Home and SMB Networking Design 11 – Bringing the Inside Out

There are two main aspects to getting data from your network to the Internet:

1. Allow users on your network to send data.

2. Allow Internet users to come and get their data themselves.

1: Allow your users to submit data.

This is a standard operation that most Internet users perform on a daily basis, such as emailing, texting, tweeting, instant messaging, and posting to blogs and other data services. If you’re going to allow it from your network, it can be difficult and expensive to manage. Most small businesses simply rely on the discretion of their users.

2: Allow Internet users to come and get data.

Especially for businesses, it can be important to allow content you create or maintain on your network to be transmitted to the Internet. There are two basic mechanisms for doing this:

• Export it from your network to a host elsewhere on the Internet

• Save it to a server on your network

2.1: hosting on the Internet: Why would you allow your data to be kept on someone else’s servers?

There are several very good reasons to put your data on an Internet hosting server and allow others to access it from there:

1. What you save on the Internet is only a copy of the original and therefore if it gets corrupted or deleted, you can upload it again;

2. You do not need to allow anonymous Internet users onto your network;

3. The user’s browser traffic does not use the bandwidth of their Internet connection;

4. You do not have to disclose your own IP address to Internet users;

5. You can use a dynamic IP address for your Internet connection (unless your host servers need access to your network).

6. If, like many large organizations, you choose to host your network services in a data center, you can provide your own hosting for your Internet presence from that data center. However, this makes you subject to some of the problems mentioned below in hosting your own internet presence.

There are also several disadvantages in Internet Hosting:

1. It’s hard to keep your data fresh, although this is generally fine for static content.

2. If you have dynamic content, you must provide a channel to proactively update data on Internet servers or allow Internet servers to access data stored on your network in real time.

3. It can cost significant amounts of money, although many ‘personal’ file hosting resources on the Internet (‘Cloud’) are free – up to a point.

Your contract with the host organization will determine who is responsible for what, but in general:

• You are responsible for:

  • Upload the content and keep it updated;

  • specify or configure access controls;

  • allow hosting servers to access your network data (if necessary).

The Hosting Manager is responsible for:

• Make sure the service remains available and undamaged. They will provide replacement servers if one breaks down;

• Provide a degree of access control and data security so that your content is not hacked;

• Maintain access logs and generally manage user access to your data.

Some other services are negotiable, depending on the host:

• restore backup

2.2: Remote access of Internet Users to data on your network

This is where you host your own Internet presence using devices on your own network. Generally speaking, this is considered a bad idea for small businesses. However, there are some advantages to doing so:

1. You are in full control of your data and are not subject to the whims of a hosting company.

2. You get maximum currency for your data, as there are no internet delays between your internet-connected devices and the databases that contain your dynamic content.

Against this are the disadvantages:

1. You need to spend significant amounts of money to secure your network by providing:

   • Separate servers for Internet accessible services

   • Multiple layers of firewalls and a DMZ to isolate Internet traffic from internal network traffic and prevent Internet users from accessing your network

   • Proxy services to ensure that all data sent from your network to servers connected to the Internet is fully protected.

2. All traffic between the Internet and your Internet-connected servers goes through your Internet access link. This may affect the level of service available to users on your internal network. You will almost certainly need some form of intelligent traffic management to prevent spikes in Internet user traffic (or denial of service attacks) from completely isolating your network from the Internet.

3. You have to make the IP address of your Internet connection public, and it has to be static.

4. Your Internet-enabled servers and other devices must remain powered on at all times.

Overall, these disadvantages make self-hosting your Internet presence a poor option for most individuals and small businesses.