are plenty of papers and articles about how DSL works (a 2001 Microsoft paper) and twice as much documentation and source code about analog soft modems. I could not find any source code that deals with building a DSL soft modem. I did find a 1999 precursor to “full DSL” done by Andreas Gustafsson. Too, bad guess we’re going to have to stick with those little embedded devices and wall-wart combos.

Yes, you can create your own DSL modem to DSL modem links, with the cooperation of the reigning TelCo (telephone company). To do so you must purchase a “dry copper” line, typically used for alarm systems, and have the TelCo route the dry line to another dry line. “Dry copper” is called such, because it carries no power or dial-tone, as opposed to “wet copper” or a line carrying dial-tone. At the termination of this other dry line, you have your buddy place a DSL modem on his end, and you place a DSL modem on your end. Presto, long-range LAN/WAN. For more information and ideas about this: check out the pbs.org article from Robert X. Cringely.

12/22/2007 – Add: I was poking around and I found a retailer of DSL modems and Ethernet extenders. I have been experiencing some trouble with the 100Mbps Ethernet link & Telephone combo that runs on the Cat5 that I installed last summer. It seems as though I might have exceeded the Ethernet spec’s distance.