On Mon, Sep 15, 2008 at 06:11:28AM +0530, Murtaza wrote:
Nothing if the reason isn't to avoid the US to prevent interception. ie. my point was the people are doing this for engineering reasons not political ones as was implied by that article.
I don't see it sinister even if someone wants to avoid US due to interception. But, yes I agree people are doing for engineering reasons. But, it still is impossible in many asses, as ISPs in many countries are still not cooperating with each other.
speaking from the middle east, i have been advising my clients against co-location/hosting in the US due to potential political issues. the current US policy of "detain first, question later" has the potential for serious customer relations issues, should one of the TLAs become interested in your data. oddly enough, the ISP's in the region have not caught on to the potential winfall of providing cost effective hosting locally, so therefore, the bulk of the hosting for companies in the region is primarily done in the US, then in EU, then, maybe locally. if you drive down Sheikh Zayed Road in Dubai, and check where the hosting is for 90% of the URL's on the billboards (even those with .ae domains), you will find that they follow the above pattern. a primary example is that of du.ae, one of the only two incumbent/dual-opoly providers for the UAE, hosts its own website and customer portal in Canada, even though it has a perfectly fine data center (if not more than one) in Dubai. UAE/Dubai is a major landing point for many asian/indian ocean fibers, but there is no equivilent of One Wilshire/60 Hudson/etc. so, as the data finds more and better direct routes to the end user, reducing the need to route through the US, there is still a penchant for hosting the primary data there. -- Jim Mercer jim@reptiles.org +971 55 410-5633 "I'm Prime Minister of Canada, I live here and I'm going to take a leak." - Lester Pearson in 1967, during a meeting between himself and President Lyndon Johnson, whose Secret Service detail had taken over Pearson's cottage retreat. At one point, a Johnson guard asked Pearson, "Who are you and where are you going?"