eAPPS upDATE Newsletter

eAPPS upDATE Newsletter
Published by eApps Hosting
February 2007

In this issue:

Tech Tip - How DNS Works
New SPAM Fighting Tool - Greylist Filter

Article - Beware of Loss of Your Domain
Beta Testers Wanted - For Scalix Mail Service
Application Updates - MySQL w/ SSL, RoundCube Webmail,
and the Greylist Filter

Having trouble viewing this newsletter? Visit http://eapps.com/News/eApps_upDateFeb07.html.

Tech Tip
How DNS Works

DNS or the Domain Name Service, is a worldwide directory system that is an essential component of the Internet. You may use DNS thousands of times in a single work day and not even realize it. DNS works by resolving human friendly domain names such as www.eapps.com to machine readable IP addresses like 216.154.218.35.

Every domain has identified in the information maintained at the registrar what is known as the DNS servers of record. These DNS servers are the "master" DNS servers for the domain. All DNS servers are setup to synchronize periodically but there can only be one "master" for a domain.

Within the DNS server, each domain has what is called a DNS zone file. It contains several types of records that are used for directing traffic. For example, the A Record stores the IP address that is associated with the web site for the domain. Other types of records serve other purposes, such as the MX Record, which contains the IP address for the mail server for the domain. If you were to send a message to johndoe@eapps.com, your mail client would immediately query the DNS server of the Internet provider you use to find out where the eapps.com mail server resides.

For more information about the specifics of DNS, such as the meaning of the specific records, and what they mean in the context of your eApps account, please see our new DNS user guide in the knowlegebase of our support center. The shortcut link is http://support.eapps.com/hsp/dns.

When adding a new site to your VPS, it's important to remember that DNS is a distributed world wide directory, so it can take 24 hours or more for newly added or recently changed domains to resolve properly from everywhere in the world. It is also worth noting that you are not required to use eApps' DNS service in order to use our hosting service.

New & Updated Applications

Greylist Filter - A new SPAM fighting tool is available! This application is available for all customers, all plans. Please see the article in this issue for more information.

RoundCube WebMail - We now offer an outstanding IMAP compliant web mail application implemented using AJAX. For more information, visit roundcube.net. If you are interested in using RoundCube please send an email to support@eapps.com with ROUNDCUBE in the subject. This application is only available to customers on a CentOS plan.

MySQL 5.0.27 with SSL - We now offer a version of MySQL that has SSL support. Connections to MySQL can now be encrypted for maximum security. Customers on the CentOS plans can upgrade to this version from the All Applications area on the System tab of the Control Panel. Please review the SSL for MySQL User Guide. Also, if you are upgrading from MySQL 5.0.19 or earlier, please see the MySQL release notes.

Mail Service Beta Users Wanted

eApps is presently beta testing an advanced mail solution, called Scalix, geared to Small and Medium Businesses (SMB). We evaluated Scalix and Zimbra as potential high end mail solutions and chose Scalix due to what we believe to be a more favorable business and pricing model, a more robust feature set, and a superior internal design of the application. Some of Scalix's key features are:

Support of any mail client
Mobile support
Powerful calendar, scheduling, and collaboration functions
Ajax based web mail
Standards based architecture
Much more

Scalix is a higher end mail solution, with an Enterprise level feature set. eApps will offer Scalix in a separate plan that will only run Scalix. We expect the pricing to start at less than $100 per month. We are at this time seeking a limited number of Beta users for a no cost trial and test period. If you are interested in testing out this outstanding mail solution and providing feedback to us, please send an email to sales@eapps.com and put SCALIX BETA in the subject.

New SPAM Fighting Tool
Greylist Filter

We are please to announce the availability of Greylist Filter, a highly effective SPAM fighting tool. Greylist Filter is an application that examines mail messages before they reach your mail server, and using a technique that helps identify legitimate mail servers, screens out most SPAM. Users have reported that the Greylist Filter stops upwards of 80% of all SPAM from ever reaching their inbox.

Whenever it sees a message from a sender that it has never seen before, it tells the sending mail server to resend the message. If the mail server of the sender is a “legitimate” mail server, it will resend the message with a delay of generally up to one hour. SPAMMERS usually do not use legitimate mail servers. Most SPAM is sent from “zombie” mail servers that are embedded into hacked computers. These zombie mail servers do not follow proper mail sender procedures and generally do not attempt to resend the message. Greylist Filter will then eliminate any messages that are not resent by the sending mail server.

One of the nice things about Greylist Filter is that it is smart enough to let subsequent messages from valid senders go through without delay. So there is a delay in receiving a sender's mail message only the first time they send you a message. Nevertheless, Greylist Filter is not for everyone. If you are interested in this SPAM fighting tool, please read the User Guide for more information. Greylist Filter is available for all customers on all plans. If after reading the User Guide, you want to implement it, send an email to support@eapps.com and include GREYLIST FILTER in the subject of the message. We will install it for you as explained in the User Guide.

Article
Beware of Loss of Your Domain!

Your domain is one of the least expensive components of your web presence, but it could very well be the most valuable. In face, active domains are so valuable that there is a risk that if your domain ever expires, very bad things can happen. You may find yourself in a position of having to pay a lot of money to regain control of your domain, or worse yet, lose it permanently.

In the past few years, more and more companies are using click ads from Google, Yahoo and other search engines to promote their products and services. It did not take long for some people to recognize that any domain that attracts a lot of traffic can be valuable as a way to direct web visitors to a page containing click ads. This is called domain monetization, whereby a "billboard" page is used as the landing point for people that want to visit the site for that domain. A good examples is http://www.taxes.com/. You might think that a big tax accounting firm has this domain, but check it out. It takes you to a nice "billboard" page with links to companies selling services and products related to taxes. Taxes.com generates a very high revenue stream for the owner of the domain and the entity that put up and manages the billboard page, as well as the click ad provider, such as Google or Yahoo.

Domain registrars, once thought to be those boring administrators that handle the mundane tasks related to ordering and renewing domains are becoming increasingly active in the domain monetization game. If your domain expires, and it draws a lot of traffic, there is a very high probability that you will have to pay hundreds of dollars to regain your domain, and quite possibly the registrar will refuse to let you have it. This could have disastrous consequences for you.

Please take a few moments now to do a whois lookup and see when your domain is expiring. If you bought your domain through eApps, we will do our best to notify you. However. due to the large volume of domains involved, we do this by email and cannot guarantee that your domain will be renewed. You must accept responsibility for this important and valuable asset. To do a whois lookup, try these links.

http://www.domaintools.com
http://www.networksolutions.com/whois/index.jsp