[mdlug] Naked/"dry loop" DSL and Linux-friendly ISPs

[David Favro]

Daniel Hedlund wrote:
> [...] any ISPs in particular that offer static IP addresses 
> and are reasonably friendly to non-commercial Linux-based servers, 
> including hosting my own email and DNS services.
>   
"Linux-based" should have nothing to do with it... just don't tell them
what OS is running on the box.  When they tell me, "We don't support
Linux", I respond: "You don't need to.  *I* support Linux.  All you need
to do is support your internet connection."

"Non commercial server" is a lot more difficult to find: most
residential service contracts contain terms of service that explicitly
prohibit running servers due to their broken pricing model (rather than
charging by the megabyte (rational pricing), they say they give you
unlimited data transfer, but try to prevent you from transferring
certain combinations of bits over the connection because they think that
it might entail high volumes of data, even though a personal email, DNS,
web server would be only a tiny fraction of the data volume of a typical
pr0n-surfer, which is not against the terms).  That said, if by
"non-commercial" you mean "personal" (as opposed to a large non-profit
organization), your volume will be low and you are mostly concerned with
whether they filter the ports.  If not, just do it, don't tell them, and
they likely won't notice.