Hello HN!,

The idea: I'm planning to launch an image storage service that allows users to upload photos from their IPhone. Think of it along the lines of twitpic wherein the user has a native IPhone application that can upload photos from the device's camera. I don't intend to copy twitpic, I'm just using it as an example to illustrate the general nature of the service.

The problem: After applying for an IPhone developer's license, my budget is now fairly close to $0, leaving me no money to rent a server.

The proposed solution: I have a 512KBps internet connection at home. It's supposed to be 512 up & down, but my ISP oversells its bandwidth as any ISP does, so this tends to vary wildly depending on time of day. Using a combination of dydns and port-forwarding I can set up a computer at home to be a server. The computer in question is an Acer with a 2.5GHZ intel processor & 2GB of RAM. This computer is only used occasionally for checking email or light wordprocessing. 95% of its time will be dedicated to this application alone.

The photos coming from the phone will be resized and compressed down to about 20kb per photo. There will be some additional metadata that comes with the photo like username, geolocation, etc. which brings the total data outgoing from the phone to about 25kb per photo.

Once receiving the photo, the server will send back some confirmation data which weighs in at about 4kb. If the user is requesting their profile for editing, the server sends back data that is about 25kb, ie; username, email, thumbnail of avatar, etc.

The server app is written in PHP with a smidgen of .NET for some image manipulation. The estimated frequency of use is perhaps 4 photos per day per user.

The question: This setup is only to launch the service and gain minimal traction, say 5000 users or so. That means it has to run for 3 months ? ( I have no idea how long it'll take to get 5000 users) The general idea is to get the service running with some users, iterate to the 2nd version of the product with the feedback received and then approach an investor.

Is this set-up good enough ?

Thanks HN !

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Home computer details here : http://www.acer.co.in/acer/product.do?link=oln93e.redirect&changedAlts=&kcond48e.c2att101=50579&CRC=3875343219

Submissions by karam

Ask HN: Is a home server good enough ?

Ask HN: Is a home server good enough ?