Do-it-yourself Hosting
Do-it-yourself hosting
A lot of small businesses and IT contractors turn to the idea of hosting their own online services after experiencing mounting costs and occasional unreliability with their hosting provider. However, while self-hosting can seem like an ideal solution, there are a lot of things to consider before making this transition.
Internet Service
A domestic Internet provider is unlikely to offer you the right levels of speed and service to facilitate self-hosting. You will need to have a business service with: 
• A good to excellent upload speed. This will affect how quickly people can access your pages, and it is usually a lot slower than download speed.
• Confirmed high levels of reliability. If your Internet goes down, so does your email and website. Most Internet providers will only promise certain levels of uptime, which may be insufficient for business-critical processes
• Rapid response times. The speed of your connection will affect how quickly your server can respond to requests. Any delays will be cumulative over the number of queries it gets in a given period.
Security Issues
In addition to sourcing the right Internet provider, you’ll need to do a lot of work on data security if you host your own emails or websites. You’ll need to make sure your network is secure from external attack while still allowing legitimate traffic through. This can involve complex programming, and few systems are entirely foolproof. If your security doesn’t let real queries and customers through, you may miss out on business. Even worse, in the case of a security breach, you will have to deal with all issues arising from it yourself rather than having a third party handle the practical aspects while you focus on reputation management.
Choosing hardware and software
This is important in terms of both your networking equipment and server. Your networking setup needs to reliably handle traffic routing and security and be easy to manage. You will need to make sure your physical equipment is robust and accessible and that you take time getting the setup right for your needs.
Similarly, your servers will need to run all day, every day, so you need to choose hardware with a reputation for reliability and ease of maintenance. These will not necessarily be the cheapest options, but they are cheaper than repairing reputational damage after a system failure.
When choosing server software for hosting, you need to consider long-term support as well as functionality and stability. The best software is no good if there’s no-one to help you fix it in the rare event something does go wrong.
Info Graphic: Advantages about Self-Hosting
Conclusion
Hosting your own services is not for the faint hearted. Having full control over your online services is appealing and can enable a more responsive business model. However, it comes at the cost of taking responsibility for many different aspects, a failure in any of which could damage your business and credibility.
Web hosting agencies can absorb some of this risk and provide you with expert advice. The right provider will also understand your need to be responsive and to grow your online services with your business. If you decide not to self-host, use your skills and resources to shop around for the right provider for your needs, rather than settling for the cheapest or the one with the best sales department.
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duallogic– Bigstock®
thundermedia – fiverr.com®
CentralNic Acquires Internet.BS for $7,5 Million
CentralNic announced recently that it has acquired the domain name registrar Internet.bs for up to $7,5 million.
Internet.BS (IBS) was founded by Marco Rinaudo eleven years ago, in 2003.The company had a profit of $730,000 in 2013,accordinf to CentralNic.
Internet.bs has more than 500,000 gTLD under management.Moreover, the company has 28,000 customers in 199 countries.Therefore, this acquisition is a strategic step for CentralNic.
CentralNic said how this acquisition will affect the company :
“- Gaining a proven retail platform already supporting 28,000 users in eight languages, including sophisticated administrative tools for domain portfolio owners;
– Enhancing the revenues and profits of CentralNic with an additional cash generative business retailing domains to consumers and other domain name retailers; and
– Optimizing the earnings opportunity for CentralNic presented by the new Top-Level Domains by giving it access to the retail margin for sales of these domains.
The Board believes that the deal terms are attractive, at under 10x EBITDA, with 35% of the consideration settled in shares.”
Over 65,000 .BERLIN Registrations In One Day With Discounted Fee
The .berlin gTLD started Monday 16 June with close to 50,000 registrations and ended the day with over 116,000 registrations, meaning there were a massive 65,000 or so registrations in 24 hours.
The massive number of registrations came about with a special promotion with participating registrars that saw the maximum fee charged of €5.55. Some registrars were reportedly giving the domains away for free.
It’s a marked contrast to the questionable activities of Network Solutions that gave their .com registrants the equivalent .xyz domain unless they explicitly opted out of the offer.
The special promotional campaign is running from 16 to 20 June five lucky registrants during the period will win an Apple iPad mini 32GB WIFI. Winners will be drawn on 27 June 2014.
The massive number of registrations pushed .berlin back into second place in the new gTLDs chart compiled by nTLDstats.com behind the controversial .xyz which has 145,868 registrations at the end of 16 June. Then .berlin (116,589), .club (72,023) and .guru (62,182). These are the only four gTLDs with more than 40,000 registrations. There are 11 gTLDs with more than 20,000 registrations, 25 with more than 10,000 and 115 with more than 1,000.
Getting noticed when there are so many gTLDs is going to prove more and more difficult when there are 302 gTLDs delegated and most of which will be after public registrations. Some have not begun Sunrise periods, let alone entered General Availability and there are hundreds more to come.
But the .berlin promotion has certainly boosted their registrations! And hopefully in a year or two when domains come up for renewal there will be plenty of .berlin websites floating around.
ICANN Grants Two More European Registrars Data Retention Waivers
ICANN has granted another two European registrars data retention waivers following concerns over how the Registrar Accreditation Agreement conflicts with European data retention laws.
One waiver was granted to Blacknight Internet Solutions who submitted to ICANN a Registrar Data Retention Waiver Request on the basis of Registrar’s contention that compliance with the data collection and/or retention requirements of the Data Retention Specification in the 2013 RAA violates applicable law in Ireland.
The second waiver was granted to Nameweb BVBA on the basis of the Registrar’s contention that compliance with the data collection and/or retention requirements of the Data Retention Specification in the 2013 RAA violates applicable law in Belgium.
The waivers shall remain in effect for the duration of the term of the 2013 RAA signed by the registrars.
The issue has come about as some registrars, particularly in Europe, have expressed concerns that local data protection and other privacy laws make it difficult for them to comply with these new requirements. ICANN has noted these concerns and that laws vary from country to country and that some of the new data retention requirements in the 2013 RAA may conflict with certain European data protection and privacy regulations. In a posting on the ICANN blog, ICANN’s Cyrus Namazi said, “to be clear, governing laws take precedence over the terms of the RAA.”
The issue from a European perspective was made clear in a letter from the European Commission’s Article 29 Working Party in June 2013 who said “the Working Party wishes to provide a single statement for all relevant registrars targeting individual domain name holders in Europe.” Obviously this hasn’t happened and ICANN is issuing waivers on a registrar-by-registrar basis on the specific laws that are being violated in the country the registrar is located.
The Working Party also reiterated “its strong objection to the introduction of data retention by means of a contract issued by a private corporation in order to facilitate (public) law enforcement. If there is a pressing social need for specific collections of personal data to be available for law enforcement, and the proposed data retention is proportionate to the legitimate aim pursued, it is up to national governments to introduce legislation that meets the demands of article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights and article 17 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political rights.”
“The fact that these personal data can be useful for law enforcement does not legitimise the retention of these personal data after termination of the contract. Because there is no legal ground for the data processing, the propose d data retention requirement violates data protection law in Europe.”
Sedo’s .Bid/.Trade Auction Ends Today ! Nine Domain Names Have Bids, Led By PPC.Bid
Sedo’s auction of premium .bid and .trade domain names ends today, June 17,2014 at Noon EST.Only 9 domains out of the 35 included in the auction have bids so far.
PPC.bis leads the auction ,with a high bid of $1,050,while both OnlineAuction.bid and LiveAuction.bid have bids of $800.
The auction features 35 premium .Bid and .Trade domain names. All the domain names inclued in the auction have a reserve range of $1,000 – $5,000 .As of time of publication this article ,none of the domain names have reached reserve.
Here is the entire inventory :
coffee.trade
coupon.trade
house.trade
property.trade
job.trade
properties.trade
diamonds.trade
haus.trade
stockmarket.trade
currency.trade
connect.trade
design.trade
music.trade
privat.trade
stockexchange.trade
worldwide.trade
digital.trade
apartment.bid
commodity.bid
diamonds.bid
fashion.bid
flats.bid
flights.bid
investment.bid
investor.bid
lastminute.bid
liveauction.bid
marketplace.bid
onlineauction.bid
opening.bid
ppc.bid
realtime.bid
top.bid
design.bid
counter.bid
Check out Sedo.com for more information .
