I use servers from my house, but I always use Business internet. Yes, you can get Business internet delivered to your residence, even in an apartment complex*. It won't be on the same tier system as Residential, it will be more expensive, and there is more setup to do ( particularly in the paperwork dept, but no, I have not ever had to have a
registered business to get business class net ). They won't throttle you on Business 'net, you pay for exactly what you get and typically the support services are far quicker to respond. Typically you will also get 1-5 free static IPs with it too. I find it to be far cheaper than running a dedicated / VPS server network elsewhere, especially since I have immediate access to my own hardware.
Having said all that, I have not ever used CableOne. Since you provided me the name of the company though, it was a real quick check to verify that yes, they are probably throttling the everloving fuck-hell out of you because their AUP says they will. Specifically:
Technical restrictions
...
- use or run dedicated, stand-alone equipment or servers from the Premises that provide network content or any other services to anyone outside of your Premises local area network ("Premises LAN"), also commonly referred to as public services or servers. Examples of prohibited equipment and servers include, but are not limited to, e-mail, Web hosting, file sharing, and proxy services and servers;
- use or run programs from the Premises that provide network content or any other services to anyone outside of your Premises LAN, except for personal and non-commercial residential use;
...
Which, honestly, every residential plan I know of in America will have this exact statement in it. If you are not on business, you do not get to run a server. Sure, you may
get away with running a server. For a
little while.
If it doesn't use much bandwidth.
If it uses non standard
and high numbered misc ports. Otherwise, welcome to residential 'net in America, they are all exactly like this.
If you're going to be setting up public servers, the first thing you should do is forget the notion of DMZ and public access. Anything open to the public can be seen and will be exploited by the botnets and script-kiddies if you're not secured / locked down ( and even then they will try, oh yes they will try... back when I ran a Wordpress blog it was like a daily ritual to watch them ). Just because you haven't been hit yet, don't think you won't get hit eventually if you're hosting something.
The easiest way to manage a public available net is to familiarize yourself with Proxy servers and IDS. No, I'm not talking about Proxify or other such items, I mean something like HAProxy. With HAProxy or some other Web Application Firewall, you can reverse proxy / loadbalance and SSL offload, allowing you to control exactly how services are used which also ties in to the next point, IDS. Using a UTM like pfSense will give you access to Barnyard - Snorby - Snort / Suricata / other IDS etc. pfSense in particular also comes with nettop, and is free. Nettop will tell you everything you ever wanted to know ( and not know ) about exactly what traffic is going down your pipes and at what bandwidth. Most UTMs ( including pfSense ) will also provide some out-of-the-box support for dealing with DoS/DDoS attacks.
Full disclosure: I personally prefer to use a different type of UTM than the one I mentioned above, but pfSense is probably the most well known community supported ( ie available for free that doesn't require special hardware ) one.
*In most cases, can vary on how populous / new the area you live in is.