August 2nd, 2008 DJB
About cPanel - What is cPanel?
cPanel (”Control Panel”) is a graphical web-based web-hosting control panel, designed to make administration of websites easy. cPanel handles all aspects of website administration in its interface. The software, which is proprietary and distributed by cPanel Inc., is designed for use by commercial web hosting services, so the company does not offer a reduced-cost personal use license; however, owners of non-profit organisations such as educational institutions and charities can request a license at a reduced cost. Reduced prices are frequently available from dedicated-server companies, who install it along with the operating system.cPanel runs on a number of popular RPM-based Linux distributions, such as SUSE, Fedora, Mandriva, CentOS, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and cAos, as well as FreeBSD. Preliminary support for Debian is claimed, although this version has been in “beta” state for several years, and is not supported. cPanel is commonly accessed on ports 2082 and 2083 (for an SSL version). Authentication is either via HTTP or web page login.
cPanel System Requirements
Processor: 266 MHZ or faster
RAM: 66MB+, 1GB+ when hosting many sites
HDD space: 9.95GB plus
cPanel also requires a fresh operating system installation if you do not want data to be formatted
Features
To the client, cPanel provides front-ends for a number of common operations, including the management of PGP keys, crontab tasks, mail and FTP accounts, and mailing lists.
Several add-ons exist for an additional fee, the most notable being Fantastico, a bundle of scripts which automate the installation of, but not the update of (see article), web applications such as SMF, phpBB, Drupal, Joomla, TikiWiki, Moodle and over 50 others.
Unlike some other web hosting control panels, cPanel manages some software packages separately from the underlying operating system, applying upgrades to Apache, PHP, MySQL, and related software packages automatically. This ensures that these packages are kept up-to-date and compatible with cPanel, but has become a cause for consternation to some, as it becomes difficult to easily install newer versions of these packages.
WHM (Web Host Manager)
WebHost Manager (WHM) is a web-based tool used by server administrators and resellers to manage hosting accounts on a web server. WHM listens on ports 2086 and 2087 by default.
As well as being accessible by the root admin, WHM is also accessible to users with reseller privileges. Reseller users of cPanel have a smaller set of features than the root user, generally limited by the server administrator, to features which they determine will affect their customers’ accounts rather than the server as a whole. From WHM, the server administrator can perform maintenance operations such as compile Apache and upgrade RPMs installed on the system
Source - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CPanel
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August 2nd, 2008 DJB
What you need to know about domain names
Your address on the Internet
The Internet is like an extremely long High Street with every enterprise and member of the public living on it. Each enterprise and member of the public is assigned a number on that High Street - it’s their address.
This numerical address is known as an IP (Internet Protocol) address. You need to know about IP addresses because they will appear in documentation relating to your Internet connectivity, ie the method by which you connect to the Internet whether via BT or a third party Internet Service Provider (ISP). IP is part of the fundamental communications protocol of the Internet.
An IP address takes the form xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx for example 195.10.235.16. Your IP address is assigned by your ISP. The ISP has acquired a range of IP addresses from a higher authority up the Internet management chain. If you change ISP then you will receive a different IP address from the new provider.
The domain name system
Even with (say) a billion addresses, having to give out your Internet address as 233.192.9.23 would be fraught with difficulty. Not only is it difficult to tap in correctly, should you change ISP the number will change. To get around this the domain name system was invented to give a ‘friendly’ name to your current IP address.
In principle, what happens is that a numerical IP address on the Internet is assigned a friendly name eg mycompany. This friendly name is known as the domain name.
However, we immediately run into a problem: how do we stop two or more people having the same name? This is solved by organisations called domain registrars which exist for each country in the world.
Domain registrars
In order to manage your own domains, it’s enough to know that there are a number of international and national organisations that deal with it. In Europe, domains are managed by national organisations. In Britain, a company called Nominet has been assigned the task of UK domain management by the Government.
You probably spotted earlier that the example domain name mycompany was incomplete because it didn’t have the familiar .com or .co.uk ending. Apart from the USA, all national organisations manage just their particular top level domains (TLDs) on the Internet eg uk, fr, de, it, es for Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain respectively.
UK domain name registration
In the case of the UK, the top level domain space (uk) is divided into secondary levels to indicate the kind of organisation that is being represented by the domain name.
The second level domains (SLDs) are co, me, org, ltd, net, plc and sch - for commercial enterprises, individuals, non-commercial organisations, limited companies, public limited companies, internet service providers and schools respectively, and there are others such as ac, gov, nhs, police and mod. For more information on SLDs go to www.nic.uk and select Second Level Domains from the menu.
Nominet has a membership scheme to allow third parties to act as domain name agencies for enterprises and the general public. Caz Limited is a paid-up member of Nominet which means we can do this.
US domain name registration
The top level domains (TLDs) that don’t have a country code are American but most people treat them as global. The US authorities have licensed a number of private enterprises both within the US and outside to manage these TLDs which include com, net, org, info, biz, etc.
Examples of registrars in the US are Network Solutions and Register.com. Outside the US we have joker.com in Germany and even France Telecom.
At Caz Limited we have an account with the registrar Network Solutions. We try to keep all our US domains under one roof in order to simplify management (they have the best management interface at the moment). However some domain agencies make it difficult to transfer between registrars, so we have to do the best we can.
Registering a domain name
Domains can be registered directly through a registrar or using an agent (like Caz Limited). With the DIY approach you have to manage the technical issues of the domain name service (more on this later), ensure that the domain name is properly renewed every two or three years and not fall foul of scams relating to domain name renewal - the latter are all too frequent.
UK domain names expire after two years unless positively renewed. We renew all the UK domains under our control by default. If we reckon that a domain has had its day, then we discuss this with you before letting it go.
US domains (eg com, net) may be registered for between one and nine years. We usually choose three years.
Multiple domains
For UK customers, it makes sense to have both a dot com and a dot co dot uk (or whatever is appropriate in the global and national stakes). This domain name is mapped onto the same website.
For commercial reasons, it may be appropriate to have more than one domain name ie not just mycompany.com and mycompany.co.uk but also agoodcommercialname.com. One reason for doing this may be to prevent cyber squatting - the practice of some individuals and organisations for taking similar names to yours with the express intent of capturing your business. One of our clients has had this problem, so we believe the threat is real but shouldn’t be overstated. There are also various scams running where people threaten to take a name or indicate that ’someone has approached them to take a name’ but offer it to you instead (for a price). Sometimes you may have to treat this threat seriously, but the chances are we can register the name for less and, if need be, quickly.
How do people find your website or send you email?
The answer is by using a giant address book called the domain name service which keeps tabs on all the domain names and numbers on the Internet. This service is provided by computers called DNS servers. However, DNS is also used to underpin the logical structure of computers on local area networks as well, particularly for Windows 2000 and later operating systems.
The only time DNS will become important to you is when you move your website or mail between ISPs.
When you put in a web address into your browser, your computer looks up the name in the nearest DNS server. The ‘nearest’ has either been set by your computer system administrator or your ISP has made it automatically look at its own - every ISP has at least two DNS servers. If the address cannot be resolved (ie found) then the DNS server looks further upstream (to the DNS server it’s been set to look at) and so on until the root DNS server is found - this will have the correct IP address for a domain name. Once found, a DNS server (wherever it is in the chain) will cache (ie store) the name and matching address for (usually) 48 hours. This means that if it gets another query for the same domain name, it doesn’t have to go looking.
The cached record in the DNS server has a Time To Live (TTL) counting down from the aforementioned 48 hours and besides some big DNS servers only update twice a day. Since we don’t know how many DNS servers are sitting between the requesting computer and the top of the tree, it’s impossible to know how long it will be before a transferred website or mail service will be off-air because the cache time on each DNS server is unknown.
The last leg
Once the visitor to your website has arrived at our servers our DNS directs them to it using the www part of the domain name which, in Internet-speak, is called the host name. Note that www is just a convention: one can have anything (or nothing) but since most visitors are used to www it’s not particularly sensible to change.
Email goes to a separate mail server, most commonly redirected to one on your premises (by the IP address alone, so friendly names required). This requires you to have SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) mail server software on your server hardware. This mail server resolves user names (eg the john in john@mycompany.co.uk) and puts the mail in their mailbox.
We can also send your email to POP (Post Office Protocol) mailboxes from which you collect it but this is a much less efficient way of operating.
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July 24th, 2008 DJB
Broadband speeds around the world
As the UK debates how and when to roll our faster broadband networks, we look at the huge divide between the speeds of some of the world’s faster broadband nations and some of the slowest. There is also a big gap between the advertised speeds and the actual speeds users are getting.
UNITED KINGDOM
Currently in the UK the big issue is the gap between advertised and actual speeds, so while 10Mbps might be available from a few suppliers, very few actually get this speed. According to speedtest.net - a global speed test created by actual users and approved by most of the major ISPs in the US - the real speed is closer to 3Mbps.
Things get faster next year as ADSL2+ comes online promising speeds of up to 24Mbps, although as with all DSL technology, there are physical limits and only those close to the exchange will actually get the top speeds.
Virgin Media is currently trialling a 50Mbps cable service and BT is also experimenting with fibre to the home, which could offers speeds of up to 100Mbps.
FRANCE
France has an advertised average of 44Mbps.
According to speedtest.net the average speed from those doing the test is 4.6Mbps but higher speeds are beginning to come online. ADSL2+ is already available and is being marketed as providing speeds of up to 28Mbps.
Actual speeds will vary although the copper telephone lines are generally of better quality than in the UK, so speeds are typically higher.
The leading ISPs in France have announced fibre-based services. Orange and Frees’ offerings are live now and are marketed at offering speeds around 50Mbps. Free’s offer at 29 euros a month, comes bundled with a broadband telephone service, IPTV, plus a free set top box.
GERMANY
Average advertised speeds of 9Mbps falls to 4.8Mbps according to speedtest.net.
In Germany the main delivery mechanism is still largely DSL, and the leading company is the old incumbent Deutsche Telekom.
They have a VDSL network - which provides fibre as far as the street cabinet.
This is live in the main German cities, and offers speeds of up to around 25Mbps. Outside of the main towns there is a mixture of ADSL 1 and 2 technologies.
SWEDEN
Average advertised speed of 21Mbps but according to speedtest.net, people are actually achieving an average of 7.4Mbps.
In Sweden there is a VDSL network live. Fibre has been available for quite a long time with a significant number of people served by it.
Speeds vary depending on which network, but can go up to 100Mbps, However there is a big polarisation between those that get it and those still relying on DSL products.
SOUTH AFRICA
1Mbps (this data comes from the ITU as OECD doesn’t have figures for Africa).
Alongside countries such as Morocco, South Africa is one of the biggest broadband countries in Africa.
The primary delivery mechanism is via broadband. WIMAX penetration is still low. Although it is likely to become an important infrastructure in Africa, currently it is too expensive to be widely deployed.
ISRAEL
Israel’s advertised figure is 2Mbps.
Israel has very high penetration levels with around 70% of households using a broadband connection.
There is quite a lot of cable services available alongside DSL and there has been quite a big government spend on broadband.
UNITED STATES
The US has an average speed of 8Mbps according to the OECD, although it is nearly half this (4.6Mbps) according to speedtest.net.
The US is unusual because it is one of the few countries in which cable is the largest connection network.
Typically cable is marketed at offering between 5Mbps and 20Mbps. Number of fibre providers, most notably Verizon which offers fibre to home, with speeds up to 20Mb, This is just available on the east coast. ATT is offering a hybrid DSL service while Qwest has just announced a fibre to street strategy.
MEXICO
Mexico’s advertised speed is 2Mbps.
In Mexico the predominant infrastructure is broadband via DSL.
Its rich incumbent telecom firm TelMex are considering laying fibre and despite the fact that there is no large scale implementation it is likely to overtake the UK very soon in terms of the amount of fibre available.
JAPAN
Japan has an average speed of 93Mbps according to the OECD, but this falls to 10.6Mbps according to speedtest.net, which could be indicative of the fact that fibre is concentrated in the towns and cities.
Cable broadband is quite strong in Japan but the biggest market is in fibre to the home.
This has proved so popular with consumers that DSL is actually in decline. Companies are so advanced with fibre delivery that they are beginning to find DSL surplus to requirements.
The speeds fibre provides means applications such as sharing video files are standard.
Fibre also dramatically improves upload speeds, making it much more suitable for web 2.0 communication, with individuals contributing back to the internet with pictures and videos.
SOUTH KOREA
South Korea’s figure is 43Mbps.
In South Korea there has also been a very strong fibre rollout, which has been enabled, at least in part, by state contributions.
Often regarded as something of a gold standard when it comes to super-fast broadband, an amazing 90% of homes have a broadband connection of between 50 and 100Mbps.
They also pay the lowest rates in the world. There are pilot services offering connections starting at 1,000Mbps.
The big driver for fast broadband here is gaming and 43% of the population has a personal profile in the virtual world Cyworld, which recorded £5m worth of trade per month last year.
Those dawdling on slow UK connections can take heart from results from speedtest.net which show that some citizens are only achieving speeds of 3.6Mbps. This is because the extremely fast networks are concentrated in the towns and cities.
NEW ZEALAND
Average advertised speed of 13.5Mbps, falls to 2.4Mbps according to speedtest.net
Broadband comes largely via DSL in New Zealand where Telecom New Zealand is very dominant.
Cable is limited to one or two cities.
There are very specific challenges for providers in New Zealand. Because of the distances between houses there tends to be very long telephone lines, meaning quality is not great for many. International connectivity is also an issue because of its physical distance from the rest of the world. There is not much competition meaning speeds stay slow.
The model of local loop unbundling - opening the telephone exchanges to other operators - is being considered as is the idea of providing fibre to the street cabinet or to push DSL into remoter street cabinets to reduce line length.
POLAND
Average speed of 4Mbps, falls to 1.6Mbps according to speedtest.net.
In Poland there is virtually no local loop unbundling, which means little competition for the France Telecom-owned incumbent.
Speeds there aren’t fast by western European standards although there are quite a lot of so-called LAN networks (Local Area Networks) using ethernet cable, which allow for super-fast speeds because of their limited geography. This phenomenon is peculiar to eastern European countries such as Poland where the existing infrastructure isn’t great but it is relatively easy for local entrepreneurs to set up such systems quickly.
CHINA
ITU data puts China’s broadband speed at 1Mbps.
China is fast becoming the world’s largest broadband economy. It is laying quite a lot of fibre which is a less disruptive option in China because of the amount of new building work being done.
It already has 14 million fibre lines, compared to 9.6 million in Japan, 1.7m in the US and just a few thousand in the UK but it doesn’t generate the same speeds as in other Asian countries because the fibre tends to feed into blocks of flats rather than individual dwellings.
Source: BBC News
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July 24th, 2008 DJB
Domain Lagoon
Domain Lagoon is the only site on the internet that is able to offer 100% FREE DOMAIN NAMES to its 100% FREE Members. (USA, CANADA, AND UK ONLY) At Domain Lagoon we do not require our members to sign up for anything that requires them to pay anything out of their pocket. We have teamed up with many sponsors who just want you to fill out a simple survey. You can complete our entire program and be qualified for your domain typically in under twenty minutes!
http://www.domainlagoon.com
ezyrewards
ezyrewards offers you the chance to get free domains for completing reward offers and referring your friends, it is free to become a member, so why not join today?
http://ezyrewards.com/index.php
Free Domain Site
Sign up for one free trial offer. Cancel before you are charged. Each offer can only be completed once per person, but you can complete as many different offers as you like, depending on how many free domains you want. Your free domain name (.com, .net, .org) will be 100% yours. You will have full DNS control and you can transfer it to another hosting company or you can host it with us.
www.freedomainsite.com
Stonerocket
Want a free TLD domain? well you have come to the right place, we offer completely free .info domains for 1 year, want to know more? then visit stonerocket.net
www.stonerocket.net
Express yourself with an i.ph domain
* Get a domain as john.i.ph (or any name you want)
* Receive emails as john@i.ph
* Setup multiple blogs
* Connect and interact with family, friends and people who share the same interests
* Refined privacy settings let you control what specific viewers can see
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Geek Domain
How to get your free domain in four easy steps:
1) Read the forum rules.
2) Register for an account
3) Earn enough GeekPoints for the domain extension that you want.
4) Request your domain
http://www.geekdomain.net/free-domains.php
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May 3rd, 2008 DJB
The broadband crunch
An ‘exabyte’ is a lot of data. It is 1.074 billion gigabytes of data, to be exact. It would take 14 million laptops like mine to store an exabyte. Two exabytes equals the total volume of information generated back in 1999. Today, the internet is handling one exabyte of data every single hour.
The sheer size of the internet, not to mention seemingly universal access to it, makes it easy to forget how young the net really is.
Many of us are now so familiar with – and reliant on – this technology that it’s hard to believe it is such a recent development, but it has been with us for a mere blink of an eye in historical terms: speedy commercial access to the world wide web barely made it to us by the end of the 20th century.
Something like YouTube would have seemed like a crazy dream just 10 years ago. Six million videos on a single website, each available to watch in an instant? Impossible.
Bandwidth-hungry online video
But now online video streaming is a reality - and enormously popular. However, downloading a 30 minute television programme consumes more bandwidth than receiving 200 e-mails every day for a year. Small wonder then that the internet is already working hard to keep up with our demands.
This growing demand for online video and streaming television (like the BBC’s iPlayer and Channel 4’s 4oD) is draining the internet’s capacity to deliver data. “Changes in internet usage have quickly turned the internet into an entertainment medium,” says Asam Ahmad of broadband provider Virgin Media. “And there does need to be an open discussion about how bandwidth is managed.”
Broadband providers
ISPs currently use moderate measures to ensure the most extreme bandwidth hogs do not ruin it for the rest of us. Virgin Media, for instance, uses a ‘non-discriminatory’ policy of peak time traffic management, based on a user’s total bandwidth consumption, which might temporarily lessen the speed of a video junkie’s connection if his or her usage has been particularly high.
These measures have been effective so far, and the burden of increasing demands might not have been felt yet - but it will soon. Experts are predicting a ‘broadband crunch’ come 2010, wherein increasing use of bandwidth-hungry services will bring the internet to a virtual standstill.
A report by Nemertes Research, a group that analyses the business value of emerging technology, says that current investment in internet infrastructure is insufficient to meet growing bandwidth demands.
“The network is coping”
Speaking to MSN, a BT spokesman acknowledged the issue but downplayed its severity. “It’s a commercial issue for certain internet service providers. If usage patterns progressively increase because customers are doing things which are increasing their use of bandwidth, and if those customers are charged a fixed price for a fixed amount of bandwidth, then there is a question about whether certain business models are sustainable.
“On a technical level: can the network physically cope? As things stand, the network is coping. Though if you were to ask whether the network in shape for the streaming of multiple broadcast-quality TV-type signals all over the internet to every home in the land… then that will probably require considerable investment in the network.” Because although the internet advances very quickly, the large-scale infrastructure that supports it, delivering it to homes and offices around the country, has not quite kept up.
The hardware problem
The internet video boom is being handled in the UK by networks which, in many places, were originally intended to carry voice calls only. It is testament to some very clever engineering that old hardware has been enabled to cope with as much as it has – but this cannot go on forever.
The problem lies not with the modern fibre optics and underground cabling of the internet’s main motorways, whose high technology and vast capacities mean data can zip from one part of the world to another in next to no time. The limiting factor comes at the last stage of the journey: in the routers, switches and copper wires that run finally from an exchange into a home.
When it comes to broadband speeds, the UK already lags behind many other countries. About 90 per cent of South Korea is hooked up with an average advertised broadband speed of 43 Mbps. In France the average is about 44 Mbps, whereas Japan has an astounding 90 Mbps. These figures all put the ‘up to 8 Mbps’ connections typically offered by UK providers in the shade.
A return to dial-up speeds?
What would a ‘broadband crunch’ mean for UK internet users? The Nemertes report predicts that if the problem is not addressed, users could be looking at a gradual return to the speeds of the dial-up networking of yesteryear. For those of us who know the joys of 28.8 kilobits per second modems, this is a worrying prospect.
The study says the slow-down will change our experience of the web. “[In the future] it may take more than one attempt to confirm an online purchase or it may take longer to download the latest video from YouTube,” says the report. More significant still is the crunch’s potential braking effect on internet progress. Online innovations – the next YouTube, iPlayer, eBay, or something entirely new and different – might simply not get off the ground if networks cannot support them.
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It’s not difficult to see why large-scale internet infrastructure has been neglected: upgrading such a system is a mammoth task. Although installing speedy fibre optic connections to homes nationwide is the most obvious of solutions, it represents an enormous expense and a huge amount of work. With the internet working adequately for the time being, many would hardly see the need for an upgrade, not to mention resent the digging up of roads across the country. Finally, there is the issue of who would foot the multi-billion pound bill.
An expensive project
When internet service providers have to compete with each other’s prices to win customers, an expensive, long-term project like fibre-to-the-home does not appeal. This, however understandably, leads to an approach that may not be viable in the long run.
Other providers believe they already have the problem in hand. “We will be rolling out a 50 Mbps service on our entire network at the end of the year,” Virgin Media told MSN. “”The technology we are putting into the network can theoretically cope with 300 Mbps upstream and downstream simultaneously. 50 Mbps is a good upgrade for now.”
This year, BT will trial 100Mbps fibre-to-the-home connections at an estate of new homes in Ebbsfleet, with a view to using the project as a feasibility study for further high-speed connections.
Who should cover the costs?
Alternatively, we might ask those who generate the demand for bandwidth to cough up. There have already been whispers that the likes of YouTube and iPlayer should contribute to the networks that support their services. But then could these services realistically remain free?
The solution might well require a government-funded initiative. It would be a worthy endeavour, one that would drive the nation’s technology forward and prepare us for the exponential growth of the internet. But it would also ultimately be a project funded by taxpayer money - and thus not necessarily popular.
The government recently launched a review on next-generation broadband access. “Its purpose is to look at the government can pave the way for faster broadband and minimise the cost for private sector investment – and what barriers there are to that investment,” a spokesperson for the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform told MSN. “Still, the roll-out of next-generation access should be private sector led, with minor public sector intervention.”
Looking ahead
The way forward – and the extent of the ‘broadband crunch’ threat – is not yet altogether clear. The solution may be something other than to fibre-to-the-home; it may not involve any kind of cabling at all. To bridge the sluggish so-called ‘last mile’ between exchange and home, wireless broadband services are another option for enabling the next generation of internet access.
“New wireless WiMAX technology shows it possible to achieve download speed of up to 65 Mbps at close range to users,” says David Hill of Spirent Communications, a telecommunications testing firm. “This would be sufficient to plug many of the gaps in the internet infrastructure quickly and at much lower cost and inconvenience than digging up roads to lay new cable.”
Finally, Ofcom chief executive Ed Richards recently proposed an altogether different approach: using our existing sewer network to house internet infrastructure. It was a tentative suggestion, with Richards recommending further study. “We need to establish what the position is here and whether or not duct access has a role to play in the development of competitive next-generation access. So, in cooperation with operators we intend to undertake a survey of the existing duct network.”
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