Author: Nearsource

DDoS Attacks or Distributed Denial of Service Attacks

Leave a comment Hosting, IT Services
DDoS Attacks

What is a DDoS Attack? Have you read or heard about Distributed Denial of Service or DDoS attacks? This is probably the most common way to disrupt a website and even an entire server! The DDoS is a very simple way of attacking a server: when you visit a particular website from your computer, phone or tablet the server has to use its resources (processor and memory) to show you the website you want to see. Servers are prepared to handle a lot of requests where hundreds or thousands of users are visiting websites hosted in that server. A typical user would spend few seconds per page before browsing another web page but what happens if  there is a large group of devices visiting this same website, several times per second in a very short time-frame? The server would get overloaded and collapse, unable to respond to any more requests. At this point it is likely that all other websites hosted […]

Your Business Phone Service can be a lot Cheaper!

Leave a comment Hosting, IT Services, Uncategorized
Business Phone Service

Expensive Business Phone Services Traditional businesses probably call their local phone provider (AT&T, BellSouth, etc.), and setup a business account with multiple extensions. In other cases they get a business phone service from their internet service providers. Some businesses have a work from home or have a remote team that needs to be on the same phone system and use popular VoIP based services such as Vonage Business, RingCentral or Nextiva. These services tend to be cost-prohibitive for some businesses or start-ups and creates a fixed or variable cost per extension. We were using a popular VoIP system that worked well with our distributed team, however, it created an added cost per extension and/or direct line. Our company requires several direct lines and a main line because we provide white label services to some of our partners. Some of these services charged for every feature we would need such as a conference bridge, a call tree and others. Our First […]

Create a VPN Server on a budget

Leave a comment Hosting, IT Services
how to setup vpn on a budget

You don’t need to spend a lot of money to have a VPN for your workplace.  It is pretty easy and cheap to do. Besides, it can really make things a lot more secure for your work. What is a VPN? VPN or Virtual Private Network is a way to keep things as secure as possible in a company or organization by creating a “tunnel” between your remote location and your office’s network. With a traditional VPN it makes it easier for you to connect to your company’s network, access files and applications and more. This way it doesn’t matter where you are because when you use it you will work as if you were in the office.  All the data, files and applications you normally use in your office will be accessible from any location. How can a VPN be useful or more secure? An office can control and separate things from the inside and the outside network. For example: your network […]

What is cloud hosting and why use it?

Leave a comment Hosting, IT Services
what is cloud hosting

What is Cloud Hosting? Cloud hosting is when you are able to combine several servers or machines to work together and act as one big scalable hosting server. On top of that you can set up multiple virtual environments and containers inside this cloud and each one will work independently. This provides improved scalability (it is much easier to increase resources, processing power, disk space, and more). So in effect, a cloud hosting solution can be seen as a very big server with tremendous resource capacity, high network speed and intelligent software that allows an administrator to create independent smaller hosting environments that share resources effectively without affecting each other. Advantages of Cloud Hosting With traditional dedicated or shared hosting providers (these ultimately depend on a single server) it is harder to scale and has less disaster recovery options. If multiple hard drives fail, or a RAM chip goes bad, it affects the entire server. It is harder to scale […]

Build a mobile app or a mobile web application?

2 Comments Mobile Apps, Website Development
Build a Mobile App

We often hear from our clients the following phrase “I need a mobile app that does…”, and sometimes there is a misconception of not knowing exactly how the mobile world works. So, do you need to build a mobile app or just a mobile website/application? First things first: What’s the difference between a mobile website and a mobile app? An app is a program you install on your mobile device from places like iTunes and Google Play whereas a mobile website is a site or application you open and use in the browser. What is a Mobile Website or Responsive Website? Website need to be responsive (mobile friendly), which means that it has to have a “mobile version” which probably looks a little different comparing to the “desktop” version  because it is adapted to work on small screens like a cell phone or a tablet. You can even have different versions between cell phone and tablets, meaning that you have […]

Mobile Apps For Your Business – are they the future?

Leave a comment IT Services, Mobile Apps
Mobile Apps for your Business

For good or for bad, thanks to technology leaders like Steve Jobs we have a high number of the global population always checking their phones day and night. Apps have become part of people’s lives regardless of age, gender, race or religion. You can find an app for almost everything (and really everything!), even for things you are probably thinking of right now… “there is an app for that”). But, what about businesses? Is it possible to have mobile apps for your business that are focused to help you to either grow or work better? For me, the answer is clear: why not? It doesn’t matter what your business does, there is a great chance that an app can be developed for your business and that mobile app, if properly used, can get you to the next level. It could simply help you out by saving time and making your life and business easier. Don’t think that an app as just […]

SSL is now a must for your website

1 Comment Website Development, Wordpress
SSL usage

There was a time when you only even knew what SSL was if you ran an eCommerce website or online store. Today, more and more people know what SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) is or at least know that it is “something” that creates a secure connection between a website visitor and the server through which to send information. Some people would recognize it when seeing a “lock” symbol in the browser when doing online shopping or doing online banking. SSL is what encrypts the communication between the person who is browsing the website and the website’s server. All data/text submitted either way is encrypted. This way any prying person or software can’t see anything in this connection because it’s encrypted in real time. You have to be able to decrypt it with a “key”. Nowadays keys are very strong so it is very hard to hack.  You can notice you are using SSL in a website when you have to […]

Why Amazon AWS is a great backup option for anyone

Leave a comment IT Services
Amazon AWS Backup

Even though every day more and more companies are migrating not only their backups but also their infrastructure to Amazon AWS (Amazon Web Services), you may not know how insanely cheap and nice it is to have your backups in Amazon AWS. First of all, we want to clarify: “cheap” doesn’t always mean “bad”. Amazon does a great job setting up their infrastructure, so their availability and storage cost is cheap. This makes sense as cost of disk space and digital storage has gone down significantly over the last several years. With Amazon AWS there is a trade off: their backup services “are not easy to understand”. They have focused on setting up a DIY strategy geared to “experimenters” and early adopters that have the time and patience to understand their different backup services and how to set them up. They don’t offer a lot of readily available customer support, but because they are so well priced, it is worth […]

We are Web Consultants and We will Tell You the Truth

Leave a comment Website Development
web solutions consulting

Let’s talk about NearSource and what we do and do well: web solutions consulting. A consultant is someone you can rely on to help make the best decisions in a particular field or subject, it’s like having an adviser who tells you the dos and don’ts of a problem. You might have a lot of ideas or maybe you don’t even know where to begin. That’s where we come in, we know how to go from point A to point B developing web solutions for your business using the most appropriate technologies for each business case. You need to keep in mind: when you have an idea of a web solution/application or a web site you want to design, you may have a lot of ideas of you want to do with it. Let us tell you the ugly truth: not all of these ideas may be good, practical or even feasible. We have been doing web solutions consulting for 10+years […]