Can a friendly technical person help an accountant?

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elaine@cheapaccounting

elaine@cheapaccounting

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  • #1
    I am afraid that you will need to venture into the accounts forum to do so.

    We are being told that a site is hosted in the UK but the who.is look up shows it being hosted by Amazon in IE.


    Can anyone help me to understand all of this?

    Start from post #91 on :
    http://www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=274880&page=10

    and read response from Digital Cabinet Office at the Government

    Thank you
     
    fisicx

    fisicx

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  • #2
    The whois record shows the server as Dublin:

    http://whois.domaintools.com/46.137.92.159

    So what the government wonk is saying is that they are using cloud hosting and whois says it is provided by Amazon.

    As you suggest, they are not using a real UK hosting service.

    I've checked 3 other whois services and they all say the same thing!

    EG:

    Organization: Amazon Web Services, Elastic Compute Cloud, EC2, E
    ISP: Amazon Data Services Ireland Ltd
    AS Number: AS16509 Amazon.com, Inc.

    Note that all the services say that gov.uk is not a registered domain either.
     
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    Paul_Rosser

    Paul_Rosser

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  • #4
    Amazons EC2 cloud for the EU is all serviced out of Ireland, so anyone in the UK using amazons cloud would actually be hosted in Ireland.

    Amazon EC2 is currently available in eight regions: US East (Northern Virginia), US West (Oregon), US West (Northern California), EU (Ireland), Asia Pacific (Singapore), Asia Pacific (Tokyo), South America (Sao Paulo),
     
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    elaine@cheapaccounting

    elaine@cheapaccounting

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  • #6
    FIZIX Digital said:
    The question appears to have been answered, but I'm curious as to why you are concerned about it. (Maybe I have worded that badly - but hopefully you get what I mean).

    If its that gov data is stored outside of the UK; well that's the Internet and cloud hosting for you.
    Click to expand...


    Ultimately I want to know who is being paid to operate the gov.uk web site and where they pay tax on the fees made for providing the service.

    #justcurious - it's the accountant in me :eek::eek::eek::eek:;);)
     
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    FIZIX Agency

    FIZIX Agency

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  • #7
    elainec100@cheapaccounting said:
    Ultimately I want to know who is being paid to operate the gov.uk web site and where they pay tax on the fees made for providing the service.

    #justcurious - it's the accountant in me :eek::eek::eek::eek:;);)
    Click to expand...

    I skimme the thread as I haven't got time to read it all.

    Cloud hosting is a cost effective way to host websites and services and too load balance. Arguably its the future of large scale hosting.

    As with most newer Internet technology its American companies that lead the way; like Amazon, Google, Apple, MS etc.

    Most of these companies while are American have UK offices where deals will be made but the infrastructure or tech may exist or originate elsewhere.

    Without looking I'm not entirely sure what their business infrastructure looks like; I'd probably assume Amazon has UK offices (I'd have to check); probably the financial side going through that but the provision through Ireland where the cloud itself exists?

    Even if not; if the money is going out of the country, they could be saving money by using the service. Also you can't use the EC cloud and be UK hosted as the cloud doesn't exist within the UK itself.
     
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    Paul_Rosser

    Paul_Rosser

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  • #8
    A list of all the government domains are on here -http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/resource-library/list-govuk-domain-names

    However doing a whois on .gov.uk won't work as most lookup tools are designed to expect something before the .gov bit.

    Also a domain doesn't have to necessarily be registered for it to work, the government would just need a DNS record to be put in for .gov.uk and then everyone will be able to get to it, with no domain being registered which looks like the case here.

    Agree with fisicx that all the lookups point towards at least in the first instance that the website is hosted on Amazons EC2 cloud, which would be in Ireland due to their being no presence in the UK.
     
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