re: hosting your own site
I'm on Cable, via Videotron, but woudn't hosting your own site be kind of slow anyway (regardless of saving money)? I don't know how other companies are set up, but via Videotron they cap the amount of data that can be served from your connection.
I attempted to host my own site complete with my own DNS server and it was horribly slow to access -- so much so that I closed it down after a couple of weeks (and friends complaining).
Isn't this pretty much standard with all ISPs? Just curious.