Having been involved with UNIX/Linux sysadmin for 20 years or so[1], I have operated my own mail server in my home office for pretty much the last 10 years. It's simple for me to do. It keeps my hands in Linux/UNIX in at least a minimal way. I could use my own spam filtering and virus scanning. Perhaps most importantly, the message store is right here locally so that if we lose Internet connectivity we still have all of our messages.

However, if your ISP: 1) restricts your ability to send messages to only going through their servers; and more importantly 2) has consistent Internet access problems, including being down for most of a day.... well, maybe it's just time to make a move.

Unfortunately, where we live in Burlington, DSL turns out to not be an option, and so for Internet access options we are currently limited to cable from Adelphia, who suffers both of those issues above. In all fairness, up until the last few months, the service has actually been perfectly fine. Speed has been great and I've not really had any issues whatsoever. However, as the Adelphia cable organization deals with the impacts of the sale to Comcast, service has been progressively worse. Hopefully the various outages (both of service and now of email) we have been suffering are temporary problems as they transition to the Comcast infrastructure (something the techs have told me is in progress).

But all of this makes me question whether or not I simply move to using a web-based email service like Gmail for all my personal email. Gmail lets you set up a default email address and have multiple account "identities". Luckily, my "Lodestar2.com" email comes in to a server in NH where I then pull it down to my server in my home office... so pulling it (or redirecting it) over to Gmail is not a big deal. I would not be subject to Adelphia's mail server restrictions, nor would I be reliant on them at all for email. It would let me continue to send/receive email regardless of Internet access (a blackberry or Internet cafe can also access gmail). I'm reliant on Google... but I guess if there are companies out there that I would rely on, that is definitely one of them that I would feel comfortable relying on.

It's just that control thing. I don't like having my message store living out in the network. Hmmm... I guess a compromise is to live in Gmail, but use POP to pull down copies onto the local message store so that I do have a backup. Hmmmm...

[1] And yes, I know that Linux came out only in 1991. The point is that sysadmin for a UNIX system is basically the same as a Linux system.

Tags: adelphia, email