This already happens and will become increasingly popular IMHO. I know that my broadband connection allows me to utilize 60 GB/month so I could host my own sites now (in theory).

The only problem I see is with cable connections you tend to get lumped in with a zillion other bleedin' idiots on a network hub so busy times can bog your site down considerably. Of course T1 lines (and better) continue to come down in price with better options being available so if you can afford a T1 or higher, what's stopping you from hosting?

Lastly, I'm no webhost but I do know that the number of dos attacks has increased considerably over the years. I've heard that many host went from a few hundred dos attacks per month to a few hundred per week and many are up to a few hundred per day and worse.

This is right Duke. Anyway I don't think that the mass migration to the hosting on home PC's will come soon.

We had many sites hosted on PC's in my ISP until they have realised the huge trafic these "servers" are making to the network and they shut various ports in order to stop the users from using their PC's this way.

Microsoft is up-coming with windowhost plan in a very affordable and reasonable price. I think it will impact overall webhosting business. Hosting will be very easy for everybody who are looking for a host.

I would advise anyone against hosting a public site on a home PC, for the following reasons:

1 - Residential broadband connections, although they are getting faster they will always be far less reliable than those of a datacentre, which will usually have several very high speed connections from different providers. So even if one of the backbone companies suddenly goes out of business your server is still accessible. Not to mention fire suppression, onsite generators, and security guards.

2 - Configuring a webserver to be sufficiently stable and secure is probably quite a challenge unless you have a lot of experience with Linux servers. And if you are hosting on Windows it may even be impossible (i'm thinking of home versions of windows)

Not to mention the fact that webhosts set up their hardware for one purpose only and that's to run websites. If you plan on continuing to use your computer for e-mail, internet, games, banking, or production purposes then you may not even have adequate enough system resources to dedicate to hosting your own website.

IMHO, you should have at least a dedicated server that does nothing other than host your website and also a seperate connection to the net.

So you will have to pay the electricity and internet connection for that PC only, to have in online 24 hours a day. That can be more expensive than to have hosting at some company specialized in this.

Pretty much.

yeah you can host your own sites on your pc (I've known this to be possible since 98).

But as soon as your pc is switched off then your site is down and there's obviously an increased virus/hacker risk to your PC.

As well as having more limited bandwidth option depending on your pc and iSP.

Hmm, it's possible without doubt, but it's more reliable to host your site on a hosting server, because in this way you will reduce the risk of virus/hackers/downtime etc.
A hosting company can guarantee an uptime and also the bandwith.

Ovi