The unlimited truth….

Every one has heard it or read it somewhere. Maybe your friend at work told you about his new hosting plan that gives him unlimited transfer or disk space. My own mother told me the other day that her new email account on her ISP gave her unlimited email space. Well, as you can imagine I was taken back by my own mother falling for the biggest lie ever to be perpetrated on the hosting clients of the world.

The main elements of hosting lately appear only to revolve around how much space and bandwidth is your provider providing. How insane is this?

It really boils down to a few simple truths. The network lines that carry data around the web (optic fiber, cable, copper wire etc) have a finite capacity. There is a limit to the amount of data that can be transferred at any point in time. Likewise, the hard drive of a web server has a limited amount of space determined by the physical size of the hard drive.

So how can companies offer such unlimited plans.  They are tricksters.  Truth be told, read the fine print.  These companies limit the amount of upload time, CPU Cycle Usage, place limits on INODE Usage, and so on and so on.

Now when you read our policies you will find none of these limits.  We do not limit your CPU cycles, or your the amount of files you can store, or limit your FTP sessions to 5 minutes.

My father always told me, some things in life are not what they appear to be.

A few good articles on Unlimited myths can be found here:

http://www.findmyhosting.com/truthunlimited.htm

TotalChoice Hosting Gives More Away For Free …..

We all know what happened last time Head Guru had one of his bright ideas and listened to clients, we ended up with backups taken every 12 hours. As usual he’s been listening to all the family out there and decided to give things away again for free.

I am very pleased to announce that he’s excelled himself this time, and decided to double or even triple disk space and bandwidth on plans. Effective February 12th, 2008 all new accounts will include increased disk space and additional bandwidth. These increases vary by plan but some are 200% more resources than current values. Some examples of the new plans are:

• Our new Starter Plan will feature 40GB of Bandwidth and 1400MB of space!
• Our new Simple Reseller Plan will feature 75GB of Bandwidth and 3000MB of space!

We will be phasing these increases into effect over the next couple of weeks to our entire current client base. Please be patient with us, we will be working through the servers as fast as possible.

For our dedicated clients, we will be increasing your bandwidth resources to 2000GB

Happy Hosting!

Google Apps: Changing Mail Exchange(MX) records

Over the past few months we have received an ever increasing number of support requests for changes to MX records. The majority of these requests are from customers that are wanting to get their mail via Google Apps. You can always open a ticket requesting these changes, however, here are the instructions for those of you who like to get your hands dirty. (don’t worry, if you break it we can fix it)

 To modify your MX records with TotalChoice:

1. Log in to your cPanel account.
2. Under Mail options Select the MX Entry icon. A list of your current MX records will appear.
     If using the X2 theme click Mail then Click Modify Mail Exchanger (MX Entry).
3. Click Change an MX Entry.
4. In the Change MX for… field, enter ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM
    If you wish to add additional MX entries for your domain you will need to set them with a lower priority than the primary MX entry. For example, to add the entry ALT1.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM just set the priority field to 1.  Please be aware that 0 is the highest priority and 10 is the lowest.
5. Click Change. 

It’s that simple and you should start receiving your mail via Google Apps in a few minutes.

Please note that the above instructions are specific to Google Apps but the basic steps are the same for any MX record modifications. You will  still need to open a support request if you wish to use any of the Google Apps features that require CNAME changes.

Microsoft’s hostile takeover bid !

Microsoft has offered $50 billion for Yahoo! as it failed to match Google’s success and also as a means to counter Google-DoubleClick deal. I just feel that Microsoft is frustrated because it failed to become the numero uno of the internet. Has Microsoft finally realised that it cannot make it big on its own ? is it because Yahoo and Microsoft have fallen behind Google in the race to capture online advertising dollars.

I am sure the Anti Trust lobby will have a word or two regarding this deal, if it goes through.

What is your take on the whole episode ?

Is there a conspiracy happening

Have you heard of the undersea cables mysteriously being cut? Who or what is at fault?

The count as of today is up to 5. That’s right the latest cable cut affected 1.7m Internet users in UAE.

Internet as well as voice data has been affected.

A total of five cables being operated by two submarine cable operators have been damaged with a fault in each.

These are SeaMeWe-4 (South East Asia-Middle East-Western Europe-4) near Penang, Malaysia, the FLAG Europe-Asia near Alexandria, FLAG near the Dubai coast, FALCON near Bandar Abbas in Iran and SeaMeWe-4, also near Alexandria.

The first cut in the undersea Internet cable occurred on January 23, in the Flag Telcoms FALCON submarine cable which was not reported. This has not been repaired yet and the cause remains unknown, explained Jaishanker.

A major cut affecting the UAE occurred on January 30 in the SeaMeWe-4 (South East Asia-Middle East-Western Europe-4). “This was followed by another cut on February 1 which was on the same cable (FALCON). This affected the du network majorly as connections from the Gulf were severed while there was limited connectivity within the region,” said Khaled Tabbara, executive director, Carrier Relations, du.

He explained that the network was re-routed through Al Khobar in Saudi Arabia and was near normal now.

Almost 90 per cent of Internet traffic is routed through undersea cables and only 10 per cent is done through the satellite.

The experts also suggested that the cause of damage could have been a ship’s anchor that was dragging due to inclement weather conditions in the region during that particular period. “About 60-80 per cent of damages to undersea cable are due to external factors and only 10 per cent on an average can be classified as component failure,” said Tabbara.

Khaleej Times

A ship’s anchor? Really? Five cables? Don’t these ships know where the cables are? Curious minds want to know.