Hosting locally for speed and security

People often confuse the web and the internet. The web is all the websites served over the internet with http. The internet is the global network of computers that enables this.

Email is an example of an internet technology separate from the web. In the last 15 years, email has turned from a distributed network protocol to a service offered by a few tech giants. But it wasn't always like this. Up to the early 2000's, it was common to have an email address from your local ISP, company, or school. All your emails were hosted locally. If you had a problem or needed help, you could talk to your IT guy. These were the good days.

Now, almost all emails go through servers run by Google and Microsoft. There are two main problems with this centralization:

1. Privacy Google is an ad company, and profits by collecting data about you to sell to advertisers. There's a reason their email service is free; it's because they make enough revenue from selling your data.

2. Security Having most of the world's emails on one company's servers means there's a single attack vector for all that private data. The recent Microsoft Exchange hacks (Ars Technica, March 2021) demonstrate that even tech giants can't be trusted to keep their products secure.

One final advantage of local hosting is increased speed and reliability. By keeping your services on servers that are physically near your location, they load faster and stay up through outages elsewhere in the country.

We at SLV IT offer affordable local hosting and support for websites, email, and other services.

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