Category: Domain Related

April 24, 2023

Domain Related

Reading Time: 5 minutes

Fairly common for data storage and management needs to have outgrown what you originally set up for their accommodation and giving them the elbow room they need. All sorts of possibilities and variations on and around what that outgrowing might mean for a person or organization depending on what they do and how extensive their data needs have become. For a long time now the default suggestion for any in such a situation would be to move to a Virtual Private Network (VPN). But here we are again collectively struggling to keep up with changing needs and realities, and if we were to list out all the potential explanations as to why a VPN wouldn’t be quite cutting it like it used to for people then we’d have an entire blog entry of its own. But VPNs are so well entrenched as a critical enabling tool for today’s distributed organizations and internet users. Roughly one-third of all internet users now use a VPN to protect personal data, and that’s a number that’s going to get the attention of us here at 4GoodHosting in the same way it would for any good Canadian web hosting provider. Then there’s the fact that there’s plenty ready to push this trend even further, especially with rampant cybercrime and privacy concerns likely to be front and center in the coming years. The pressure this puts on VPN providers is to offer reliable ways for this surging demand to be quickly, efficiently, and cost-effectively accommodated. And the need is even more acute in high-growth emerging markets which offer massive growth potential - Indonesia, China, Thailand, India, and the UAE to name the most notable ones. The most recent and popular industry consensus is that the best way to do this is to leverage private edge computing and networking services as a means of scaling VPNs more ideally, and that’s what we’re going to look at with this week’s blog entry. Difficult, but Doable Let’s start with what makes this difficult. Heavy regulatory barriers, lacking infrastructure, gaps in connectivity, and expensive operating costs means reaching customers in these markets can prove to be challenging. The entirety of...

April 17, 2023

Domain Related

Reading Time: 5 minutes

Be it right or wrong, being accommodating and understanding of something or someone only occurs if basic expectations are still being met. Most of you who’d be reading this blog in the first place will know what a bounce rate is, and even though we might not know it we all have an inner clock that dictates how long we’ll be willing to wait for a page to load. Page loads and page speeds are different, though, but all of this just highlights what’s already well known in the digital world. There’s only so much waiting a person can be expected to so, and so this has lead to efforts to minimize loss and latency with cloud-based apps. The success they’ve had with doing that is what we’ll talk about with our blog entry here this week. Cloud-based technology has been integral to how many of the newest apps have the impressive functionality they do, and even if you’re not the savviest person to it you are probably benefiting it in ways you’re not even aware of based on that mini PC or Mac masquerading as a ‘phone’ in your pocket. Having so many developers catering to public cloud IaaS platforms like AWS and Azure, and PaaS and SaaS solutions too, is made possible by the simplicity of consuming the services. At least to some extent when you are able to connect securely over the public internet and start spinning up resources. This is something that shows up on the horizons for good Canadian web hosting providers like us here at 4GoodHosting, as it’s definitely within our sphere. So let’s have a look at what’s known with the best ways to minimize loss and latency with cloud-based apps. VPN And Go The default starting point for any challenge that needs to be addressed or choice that needs to be made is to use the internet to connect to the enterprise’s virtual private clouds (VPC) or their equivalent from company data centers, branches, or other clouds. And preferably with a VPN, but doing so doesn’t guarantee an absence of problems for modern applications that depend on lots of network communications among...

April 10, 2023

Domain Related

Reading Time: 4 minutes

There are some people who have more in the way of long-term memory ability than short-term memory, and while that may sound good it does come with its own set of problems. Ideally you have a balance of short and long-term memory, and that will be more beneficial if you’re the type who has a demon of a time remembering their passwords. But it’s never been a good idea to create simple passwords, and it’s even less of a good idea nowadays with the news that the rapid advances in AI recently mean that artificial intelligence is almost certainly going to be able to figure out those passwords. The fact that most of us use password apps on our phones attests to two things. First, how many passwords we need to have given the ever more digital nature of our world. And second, just how many of us don’t have the memory to be able to remember them organically. So if you’re not good with memory but you’ve resisted putting one of these apps on your phone then you may want to now. This is a topic that will be of interest for us here at 4GoodHosting as like any good Canadian web hosting provider we can relate the proliferation of passwords we all have these days. Some of you may be familiar with RockYou, and if you are you’ll know that it was a super popular widget found on MySpace and Facebook in the early years of social media. There’s a different connection there between the widget and where we’re going with AI being able to hack passwords in less than a minute, so let’s start there with our web hosting topic blog entry this week. Password Mimicker How it is part of the reason that now is a good time to update your password is this. Experts have found AI systems are able to crack almost all passwords easily, and that’s just one more example of how the capabilities of artificial intelligence are expanding in leaps and bounds these days. In 2009 RockYou was the victim of a big-time cyber attack and 32 million passwords that were stored...

April 3, 2023

Domain Related

Reading Time: 5 minutes

Network traffic is like the type of motor vehicle traffic where we most immediately connect the term. Build it and they will come, and the concept of induced demand really does work in exactly the same way. If space is created the fact it has been created means a demand will be created to fill it. That’s not so good when it comes to trying to build enough infrastructure to accommodate traffic, and servers are struggling in the same smaller-scale way with what it takes to accommodate more data traffic demands. The advantages of cloud computing have compounded the problem with so many more users demanding cloud storage space, and increasingly there are apps that are cloud-based and require bandwidth access to the point that without it they won’t function properly. That’s bad news for app developers who want people using their app to not be impeded in any way. Performance of cloud-based apps that create lots of network traffic can be hurt by network loss and latency, and ways of best dealing with that is what we’ll look at this week here. It’s a topic that will be of interest to any good Canadian web hosting provider, and that certainly applies to us here at 4GoodHosting. We have large data centers of our own too, but wouldn’t be able to accommodate even 1/1000th of the demand created by cloud storage at all times. There are ways to minimize loss and latency for cloud-based apps and SaaS resources and so let’s get onto that. Mass Adoption A big part of the popularity of choosing to adopt of public cloud IaaS platforms and PaaS and SaaS has come from the the simplicity of consuming the services. The means of connecting securely over public internet and then accessing and utilizing resources creates strong demands on infrastructure and there are big challenges associated with private communication between users and those resources. Using an Internet VPN is always going to be the simplest solution if your aim is to connect to the enterprise’s virtual private clouds (VPC) or their equivalent from company data centers, branches, or other clouds. But there are problems that can...

March 27, 2023

Domain Related

Reading Time: 4 minutes

It has been quite a while since we made any type of cybersecurity threat the focus for our blog entry, but one that is really prominent and increasingly so these days is mobile Stalkerware. Stalkers are different from spies, and Stalkerware is different from spyware. As the name suggests, what it involves in uninvited following and tracking of your activities and whereabouts. It can be just as disconcerting digitally as it is in real life, and more specifically what they do is record conversations, location, and pretty much everything you type. So yes, they pretty much nix any aspect of privacy at all that might have - and expect to have with the operation of your mobile device. And the problem is that all of this occurs while you have no idea you’re being ‘stalked’. These types of malware often comes disguised as calendar or calculator apps and ‘Flash Keylogger’ is the most infamous one that was busted for it and is fittingly nowhere to be found these days. Passing on information that their clients can use to keep themselves cyber-safe is going to be agreeable for any reputable Canadian web hosting provider, and that certainly applies for us here at 4GoodHosting too. So we’re taking this entry to talk about why Stalkerware is even more of a problem now than before, and then we’ll conclude by talking a little bit about what you can do to get rid of it. 3x The Risk Now Apparently there is 3x the risk of being a victim of Stalkerware as compared to what it was three years ago. The possibility of encountering this form of mobile malware has gone up 329% since 2020. These attacks involve the attacker stealing the physical and online freedom of the targeted person, and doing that by tracking their location and monitoring their smartphone activity without consent or the victims being aware it’s going on. One of the biggest risks can be with valuable information that may be exchanged in a text message, for example. Stalkerware may also be installed secretly on mobile phones by people who have grudges or ill will towards a person, and there...

March 20, 2023

Domain Related

Reading Time: 5 minutes

Try to travel outside your country of citizenship without a passport and see how far you get. Likely no further than the airport or terminal of either sort, and that is the way it should be considering there are some people - and some things - that aren’t allowed to leave the country. It’s best that they stay in, or it’s best that they aren’t to be elsewhere in the world. The last part of that would apply to anyone who’s a risk to others, but the first part of it can apply to big data too. There are companies that need to give federal governments the assurance that some of the data they collect from customers or investors doesn’t go beyond their borders, and a good example of this would be manufacturers who work with the Department of Defence or others who have patents on manufactured goods where the government has a vested stake in keeping that technology under wraps and out of the eyes of others in different countries where patent laws aren’t adhered to the same way they are here. All of this comes at a time when the ongoing shift to cloud computing is as strong as ever, and where the need to not have the bulk and expense of physical data storage is a huge plus for companies of all sorts. This is the aspect that we can relate to here at 4GoodHosting with our being a good Canadian web hosting provider that can see the bigger picture with anything digital despite our being a mere bit player who ensure that a company’s website is always there and open for business or at the very least connection on the World Wide Web. The need for cloud storage while staying inside laws around domestic data control has led to what are called ‘Sovereign’ Clouds, and that’s what we are going to look at with this week’s blog entry. Protecting Interests Banking is another prominent example here of an industry that has been very eager to adopt cloud computing where certain data segments need to be kept within the country. Insurance, healthcare, and the public sector are...

March 13, 2023

Domain Related

Reading Time: 5 minutes

There’s always going to be the need to make distinctions between wants and needs, but when it comes to space and resources there’s many times that having a greater amount of it is much more of a need than a want. That is obviously true for people, and the best example would be how a married couple with 3 kids can’t make do with a 1-bedroom condo even though it’s in the most desirable part of town. But it can also be true of objects and inanimate items of all sorts, and it’s true for servers too and the data centers they reside in. It's never going to be a situation where businesses, organizations, or ventures uniformly have the exact same data management needs and for ones that have especially large ones server colocation often makes a lot of sense. This is where a server owned by one of them is deployed and hosted within a managed service facility / environment, and usually an existing data center or IT facility. The customer retains control of server services, operating system and applications while the MSP provides the physical space, power and network resources. Obviously with 4GoodHosting being one of the best Canadian web hosting providers this is a topic that we’re very familiar with even though a hosting provider is going to have their own expansive data centers all the elbow room we need for our clients’ data storage needs to begin with. We’ve got two excellent ones full of capacity in both Vancouver and Toronto, but that’s all we’ll say about that and instead let’s move to discussing what sort of server colocation services you will want to be aware of if your data management needs are much bigger than they used to be. Tower Server Colocation Server colocation is sometimes also referred to as ‘carrier hotels’ and having the maximum of safety when having your server within a facility is best achieved with tower server colocation. It provides your servers with an extra layer of security that wouldn't be available with another type of server colocation arrangement. Server colocation pricing and things of that nature also need to be...

March 6, 2023

Domain Related

Reading Time: 5 minutes

People may think of Abraham Van Brunt or the Legend of Sleepy Hollow when they hear the word headless, but in the context of it we’re about to lay out here we’re not talking about horsemen. We’re talking about headless commerce, which is a separation of the front end and back end of an e-commerce application where brands are more free to build whatever and however they want. One of the many offshoots of conventional e-commerce since it came around some 25 years or so ago. Headless commerce has gained attention as a method that businesses can employ to address some of the challenges associated with the evolving eCommerce market and it does allow businesses to obtain a substantial competitive advantage when the presentation layers and the backend of the application are built and operated distinct from each other and continue to be standing apart from each other as the business gains traction. And of course a primary resource for any e-commerce business, venture, or other commercial enterprise online - headless or not - is going to be the website. And as a top Canadian web hosting provider, 4GoodHosting is always all ears when it comes to whatever it may be that might be relevant for the small / smallish businesses that have their websites hosted by us. Dedicated hosting is often a better choice than shared hosting for many reasons, but it is especially so for headless commerce interests and that’s what we’re going to look at with our entry for this week. Challenges With Headless Commerce There are common challenges that need to be overcome by organizations implementing a headless commerce environment. What is quite common is that these challenges aren’t overcome sufficiently (or easily) and the company then decides to choose to deploy a traditional e-commerce solution. But if they were to move to a dedicated server arrangement with their Canadian web hosting provider then at least a PART of why that is would be taken out of the equation. These are the most common challenges: Cost - There are often substantial initial cost of implementing a headless commerce architecture and there may not be a fit...

February 27, 2023

Domain Related

Reading Time: 5 minutes

Businesses that are more centrically attached to a certain industry do tend to be ones that do not have as much of their success invested in e-commerce, or in a more simpler sense reliant on having a certain type of web presence. But countering that is the fact that often they have a greater amount of their investment connected to profit-generation capacity that is related to the infrastructure of their operations. Industry clouds are a good example of that, and we’ll skip the W5 overview of them and go right to saying that industry clouds are nearly always vertical for obvious reasons. They also need to be more agile way to manage workloads and accelerate change against the particular business, data, compliance or other needs of their segment. The last part of that is important to note, as business compliance needs are a characteristic of operations for these types of very industry-connected businesses in a way that is not seen at all for most of them that are strictly commercial in their operations. So yes, the vast majority of businesses operating commercially and nearly all in online retail will be the types that make the services of a good Canadian web hosting provider part of their monthly operating budget. You’re basically invisible without a quality website and developed online presence and identity these days, and providers like us are just conduits that make your website up and visible on the information superhighway. Data Fabrics Factor Industry-aware data fabrics are in many ways the biggest part of how these clouds differ from conventional or community clouds. Innovative technologies and approaches are a close runner-up, but one constant is that using industry-specific services will add cost and complexity. There will be more value returned to the business but it’s not a simple or straightforward equation for exactly what and how is the best way to make that happen. Investment in industry clouds is really taking off now as companies seek higher returns on their cloud computing investments, and these are investments they’ve had no choice but to make. As industry-related technology becomes better and more available, enterprises that climb on the industry...