# Does my Local Install Communicate With Discourse Servers?
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/does-my-local-install-communicate-with-discourse-servers/57630
**Category:** Support
**Created:** [2월 19, 2017, 11:48오전 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/does-my-local-install-communicate-with-discourse-servers/57630 "2017-02-19T11:48:00Z")
**Posts on this page:** 10
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@regnatarajan](https://meta.discourse.org/u/regnatarajan)
#### Post date: [2월 19, 2017, 11:48오전 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/does-my-local-install-communicate-with-discourse-servers/57630/1 "2017-02-19T11:48:00Z")
Hello. I’m yet another newbie thinking of moving a forum over to Discourse.
What I want to know is this: If I install Discourse on a cloud server of my own somewhere, will my local install communicate with the Discourse servers for any purposes at all? In other words, if the Discourse company died, would my forum still work? Obviously I’m hoping it doesn’t die but I’d like to know if I’ll have time to migrate if it does.
Thanks in advance!
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### Author:  [@jomaxro](https://meta.discourse.org/u/jomaxro)
#### Post date: [2월 19, 2017, 12:28오후 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/does-my-local-install-communicate-with-discourse-servers/57630/2 "2017-02-19T12:28:05Z")
There are two things I can think of that a “typical” Discourse install communicates with Discourse “servers” for. The first is the Avatar service. Discourse hosts the letter avatars that new accounts use by default. You can easily change that if Discourse (the company) ever went away. The second thing is communication with Github where you get updates from - obviously, if the team stopped updating the software, there’d be no more updates on the team’s Discourse.
Other than that, I can’t think of anything…your Discourse install is your Discourse install!
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### Author:  [@RGJ](https://meta.discourse.org/u/RGJ)
#### Post date: [2월 19, 2017, 12:58오후 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/does-my-local-install-communicate-with-discourse-servers/57630/3 "2017-02-19T12:58:42Z")
It also does version checks against a centralized API on a regular basis - which can be turned off as well.
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### Author:  [@jomaxro](https://meta.discourse.org/u/jomaxro)
#### Post date: [2월 19, 2017, 1:04오후 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/does-my-local-install-communicate-with-discourse-servers/57630/4 "2017-02-19T13:04:51Z")
> [@RGJ](#):
>
> It also does version checks against a centralized API on a regular basis
Good to know, thanks @RGJ! I always thought updates queried Github, not a Discourse API…
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### Author:  [@mpalmer](https://meta.discourse.org/u/mpalmer)
#### Post date: [2월 19, 2017, 6:49오후 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/does-my-local-install-communicate-with-discourse-servers/57630/5 "2017-02-19T18:49:35Z")
> [@regnatarajan](#):
>
> if the Discourse company died, would my forum still work?
Yes, Discourse-the-software can outlive Discourse-the-company. Nothing in the Discourse codebase _requires_ talking to Discourse servers, although as others have said, there are some things that are enabled by default that communicate externally. The version check failing won’t have any impact on operation; the thing that’ll cause the most visible problems is the avatars service, but even that’s just some missing avatar images (same as if gravatar went on the blink).
The most important resiliency feature of Discourse, though, is the fact that it is **open source**. Even if there were some sort of “phone home to get approval to run” code buried in Discourse somewhere, because you have the full source code _and_ the legal right to redistribute modified versions, you (or anyone) could rip that code out with impunity, _and_ give everyone else your fixed version.
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### Author:  [@regnatarajan](https://meta.discourse.org/u/regnatarajan)
#### Post date: [2월 21, 2017, 12:11오전 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/does-my-local-install-communicate-with-discourse-servers/57630/6 "2017-02-21T00:11:23Z")
Thanks for the replies, everyone. Very helpful. One related question: how easy is it to snag a copy of the avatars and point Discourse to the local copy?
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### Author:  [@Falco](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Falco)
#### Post date: [2월 21, 2017, 12:17오전 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/does-my-local-install-communicate-with-discourse-servers/57630/7 "2017-02-21T00:17:21Z")
It’s open source and with a Dockerfile ready to use: [GitHub - discourse/letter-avatars: Teeny tiny web service to generate letter-based avatars · GitHub](https://github.com/discourse/letter-avatars)
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### Author:  [@mpalmer](https://meta.discourse.org/u/mpalmer)
#### Post date: [2월 21, 2017, 12:23오전 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/does-my-local-install-communicate-with-discourse-servers/57630/8 "2017-02-21T00:23:38Z")
The avatars are generated on-demand; the central avatars service code is [open source as well](https://github.com/discourse/letter-avatars), and there is some internal letter avatar rendering code (that doesn’t get used normally), but which you can enable by changing the `external system avatars enabled` site setting. You may want to read [this topic](https://meta.discourse.org/t/optimizing-letter-avatar-rendering/33082) for more background on why we support a centralised letter avatars service.
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### Author:  [@system](https://meta.discourse.org/u/system)
#### Post date: [5월 4, 2019, 8:17오후 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/does-my-local-install-communicate-with-discourse-servers/57630/9 "2019-05-04T20:17:39Z")
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### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [5월 5, 2019, 11:59오후 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/does-my-local-install-communicate-with-discourse-servers/57630/10 "2019-05-05T23:59:43Z")