Corporate Blog

Beware the walled garden

30 September 2011 23:59:24 +0000

There’s an interesting article on the website of The Guardian entitled Facebook accused of removing activists’ pages. It’s particularly interesting to read in light of the post I made back in February referring to an article entitled Navigation Nightmare.

Having a website shut down is not a new experience for many people. Reasons range from the technical (you’ve exceeded your bandwidth allocation for this month) to the political and censorial. However, it’s always possible to move your website to a new web hosting company if you’re dissatisfied with your current hosting company.

Not so with “walled gardens” like Facebook.

If Facebook closes you down, this is probably the situation in which you’ll find yourself:

You won’t have a copy of your website. (Yes, a Facebook group, page, profile, etc. is a website.)
You won’t have access — even temporarily — to back up your data.
Even if you have managed some sort of back-up in some form, what can you do with it?
You’ve lost your address, the one where everyone knew where to find you. All links to you will be broken, and there’s nothing you can do to fix them.
You’ll lose your “friends”!

If your web hosting company shuts you down, this is probably the situation in which you’ll find yourself:

You have a copy of your website and database. (You do, right?)
Unless you’ve engaged in outright illegal activity, you can probably talk to an actual person at the hosting company and arrange temporary access if you need something.
You point your domain to a new hosting company.
You upload a copy of your website.
You’re back in business. Some people might not even have noticed that you were down.

Facebook and other walled gardens serve a purpose. Just don’t put all of your eggs in one basket, especially a basket that is not yours!

Tags: branding, domains, facebook, hosting transfer
Categories: Interest
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Server NC018 move: The aftermath

25 July 2011 07:39:44 +0000

The move of server NC018 to the new data centre has been completed. Due to two failures, the downtime for some websites was longer than the planned 12 hours. These two failures were as follows:

For some reason the data centre did not actually configure the server to use the new IP address, even though this was expressly a part of — and indeed a requirement of — the move. This resulted in most websites being down when the server came back online because most websites on the server use the server’s primary IP address. (Websites that have their own or share a secondary IP address had no problems, initially.) We have made a submission to the data centre to have this issue reviewed. However, given that such physical moves are so rare, it’s unlikely we’ll be in a position to test whether or not lessons have been learnt. For ourselves, we’ve learnt that a large part of the problem could have been avoided if we actually hosted most domains on a secondary IP address, rather than the primary. We’ll consider following through on this, but given other plans that will come to pass long before the chance of another physical move comes about, we may not do this at this time.
Secondly, a script that we were assured by the provider of the control panel would work to assign domains quickly to the new IP address as soon as the server came back online, had no effect. The lesson here is that nothing can take the place of exhaustive testing.

I mentioned above that websites on their own IP address experienced no problems “initially”. Once trouble tickets were opened with the data centre, we and their technicians were working at cross purposes at one point, and they essentially redid work we had done to bring websites on the primary IP address online, and at the same time taking down those websites (including the NinerNet website) on their own IP addresses. When this was discovered it was quickly fixed.

We had some reports from clients that email was arriving out of order. This is to be expected when a server has been offline for a while. This is what happens: Let’s say an email is sent 5 minutes after the server goes offline. It can’t be delivered, so the sending mail server holds onto it and tries again in 5 minutes. It still can’t be delivered, so it tries again in 10 minutes, then half an hour, then every hour, and so on. So if the server comes back online part way through the hour wait, but a different email is sent a minute after the server comes back online, that newer email will be delivered immediately, as usual, but the older email won’t be delivered until the hour wait has expired.

Clients hosting some or all of their services on a server other than NC018 and using the third nameserver we provided were up for the duration of the server move.

There was a minor issue with some outbound email that was on the server before the move. We’re still investigating that. However, there were no issues with inbound email that we’re aware of.

Unrelated to the move itself was the fact that posts to our Identi.ca and Twitter accounts did not appear. Of course, these services are independent of NinerNet — which is part of the point, actually — so this was beyond our control. Our status website remained online at status.ninernet.net. It will revert to status.niner.net, but will still be available at the former address, now and in the future.

Again, we appreciate your patience and understanding during this necessary move. If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to let us know.

Craig

Tags: down time, maintenance
Categories: Notices
1 Comment »

Physical move of server NC018 this weekend

18 July 2011 05:07:49 +0000

On 24 July between 01:00 and 13:00 UTC we will be moving server NC018 to a new, “greener”, state-of-the-art data centre. Because this is a physical move — i.e., the server will be carried from one location to another — the server must be powered down, disconnected, moved to the new data centre, reconnected and powered up again. This means the server — and some or all of the services hosted on it — will be unavailable for up to 12 hours this weekend.

Here are the dates and times in some major time zones:

UTC:     24 July, 01:00-13:00
PDT:  23-24 July, 18:00-06:00
CAT:     24 July, 03:00-15:00
AWST:    24 July, 09:00-21:00

Please visit the World Time Server website to convert this date and time into your own time zone if it’s not listed above. Please also ensure that you pass this information along to employees, colleagues, developers, customers, etc., so that they are aware of the outage in advance.

Many of the redundancies already in place will help ensure that the effect of this maintenance outage will be minimised — apart from the fact that, of course, the server will be offline for all or most of 12 hours. However, the recovery from this downtime will be quick because of these redundancies.

Here is some service-specific information that you should be aware of:

IP address

If your website is currently hosted on IP address 65.61.157.54, it will be hosted on 72.3.245.152 after the move. This will not be of interest to most clients, but there are some for whom this might be important.

The IP address of NinerNet’s primary mail server (mail.niner.net) will also change to 72.3.245.152. Again, this will not be of interest to most NinerNet clients. If it is of interest or concern to you, then you will already know that. Such instances usually apply to configuring firewalls, or other security considerations that are based on IP addresses rather than domain names.

DNS

A few days before the move, we will be lowering the length of time that DNS (domain name system) information is cached for your domain around the world. Immediately after the server comes back online, we will then update the DNS information for your domain and associated services so that, if your domain or an associated service is using the new IP address, the change will propagate within minutes.

Communication

Following this post, before and after the move we will be communicating important information through our status website at status.niner.net. However, because the niner.net domain itself will be offline during this move, the status website will also be available at its alternative address: status.ninernet.net. Please make a note of that address and use it to seek updates during the move.

NinerNet website

As indicated above, the niner.net domain and all sub-domains on the niner.net domain will be offline during this move. This includes the main NinerNet website.

Email

All email accounts and forwarders (redirects) hosted on server NC018 will be unavailable during the move. Incoming email will be held on the sending servers until server NC018 is back online, at which point it will be delivered. While some email may arrive out of order, no email will be lost; it will only be delayed. Webmail will be unavailable.

Special cases

Because we have quite a number of clients with unique configurations, those clients may be less affected by this outage than if all of their services were hosted on server NC018. In these cases — all of which assume that you are using the standard NinerNet nameservers (i.e., ns*.niner.net, where the asterisk is a number) — we will put in place (if it’s not already in place for your domain) an extra nameserver that will ensure that your self-hosted mail server or other service remains online during the move. Here are some examples, some of which may apply to you:

Self- or other externally-hosted mail server: If you host your own mail server or host your email with a third party (e.g., Google Apps or your ISP), that service will remain online during the move.
Website not hosted on NC018: If you host your website using our virtual private server (VPS) service, on the PHP 5 server (NC020) or with a third party, your website will remain online.

Both of the above assume that we have access to your domain registration to add the extra nameserver. If your domain is not registered through NinerNet, then you will need to add the extra nameserver yourself. That extra nameserver is ns3.niner.net, and its IP address (in case you need it) is 173.45.228.52. Please contact support before adding ns3.niner.net to your list of nameserver to confirm that you should do so.

DNS hosted elsewhere: If you use your own or a third party’s nameservers, but point one or more of your services to server NC018, the service hosted on NC018 will be offline during the move. Other services pointing to other servers will remain online. If your website or some other service was hosted on IP address 65.61.157.54, please update your DNS to point it to 72.3.245.152 during the move window.
Zam.co domains: If you have registered a .zam.co domain (e.g., example.zam.co), your domain will remain online.
SpamSlip.com: Your rotating anti-spam email addresses will continue to work.

In the case of email, a website or any other service hosted with a third party, please contact support to ensure that we’re aware of your configuration and that we have assigned or will assign you an extra nameserver.

Also, please be aware that although your service hosted on another server will remain online, performance may be slightly degraded during the server move. The degradation will be almost negligible, and performance will return to normal after the move has completed.

Emergency contact information

If your domain or service hosted on server NC018 is not back online within 30 minutes of the scheduled conclusion of this maintenance, please check the status website at either status.niner.net or status.ninernet.net for updates that may explain the situation. If updates there indicate that everything is (or should be) back to normal, please follow these steps, checking to see that your domain or service is still down after each step:

Reboot your computer.
If that doesn’t fix the problem, reboot your router, modem, and any other connection equipment.
If that doesn’t fix the problem, please ask someone else — i.e., someone in another location (not the same building) that you have to phone to talk to them — to see if they can load your website.
If that person cannot load your website, use the service at Just-Ping to see if the server is up.
If that indicates that the server is down, please send an emergency email through the NinerNet website.
If you cannot load the NinerNet website, please send an email to (deleted).
If you use Skype, add NinerNet.Support to your list of contacts and talk to someone.
As a last resort, please phone one of the following numbers:
- Vancouver, Canada: 604 715 7263
- Toll-free in North America: 1 855 NINERNET (1 855 646 3763)
- Outside of North America: +1 604 715 7262

We appreciate your business and your patience, and most of all your understanding during this maintenance to improve the services that we deliver to you. Please contact NinerNet support if you have any questions or concerns.

Tags: down time, maintenance
Categories: Notices
1 Comment »

Connection problems for Airtel customers

30 June 2011 10:22:28 +0000

One of our Zambian clients is having some severe connectivity issues with Airtel, and two other clients have reported similar issues. The problem is that, while connected to the Internet, the IP address assigned to the customer’s phone keeps changing every few seconds. This wreaks havoc with any systems that the Airtel customer is trying to connect to that require, for security reasons, that the phone’s IP address remain constant throughout the session. This also applies if you are using an Airtel “stick” plugged into your computer.

This is most often relevant, for our clients, when trying to use either regular email or webmail. In the former instance, if the IP address assigned to your phone (or “stick”) by Airtel keeps changing every few seconds, you will likely be unable to send email, or you may get lucky and be able to send email every few tries. In the case of webmail, you will find that you will be logged out of the system constantly, often while you are actually trying to log in. This can also happen when trying to log into the control panel or any other service hosted by NinerNet that requires you to log in.

This problem exists, as noted above, with any system that requires that your IP address remain the same during a session. A “session” is the time between when you log into (using a user name and password) a website or other Internet-based service, and when you log out. Many web- and Internet-based systems require your IP address to remain constant throughout a session to prevent someone taking over your session and pretending to be you, thereby being able to log into whatever account you were logged into at the time they managed to hijack your session.

You can check your IP address by pointing your web browser to www.niner.net/go/ip. If you refresh the page every few seconds and your IP address keeps changing, then you will have the problems described above.

If you are having this problem, please contact Airtel and explain that your IP address is apparently changing every few seconds, and that this is preventing your from logging into Internet-based services. Please also let us know that you have done this, so that we can track this issue to resolution. Airtel have, apparently, been reasonably responsive on this issue with the NinerNet client mentioned above, but the issue has been going on since last week and has still not been resolved.

We apologise that your experience with NinerNet is affected by this issue. However, the problem is caused by Airtel, and the IP-based security on our systems and on many other systems used by other companies is there for a reason. It’s a very common form of security, and any connection systems provided by companies like Airtel simply must take this into consideration.

Tags: airtel, connectivity, ip address, security, support
Categories: Notices
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Client spotlight: The environment

27 May 2011 23:53:54 +0000

Plastic. Two of NinerNet‘s clients are plastic fantastic fanatics. Well, not really; that just sounded cool. They’re actually quite the opposite, trying to educate the world about the extent to which we rely on plastic, and the harm that the plastic we discard is doing to the environment.

The impetus for this post was a post made yesterday on the BSI Biodegradable Solutions blog about a short (eight minutes) video entitled One Plastic Beach. Watch it. Behind the quirky humour is the unrelenting effect that plastic is having on the environment, particularly the marine environment and the animals that live in and over our man-made “plastic soup”.

Which brings me to our other plastic client: Dutch author Jesse Goossens who has written the books Plastic Soup (English edition, ISBN-10: 9047702069, ISBN-13: 978-9047702061, Amazon.com affiliate link, non-affiliate link) and “Plastic Soep” (Dutch edition). In her own words: “Floating in the Pacific Ocean is a vast amount of plastic waste twice the size of the United States. Marine life and sea birds are dying, and we are also finding plastic in our own foods from the sea … all with dire consequences. Look, read and shudder; it’s time for action!” You can read her blog in English (Plastic Soup) or Nederlands (Plastic Soep).

Craig

Tags: client spotlight, environmentalism, happy hosting customers, plastic
Categories: Interest
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Potential strike by Canada Post employees

19 May 2011 22:42:26 +0000

Depending on who you listen to, a strike at Canada Post is either imminent or a remote possibility. However, certain large customers of Canada Post — e.g., at least one ministry of the British Columbia provincial government, to name one — have decided that they’re not taking any chances and have sent critical mail out a week earlier than scheduled.

As is the case for any business, we need our clients to keep paying their bills during a postal strike. Fortunately we send out our invoices via email, so there are no issues with the delivery of those. However, unlike most hosting companies, we accept payment by cheque, and so if you regularly pay your invoice by cheque (and send it to us via postal mail, of course) you may need to make alternative arrangements if there is a strike, especially if it’s a protracted one. (This does not apply to our Zambian clients.)

We accept online payment via credit card, and would encourage you to pay your invoices using this method. If you’re in the Lower Mainland, Fraser Valley or Victoria areas of British Columbia, you may also make deposits directly to our Vancity account. The details for these methods of payment and others that don’t involve the post office are in the emails that you receive to which your invoices are attached.

If you have any questions or concerns about making sure that we receive your payments on time during a postal strike, please contact us. Thank-you.

Tags: accounts receivable, billing, canada post, invoices, paying your bill, paying your invoice, postal strike
Categories: Notices
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Getting started with WordPress

30 April 2011 23:16:16 +0000

We’ve put up a page on our documentation website entitled Getting Started with WordPress, which is aimed at our clients that we have set up with the WordPress content management system. This is intended, as the title suggests, just to get you started — heading in the right direction — with WordPress, so that you’re not flailing about in the dark with nobody to hold your hand at the beginning. Once you’ve got the hang of things and learnt some of the lingo that WordPress uses, you can then strike out on your own, taking your blog or website where you want it to go, using WordPress to help you.

Tags: documentation, support, wordpress
Categories: Announcements
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Testimonials

26 March 2011 21:59:44 +0000

We’re shy here at NinerNet. We don’t like to toot our own horn more than is necessary. This is why we don’t beg our clients to write testimonials for us — either lengthy ones, or short ones loaded with exclamation marks that make the writer sound like he’s on speed, or make us sound like we’re the best thing since sliced bread. (We’re good, but not that good!) We simply do not solicit testimonials. Not only are they easily faked anyway, but … I don’t know … it seems to me to be like going up to the cool kid in the playground and asking if she likes you and if you can be her friend. Not cool.

But you’ll notice that we do have testimonials on our main website, displayed in random order at the foot of every page. They’re usually quite short, some as short as only two words. (“You rock!” comes to mind.) They’re short because we pluck them from actual emails we receive during the course of ordinary business — usually from support emails where we’ve helped a client get something done, and they’re truly appreciative and thankful. (That said, at least one of our testimonials that comes to my mind was received on a handwritten thank-you card, a very nice touch in this day and age.) Sometimes though, we have to censor the occasional over-exuberance. 🙂

Anyway, the point of this post is that we’re going to start posting testimonials on this fledgling blog as they come in, and often add the context behind the testimonial that you don’t get when reading the short quote on our website. I think that adding in the context will show how, every day, we help our clients achieve what they want to achieve using the technology that we provide. It also shows the authenticity of our testimonials.

We’ll start today with our newest testimonial and our oldest. The oldest was received back in our early days, and is the one that we received on a handwritten thank-you card:

Thank-you … for all your kind help. You have made the jump into this unfamiliar territory so much easier.

This was sent to us in the mid-nineties by Avalon Dance Shop of Canada Ltd., who are still a client of ours today. I remember sitting on a bench (or was it a stool?) with the owners of Avalon Dance in the dim light at the back of their shop after hours, explaining the then relatively new technology of the World Wide Web. Evidently they appreciated my help, and hopefully still do today.

Most recently we received the following:

Thanks again for your quick response and willingness to assist as always.

This was from Night Sight Zambia, an outfit that provides IT services to companies in their area. A mutual client was having problems with their in-house mail server (we provide them with a back-up mail server and a relay server), and Night Sight contacted us for some feedback on what might be happening. After checking to make sure that the services that we provide to this client were working, we provided some feedback. That said, the problems had nothing to do with the services we provide, and so any ideas we provided were purely a matter of brainstorming. In the end, the problem with the client’s machine was found and fixed by Night Sight, and we hadn’t really made a concrete contribution to the solution. Nevertheless, as the quote above says, we were willing to help if we could (and we were quick about it), even though the problem had nothing to do with us or our services directly. (Fortunately though, the back-up mail server we provide for this client did its job, storing incoming mail until their in-house mail server was back online.)

If you say something nice in your next support email, you could be featured here too. But please, keep the exclamation marks and sickly sweetness to a minimum, and remember, we don’t solicit. 🙂

Craig

Tags: client feedback, happy hosting customers, testimonials
Categories: Interest
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Domain iCash.ca up for auction right now

20 March 2011 01:27:21 +0000

We have, over the years, acquired a number of domains which we have not yet used for anticipated projects. One of these — iCash.ca — is currently in a seven-day auction which ends on Thursday 24 March at 18:55 EDT (15:55 PDT, 22:55 UTC). (See the World Time Server to calculate the time in your time zone.)

With the ubiquitous “i” prefix everywhere these days, iCash.ca could be used to promote a banking app for mobile phones — the iPhone in particular, of course.

If you’re interested in acquiring this domain, please place your bid at the Afternic website by Thursday. Thank-you.

Tags: apple, branding, domain sales, domains, dot-ca domains, iphone
Categories: Announcements
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How NOT to transfer your hosting

19 March 2011 12:52:28 +0000

More often than not, we’re helping new clients transfer their hosting from their former hosting provider to NinerNet. Over the years we’ve become very good at this, and we have a tried-and-true process we follow to make sure there are no problems and that (most importantly) the new client’s email and website do not go down. There is simply no need (or excuse) for even a second of down time when you’re moving your hosting from one place to another.

Transferring your hosting takes time and planning; not that much time, but it’s not something that’s completed in five minutes while you’re on the phone. When a potential client contacts us about transferring in, we ask a number of questions and then send them a detailed plan laying out our step-by-step transfer process, how long each step takes, setting out what needs to be done and who does what, and the checks and balances that happen at each step. The transfer document is a little lengthy (if you’ll excuse the oxymoron) and potentially intimidating, but it has a bullet point summary and the details are there for the purpose of full transparency.

The point of this post though, is how not to transfer your hosting. We do all of the legwork detailed above because — guess what? — we want this new client and we’re willing to do the legwork up front for years of business from a happy client down the road. Sometimes though, I have to admit, we see the occasional client transfer away from us to one of our competitors. This can sometimes be a painful process for us to watch — not just because we’re losing a client, but because we see the amateurish way in which the transfer is handled. Often this is because of one of two reasons:

The client is transferring to a “stack ’em deep and sell ’em cheap” hosting company because … well … they’re cheaper than we are. In this case the client is usually on their own during the transfer.
The client is transferring to hosting resold by a web designer or a “search engine optimisation” company that they’re using. In this case, while these companies might be good at web design or SEO, they’re often clueless when it comes to the technical aspects of hosting. Contrary to what some of these companies believe, hosting is about more than just clicking pretty icons in a web-based control panel provided by the aforementioned “stack ’em deep and sell ’em cheap” hosting companies.

So we recently waved goodbye to a long-time client whose ownership had changed hands since they came on board with us seven years ago. (Almost all of our ex-clients left us because of things beyond our control — e.g., business closure, a sales pitch from the aforementioned web designer or SEO “expert”, recommendations of close friends or trusted advisors, etc. — not because they didn’t like the service they were getting from us.) Experience has taught us that, when the client has made up their mind, we have to let go. We do say that we’re sorry to see them go — and we mean it — and we ask if there’s anything we can do to keep their business, but if they’re committed then we back off. At that point they’re in the hands of and following the advice of third parties, and as bad as that advice might turn out to be, we’d be interfering if we tried to point that out. (That’s not always the case. To be fair, most of the clients we’ve lost over the years had no problems when they transferred away from us, but the exceptions stick out in one’s memory.)

And so it was that this client transferred to an SEO company that resells the hosting services of a well-known “stack ’em deep and sell ’em cheap” hosting company. The sad result? The client’s website and email were down for ten days! TEN DAYS! Not ten minutes, but ten days! During those ten days much of the work that the SEO company had done (and been paid to do!) previously was wiped out. Not only that, but in their panic — evident in the dozen or so emails sent rapid-fire in the span of about forty-five minutes — they issued confusing and conflicting instructions which actually resulted in further damage to our ex-client’s reputation in the search engines — not to mention the damage already caused in the eyes of their customers and potential (but probably lost) customers. As I said, it was a painful process to watch.

The bright side to this? We actually have a number of former clients that have transferred away come back to us a year or two later, most recently one about a week ago. Now that’s definitely what I’d call a vote of confidence!

Contacts us if you have any questions about transferring your hosting. We’re here to help.

Tags: down time, hosting transfer, reputation, search engine optimisation, search engine optimization, seo, transparency
Categories: Interest
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