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Copyright 2003Jupitermedia
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Check the rulebook... 

Before you turn on any serving, you'd best check your ISP's Terms of Service (or whatever they call their rules and regulations) to see if running servers is ok with them.

ISP's vary widely on this policy.  Some will boot you off their network as soon as they detect any servers running on your machine.  Others are more tolerant and will let you run most anything as long as it's not illegal, pornographic, or offensive.

No matter what your ISP's policy is, it's important to be a good "Network Neighbor".  This essentially boils down to not hogging bandwidth and running a clean, well secured server that doesn't open security holes in your ISP's network or serve as a SPAM relay.  Running a properly secured server is covered in Step 4, so we'll focus bandwidth.
Be kind to your bandwidth

Contrary to what you may hear in their advertisements, your ISP doesn't have unlimited bandwidth at your disposal.  Bandwidth is shared by everyone and is limited at many points in your data's travel from one point to another on the Internet.

Many ISP's implement some sort of bandwidth limiting at the point where they connect you to their network, usually in the cable or DSL modem itself.  Sometimes this limit is higher (i.e. they limit you to a slower speed) on the uplink side than on the downlink, primarily because most users download more data than they upload.  No matter how your ISP has "tuned" their network, there's not much you can do about it if they've cranked your upload speed way down, other than to change ISPs!

But let's say that your ISP is generous and provides you with a nice speedy connection in both directions.  Does this mean that it's ok for you to share the connection with all of your dorm buddies or suck down large MP3 files or StarWars video trailers for hours at a time, especially during peak evening hours?  Or how about running a webserver that gets tens of thousands of page views a day?  It depends on your ISP and on how much bandwidth you actually consume, but the answer is probably NO. 

Basically, don't do anything that you wouldn't want done to you and you should be able to remain on good terms with your ISP.  Remember, they don't have to provide service to you and if you have only one choice for high-speed Internet service, you'll find it painful to go back to dialup if you get "de-provisioned".

Open some holes!