I agree - site to site VPN at the router level seems ideal for this challenge.

And yes, you could spend a lot of money for small business routers, or you could buy routers compatible with (or pre-installed with) firmware such as DD-WRT which will allow you almost all the same functions for much cheaper, but require a little more elbow grease to get working.

http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/ind...

Here's the thing you didn't address, which is harr2969's fundamental axiom of backups: if it isn't automated it doesn't happen. YOU MUST AUTOMATE.

For that reason, you need to place a bigger weight on cloud options. You listed a few specific issues with cloud. I believe there are easy and specific ways to address them. The tool I'll leverage for my answer is Crashplan, although others have suggested other tools.

Cloud Concern 1 - someone else is responsible for my data: Crashplan can be peer based. In that mode, you still have control of the data at your friend/family member's house.

Cloud Concern 2 - I could lose it to hackers: Crashplan can apply a backup-specific password on top of whatever standard file-level encryption you prefer for your personal data..

Cloud Concern 3 - The entity going out of business: The resources to run the program are on you, not on them with a peer based model.

Cloud Concern 4 - Once it leaves my home, I no longer fully control it, which is unacceptable: Peer-based, again, you're in control.

Cloud concern 5 - Cloud based costs $$: you didn't even mention this one, but the peer model is free.

Cloud concern 6 - harr2969 is a shill for Crashplan: Nope. It's a good program and I use it.

You WILL like it more after - you just don't know the joy till "you've been saved" from them.

Lasts for centuries - Unless he is very angry. http://biblehub.com/exodus/32-19.htm

I love how 75.3% of the posts in this thread are rated +15 Insightful!, or +20 Interesting!.

We seem to have hit a nerve on the inner nerd in most of us. We all have knowledge and many have experience when it comes to how people perceive us ... and remember - "perception is reality". If you're perceived as arrogant, you really are arrogant for all intents and purposes, especially when it comes to the boss, customer, etc.

On a related note - some may prefer "geek" vs "nerd" - but remember that NERD = Network Emergency Response Dude and maybe it will help you find your place.

**Baen's (normally inexpensive) books are also provided free of charge to those who are physically disabled: http://www.webscription.net/t-disabled.aspx **

Baen's Rocks!

Note their free library selections are pretty extensive; I read voraciously (and quickly, 350+ wpm) but it still took many months to get through their entire free library (http://www.baen.com/library/) several years ago. Awesome free resource.

If you're in business, or if you care about your domain's reputation, you should be implementing SPF to prevent others from sending mail (aka joe-jobbing) as your domain.

Even if you DON'T care about your reputation, your life will be easier if you don't have to deal with the back-scatter (complaints, threats, invalid postmaster replies, out of office messages, etc) from a massive joe-job/spamming effort which is spoofing your domain.

You CAN make a substantial dent in these types of attacks with SPF. There are levels of SPF "certainty". In order to be most effective, you need to list all your sending servers with a dash "-all" for example, a major financial uses:

text ="v=spf1 ip4:207.162.228.0/24 [shortened] -all"

On the receiving side, most SPF implementations will (and should) respect the certainty of the senders SPF record. In the above example the financial implemented the "-all" qualifier, so if mail comes in from a place not on that list, based on their assertion I can safely drop it as spam. If they used a "?all" or other, I might only increment the spam probability or tag it [maybe spam].

When implementing your DNS SPF record, it can take time to make sure you've identified all the legit sender's of mail with your domain name if you're a large company. Keep at it and come back here and let me know, I'll give you a pat on the virtual back for doing THE RIGHT THING.

http://www.openspf.org/

Actually it's still up.

http://wirelessphiladelphia.org/about_wireless.cfm

About a month after the shutdown, it was turned into an open/free network with no tech support or guarantees. Turns out that it's a lot cheaper to run a network when all you have to do is keep it up and not support the end users, collect payment, process signups, etc. I like it this way better. What EarthLink was running only cost a little less than Comcast and Verizon, so I didn't see much point to it.