Monthly Archives: April 2020

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Traditional data centres had a good and long near 20-some year run as the primary and exclusive means of being the large-scale repositories where the ever-increasing volumes of digital data that was so key to modern life were kept. It’s only in the past 5 years of so that there’s been this change to cloud-based data storage, but what a monumental and impactful shift it’s been.

Now there’s no debating the fact that cloud-based storage does come with certain drawbacks, and the security of data stored ‘up there’ is first and foremost among them. Fortunately there’s been major advances made in cyber security technology to meet the need this has created. But all in all, the good far outweighs the bad when it comes to cloud computing and cloud storage.

That said, it’s not like traditional data centres and the now more-conventional data storage means are going to become entirely obsolete anytime soon. Here at 4GoodHosting, the nature of what we do as a Canadian web hosting provider puts us in as good a position as anyone to be informed regarding this and of course we know that being both receptive of these trends and judicious about the extent to which we incorporate them is important.

Web hosting means data storage and data centres, and that’s not going to change. But cloud computing and storage trends are changing the role they play and how they’re likely to be built and configured in the future.

Let’s dig into that today.

Extensive Demises Expected

The first thing we can say about traditional data centres is that a good many of them won’t be around for much longer, or so it seems. Many are predicting that 80% of enterprises will have shut down their traditional data center by 2025, and that’s in comparison to the 10% we see today. This adoption is going along with an adopted mindset that the hybrid cloud is the foundation of digital business. Which may well be true, considering that there are estimates that the hybrid cloud market will reach $317 billion by 2022.

Looking at the Data Center Footprint

We can start by understanding that annual global IP traffic continues to rise, and is predicted to go even higher – annual global IP traffic is estimated to soar up to 3.3 zettabytes by 2021. Further, the number of traditional enterprise data centers globally has gone down considerably – well down from the 8.4 million of them there was just 3 years ago.

Despite the decline, energy usage and costs associated with it globally are pretty much staggering. In our neighbouring U.S.A., data centers devour electricity to the tune of more than 90 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity a year, and of course that requires a LOT of energy generation. Federal agencies have instructed related parties to reduce the costs of physical data centers by 25% or more, and similar instructions have been given by the regulatory agencies here in Canada.

Ever-Greater Demands on Data Centres

This shift from the traditional physical data center to newer options comes isn’t exclusively related to cost-cutting mandates. The explosion of artificial intelligence, on-demand video streaming and IoT devices has a LOT to do with it as well. These technologies are being rapidly adopted and require substantially more power and infrastructure flexibility. With some 20 billion IoT devices currently in use around the world, massive increases to data center infrastructure and electricity consumption are needed to keep up.

With these mounting demands and the introduction of the Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) metrics, traditional data centers have needed to evolve. They’ve done so through more efficient cooling systems and greener, smarter construction practices for better-regulated buildings, as well as with greater energy efficiency from storage hardware. We can look at Google as a success story in this regard (despite that the fact that of course they have pockets deep enough to keep going back to the drawing board as many times as it takes) and their impressive PUE of 1.12 across all their data centers.

The Ideal Nature of a Hybrid Solution

Despite all this, enterprises are still relying heavily on public, private and hybrid clouds over data centers. That can only last so long, however, as cost and demand are driving shifts from traditional data centers to the hybrid cloud.

Hybrid, custom and multi-cloud solutions offer the most objective-focused approach to these new operating realities, with solutions that blend the capabilities and benefits of public and private cloud technology with traditional data centers. It’s a comprehensive approach that meets the cost, security and compliance needs of enterprise organizations, and there’s no way they aren’t going to be the new ‘norm’ moving forward.

Receptive to the Cutting Edge

With traditional data centers evolving for a new IT era in exactly the way they should be, the landscape is no doubt very complex. Or at least appears to be that way at this time. IT partners with data center expertise are going to be invaluable, and ones that are also able provide the necessary geo-diversity, interconnection services, tools and experience from migration to management are going to be even more integral to successful adaptations.

In addition, rationalizing public cloud workload placement and making ‘as-a-service’ offerings available to provide some measure of relief from the cost and resource pain points that organizations may run into is going to help too. Especially in instances where they are trying to implement changes using their already-overloaded internal IT staff. Building this network of partners to enable and integrate diverse platforms is just another component in the evolutionary change of the IT environment.

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Here we are just over a month into the emergency response measures dictated by the current Coronavirus crisis and unfortunately the end is not in sight yet. While absolutely no one is pleased about all of this, the majority understand that’s what’s being done is necessary. The worst part of it is the economic slowdown that’s coming with this, and for many people it’s really affecting the way in which gainful employment supports life.

Almost everyone has a connection to the digital world these days, whether you’re working in it directly or not. And it’s not almost everyone who makes use of email for a large majority of communications, it’s everyone. Unfortunately, every time there’s a large-scale calamity of the sort that we’re experience with COVID-19 there’s going to be some who see it as opportunity to fraudulently take advantage of others. That’s why we’re seeing so many coronavirus email scams going on these days.

 

We’d like to think that one of the ways 4GoodHosting has established ourselves as a reputable Canadian web hosting provider is the way we’re always keen to share what’s most valuable from what we gather by keeping on to of current events in the digital world. The fact that so many scam emails related to the Coronavirus are out and about now definitely meets the criteria for this stuff, so that’s what we’re going to look.

Google Blocking 18 Million of Them – A Day!

To gauge the full extent of the problem, look no further than the fact that Google has revealed that on each day over the past week, its Gmail-linked computer systems detected and then blocked 18 million malware and phishing emails related to the coronavirus. That’s a mammoth number, and really speaks to magnitude of the issue and the way it’s a far-reaching threat.

Interesting to note that Google has also blocked more than than 240 million daily spam messages linked to the virus. And well they should be able to given the resources they have at their disposal; Google’s machine-learning systems have become so effective at detecting the online threats that it manages to block 99.9% of spam, phishing, and malware from reaching anyone’s Gmail inbox.

As you might expect, these phishing attacks and scams are being used to stoke fear and push financial incentives to create urgency to try to prompt users to respond. Some of what’s being seen are individuals impersonating high-profile bodies like the World Health Organization, and the perp sending emails to try to solicit fraudulent donations.

The aim may also be to distribute malware which could give remote access to the victim’s computer or mobile device if downloaded.

What Can You Do?

Be suspicious of unsolicited emails

Unsolicited emails that prompt you to click on an attachment should raise a red flag at the best of times, and even more so now. Given that so much is going on at the federal level to provide financial relief to Canadians affected by the lockdown measures, any type of unsolicited communication related to the provision or management of finances should be treated with the right amount of precautions.

One thing that’s going to be very important here is to ensure that you don’t have any feature working with your email client that prompts the automatic opening of any attachments sent with the email.

Be Wary of Mobile Malware

A lot of people will be keeping tabs on the coronavirus and local measures related to it via an app. That’s perfectly normal these days, and no one will suggest you shouldn’t use them. However, you need to be cautious here too.

Down in the States, a research study has found that there are currently 16 apps that are maliciously trying to pose as legitimate coronavirus-related apps in a bid to steal users’ sensitive data or generate fraudulent revenues from freemium services.

The best advice here is to only use apps you’ve obtained through the App Store or Google Play. The chances of them being fraudulently-oriented are much less.

Determine Legitimacy of Sources

You should also be wary of social media or other sources where you obtain information regarding the Pandemic. It’s not that referencing these sources puts you directly at risk of malware or malicious email content, but it does increase the risk that you’ll be targeted by them.

For example, there’s many random Facebook groups offering supposed home cures for COVID-19 and long Twitter threads from self-appointed health experts and cleverly designed websites. Visiting them may mean you’re more at risk of receiving these fraud-aiming communications or suggestions for downloaded apps, etc.

Here’s a tip related to Facebook; click on the ”about” section of a Facebook group. You’ll then be able to see whether that group has changed its name multiple times to reflect new national crises — a sure sign that the group is trawling for an audience instead of promoting reliable news.

For Twitter, keep an eye on official sources, including the accounts of trusted news sites and their news reporters, and avoiding political operatives where possible.

 

 

 

 

 

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Anyone who’d unfamiliar with Siri or Alexa these days will have had to very consciously done something to stay so totally out of touch with how voice searches are entirely commonplace nowadays. Even if you’re not among the hundreds of thousands who make use of virtual assistants this way every day, you really can’t not know of them. It’s true that advances in digital and Internet technologies are coming fast and furious these days, however, so for some who aren’t keeners these sorts of things may arrive on their radar much later.Well, as you might imagine given that we’re a Canadian web hosting provider, the lot of us at 4GoodHosting are totally keeners for this sort of stuff as it factors into the way we make decisions on what we do with our product and services. That’s going to be true for a whole lot of people who rely on the Information Superhighway to make them visible for ‘searcher’s on the lookout for whatever it is they have to offer.

And so here we are with a number of figures that bear out what we’re getting at here; the fact that mobile web browsing is outdistancing desktop variations is well established, and now we’re also seeing that more and more often those mobile web browsers are utilizing voice search on their devices.

Voice Search Becoming Commonplace

It’s being reported that more than 50 percent of all smartphone users will utilize voice technology on their devices over the course of the rest of this year. There’s no debating that voice and visual search tools have completely transformed the way we use the internet, and that half figure there indicates that the transformation is definitely being well received. We’re at a point now where using our mouths and eyes to guide searches has transformed how we find desired information, items, and whatever else it is we have access to on that Superhighway.

We may be just a quarter of the way through, but 2020 is already proving to be a big year for internet development. Whether it’s huge gains in major data storage expansion capacities or the way cloud computing has been redefined across the board, this year is likely going to be looked back as one where we say some really big leaps.

There is no doubt that expansions are underway for further developing and improving our voice and visual search options. What’s the significance of that? Well, it is going to open the door for more inclusion and opportunities for internet users all over the world.

A Look Back at the Beginnings for Voice And Visual Search

We had our first try with voice search made available to us in 2011, and courtesy of – surprise, surprise – Google. It’s fair to say that at first it was really only a novelty. Most people were never going to foresee this new and unknown feature helping them navigate their devices and the web. Speech recognition technology improved, however, and with those improvements came applied technologies that ever greater numbers of people started paying attention to.

Fast forward 9 years to today, and most tasks are unimaginable without voice search technology. So much so that voice has surged to the forefront of search marketing.

How About Visual

Visual search comes very a different place conceptually, and some say it is designed in accordance with the fact most human beings are very visual in nature. It has been said that the future of search will be about pictures, rather than keywords, and it seems as if this was an accurate foresight. We’re now seeing retail giants investing in quality visual search technology to help their customers find exactly what they need, and finding it as directly as possible. Look no further than how many retailers have a function on their website where consumers can now take a photo of an item or image and quickly purchase that product, or search for similar ones in the same portal.

Effectiveness Of Using Words And Sight

A recent study from our friends over at HubSpot found that the average person can recall 65% of the visual content they see nearly 72 hours later. That provides a lot of the rationale for the way companies have invested into visual search technologies. Telecommunications infrastructure relies on network cabling to transmit this data, and we’re at a point where this technology has grown rapidly to allow for a vast amount of data to be in transit at all times.

There’s a lot that goes into this process, but the long and short of it is that we now have networking systems that allows us to take the words and pictures in our heads and turn them into directional tasks. It’s making search engines work for us more in line with how we naturally operate with something of a ‘this is exactly what I’m envisioning, what do you have that’s like it’ kind of methodology guiding the development.

Moving Everyone Forward

Then there’s the way that hearing and vision-impaired individuals have used voice and visual technologies to help them communicate with the world for a long time now. Voice and visual search technology have great potential to make the internet much more friendly to people with disabilities. By removing the need for functioning hands to type or eyes to read keys, these advances are making everything from ordering food to purchasing medical supplies a whole lot more possible and less demanding for the individual.

A more accessible internet is one that will not only be even more cemented in day-to-day existences and operations, but one that will serve every individual who has a need. Even if they don’t have the same abilities as others when it comes to using devices as effectively. The expansion of voice and visual search options is sure to continue to surprise us for years to come, and it’s an interesting time to be taking in the speed with which all of these game-changing developments are occurring.

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Young adults under the age of 25 won’t remember it, but there as a time a good few years before the turn of the century when the Internet was still something of a novelty and not the principle resource in the digital world we have today. If you’re in that age bracket it will be probably be hard for you to imagine, but for those of us in the ‘biz’ of sorts and old enough to remember what we felt like on the Millennium NYE it’s really quite something to look back and see the way the Information Superhighway became so integral to the entire world.

Now not to toot our industry’s horn too much, but it’s web hosting that’s served as the conduit between domains and getting onto that Information Superhighway. And if you’re in business online then perhaps it’s more opening yourself up to it. Either way, you can’t deny that reliable web hosting has been pivotal for a whole lot of us being able to do with our own website or overall online presence, no matter what aim it serves. Here at 4GoodHosting, we’re like any Canadian web hosting provider in that a look back on the history of web hosting isn’t going to be as informative for us as it is for you.

Still pretty darn interesting all around though! Seeing as the whole word is pretty much on pause we may find there’s not a whole lot new or interesting to discuss all the time, so how about we look back on all the important moments that happened along the way as web hosting played an important role in building the digital world we enjoy today. We’ll go until 2001, and then we’ll continue with this next week.

1965 – MIT Scientists lay the foundation for the Internet by having two computers reliably communicating with each other.

1973 – The dawn of the Internet – 2 European organizations are able to connect to ARPANET, the U.S. Defence Department’s Internet predecessor.

1974 – The First Internet Service Provider (ISP)

Telenet provides a version of ARPANET for the public to become the first ISP.

1979 – Founding of Network Solutions

Originally an engineering consultancy company, Network Solutions eventually became the first company to handle the Domain Name System (DNS) and make domain names available to websites.

1983 – TCP/IP

ARPANET begins using the Internet protocol suite, or TCP/IP. This is still used today to connect networks through the Internet.

1983 – DNS

The DNS (Domain Name System) makes its arrival, establishing the standard method for locating where the websites are hosted.

1984 – Cisco

Stanford University staff found future technology giant Cisco Systems, Inc. By 1987, Cisco was able to sell their own routers after negotiating royalties with Stanford University.

1985 – The first domain is registered – symbolics.com

1987 – Reached 30,000 hosts on the Internet.

1988 – 1st Hosting Companies On the Scene

1&1 Internet (now known as 1&1 IONOS) is founded in Germany. 1&1 becomes one of the first web hosting companies.

1989 – The World Wide Web is Invented

While working at CERN, Tim Berners-Lee creates his prototype of a global, interconnected “World Wide Web.”

1989 – First Commercial Dial-up Services

Commercial dial-up Internet becomes available from ISPs such as World.std.com[xii] in America and DIALix and Pegasus Networks in Australia

1990 – HTML Launch

Berners-Lee develops HTML, allowing documents to be display in web browsers via a programming language. HTML remains a primary building block for the web.

1991 – Linux

TheLinux operating system arrives, and with it comes a cheaper, near-identical alternative to Unix. This enabled Linux hosting providers to offer their services for cheaper than previous Unix hosting providers.

1992 – Startings of Colocation Web Hosting

Metropolitan Fiber Systems (MFS) breaks new ground in colocation web hosting with their MAE-East Internet exchange point. A few ISPs decide to connect their networks through MAE-East, and MFS provides colocation facilities for them.

1993 – A whopping (jk) 623 websites on the Internet now, and government organizations like the UN now have their own sites

1993 – Mosaic

Marc Andreesen and Eric Bina create and debut Mosaic web browser, and it’s a big contributor to the 90s Internet boom.

1994 – Register.com, Netscape, & EarthLink Launch

Peter Forman founds Forman Interactive and over time it grows into a major web hosting provider and domain name registrar before the company name changes to register.com. The ISP and eventual web hosting provider EarthLink is also founded this year. Netscape is founded under the name Mosaic Communications Corporation and the Netscape web browser is made available.

1995 – Free Web Hosting, AIT, Inc., and the Arrival of Internet Explorer

Free web hosting starts to become available from sites such as Geocities and Tripod, with revenue coming from banner ads. Advanced Internet Technologies, Inc. is also founded this year. The first Virtual Private Server comes from AIT and it becomes one of the largest privately owned web hosting companies in the world.

1996 – Verio Founded

Verio Inc. is founded, and it quickly takes up a spot as one of the earliest and most prominent dedicated hosting companies. They purchase many smaller ISPs and hosting companies and consolidate them under the Verio brand name.

1996 – Microsoft Releases ASP

Microsoft releases the server-side script engine ASP (Active Server Pages), which makes users capable of building compelling interactive pages.

1997 – GoDaddy Launches

Fomain registrar and web hosting company GoDaddy Inc. is founded as Jomax Technologies. Birds go wild. Absolutely wild. By 2019, GoDaddy becomes the largest web hosting provider in the world.

1997 – Virtual Web Hosting

LexiConn becomes one of the original companies able to offer virtual web hosting.

1998 – Content Delivery Networks (CDN), Rackspace, and Hostway Launch

Akamai Technologies, one of the first and largest content delivery networks in the world, is founded. Rackspace also makes its appearance, and becomes one of the biggest giants in the cloud computing industry. Hostway, one of the oldest dedicated hosting providers, also begins operations in 1998.

1999 – Yahoo! purchases Geocities.

2000 – Domain Name Registrars

Ever greater numbers of domain name registrars start to pop up. Domain.com starts conducting business and before long becomes another prominent player in the domain name registry and web hosting fields. Namecheap, Inc. is also founded this year and over the next decade becomes known as one of the more well known domain registrars and web hosting companies.

2001 – Linux VPS Hosting

RoseHosting is founded, becoming the very first company to offer commercial Linux VPS hosting to the masses.

2001-2002 – New TLDs Launch, and among there are popular ones .info and .biz