The Eagle has Landed

I received a phone call this morning notifying me that the server has been delivered and is sitting in a rather large box in the office. I will pick it up over the weekend and get to work on it — expect a post here when I have more details.

Getting back online: How we’ll do it

I spoke with Verizon on Friday to find out what my options were to get a broadband connection at my home that will permit web hosting. It seems I can convert my residential FIOS line to a business-grade line with no restrictions without any changes in hardware or the need for a technician to come to my house (so they say at least!).

The good? It’ll be easy to get the new line up and running — within a week. It’ll also be a lot cheaper than colocation — $99 a month, which when you eliminate the existing cost of my $29/month home FIOS line (since the new line will replace it) that means the effective cost is $70/mo., a great deal. Finally, the server will be in my house, giving me “unlimited” access to it without having to pay $125/hr to do so.

The bad? No guaranteed service level, which means throughput may not be 2MB and there is no guarantee for uptime. Also, I still need to find time to go to Manhattan to remove the server from its current place of residence and figure out where to put it in my house. Finally, I’ll expect a small increase in my electric bill (as well as some extra noise coming from my storage room in the basement — the fans on the server sound like a jet engine before take-off).

I plan on calling Verizon on Monday to order this, and will try to make arrangements to get the server back in my possession some time next week. The good thing is that we’re making progress.

I’ll give you an update on other facets of the game and our other discussions over the past few days tomorrow.