Infrastructure · local first · online second
Your infrastructure should still make sense when the internet doesn't.
I design and build networks, servers, backups and private cloud for small businesses, properties and households that can't afford to stop when the uplink does. Everything I build runs on your premises first and uses the internet second — so a dead link is an inconvenience, not an outage.
What I build
Eight systems, one rule: each has to work with the uplink unplugged.
Networks that hold
Wi-Fi that reaches, a wired backbone where it matters, separate lanes for guests, cameras and work — and a firewall you can read.
Read more → 20Starlink, done properly
The dish is the easy part. What sits behind it — your own router, a second uplink, and the quirks I have measured on my own link — is the work.
Read more → 30Servers on your premises
A small machine in your building running the things you would otherwise rent — files, calendars, the phone system, cameras, automation.
Read more → 40Backups that restore
Three copies, one of them off site, every night — and a restore that has actually been rehearsed, because a receipt is not proof.
Read more → 50Private cloud
Your files, photos, calendars and contacts on a machine you own — reachable from your phone anywhere, scanned by nobody.
Read more → 60Continuity
The plan for the day the internet, the power, or a disk fails — written down, rehearsed, and short enough to follow while stressed.
Read more → 70Monitoring that tells the truth
Alerts for what stopped running, not just for what is up — on a quiet channel you will not learn to ignore.
Read more → 80Small business & property systems
For a shop, a rental, a farm, a clinic or a small office: the network, the guest sign-in, the cameras, the phone line, the files and the backups — built as one system, documented as one.
Read more →How I work
Assess. Design. Build. Hand over the keys. Keep watch.
- Assess. I look at what you actually have — every device, every service you depend on, every place a single failure would stop you — and write it down.
- Design. Boring, proven parts, arranged so the important things keep working with the internet gone.
- Build. With you present where possible. Every decision explained in plain words.
- Hand over the keys. You own the hardware, the accounts and the passwords. The documentation is written for you, not for another engineer.
- Keep watch. If you want it, I monitor what I built and tell you when something stops — quietly, and only when it matters.
Three rules I build by
- Local first. If it doesn't work on your own network with the uplink unplugged, it isn't finished.
- Boring parts. I choose the equipment and software that has stopped trying to be clever. It is the kind that is still running in ten years.
- You own it, and you understand it. A system you can't explain is a system you rent from whoever built it. I don't want to be that person.
Three names, one person
My Computer Therapy fixes what's broken, at your kitchen table or over the wire.
MCT Systems — this site — builds infrastructure for clients.
Robot Trainer is the lab, where I experiment with and automate what that infrastructure can do.
Where it starts
A conversation first. Then an assessment, with a fixed price quoted before I start.
Tell me what you have and what worries you. If what you need is really a house call, I'll say so and point you at My Computer Therapy instead.