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I am not in any position where I have to worry about someone seeing my emails. I don't work for the State Dept!
What are the advantages of having a server in my home? I already have my own domain, which I have had for a long time. I use it just for email and forward it to whatever ISP email account I have at any given time. This way I don't have to worry about someone finding me by email.
Other than serving the same purpose are there advantages? Speed? Is it complicated? Worth the time and trouble?
03-17-2015, 06:59 PM
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n/a posts
Yes it's fairly complicated to set it up. No, it's not worth the time or trouble.
What will likely happen is that nearly all your outgoing email will get flagged as spam.
Advantages for the Secretary of State: Not much, and the advantage of handling your own spam/virus filtering are removed when using a 3rd party service to handle that task, which a certain SoS did. Also gone with using the 3rd party is email security and privacy, which should be important for high ranking government officials, but apparently isn't.
Speed: Your connection from your PC to your email server will be as fast as your home network, which is neat and all, but kind of unnecessary as emails are generally pretty small and transfer quickly over a broadband connection.
Complicated: Yes, if you want to do it right, and an email server isn't something you want to do wrong.
Worth the time and trouble: No, unless you're a tinkerer, hobbyist or professional.
ETA: You CAN'T run one on a typical residential connection, btw. The ports required are blocked. You have to have a business internet connection, or get your ISP to open up those ports (good luck with that).
If you look in the fine print of the TOS for your ISP they are going to state you can't do this with your residential connection and becsue there is no guarantee of a dedicated IP it's not going to work anyway.
You'd have to sign up for one of their business plans that will allow you to run a server. Those are not cheap compared to the same types of speeds you can get from a regular host. With the host you're also getting the machine. If you wanted to run your own hardware from data center you can still do that if they offer co-location where you own and service the hardware. Of course the location needs to be physically near you.
The only real advantage to having it in your home is the hardware is sitting right there.
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It's not a big deal to get a static IP and a business class connection. I have one through Comcast in the DC area, and it's $89 a month. Sure, it's a little more expensive than a residential account, but the static IP address is worth it alone. I then run my own SMTP server over a spare Windows 7 computer. It was very easy to setup and configure, and it runs like a charm. There are a few on the market, but I'm using Free SMTP Server - QK SMTP Server. They have a free 30 day trial version for testing.
I am not in any position where I have to worry about someone seeing my emails. I don't work for the State Dept!
What are the advantages of having a server in my home? I already have my own domain, which I have had for a long time. I use it just for email and forward it to whatever ISP email account I have at any given time. This way I don't have to worry about someone finding me by email.
Other than serving the same purpose are there advantages? Speed? Is it complicated? Worth the time and trouble?
Agree with what other's have said. It's likely not worth the effort. In general though, when you have your own server. You retain control over how its managed, secured, etc. However, if you don't have the appropriate expertise, you may actually do more harm than good.
Also keep in mind that email is, by default, an insecure communication medium. You can certainly layer security on top, but you can only do so with the segments that you have control over.
.... and it's $89 a month. Sure, it's a little more expensive than a residential account,
You have to compare apples to apples, it's far more expensive than paying for hosting. For example my host offers a dedicated server for $109. Unmetered bandwidth @10Mbps. I5 3.4ghz, 16GB Ram and 1 TB drive.
Your advantage of course is the machine is sitting right there and if security is of utmost importance then having physical control of the machine is imperative.
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