The Law and TLD, The Cloud and Home Servers

v 0.22

12 Jun 12

I've recently had a few disparate threads of the Cosmos come together to lead me down a new line of interest with my Computing.  It all started a few months ago when I was reading my daily dose of "Slashdot" and has finished with me starting to set up a Home Server for myself.

The Law

Whilst the Slashdot article was about the US Government seeking the extradition of a UK Student, the issue was their assertion that all ".com , .net , .org " etc domain names were subject to US Law, no matter where the servers or businesses or organisations were located.  Now, whilst the current actions involve copyright infringement allegations, I can see that this could easily be extended to other areas of the law,  were it convenient for those in power.  A link to a relevent article:

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2083906/claims-com-net-websites-jurisdiction

Whether the legalities of this assertion by the US Government are shown to be valid or not, what it means (to me, anyway) is that if you host a website with one of these top level domains, then you potentially must comply with US Law.  You may, for example, run a business in one particular country using such a website, so not only do you need to comply with your own country's laws, you must also comply with those of the US.  Some (legitimate) Canadian businesses are already discovering this.

The lesson I've taken away from this is that if I need a business or other serious website, then a domain name from maybe my own country would be a better decision.

The Cloud

The Cloud is certainly a convenient place to store data, and in all normal circumstances, your data should be quite safe - Google has just received security certification for its services.  Dropbox, whilst convenient, doesn't store your data encrypted, whilst SpiderOak does.  If you are paranoid and want to use Cloud storage, then SpiderOak would be great.  Or encrypt your data on ANY Cloud device.

Of course the problem comes when your provider has their server seized by whichever Law Enforcement agency, because of some other entity which also uses that server ........

Home Servers

It almost feels to me that the concept of keeping your own data is making a comeback - perhaps not for all, but "the Cloud" is not necessarily the best move in all circumstances.  There are some really interesting Web applications that can be hosted on your own server.  Several I'm fascinated with are "OwnCloud", "OnEye", "Diaspora" and "Citadel".  I easily set up "OnEye" on a test virtual server at home, and did the same with "Citadel".

Routers

When I tried to demonstrate Citadel to an organisation I was a member of though, I found I couldn't get my router (Apple Time Capsule) to open any ports to allow this.  Googling for a solution gained me nothing other than finding more than a few others with the same problem and the best I could find was that it was a flaw in the firmware.

Bad Time Capsule .... Bad Bad Time Capsule.

So out of that, I thought maybe time for a "proper" router.  I'd recently seen an interesting "Category5TV" Episode 166 dealing with DD-WRT firmware and a Netgear router.  In the end, I chose to get a WNDR 3700 Netgear - for it's firmware flashing capabilities and the wireless range it offered.

* Subsequently I found that my ISP was blocking some ports - it wasn't helped by them denying it when I called to see if this was in fact happening.  Unfortunately I had to fall back on detective work to discover this (and then have my Nephew say "yes, of course they do, didn't you know?").  So Ultimately, I could have saved my money and continued with the Time Capsule by using unblocked ports.  Sigh

Server Hardware

As I mentioned before, I'd been playing with servers within Virtualbox Virtual Machines on my Desktop - now whilst at the time I knew my desktop wasn't the best machine to use as a server if only for its power consumption, I was prepared to live with this for a short while, however once I started thinking about the router problem, my mind drifted back a week or so to when Dell sent me an advertisement for what I considered to be a cheap desktop that would be suitable.  Of course, I wouldn't be buying the Dell because I had plenty of screens and keyboards already and saw no point in buying anymore, not to mention that I had no use for Windows on my server.  But research into the components did lead me to an interesting setup.

Motherboard   Asus P8H61-M LX Rev 3
CPU                Intel i-3 2120
Memory          8 gig
HDD               Western Digital 2 TB Caviar Green
DVD drive

This machine is about 10 times as fast as a P4 3.0 box I already have and uses less power.  How much less?   Testing I've seen indicates the machine should use between 50 and 100 watts under most conditions.  Using this as a server rather than one of the previous two I've mentioned would be a minimum saving of 200 watts.  This works out at roughly 5kwhr per day or over $1 per day where I live.  It would pay for itself in electricity charges in a year.

Server Software

Having worked out the hardware, I'm planning on replacing an old P4 desktop that is used by the family.  I intend having it used as a desktop, with Virtualbox providing servers in virtual machines.

Debian "Wheezy"  64bit
Xfce Desktop
Virtualbox

At the moment, I intend setting up one or two virtual machines as Citadel servers - one for the family and one for my organisation to evaluate.  After that, well there are a number of interesting projects that are available, even within the Debian repositories.

I think that is enough for now ... I shall report back with my installation adventures.



Later ...........