Here is an insightful bit from this comment in this Slashdot discussion:
Someone I know went for a job interview with (I think) Vodafone. Their open-plan office was set out according to the OSI model — physical layer people at the end, application people at the other end, and everyone in order in between!
Talk about integration of technology and corporate culture…
I’m far from honest myself, but at least I don’t charge for my lies. Plenty of people do, however. One of the commonly told lies that I come across rather often these days is the one of Cyprus web hosting. Some companies are telling lies out loud, others are just being overly silent about the truth. But the fact of the matter is that Cyprus web hosting is almost non-existing. There are only just a few companies providing web hosting in Cyprus (PrimeTel and CytaNet, for example), and in most of the cases, their offerings don’t make sense financially. That’s one of the biggest reasons for most of Cyprus web sites being hosted outside of Cyprus, in countries like USA, UK, Germany, and Netherlands.
Still, most of the web design and development companies in Cyprus offer “Cyprus web hosting”. Here is just one example, that I found (ironically, I found it through AdSense block on my own blog) – CyprusWebSpace.com . Here is a partial snapshot of their front page.
If you are using Firefox browser with Flagfox plugin, than you will immediately notice the United States of America flag in the bottom right corner of your browser window. If you don’t have the plugin or don’t trust the information that it provides, or use a totally different browser, here is how you can arrive to the same results:
Now, there is always this argument, that the web hosting company runs its own web site on a different server from the one that it uses for its customers. It is a theoretically valid point, but the one I haven’t seen in practice just yet. Most of the web companies offering web hosting in Cyprus only have a single server (usually it is a shared or dedicated server, or a VPS account), which they use for all of their hosting needs.
There is also another argument to this point – what exactly is a Cyprus web hosting? Is it hosting on the web server which physically resides in Cyprus, or is hosting on a web server, which is assigned one of the Cyprus IP addresses? And it is, in fact, an interesting point. There is significant difference between the two. If the server is physically located in Cyprus, then chances are, that it will have a lower latency, meaning that web sites on such a server will appear to respond much faster to visitors who are also in Cyprus. This is what matters for many site owners. On the other hand, Cyprus IP address of the web server might be more important to other site owners, since some search engines use this information in scoring their search results (that is considering, for example, that web sites residing on servers with Cyprus IP addresses are more relevant to Cyprus related queries than web sites residing on other web servers).
Technically, it is quite possible for a web server to be physically located in one country, while carrying the IP address, which belongs to another country. But situations like this, aren’t so common, and that is specifically the reason why search engines (and other tools) utilize the information of IP address location.
So, back to the issue of Cyprus web hosting. How bad is it? Let’s see. Examine the first 10 or so results for each of these queries at Google, using the method above:
Impressed? I am. Results:
How do I know about this one company with Cyprus IP address that it doesn’t have the server physically located in Cyprus? Because I am an employee of that company (disclaimer and blah blah blah). And even if I wasn’t, finding this information is rather trivial with any traceroute tool (here is one, for example).
So, keep this stuff in mind before you pay for you Cyprus web hosting next time. Maybe this Cyprus offering is not so Cyprus after all. But then again, maybe you just don’t care…
Qatar is a country I know nothing about. And whenever I hear the name of a country that I know nothing about, the first thing I want to know is if they have Internet connectivity over there. It appears, that I should have be more careful with my Internet criteria evaluation – via via TechCrunch:
Qatar has a single ISP, Qtel, with a single IP address shared by the entire country.
So, the fact that there is Internet connectivity today does not necessarily imply that there will be Internet connectivity tomorrow…
Most of today I spent in the Mediterranean hotel. Together with about twenty other administrators from most Cyprus ISPs, I attended DNS/DNSSEC course given by RIPE NCC.
Continue reading RIPE DNS/DNSSEC course
Most of the modern cell phones are equipped with both “Bluetooth” and “Infrared”. “Bluetooth” is extremely popular these days. But “Infrared” also has its use. The other day I was reminded of this.
My brother and I were in the car on the highway between Paphos and Limassol. I was driving at about 140 km/h. My brother was occupied copying ringtones from my SonyEricsson P800 onto his SonyEricsson P910. “Bluetooth” connection wasn’t working at all. When I slowed down to about 80 km/h it managed to connect, but was very slow and unstable. “Infrared” on the other hand, worked like a charm.
I suspect that this was because “Bluetooth” is a point-to-multipoint connection. Basically, it is like a small radio transmitter. It sends waves to about 10 meters around it. Because the car was moving so fast, it was getting out of the 10 meters radius pretty fast. “Infrared” on the other hand is a point-to-point connection. As long as it can “see” the other end, the connection will work perfectly.