Corporate Blog

Domains blocked

21 May 2012 14:55:21 +0000

We have taken the unusual step of blocking mail to and from certain domains on our primary mail server that are not (to our knowledge) sources of spam. These domains are:

cfcsprl.com
congofret.com
impala-wl.com
trafigura.com

We have blocked email to these domains because their mail servers — all hosted by the same company — while appearing to be up, do not accept any email. Instead of immediately rejecting email with either permanent (5xx) or temporary (4xx) errors, they hold open the connection from our mail server until it times out. This has a significant negative impact on other email sent by our clients.

Adding to the issue is that the domains associated with the mail servers and nameservers of their hosting provider — smtpdaemon.net and dnsdaemon.net — do not resolve to websites, and the identity of the owner of these domains is hidden behind a WHOIS privacy service. This means that this hosting company does not want to reveal who they are or how to contact them.

We regret the necessity to make this decision, and will revisit it in the future should circumstances change or if new or changed information is brought to light.

As always, please contact NinerNet support should you have any questions or concerns.

Domain renewal scam warning

22 March 2012 12:25:40 +0000

We have had a new domain renewal scam brought to our attention. The example we have seen includes the following wording (changed to preserve our client’s privacy):

Domain Name: EXAMPLE.COM

To: Client Name

Your order #12345678 has been received and is currently processing. Registration includes SE submission for EXAMPLE.COM for 12 months. There is no obligation to pay for this order unless you complete your payment by Mar 25, 2012. SE Services provides submission services and search engine ranking organization for domain owners.

Failure to complete your search engine registration by Mar 25, 2012 may result in the cancellation of this order (making it difficult for your customers to locate you using search engines on the web).

Here is a redacted image of what the email might look like:

Domain renewal scam email.

Clicking on the links takes you to a website that looks like this:

Domain renewal scam website.

While this email carefully avoids any mention of the expiry or renewal of your domain registration, the intent is clearly to fool and scare the recipient into thinking that their domain registration is about to expire so that they click one of the prominent “PROCESS SECURE PAYMENT” links and complete the payment process. If you do this, your domain will not be renewed, and you’ll be out $75 (in this case) for services of dubious value that you may or may not actually receive. Additionally, you might be opening yourself up to identity theft and/or the abuse of your credit card information.

In fact, if you have already fallen victim to this scam, we suggest that you contact your credit card company immediately, and check to ensure that your domain is “locked” and still registered to you and under your control.

Some of the domains associated with these emails and websites are the following:

annualurldom.com
iglobalmerchantservice.com
urldomannual.com

NinerNet attempts to protect our clients from these kinds of domain-related scams by having a policy of “locking” (as mentioned above) all domains under our management that can be locked. However, you should still be cautious before acting on any emails not from NinerNet (or your actual domain registrar if it’s not NinerNet) regarding any domains you have registered, especially if they attempt to scare you into taking action.

Please contact NinerNet support if you have any questions about emails regarding your domains, and we will help you.

Thank-you.

Tags: domain locking, domain registration, domain renewals, domains, scams
Categories: Warnings
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Entrusting your privacy to “the Cloud”

29 February 2012 23:59:52 +0000

As a company NinerNet is — and I personally am — a bucker of trends, a refuser of “the easy way”, an anti-“fashionista”, and an advocate of low-level simplicity. This can, at times, make us look like Luddites, but we’re not quite that bad. For example, we’ve joined the trend over the last few years of using the new electric light rather than burning torches to light the office.

The trend we haven’t joined is that of entrusting every scrap of data to “the Cloud”. And this is where what I call “low-level simplicity” comes in. Sure, it might be “easy” to set up a Gmail account, or to use Google Apps to host email on your company domain, or to use Blogger (also owned by Google) or WordPress.com to host your blog. It may even eventually be true, as one client told me recently, that websites are passé and have been replaced by Facebook! (Heaven help us if that prediction ever comes true!) But is it really easier?

In evaluating any course of action, one has to conduct a cost-benefit analysis. Even getting out of bed in the morning involves a cost-benefit analysis, so choosing where to store your private email and sensitive company documents certainly does too. But the costs and the benefits are not confined to the beginning of the endeavour; the costs and the benefits run the entire life of the course of action, from set-up to tear-down — whether or not that tear-down is voluntary and planned.

So if you want to entrust all of your data to the Cloud, please be my guest. Just remember to consider what might happen to that data once it’s beyond your control, how you might deal with the situation if the company you’ve entrusted it to loses it or disappears, what your losses will be if the company decides to give access to your data to someone (e.g., a government or someone undesirable who gains access to the data illegally or through a company takeover), and how you’re going to deal with the situation (and how much it’s going to cost) when you decide to switch systems. So it was free and easy to set up, but will it be free and easy to take down?

The paradigm shift, in my opinion, seems to have been the move from keeping all of your data locally and backing it up remotely (even if it involved driving back-up tapes to a warehouse across town), to keeping all of your data remotely and backing it up … where? Locally, or on another remote system, probably owned by the same company where your data is primarily stored? Good questions. Many of these systems (Cloud and otherwise) that are supposed to “help” you and make your life “easier” with respect to technology really just add a higher-level layer of complexity on top of lower-level simple protocols that have been running the Internet (just fine, thank-you very much) for decades.

Anyway, this is a long-winded introduction to Two honest Google employees: our products don’t protect your privacy. In that article security and privacy researcher Christopher Soghoian explodes the myth — if, in fact, the myth existed in the first place among people who actually think about this stuff — that Cloud companies like Google care one jot about the privacy of your data. In fact, Google’s business model — those ubiquitous adverts next to everything you see on the Web these days — relies on your data being open and easily read. Reading a steamy email from your husband about last weekend’s getaway? Yeah, the ads off to the side might also be NSFW.

Here’s a preview:

Google’s products do not meet the privacy needs of journalists, bloggers, small businesses (or anyone else concerned about government surveillance).

… if the files that I store in Google docs are encrypted or if the files I store on Amazon’s drives are encrypted then they are not able to monetize it …. And unfortunately, these companies are putting their desire to monetize your data over their desire to protect your communications. … their business model is in conflict with your privacy.

Read the comments too. Unlike on some blogs, these comments are intelligent and worth reading … with one exception. Oh, and Soghoian’s The New York Times article (When Secrets Aren’t Safe With Journalists), to which he refers, is worth reading too.

Don’t fool yourself. As with anything, use the right tool for the job, and be aware of the strengths, weaknesses, limitations, costs and overall suitability of the tool you choose.

Tags: amazon, blogger, cloud computing, facebook, free and easy, google, google apps, government surveillance, journalism, new york times, secrets, the cloud, trends, wordpress
Categories: Interest
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Christmas and New Year Break: Hours and Wishes

24 December 2011 20:47:02 +0000

I’d like to take a moment of your time to wish you and your family and staff all the best for this holiday season and the coming New Year, and to thank you for being a NinerNet client and for the support you have shown us over the past year by referring new business to us. We appreciate this and the trust you show in us very much. Thanks to you, NinerNet has continued to grow despite the state of the economy in some parts of the world, although we’re looking forward to more robust growth in 2012.

Please note that support will be staffed as usual over the Christmas and New Year period, but non-essential functions will be on a break between 23 December and 2 January, returning on 3 January. For support issues, please ensure that you email support or send an email through our website. Thank-you.

Again, all the best to you and yours, and thanks for your ongoing support.

Craig

Tags: service hours
Categories: Notices
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How unlimited is “unlimited”?

5 November 2011 13:11:20 +0000

While reviewing the updated terms and conditions of one of our service providers, I noted the following clause:

CHANGE OF SERVICES: If [service provider] finds it impossible to offer services at current pricing we reserve the right to change account offerings at anytime. We will not institute higher fees automatically, however we do reserve the right to limit services that may have been “unlimited” or had higher limits previously. These changes can be caused by increase in network / support costs that the [service provider] services take to operate.

It almost smacks of honesty when they put the word “unlimited” in quotation marks! Just with those quotes, never mind the rest of the text, they’re tacitly admitting that even they don’t take themselves seriously when they sell one or more of their services as “unlimited”. If a company offering “unlimited” something or other doesn’t even believe their own marketing material, why should you?

Good question.

I’ve written before on supposedly unlimited services. Have a look.

NinerNet does not offer unlimited anything. We simply believe that it’s dishonest. You’re not going to give us a blank cheque, and neither are we going to give the equivalent in services. It’s just asking for trouble, and opening up ourselves and all of our other clients for disruption when someone takes advantage of their blank cheque. We won’t do that.

Craig

Tags: fine print, reputation, transparency, unlimited hosting
Categories: Interest
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How free is “free”?

31 October 2011 23:04:52 +0000

As has been noted before, the Internet has spawned a generation of freeloaders. The lure of “free” is very difficult to resist, especially when other options out there cost as much as (gasp!) $4.95 a month. However, there is a cost to “free”.

To quote usability guru Jakob Nielsen, “users pay with attention instead of money” when they’re using “sponsored” (i.e., “free”) software. This applies especially to web-based free software, but now even some free software that you install on your computer actually comes embedded with advertising. Imagine! People who install this kind of software — called “adware” — on their computers are actually choosing to install advertising and the engine to drive it on their computers. Makes you shake your head when people who complain about being subjected to advertising against their will in other media actually choose, of their free will, to infect their computers with resource-consuming advertising.

But I digress.

The point is this: There is always a cost when it comes to “free” sponsored software, and this is explained very well (complete with costs added up) by Nielsen in his article The Real Costs of “Free” Search Site Services. Of course, we’re interested in this because some of these free services compete with us. Remember that we are accountable to you because you send us your hard-earned money; companies that provide their services for free have no reason to be accountable to you, because they’re not getting anything measurable from you. What they are getting is payment from their advertisers, and that’s who they’re accountable to.

Nielsen concludes his article with a note about non-commercial software, which he differentiates from “free” sponsored software. It’s a valid and noteworthy distinction.

Do you have questions about free software? Let me know!

Craig

Tags: accountability, advertising, adware, cheap hosting, free hosting, free services, free software, google, hidden costs, jakob nielsen, non-commercial software, sponsored software, usability
Categories: Interest
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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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