I purchased a used PC two weeks ago from eBay. It comes with i7-3770 and 128GB ssd. I later upgrade it to 16GB memory and add 2TB hdd. I intended to use it as a home entertainment system, e.g. playing videos and games. It is connected to a 55-inch TV and a sound bar.
The experience is gorgeous.
Now I find a new way to use it – as a home server.
Actually, this idea is not my first time. I had done this when I was in the college. At that time, I set up a server using a mini motherboard purchased from taobao. It was running Atom CPU and Ubuntu server, which is much weaker than what I now have. I mostly use it as a downloader that fetches shared resources from our university’s PT website.
Beside the downloader, it also runs the webserver. I setup my first blog there. It records lots of precious memory during my undergraduate time. I also share a lot of computer techniques there, mainly about cross-compilation. The blog webpage can be accessed from the outer Internet. Thus, the blog also gains minor attention from others.
Then, I came to US, with hope that I can do some similar thing. However, I sadly found that all the usable network has incoming firewall. That means even I setup the server, other cannot access it from outside. The firewall is necessary since it prevents most of active attack.
Nevertheless, I just find a new way to bypass this limitation, that is to use the 1-to-1 dedicated VPN service. You established a secure tunnel to a remote server, which has public static IP and doesn’t have the firewall. Any packet to the server will be routed to your PC. Any packet initiated from your PC will look like to be stemmed from the server.
It takes me $9.9 each month to enjoy this service. It does not has limit on the bandwidth or speed. The only problem is that the server is located in the UK. Thus, it will incur relatively high latency and bottleneck the throughput. Despite of this, it is much cheaper than getting a VPS, and more importantly, it is my own server – I have completely control over it.
As a result, I use it to do what I have dreamed from. Setup this personal blog, a private cloud storage and a game server – MU Online. A game I first played when I was still a kid.