Is Your Website Secure On A Shared Server? Part 2

SSL certificates The secured socket layer (SSL) technology provides strong encryption of HTTP packets during their transfer through the World Wide Web. However, in order to encrypt; a SSL certificate from a trusted certification authority like Verisign or Twate is necessary.

Shared hosting and SSL certificates SSL can undoubtedly provide a lot of security on the server side. Most of the encryption done is on the 128 bit level, which in its own right is very secure. But, when it comes to securing websites on shared hosts the real problems surface as the SSL technology requires an IP address ( with port number) and most shared websites don?t have one!

To overcome this problem many ISP?s have come-up with shared SSL certificates. But, this quick fix solution actually undermines the importance of SSL certificates as, with a shares SSL certificate the credibility and trustworthiness of a certificate comes under the scanner.

However new methods are being developed at a rapid pace whereby Genuine SSL certificates would be provided to websites operating on shared hosts and with the evolution of IPv6 (The new generation of Internet Protocol) the scarcity of public IP?s would also be addressed to a certain extent).

Other practical methods to ensure security on shared servers

• You should have complete information about the types of scripts and software installed on the server. As applying unproven or substandard codes by others using the server might affect you too.
• Enquire about the security audit procedure employed by your host. That?s because the frequency of review can be the deciding factor between succumbing to a security threat and overcoming it.
• The most important action you can take on your part is to use very strong password for your website. As using easy to crack password would make your website as open as a stadium in front of hackers.

When we talk of the World Wide Web and its secure nature, we have to understand that nothing is fool-proof. Recent times have seen hackers breaking in to some of the most secure websites. That?s why, the trick here lies in keeping up with the times and heeding to the latest of security updates. A web hosting provider who does that can provide a great deal of security to your website even if it?s hosted on a shared server.

The Author Search Engine marketing expert, Tarun Gupta is one of the most prolific writers in the internet marketing domain with his articles being published in numerous search related websites and newsletters.

He is the founder director of web development and web hosting services company BrainPulse.com.

Web Server Monitoring Goes to Australia

January 31, 2006, Plymouth, Minnesota -- Dotcom-Monitor has just added Sydney as its newest web server monitoring location, bringing executive class monitoring to Australia.

"Companies need to know how their web sites respond to customer usage," says Vadim Mazo, CEO of Dotcom-Monitor. "Adding the Sydney monitoring station means they will now be alerted if their web site is inaccessible or slow to Australian customers."

The Sydney's monitoring station is a robot that visits a company's web site, simulating a human visitor, and performs various functions, including surfing, form-testing, shopping cart usage, etc. Performance speed, accessibility and response times simulate a human user's experience.

Companies depend on remote web server performance monitoring to respond quickly to emergencies (such as an order form no working), as well as to plan for long term upgrades to ensure maximum satisfaction for customers. It is estimated that $20 to $40 billion is lost each year from users who abandon slow loading web sites.

Global web site monitoring secures customers world-wide

Global marketers understand that web sites respond differently in different parts of the world due to trans-Atlantic connections, bottlenecks, the quality of local connections, etc. "Just because a web site performs well in New Jersey, does not mean a customer in Sydney or London benefits from the same performance," Mr. Mazo says. "Monitoring your web servers from Sydney will tell you if you need to make changes to better serve your Australian market."

While only 13% of U.S. home users still use sub-56K Internet connections, that number is much higher in less developed countries, meaning web sites optimized for U.S. customers might not perform well overseas.

Sydney is the tenths monitoring station in Dotcom-Monitor's global network. The other five sites are:

- London, UK - Minnesota, USA - New York, USA - California, USA - Florida, USA - Calgary, Canada - Colorado, USA - Frankfurt, Germany - Honk Kong, China

Dotcom Monitor is an executive class website monitoring company, offering top performance services above and beyond the norm in the industry. Since 1998, its goal remains to protect the reputation and profitability of online business by bringing together monitoring, reporting, notification, escalation and analysis in the combination best suited to a company's needs.

About Dotcom Monitor: Dotcom Monitor is an executive class website and network monitoring company, offering top performance services above and beyond the norm in the industry, including website load stress testing introduced in 2004 (offered by very few monitoring companies). Since 1998, Dotcom Monitor has been protecting the reputation and profitability of businesses online by bringing together monitoring, reporting, notification, escalation and analysis in the combination best suited to a company's needs. Visit the website at www.dotcom-monitor.com or get more details about website monitoring services at www.dotcom-monitor.com/web-site-monitoring.asp. Get information on network monitoring at www.dotcom-monitor.com/network-monitoring.asp.

Johan Jacobsson is a marketing and SEO consultant at Dotcom-Monitor.com, a web-server monitoring company.

Have a big website? Worried about server load ?

If you have a big website, then it happened more that once to see it moving very slow. There is a way to do some testing and find out is the problems are caused by the hardware, or by the website itself.

Have we ever thought how big websites could be configured to handle massive amount of traffic? How thousands of businesses worldwide are facing challenges everyday to make sure there are no connection failures due to heavy load or congestion of traffic at the website.

The answer is straight, every organization will have to monitor and baseline amount of traffic by going for stress test to find out if the current hardware could be supportive enough to handle a specific amount of load. One such great software is the ?Web Application Testing? or WAPT, which is a great utility for any website?s sustainability. This software is load, stress and performance testing tool for web sites and intranet applications with web interface. WAPT is designed for MS Windows 2000/XP/2003 and Windows 98/Me operating systems. The question that should be asked is why should we consider WAPT or why should the organization consider Load or stress testing? We certainly believe, major performance issues would arise if stress test has not been performed. This could very well mean that after the server reaches a certain level of concurrent connection made by visitors, it would consume its hardware resources to process every visitor?s request. If there is a lot to process, the server might give priority to web application than its local resource ending up in a system crash.

Thus, the goal of WAPT is very simple; it helps the organization?s web servers to become active at every stage of stress, whether it?s a web development or website traffic processing power. WAPT can perform a stress test by simulating several thousands of concurrent connections to check the web server/website performance and if it finds any bottlenecks it would warn and suggest fixing this issue by recommending the very next thing.

There are lots of new features added in WAPT 4.0

- You can use multiple virtual profiles to test a single scenario

- There is support for IP spoofing where each virtual user can run with individual and unique IP address

- Each Virtual can be configured with different username and password and is compatible with Windows Integrated Authentication or Basic Configuration.

- You can see and configure the type of reports even a test run summary report is generated

- There is command line interface available

- There is a support for persistent cookies

- All the test scenario and profiles are stored in XML format

The Main features of WAPT 4.0

- You can have the application run and understand multiple languages

- There is cool recording feature which you can use to record any configuration and stress test simulations for later review or demonstrations as it supports playback of HTTPS/SSL 2.0 & 3.0 pages. You can also record the user connection speed using the keep-alive connections to a HTTP 1.0 or HTTP 1.1 pages or even HTTPS/SSL pages.

- You can generate data for run-times on specific scheduled intervals by randomizing the delay between the page hits.

- It also has a support for proxy servers for HTTP, HTTPS, SOCKS4 & 5 and supports cookies as well.

- All the authentication request can be handled using NTLM (windows Integrated Authentication) or using the basic authentication.

- If you would like to call the website by a different name, then you also have the facility to add custom host headers

- All this the scenarios can be configured using the user friendly Wizard

- You can choose the reports to be either graphical or in plain text along with full virtual server logs

A must tool for administrator or other user who would to maintain their website efficiently.

Source: Free Articles from ArticlesFactory.com

Mircea Ionescu writes for CoreDownload, a shareware archive where you can find utilities like WAPT to test your server.

Website Hosting - Dedicated Servers

You have heard of dedicated servers but you really are not sure what they are and if you should have one. On the other hand, maybe you know that you require a dedicated server, but really do not know how to choose the right host. Well, either way, this article is filled with information just for you.

When it comes to website hosting, essentially they provide you with two options dedicated servers or shared servers. What is the difference? Well, shared servers are the type in which you will share the space with other people. Your website and those of other people will share the same server. A dedicated server is completely the opposite, every aspect of that server, as well as the network connection is "dedicated" only to your website.

Before choosing a dedicated server, you should have an understanding of the major differences between shared and dedicated. One massive difference is the price. In most cases, a dedicated server will cost you a great deal more than a shared server. Another massive difference is the skill levels required for each. With a shared server, the host typically takes care of administration of the server, which requires little technical skills. On a dedicated server, it is your responsibility to take care of server administration.

Before deciding if a dedicated server is for you, you should consider the level of your website. If you operate a small business or a basic website, a dedicated server is likely not the best choice. However, if you have a high traffic, large, and massive website, a dedicated server will be the likely choice.

Overall, it is important to understand your space needs, reliability, bandwidth, and budget prior to choosing dedicated server website hosting. Generally, a large website, a large company, with high traffic, may want to consider a dedicated server. A small business, with minimal traffic, will likely want to stick with shared servers.

The author is owner & operator of several reliable website hosting sites. For Cheap Website Hosting Visit http://www.myreliablehosting.net today

Dedicated Servers ? Backup and Recovery Strategies for Web Hosting Companies

What kind of backup recovery strategy should a company have for its dedicated server? Web hosting companies have been debating this architecture since their existence began. It is really a question pondered by the whole IT community. There are many right solutions, dependent on your company?s ability to handle downtime. The correct solution for you will factor in the amount of redundant protection you need against the overall cost.

Before we discuss the different options for backing up and recovering your dedicated server, we should mention that the server hardware, data center, and fiber connection are all critical to reliability. This article is specifically focused on strategies to backup and recover your server?s data.

At a minimum, you can create a partition in your hard drive and backup your server weekly or monthly. There is no cost to this kind of solution, but the downsides are obvious. If your hard drive crashes, you will lose your backup as well. This kind of solution is only recommended if you can afford to lose all of your data, which most web hosting companies cannot.

Next, you can contract a remote backup service to set up offsite backups. These backups can be run daily, weekly, or monthly. The cost of this solution is around $30-$50/month depending on the web hosting provider. This option gives you a solid backup in case your hard drive crashes. The downside is that recovery time will take 6-12 hours or more depending on how much data you have. The data has to be manually copied over, and this is a slow process. If you can afford the cost, this solution is part of an overall backup system, but it is not recommended as your only solution.

The next backup option is to have a second hard drive installed on your server and have it set up to do daily, weekly, or monthly backups. Most web hosting companies that provide dedicated servers will charge between $15-$30 for a second hard drive. This is a nice compliment to the previous solution if you have the budget for both. The recovery time is faster then a remote backup. But unlike a remote backup, if your dedicated server or the datacenter are down, then you cannot access the backup. For most small web hosting companies this is not a problem. If their entire server or datacenter are down, they have larger issues to worry about. We recommend this as a complimentary option with a remote backup.

Next, a web hosting company can use mirrored RAID drives. This option will cost $50-$80/month more, but it provides the fastest possible recovery in case of a hard drive crash. You can just reboot using the mirrored drive, and you are back in business. The cost is a little higher, but this is a nice luxury. The downside of this option is that if your server is unavailable, then you still cannot reach your data. Additionally, if the hard drive becomes corrupted it will also corrupt your backup. This is why we recommend mirrored drives as part of a larger solution that includes other backup systems.

Finally, there are mirrored servers. This entails the largest cost and is really not necessary, except for those web hosting companies that can tolerate no downtime at all. In this scenario, if the server itself dies you can have another server ready to take the load. In fact, if your company is large enough, you might already need this kind of solution for performance. Some websites require multiple servers to handle the performance, and it is load balanced across them. In this case, if a server dies the system still runs. This is the best solution but it is not always necessary. And, of course it is costly.

We recommend a weekly remote backup to provide you with a fail safe version. Even if the datacenter burns down, you will have a copy of your data. To this we would add either mirrored RAID drives or a second hard drive, depending on your hosting company?s needs. If you are more worried about recovery time from hard drive crashes, which is the most frequent hardware problem with dedicated servers, then go with the RAID drives. If you are more worried about the hard drive getting corrupted, go with the second hard drive.

We hope this article provides you with the information you need to adequately back up your dedicated server!

Rodney Ringler is President of Advantage1 Web Services, Inc., which owns a network of Web Hosting Informational Websites including HostChart.com, ResellerConnection.com, FoundHost.com, ResellerForums.com, and HostingKnowledge.net. Rodney has over 15 years industry experience from programming to internet marketing. rodney@hostchart.com