Best Business Practices for Photographers [199]
Suppose you have a cable modem router—this is where the IP addresses are determined. You may choose 10.0.1.1 for the cable modem. The first computer on your network will then likely be 10.0.1.2, the second computer will likely be 10.0.l.3, and so on. Once you know these numbers, you can go into the port forwarding section on your router and assign all requests for websites (http or port 80) to be forwarded to the second computer on your network—10.0.1.3. Thus, all views of your website are delivered to the World Wide Web directly from your computer in your office.
Although I would caution you against doing this for bandwidth and other reasons, there is a reason to use port forwarding: You can allow clients to securely access a folder on your computer where they can FTP images directly to themselves from you. This means that you do not need to e-mail image(s) to them or upload them to your own offsite FTP servers. You need only e-mail them the link: ftp://192.168.102.1/clientfile.zip. When that request is made, it reaches your router, and your router, seeing the "ftp," looks up the port forwarding number for port 21 (the FTP port) and finds the address of 10.0.1.3. It then sends that request directly to the computer in your office, which will then verify that "clientfile.zip" is in that folder and begin to deliver it to the client. This does, however, potentially create a whole host of security concerns. Most important, you should have hard-to-remember passwords and such on your computers, and you should change them regularly.
There is one other benefit to knowing what and how port forwarding works. Using applications such as Timbuktu on the PC or Apple Remote Desktop on your Mac, you can access your computer at home from anywhere you have Internet access (at a decent speed). All you need to do is configure port 407 on your router for Timbuktu, or for Apple Remote Desktop, 3283, 5900, and 5988. Both applications allow you to modify the port number(s), and there are other applications besides these two that can provide this functionality for you.
The beauty of this is that you can access all your data at home, send e-mail from your home computer, and even help an assistant figure out a problem working on your computer in your office if you're at a remote location. The benefits of this functionality should not be underestimated. If you have ever been out of the office and realized you left a document, file, or image on the computer at home, this is a lifesaver. If you want other solutions, solutions such as GoToMyPC.com for the PC or MobileMe's Back To My Mac will make it even easier to access your computer from a remote location.
Back Up, Back Up, Back Up!
A study by the Gartner Group reveals that 60 percent of backups are incomplete, 50 percent of restores fail, and only 25 percent of backups are stored offsite. The study further indicates that 64 percent of small and mid-sized businesses maintain their backups onsite. This is a catastrophe waiting to happen. It is imperative that you establish and implement a routine backup solution—preferably for all your systems, but at least for your critical data.
Here are some sobering statistics from their report:
Eighty percent of all business data resides on computers.
Thirty-two percent of all data loss is the result of user error.
Ten percent of all laptops are stolen each year.
Fifteen percent of all laptops suffer a hardware failure each year.
For my mission-critical data (other than digital