So you <i>could</i> run services on the end of your residential xDSL or cable line. Getting multiple IP addresses from your ISP makes it easier (good luck with that!), but you could just set up port forwarding from your router. That would technically 'work', but...<p>With any volume of connections, your cheap residential router will fall over under the load. xDSL and cable are both asymmetrical, so you don't have much upload bandwidth, and cheap ISPs frequently have 'no servers' clauses in their terms of service. The reliability isn't great, either. A business xDSL or cable service will fix the terms of service issue, and possibly get you a more reliable service, but isn't going to do much for the upload bandwidth.<p>You could get a leased-line type connection, which these days are generally delivered as Ethernet over optical fibre or Ethernet-in-the-First-Mile, which is a VDSL-ish symmetrical service. That's going to cost at least an order of magnitude more than cable or xDSL, and unless your garage happens to be located in a business district, you'll probably also have to pay for them to dig up the street and extend the network to you.<p>With either of those routes, your garage won't have redundant connections to the Internet, won't have redundant power or cooling (does it even have cooling to begin with?), a staffed NOC, or all the other things which go with a proper datacentre.<p>Cloud and dedicated hosting is so cheap these days that for anything more than a hobby project, I wouldn't even consider running a server from home -- and it's very questionable, even for the hobby projects!