On Thu, 2005-12-15 at 05:16, Christofer C. Bell wrote: > You guys are trying to make it sound like running a Linux machine on > the public Internet is some kind of nightmare of "lions and tigers and > bears" and that depiction couldn't be farther from the truth. I've The point I was trying to make is that he needs to consider a number things depending on if the system was for a business or simple personal page type stuff. For a business the benefit of having your system located in an IDC is significant. Moving a business service to a home cable line requires some careful planning to make sure you don't end up losing money due to down time. For personal home pages that is not as critical. There is always a risk/benefit analysis that must be done. And the reality is that there are plenty of "hacker and crackers and spammers" out there that can make an admins job something they dread. If the OP takes basic precautions and uses the best practices that have been suggested he will have fewer issues and can spend time more on using the Internet and his systems. We all started out with no idea how any of this stuff worked. The OP gets the benefit of those that have gone before him which should improve his learning curve substantially.