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Notice of new IAC services or updates, Items of general interest and commentary on areas of web-related concern. Find a Datacenter 03/15/09 Significant moving of the colocation facility to newer and better shelving.. This 2 year project has finally come about in the outlay of new infrastructure in 2nd generation model mode to house servers and related equipment. The green initiative continues, this new rack area requires less area per square foot to cool. Find a Datacenter 02/07/08 IAC is pleased to announce that it has signed an agreement with New England Fiber, Find a Datacenter to work together to develop single dedicated and colocated server customers into our freestanding shelving space server room. Shade Cloth 07/07/07 IAC is pleased to announce that it has mounted shade cloth material over one side of our facility structure to shade afternoon sun. This inexpensive yet durable material produced over 90% shading thus reducing our air conditioning consumption by 10%. "Backup Shed" Storage 04/05/06 IAC is pleased to announce that it has extended infrastructure out to one of it's out-buildings. This seperate building, while still on the facility property constitutes an off-site backup. The backup shed's high-speed pipe facilitates all-hours backups while not effecting "front end" bandwidth performance. Contact us if you would like our own server in the backup shed or for a private Windows drive letter. "Green" Light 04/01/06 IAC is pleased to announce that it has replaced over 32 incadescant light bulbs with their low-wattage flourescant equivalent. With energy costs on the rise these bulbs run 1/4 to 1/5 the current of their incadescant equivalents and provide the same light with less heat which is doubly efficient, especially in temperature controlled server rooms. Black Monday & Tuesday 11/30/05 We notice heavier traffic loads between 20% and 75% on our retail e-commerce servers representing activity during the hours of the day as shoppers went on-line to purchase products and services.  Verisign & ICANN vs. the World 11/29/05 The domain name litigation merry go round continues as Verisign is again sued. In the middle is ICANN, the registration world's authorizing body who have been accused of conspiriting with Verisign in a deal that effectively allows them to raise rates 7% per year to Industry vendors while being allowed to retain perpetual control of the .com database. We call upon ICANN to adopt a retail domain name registration lower limit of $15 per year. Say no more to $5 domain name registrations that are really more about accumulating databases. If a person or entity needs a domain name, $15 per year (3, 5 or 10 year registrations with discounts) is a reasonable rate to charge while providing reliable DNS which is the additional ongoing task of translation that is very necessary for the Internet to work. It is a shame that DNS is what suffers at many cut-rate domain registration services. Getting Greener 11/15/05 IAC is pleased to announce that it is switching over to pellet fuel to reduce winter heating costs. After enduring a 30% increase in the price of oil in 2004 we are now looking at an additional 60% over last year's already inflated rate. IAC are pleased to be using highly efficient local-source (New Hampshire) bio fuel that delivers clean efficient heat. where needed. "Redemption Period" Abusers 09/16/05 Beware the domain name registration "redemption period". The rules of engagement for domain name registration services is such that an expiring domain can be re-registered by the domain registrar in such a way that it no longer works and you are required to pay an exhorbinent fee to rescue your trapped domain. Unscrupulous registrars exsist in droves and lure with deep discount registration services. If you do not remember to re-register your domain before the date it expires you can face a fee of up to $100 per domain. Expect no expiration reminder from the registrar. Beware of or read any terms/agreement pages. Pay special attention for the words: "Redemption" or "Redemption Period". Microsoft Moving to China? 09/16/05 Microsoft is on track to outsource more than 1,000 jobs a year to China, according to blistering evidence released yesterday in Microsoft's increasingly nasty spat with Google over an employee who jumped ship in July. In a revelation that highlights the complexity of China President Hu Jintao's visit to Seattle and Microsoft on Monday, legal filings detailed claims of how Microsoft had offended the Chinese government by not outsourcing as many jobs as promised to Chinese technology vendors. Ballmer Blows Up 09/02/05 Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer vowed to "kill" Google in an expletitive-laced, chair-throwing tirade when a senior engineer told him he was leaving the company to go work for Google, the engineer claimed in court documents made public on Friday. In a sworn statement made public Friday, Mark Lucovsky, another Microsoft senior engineer who left for Google in November 2004, recounted Ballmer's angry reaction when Lucovsky told Ballmer he was going to work for the search engine company. "At some point in the conversation, Mr. Ballmer said: 'Just tell me it's not Google,'"Lucovosky said in his statement. Lucovosky replied that he was joining Google. "At that point, Mr. Ballmer picked up a chair and threw it across the room hitting a table in his office," Lucovosky recounted, adding that Ballmer then launched into a tirade about Google CEO Eric Schmidt. "I'm going to f***ing bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I'm going to f***ing kill Google." Schmidt previously worked for Sun Microsystems and was the CEO of Novell. Botwars 08/18/05 "We seem to have a botwar on our hands," said Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer at F-Secure. Virus activity continues to abound making Yahoo top stories with at least three gangs of virus writers taking advantage of a flaw with WIndows 2000 Plug and Play. Visit our security page for more information. We continue to treat this as a top-level threat to Windows 2000. Basically there is the ability for a command to be sent to your computer that invokes the operating system's automatic hardware detection technology. That this command can be sent over the Internet with absolutely no human interaction (other than to have turned on the computer) is something MS addressed in Windows XP, but Windows 2000 needs to be patched. IAC Focus on: Free Email Accounts 05/24/05 MSN/Hotmail has introduced draconian measures to secure their servers from an ever increasing torrent of SPAM. Because of this SPAM a labyrith of security is preventing email from reaching MSN/Hotmail accounts. Hotmail make use of a commercial whitelisting and back-end pay-for mechanisms to allow bulk senders to pay to continue to send volume mail a practice which is creating more problems than it solves. IAC Focus on: Secure data or file server 03/08/05 If you need private, back-end access to a database or file structure, we have been working on secured setups to run ASP, MS-SQL and Windows networking environment. With a minimal compliment of started services and applying our years of time-honed techniques we can deliver a stable database or file service that can safely reside on a non-Internet connected server that provides data channel to your webserver(s) while itself immune from network attacks. IAC Focus on: Private e-mail server 02/10/05 Your email is as important as your phone system yet most companies spend a fraction of what they spend on phone equipment as they do on email. If you are thinking that it's time to upgrade email, we have been configuring mailservers that in addition to further branding your company on the Internet allow an otherwise unexplored world of security options and enhancements. Get the kind of control over your company's email that you have been looking for. We provide the support needed to effectively block that SPAM yet at the same time requiring only minimal administrator intervention for day to day operations. The Great Telco Debacle 01/04/05 Maybe you've heard of the proposed superhighway through Texas? Not only would this be a road but also broadband Internet connections would travel up and down it. The downside of such great plans is that the Bells or giant Telcos (wherever they may be) should not be the only provider of Internet service. See Bells dig in to dominate high-speed Internet realm. According to this article telcos continue to push smaller players out of the market. By it's nature Internet service requires the free-wheeling speed and flexibility only possible in smaller companies. Telcos are great for providing the set it and leave it circuits that comprise the local loops and maintaining all that wiring is no small task, however competition in this industry servers everyone's best interests. Microsoft Suffers Legal Setback in EU 12/20/04 Microsoft has suffered a legal setback in it's battle to the European Union to embed it's Windows media player technology in each copy of Windows. The Europeans wish to have an open market with a few competitors regarding media applications and are requiring Microsoft to allow other vendor's software to operate in their systems. This may set precedent for other countries regarding Microsoft's product in their markets. "Green" HVAC system at IAC 10/07/04 A secondary air circulation system has been engineered at IAC WebServices to take advantage of high pressure cool air predominating in the Northeast for ventilation and air conditioning in our server facility. This method utilizes favorable atmospheric conditions to act as a highly energy efficient air conditioning system that is environmentally friendly and has lower operating costs. "More Spammers than Lawyers" 06/24/04 "More Spammers than Lawyers": In a report aired by McNeil Leherer News Hour today, A major discovery of an internal AOL source providing 37 million AOL verified email addresses some with personal information was uncovered through a Las Vegas connection distributing this information to SPAMMERS. The first case to be tried under the new Federal Anti-Spam laws, this break hopes to enact stiff monetary and jail penalties on those that clog our email accounts with unwanted junk mail. Dubbed a "perennial" problem, at AOL and most certainly at other ISP's the problem of SPAM and Junk Mail has reached epidemic proportions and needs really tough legal and technical action to be taken in order to minimize the amount of SPAM and Junk email on the Internet. Especially despicable are those that forge otherwise valid business email addresses and those that send message fragments that are designed to corrupt user's email programs. The amount of aggravation that these cause ISP's and email users goes beyond any rights the perpetrators of these crimes deserve. NEW IAC Website layout: 03/19/04 Welcome to our new website layout. We have streamlined our look and rearranged the flow of information. It's been many years since the first IAC site launched in 1996 and we continue with our service expanded to new and exciting areas of server development and Internet industry. Increased Virus Rate: 03/19/04 Viruses continue to spread at an increased rate. The Bagle Virus has quickly gone from A to R variant and new viruses and versions of existing viruses continue to propegate 2 - 3 a day. Viruses in emails continue to range around 1% up 10 times from the usual 0.1% since February 2004. Leaked Source Code for Windows 2000: 02/13/04 Somehow elements of the programmatic "Holy Grail" of Microsoft's Windows 2000 operating system have been "leaked" to the Internet. From what we gather up to 38% of the core code of Windows 2000 is available online at various underground file swapping and posting locations. With source code a program writer can directly see what the operating system does behind the scenes and then be able to formulate better plans for their software to interact with Windows for good or ill. We hope Microsoft takes appropriate steps to rectify the situation and make it impossible for this absolutely huge breach of security to happen again. EWeek Article Email Service and the MyDoom Virus: 02/11/04 Since first appearing on Feb 3rd, 5% of emails recieved at our network (1 in 20) arrive with MyDoom/W32 virus attached to it apearing as SPAM. Viruses, sent out as SPAM wreak havoc with email communications on the Internet and are increasingly problematic to electronically detect and stop as Spammers continue to evade our countermeasures. To insure the continued viability of email communications on the Internet we urge you to contact your Representative and demand they allow stronger and more immediate measures for shutting down known spammers who continue to operate, threatening the Internet email system. For the time being, if you have an important attachment or communique to a vendor or customer, please request a confirmation or follow up with a call if you do not hear from them. MyDoom continues to propegate in the wild with incoming Virus levels 50 times higher than usual. New Webserver Capabilities: 01/30/04 IAC is pleased to announce it has integrated Apache, PHP and MYSQL into working webserver configuration for it's customers. These powerful and secure software pieces running under Windows Server augment and round out our service offering to include integrated database and Perl-like hypertext preprocessor capability to deliver dynamically-driven websites to the Internet consumer. FTC Action Against Domain Registry Of America: 01/21/04 The Federal Trade Commision has begun investigating misleading practices regarding the Domain Registry of America's recent mail campaign for domain renewals. The questionable practice of sending solicitations that some mistake for a bill is what is in question. We urge all customers to keep a register of who they register their domain(s) from, for how long and to record any passwords or other account login information provided. This is of increasingly paramount importance as domain name thievery continues. Your best defense is to print out all communications involving a domain name registration but more importantly to closely scrutinize who you are entrusting your domain name registration with. Archives: 2003 2002 |