Hello

I want to set-up a home web server. It won't be an issue to get a static IP and to run a server (spoke about that with my ISP already).
The difficult part is the hardware. My budget is tight and I don't feel like investing money into buying an additional hardware, unless I absolutely have to. What I have right now is a DSL modem that has SOME (keyword SOME!) router capabilities. It's basically 3 in 1. It's a DSL modem, a Wi-FI AP and Ethernet switch. I don't need it as a modem, since I don't have DSL here (the device is from another apartment and even country -- long story and not relevant). Right now I use it as a switch and AP. I really do NOT need this nice device to get online, it's just it's more convenient to get rid of wires on the floor. Some fools think that I have a Wi-Fi Internet at home or DSL. AGAIN -- it's NEITHER. It's a RJ-45 Ethernet PPPoE connection to the ISP.
P.S. Frankly, it's not even a money issue -- I'm afraid to buy Chinese crap that produces a high-pitched noise (kinda zzzzzzzzzzzzzz!) while working and I can hear it and it drives me crazy (already returned couple of devices to the store).

You don't need a router just to run a server at home. Just be very sure your firewall is setup properly. You might create a 'dmz' on your 'switch' and point it to the server.

Thank you for your reply!
The device we're talking about is
HUAWEI hg-530
This device does have some router capabilities, but not all. It does have port-forwarding. Now when you know exactly what we're talking about, you'd know better IF that device can be used in a home web server set-up. This device has a DSL WAN port (RJ-11), that I'm NOT using. So I can't use this modem for automatic connection to the Internet. I have to use a Windows dialer (so called "High Speed Connection) or ppoeconf in Ubuntu.
My guess is that I probably CAN use this device in the context of HTTP server hardware, but it all comes down to its correct configuration for such purpose.

I would not run any server process on a standard port on home hardware. For fun I left a virtual machine with port 22 (ssh) open to the internet and I was port-scanned and had password-cracking attempts happen every day. Setting up a server on a home connection is certainly possible but may result in all kinds of problems.

None of the router functions except for WifI and maybe DHCP are really useful since your only using the LAN side. I can not think of any use it has in the context of running a web server. However, you can create a LAN for your other devices by installing a second network adapter and configuring the server to be a NAT router.

Thanks for your replies! Okay, I'm gonna check my router and see what I can do with it.