I did the same a while back in early 2007, when FiOS was introduced in my city in France by Orange. I needed a good server for a custom made webapp (8G RAM min

I did the same a while back in early 2007, when FiOS was introduced in my city in France by Orange. I needed a good server for a custom made webapp (8G RAM minimum, 500 MB with a spare, quad core 64 bit - that was a little expansive in 2007). The cost analysis revealed a low end Dell with a decent CPU, loaded with RAM + dedicated "home" hosting was the most reasonable option, compared to VPS or rewriting the app. I paid 80 Eur/month for 100 Mbps symmetrical - add that power and lost rent costs (it was in a dedicated room of my appartment) for like ~ 150 Eur/month total. The big advantage was a full control - I could do what the hell I needed with my hardware. It doesn't take too much time to do administration as you reported. The only drawback was the Orange Livebox - a brain dead box sold to home users (100 Mbs/20 Mbs for 50 Eur/month) that had far too munch problems for any real use. Seeing the downtime in the first couple of months was approaching 10 minutes a day, I did hook the optic fiber adapter RJ45 directly to the server. With some reverse engineering, running ppoe on a specific VLAN worked like a charm until this june, when I decided to pull the plug. The project didn't catch up, it was very innovative in 2006, it is only moderately innovative now - time to kill it (parts of it will be used for a non profit help for Haiti) Current hardware costs make it more logical to rent instead of build/host/maintain at home.