I'm looking for a low cost way to get a Lisp environment with Internet
connectivity. Does anyone know of a service providing Internet
hosting (the $20-30/month kind) where you can install your own
software?
The virtual server deals I've had experience with allow SSH access
into a portion of a shared server, but most of the software is part of
the preinstalled package--not intended to be changed or removed. For
example, many virtual servers use Apache as the Web server and don't
allow one to experiment with something different such as AllegroServe.
I'm looking for someone who has wanted/needed to find a virtual server
to install Lisp software, and I'm curious to know if you've found a
service that will let you do it.
Jason Kantz <·········@kantz.com> writes:
> I'm looking for a low cost way to get a Lisp environment with Internet
> connectivity. Does anyone know of a service providing Internet
> hosting (the $20-30/month kind) where you can install your own
> software?
>
> The virtual server deals I've had experience with allow SSH access
> into a portion of a shared server, but most of the software is part of
> the preinstalled package--not intended to be changed or removed. For
> example, many virtual servers use Apache as the Web server and don't
> allow one to experiment with something different such as AllegroServe.
>
> I'm looking for someone who has wanted/needed to find a virtual server
> to install Lisp software, and I'm curious to know if you've found a
> service that will let you do it.
I've been using SkyNetWeb for the last two months while waiting for
DSL installation. After about a $200 setup charge, it is
competitively priced at about $200/month for a low-end box with a
modest amount of memory and disk and exclusive root access to you over
ssh to do whatever you want with the box. I say "competitively
priced" to mean, I didn't find anything lower and I found a lot of
things higher. SkyNetWeb was the only one in a list of about 6-8
that I priced who did short-term contracts (didn't require a long-term
lock-in). They also don't insist on having a copy of the root password.
We've had a few administrative snags, but they were quick to resolve them,
and I've been overall happy with them as a provider.
I don't think you're going to get full access for $20-30/month, though
you might pool with some friends to have shared access. $20-30/month
is likely to get you dial-up access to an ISP, but not much more. I
might even offer to set up a machine and sell slices of it, but most
ISP arrangements I've dealt with specifically forbid recursive uses of
their product as an ISP. (My sneaking suspicion is that some or all
are overselling bandwidth and hoping you don't use it all, but fearful
that if you resell the part you are not using that you'll saturate the
oversale and expose the lie. I'd have thought they'd just sell you a
dedicated time slice and this wouldn't be an issue, but for some
reason it's more complicated than that.) The only quasi-legal dodge
to this restriction I can see is to pool yourself as users, rather
than for profit, so that you aren't selling the service but are merely
multiple people acting as a single entity to contract the service, and
even then you may be on shakey grounds, so consult the contract you'll sign.
Kent M Pitman <······@world.std.com> writes:
> I don't think you're going to get full access for $20-30/month, though
> you might pool with some friends to have shared access. $20-30/month
> is likely to get you dial-up access to an ISP, but not much more.
However, you might try looking for small, local ISPs. While not all
of them are flexible and responsive, some are, and certainly the big
ones are not. I've had good luck in the past just asking if the
administrator would install something significant system-wide, for the
benefit of everyone (and my disk quota).
> I might even offer to set up a machine and sell slices of it, but
> most ISP arrangements I've dealt with specifically forbid recursive
> uses of their product as an ISP. (My sneaking suspicion is that
> some or all are overselling bandwidth and hoping you don't use it
> all, but fearful that if you resell the part you are not using that
> you'll saturate the oversale and expose the lie. I'd have thought
> they'd just sell you a dedicated time slice and this wouldn't be an
> issue, but for some reason it's more complicated than that.) The
> only quasi-legal dodge to this restriction I can see is to pool
> yourself as users, rather than for profit, so that you aren't
> selling the service but are merely multiple people acting as a
> single entity to contract the service, and even then you may be on
> shakey grounds, so consult the contract you'll sign.
That's not quasi-legal, it's perfectly legal: it's called a consumer
collective. The only caveat is that a collective is an organization,
not an individual, so you'll probably get higher rates.
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