June 26, 2023

Domain Related

Reading Time: 5 minutes

Exclusivity is wonderful, especially when it comes to access to the resources that mean productivity and profitability for your organization. The cost of having that exclusive access is often what tempers the level of enthusiasm and willingness to jump all over opportunities to have it. Emphasizing all the advantages that yours may gain from cloud computing by laying sole claim to resources in the cloud that make that possible will be beneficial for obvious reasons, but can you afford it? That is always going to be the most basic but foremost question when it comes to weighing public cloud computing versus private. Public cloud computing is decidedly affordable, and it will meet the functional needs of the majority of organizations or businesses based on the related needs created by what it is that they do. Ask people where they think the biggest shortcoming will be and they’ll think that it will be with speed and in particular with server requests around data. Not so though, and here at 4GoodHosting we having something of an intermediary interest in this. As a good Canadian web hosting provider we know the direct interest business web hosting customers will have as they may well be weighing their options with cloud computing nowadays too. So this will be the subject for our interest this week – standard considerations for decision makers when it comes to public vs private cloud. Mass Migrations The industry’s expectation is that a minimum of 80% of organizations are expected to migrate to the cloud by the year 2025. But easy access and management of all your data isn’t guaranteed, and so organizational leaders will need to be very judicious about how they make their move. Different types of cloud services are there to choose from, but the vast majority will be option for some variant of either the public and private cloud. There are pros and cons to each, so let’s get right to evaluating all of them. The public cloud provides cloud computing services to the public over the internet, with off-site hosting and managed by a service provider the whole time to have control over infrastructure, back-end architecture,...

June 19, 2023

Domain Related

Reading Time: 5 minutes

Look back across history and you’ll see there has been plenty of empires, but even the longest-lasting of them still eventually came to an end. When we talk about larger businesses operating online and taking advantage of new web-based business technologies no one is going to compare any of them to empires, perhaps with the exception of Google. But to continue on that tangent briefly, there is not better example of an empire failing because it ended being spread to thin quite like the Mongol empire. The reason we mention it as our segue here to this week’s blog topic is because nowadays as businesses expand in the digital space they naturally assume more of a surface, or what you might call the ‘expanse’ of their business in Cyberspace to the extent they’ve wanted / needed to move it there. With all that expansion comes greater risk of cyber-attacks, and that leads us right into discussing attack surface management. So what is that exactly? Let us explain. An attack surface is every asset that an organization has facing the Internet that may be exploited as entry points in a cyber-attack. They could be anything from websites, subdomains, hardware, applications, to clod resources or IP addresses. Social media accounts or even vendor infrastructures can also be a part of the ‘vulnerabilities’ based on the size of your surface. All of which will be of interest to us here at 4GoodHosting as quality Canadian web hosting providers given how web hosting is very much an abutment for these businesses with the way it’s a part of the foundation for their online presence. So let’s dig further into this topic as it relates to cloud security for businesses. Rapid Expansions We only touched on the possibility for an attack surface above. They are rapidly expanding and can now include any IT asset connected to the internet, so we can add IoT devices, Kubernetes clusters, and cloud platforms to the list of potential spots where threat actors could infiltrate and initiate an attack. Having external network vulnerabilities creating an environment that can prompt a potential breach is an issue too. It’s for these reasons...

June 12, 2023

Domain Related

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Speed has been and always will be the name of the game when it comes to data transmission as part of utilizing web-based technologies. That is true for the smallest of them in the same way it is for the biggest, and it’s not going to come as a surprise that with the advances in those technologies comes a need to handle much more data, and handle the increased volume of it faster at the same time. Add the fact that global network use continues to grow explosively all the time and there’s a lot of gain – both functional and financial – to be had for those who can introduce means of moving data faster. And that’s just what’s happened courtesy of Danish and Swedish researchers who have succeeded in setting a new benchmark fastest speed for optical data transmission. Many of you will be aware of what a Tbps (Terabits-per-second) speed score would indicate with regards to fastness in this context, but if you’ve heard of a Petabit in the same one then consider us impressed. It’s been nearly 3 years since the previous data transmission speed record was set, and you’re entirely excused if you’d only heard of a Terabit back then. The score 178 Tbps set in August 2020 was quite remarkable for the time, but not anymore. And it certainly would have been for us here at 4GoodHosting in the same way it would have been for any good Canadian web hosting provider based on the fact that we have a roundabout way of associating with this based on the parameters of what people do with the sites we may be hosting for them. But enough about that for now, let’s get right to discussing the new data transmission world speed record and what I may mean for all of us. Doubling Current Global Internet Traffic Speeds This mammoth jump in speed capacity is made possible by a novel technique that leverages a single laser and a single, custom-designed optical chip that makes throughputs of 1.8Pbps (Petabits per second) possible. That works out to double today's global internet traffic, and that highlights just how much...

June 5, 2023

Domain Related

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Anyone who’s a keener with the all the workings of the digital world will be familiar with the acronym IoT and the fact it stands for the Internet of Things. We’ll go ahead and assume you’re one of them if you’re a regular here and reading our blog entries with any degree of regularity. It never takes long for major technological infrastructure developments to branch off into subsets of the original, and that’s exactly with the newfound EoT - Economy of Things – and the way this new level of interconnectivity is set to revolutionize the online business world is quite something. Much of what makes this practical and appealing at the same time is that people will always want to have straightest distance between two points available to them when it comes to completing transactions for services / goods obtained. The IoT certainly has much more of a relation to services than goods, but when you think about all of the services we take advantage of on a regular basis it makes sense that implementing web-based tech to simplify transaction processes is going to be to most people’s liking. And this makes sense to us here at 4GoodHosting in the way it would for any good Canadian web hosting provider too. We are likely to see a lot of inroads made in between the EoT and SaaS and PaaS services / products as well, and we are certainly just seeing the tip of the iceberg with where this is going to go and how far-reaching this is going to be. So we’re going to look at how much inter-device trading is expected over the course of the remainder of this decade here with this blog entry. Intersections for Data and Money The expectation is that by the end of the 2020s, around 3.3 billion Internet-connected devices (IoT devices) will be taking money and data and trading directly between them. The same calculations that came to that are saying that for 2024 the number will be 88 million devices participating in EoT and so it puts into perspective how much this is going to grow explosively over the next 6...

May 29, 2023

Domain Related

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Over the past 10 years the digital expanse for businesses has become nearly all encompassing. Without going into too much detail that’s the primary factor as to why so many businesses have had to embrace the cloud as - quite simply - their operations are necessitating it. That goes beyond data too, and companies that are utilizing the IoT are especially in need of everything cloud computing makes possible. Now there are many instances in life where something can be described as both a blessing and curse. That probably doesn’t legitimately apply to cloud computing, but for some of these businesses it may be at least somewhat applicable based on all the added costs they have had no choice to assume because of moving more and more into the cloud. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t might well apply here too. That doesn’t so much apply to us here at 4GoodHosting in the same way it won’t for any good Canadian web hosting provider. But there is likely enough of the audience here that is making the move to a greater extent at all times too, and so we’ll make the expensiveness of cloud computing for businesses our topic for this week’s entry here. Higher than Expected Costs Even though most businesses are happy with the rate at which their company is transforming to the cloud, higher-than-expected costs are making some businesses revisit how they are allocating needed monies for it. All of this based on a Cloud Impact Study where senior IT professionals across large organizations in the US, Canada, and UK were asked about their organization’s spending on cloud infrastructure. 36% of the respondents reported that delivering cost predictability is one of the key challenges facing their organization. And the overarching belief is that while Cloud cost is high, the benefits don’t line up with how much is being spent on it. In addition, ‘many companies are not getting the benefit of a comprehensive management strategy they expected. The adjoining belief is that much of this stems from having rushed into cloud service adoption due to the way the pandemic nudged many businesses online. The popularity...

May 22, 2023

Domain Related

Reading Time: 4 minutes

There have been plenty of entries here over the years where we’ve talked about the many benefits of VPS web hosting, and for those who truly need to have a private server it’s not even a consideration to go with a more affordable shared web hosting package. Websites that need elbow room to do what they do when pages load are often a big part of a businesses online presence, so while it would be nice to have a less expensive web hosting arrangement it’s just not possible to do with anything less than VPS hosting. With that understood, anyone with a website that doesn’t need to be accommodated to such an extent can and will be fine with shared web hosting most of the time. And there are smaller and less dynamic e-commerce websites that have been on shared hosting plans for years. There is more in the way of valid concerns around the security and integrity of websites hosted in shared environments though, and that’s always going to be the case. Website isolation can be a partial fix for that though, and that’s what we’re going to go over here with this week’s entry. It’s a topic that is going to be noteworthy for any Canadian web hosting provider, and here at 4GoodHosting we are the same in the way we put an emphasis on providing valuable information for anyone who has a website for their business, venture, or personal interest and want to be proactive in ensuring that everything stays uneventful with their site and that it’s always problem free alongside the information superhighway. Isolation = Better Security Businesses, bloggers, and web developers often rely on shared hosting environments based on their affordability and the way general management is less complicated. But security is nearly always a challenge in these environments. Website isolation can be part of a solution to reducing risks, and there are 5 primary advantages for putting website isolation in place. Better Overall Security Being more vulnerable to security breaches is natural with shared hosting when multiple websites share the same server resources. Implementing isolation techniques helps contain the impact of a security breach,...

May 15, 2023

Domain Related

Reading Time: 5 minutes

Anything in life that requires learning in order to have functional ability is going to also have a hands-on experiential component if you’re truly going to become adept at whatever it is. There is value in learning how to do it, but usually the most integral part of the learning comes from actually being at ground level and doing it. These days AI is the buzzword connected to nearly everything in the digital world, and that world is where an increasingly large part of everything we have and make use of has its roots. We’ve talked about machine learning before, and it’s a concept that’s fairly well understood within the parameters of how advanced computing has made advances in leaps and bound over recent years. As the saying goes, you certainly can’t stop progress and the type of deep learning that people are talking about with relation to supercomputers and the like builds on machine learning and improves on it with a whole lot of experiential learning. It is a profound subject, and more so for anyone or a business where much of what you do is being constantly reshaped by computing technology. That certainly applies to us here at 4GoodHosting in the same way it would for any reputable Canadian web hosting provider, and as AI continues its meteoric rise to prominence and increasing dominance in the space it makes sense for us to have a look at Deep Learning and how it contributes to influentially to supercomputing. Data Abundance Deep learning is an advanced artificial intelligence technique who’s usefulness is in the way it has abundant data and increased computing power. Online language translation, automated face-tagging in social media, smart replies in your email, and the new wave of generative models are among the many reasons it’s main technology behind many of the applications we use every day. Everyone will have heard of all the buzz around the ChatGPT AI-powered chatbot and the way it is revolutionizing pretty much everything, and part of its strength is in the it can differentiate images from text descriptions, exampling how deep-learning systems that model the relation between images and text descriptions...

May 8, 2023

Domain Related

Reading Time: 5 minutes

It’s fortunate that these days greater number of people or businesses who are online are more aware of the need to be smart about when and where you make phone number and email addresses available. Phishing scams are likely if you’re negligent about where your contact details are accessible, and in worst case scenarios identity theft or even having your website hijacked can happen. Anyone who knows anything about acting will be familiar with what a stand-in does for an actor while on set, and they’re very valuable that way. The way domain privacy works is kind of like that it is the actor’s stand-in that it’s a service that replaces the individual’s contact information with that of the service provider. Doing this secures you against anyone who might be trying to access your details with the aim of initiating fraud or malevolent practice. Business owners investing in expensive websites will want to consider getting the domain privacy add-on when building their website or having it built for them. Keep in mind as well that contact information doesn’t need to be publicly displayed on your website to have it still be available. The aim needs to be with making sure it doesn’t end up in WHOIS records and this is a way to protect you from spambots that exclusively check WHOIS data. This option is going to make a lot of sense for man individuals or businesses, and the growing need for expanding web security practices makes domain privacy a topic that any good Canadian web hosting provider is going to take an interest in and that’s true for us here at 4GoodHosting too. So this is what we’ll look at with our blog entry this week. Who’s Name? The way domain privacy functions starts with how domain names are registered. That’s something we are explicitly familiar with and most internet domain names found in use on the Internet are registered through an organization called ICANN - Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. Domain owners must provide their name and contact information when purchasing a new domain name and the information is then listed on a database that has...

May 1, 2023

Domain Related

Reading Time: 5 minutes

Gleaning insight from conversation with others is what has made Reddit the hit it has been in the digital space, and if you have any area of interest you can always find at least one sub-Reddit on it, and usually you’ll have more than a few to look through. It’s one of the most engaging social networking sites if you like to ingest your information by consuming text and the simplicity of it is really nice too. 57 million people visit Reddit every day to chat and broaden their horizons with whatever subject it is they’re interest in, and it’s a great resource for that. Looking at it from a different angle, you might be surprised to learn that Reddit chats have also served as a free teaching aid for companies like Google, Microsoft and – most notably these days - OpenAI. Reddit conversations have been used in the development of giant artificial intelligence systems created by these 3 and we’re seeing how they’re already becoming such a big deal in the tech industry. Definitely a development that everyone in our industry will take note of as well given the connection, and here at 4GoodHosting we’re like any other quality Canadian web hosting provider in that seeing an online chat forum become an open-source type of asset for these big players in the digital world is definitely something we’ll be keen to follow as well as share here with our blog. Charging for Access And it is definitely interesting to see that Reddit wants to be paid for accessing its application programming interface now. That’s the method through which outside entities can download and process the social network’s vast selection of person-to-person conversations, and the heads of the company at Reddit don’t think they should be making that value available for free. So what we’ll see now is Reddit charging for access to the conversations it hosts for the purpose of developing A.I. systems like ChatGPT, OpenAI’s popular program. Reddit is also acting as it prepares for a possible initial public offering on Wall Street this year. As of now it makes most of its money through advertising and e-commerce...