Author: Stilgherrian

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Internet hosting: the cost of reliability

[This is the second in a series of three articles to help people understand how internet hosting services work from a business perspective. They’re written for my small business clients over at Prussia.Net as part of a review of our own internet hosting service, but I’m hoping they’ll be of general interest. Enjoy.]

Prussia.Net logo

As I explained yesterday, the big cost in providing internet hosting is paying humans to provide support. However there are still some technical factors that affect the price, and that’s what we’re looking at today.

Most internet hosting customers would be familiar with the usual measures: the amount of storage space you get and the amount of data transfers (“bandwidth”) per month. Those raw measures of capacity are certainly important. You need enough capacity to meet your needs. But you also need to consider performance, reliability, scalability and flexibility.

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Patch Monday: Why transport smart card projects go bad

ZDNet Australia logo: click for Patch Monday episode 37

Melbourne’s $1.3 billion myki smart card ticketing system still hasn’t been rolled out to buses or trams even after experts were flown in two months ago. Sydney’s Tcard project was cancelled and now it’s starting again. What can we learn from these transport IT disasters?

hat’s what I spoke about in this week’s Patch Monday podcast, which I’m now posting on Friday. Slack, eh?

My guest is Tom Worthington who, apart from teaching computer science at the Australian National University, has a strong personal interest in transport ticketing systems.

You can listen below. But it’s probably better for my stats if you listen at ZDNet Australia or subscribe to the RSS feed or subscribe in iTunes.

Please let me know what you think. Comments below. We accept audio comments too. Either Skype to stilgherrian or phone Sydney +61 2 8011 3733.

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Internet hosting: the cost of support

[This is the first in a series of three articles to help people understand how internet hosting services work from a business perspective. They’re written for my small business clients over at Prussia.Net as part of a review of our own internet hosting service, but I’m hoping they’ll be of general interest. Enjoy.]

Prussia.Net logo

Internet hosting prices are usually explained in terms of the amount of storage space you get and the amount of data transfers (“bandwidth”) per month. However the real cost factor is paying the humans who provide support.

Some technical factors do affect the price of hosting, and I’ll address those tomorrow in Internet hosting: the cost of reliability. But with storage and bandwidth prices always dropping, particularly when set up on a large scale, hosting is now so cheap that Google, say, or WordPress.com and many others can provide free hosting in exchange for advertising. Or in Google’s case with Gmail, monitoring your email to build a profile so they can target advertising at you.

No, the humans are the expensive bit, and the cost can vary dramatically depending on how that support is provided. Here’s just a few of the factors.

Continue reading “Internet hosting: the cost of support”

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Without civil liberties…

“The only difference between a Nation State and a Mafioso protection racket is the letterhead and the rituals — and the series of concessions, hard-won over eight centuries, that we call ‘civil liberties’.”

That’s the start of my guest post today for Electronic Frontiers Australia, entitled Without civil liberties, government is just a criminal racket.

It’s an essay that combines some thoughts about the constant battle for civil liberties with my reaction to the video posted by Wikileaks at Collateral Murder. It’s footage from 2007 showing a Reuters photojournalist and his driver and others being killed by US helicopter gunfire in Baghdad. It’s footage the US Department of Defence didn’t want you to see. It’s challenging to watch.

This is one of a series of guest posts for the EFA as part of their current fundraising campaign.

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Patch Monday: Refused Classification means what, exactly?

ZDNet Australia logo: click for Patch Monday episode 36Australia’s planned mandatory ISP-level internet filter will block Refused Classification (RC) material. Communications Minister Senator Stephen Conroy says that’s “child pornography, pro-bestiality sites, pro-rape websites and material like that”. But it’s actually more than that.

I covered this in the most recent episode of the Patch Monday podcast, back on 29 March, but I forgot to re-post it here. Consider that fixed.

My guest is Professor Catharine Lumby, one of the authors of Untangling the Net: The Scope of Content caught by Mandatory Internet Filtering.

You can listen below. But it’s probably better for my stats if you listen at ZDNet Australia or subscribe to the RSS feed or subscribe in iTunes.

Please let me know what you think. Comments below. We accept audio comments too. Either Skype to stilgherrian or phone Sydney +61 2 8011 3733.