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By: OpenSRS Team on August 20th, 2008
Posted in: General
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You may or may not have heard about the recent flaw discovered in DNS system by a researcher named Dan Kaminsky.

Recently, ISP Planet spoke with Rick Yazwinski our principal engineer, to talk about the exploit, and about the impact its discovery had on the industry. You can read that article here.

We also wanted to take a minute or two to reassure our customers that we’ve taken the appropriate measures to ensure that our DNS system is safe from this exploit. Garrick Lau, who is responsible for IT Security and Compliance at Tucows, explains:

“This exploit targets “recursive” DNS setups as they are susceptible to this DNS design flaw. Authoritative DNS servers are NOT susceptible to this flaw. All of the Tucows DNS servers that are serving customers are Authoritative DNS servers.”

Garrick adds, “We were notified of this exploit back in June, during the last MAAWG (Messaging Anti-Abuse Working Group). This notification came well before the exploit was public knowledge and at about the same time as Dan Kaminsky was briefing U.S. Homeland Security. At that time, various venders were hard at work creating patches for this flaw. This early warning gave us ample time to verify that all of our external facing DNS servers are all Authoritative and that Tucows and our resellers (and by extension, our resellers’ customers) are safe from this flaw.”

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By: James Koole on August 19th, 2008
Posted in: Reseller Resources
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One of the easiest things to overlook when you start thinking about how to grow your business is writing.

Sure, you need to have the kind of products and services that prospective customers are after, be it a hosting plan with all the bells and whistles, or fully-featured, high-speed Internet access. But beyond your product or service, you need to make sure that you are effectively conveying that information to each prospective customer.

Who are you selling to?

To do a good job writing for your customers, you first need to know who they are. For example, if you are primarily targeting fairly tech-savvy users with a hosting plan, it might be acceptable to use terms like terabytes, or Linux, or MySQL. But if you are selling services to people who aren’t plugged in when it comes to hosting, then you’ll need to adapt your writing to ensure that you aren’t baffling them with words that sound like a foreign language to them. You may instead choose to use words like plenty of storage, secure web servers and blog-ready databases.

Similarly, you should make sure that you don’t make any assumptions about the level of knowledge of your users. And that goes both ways. Don’t assume that your customers are fully versed in the terminology and technology of the Internet. But at the same time, make sure you don’t treat them as idiots either.

Think of the geek and your grandmother

You might want to serve up multiple versions of the same information with a link from the version for “normal people” to a version for “geeks”. It can be as easy as putting a simple subheading with something like, “I’m up to speed on this stuff, give me the techie version” that links to a specs page.

For example, OpenDNS, a provider of third-party DNS service, caters to both groups on their page. Those with a solid knowledge of DNS and routers are after one thing – the IP addresses to plug in to their router. OpenDNS understands their audience and on the “Getting Started” page, they simple provide what they call “The Straight Dope” – the two IP addresses of their DNS servers.

But for those who need some hand holding (in other words, the average person), OpenDNS takes the time to explain their service and how to configure it in plain English. They provide pictures of the routers they have instructions for, and screenshots that help users configure things to use the OpenDNS service.

The golden opportunity

There’s a real opportunity for both hosting companies, and also for ISPs, to grab market share by being friendly and approachable in a way that really stands out from the crowd. As more and more people start looking to simply establish a presence online, it becomes even more important to tailor your service offerings and marketing to increasingly less technologically-inclined customers.

Take a look at your website and marketing materials from the perspective of the non-tech. Better yet, have someone who doesn’t understand the business read through your website and provide feedback. Is what you are selling clear? Does it make sense to the average user as well as the Internet expert? Is you pricing clear and understandable? Do you clearly explain why you are a better choice than the competition?

Your website is probably the single most important marketing tool you have. Make sure that the writing is effective and clear and that it serves the broadest section of potential customers.

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By: Ken Schafer on August 18th, 2008
Posted in: OpenSRS Services
Tags: Email Service
Comments: 2

First off, I’d like to apologize again for the problems that resulted from the problems last week on Cluster A of our email service. Email is a mission-critical service. We know how awful it is to have your personal and business communications disrupted. We are deeply sorry for any problems that resulted from this interruption.

After around-the-clock work last week to restore full service to our impacted resellers, and their end-users on Cluster A, our team took some time today to review what happened with last week’s service degradation.

Last Tuesday, a shelf controller hardware failure meant that 14 disks required a rebuild. This resulted in the degradation of multiple storage volumes. This failure affected 50% of customer mailboxes on OpenSRS Email Service – Cluster A. The restoration process was consecutive for the affected devices and therefore took a number of days to complete. To resolve the issue, we replaced the shelf controller and rebuilt 14 disks. During the service interruption, we made temporary mail stores available to customers. On Friday, once restoration was complete, all mail content (messages and folders) were merged from the temporary volumes to the user’s original mailbox.

As with any service problem of this magnitude, it is essential we take steps to make sure it does not happen again. Before the end of the month we are making storage architecture changes to Cluster A to ensure that we eliminate the chance that a similar event with storage will occur in the future.

Again, let me say that we are incredibly sorry about the impact this undoubtedly had on you and many of your customers.

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By: Ken Schafer on August 15th, 2008
Posted in: OpenSRS Services
Tags: Email Service
Comments: 0

Update: August 15, 16:00 P.M. ET:

On August 15, 2008: 16:00 P.M. ET, Full service to OpenSRS – Cluster A was restored. No mail or data was lost.  We truly apologize for this service disruption.

Update: August 15, 09:57 A.M.:

Regular updates are available at http://status.opensrs.com/

As of this morning, we can report that about 80% of users on Cluster ‘A’ have full email service. The remaining 20% of customers on Cluster ‘A’ have limited access, via webmail only. Additionally, we have updated our original estimate for restoration of service to all customers.

We now estimate that full service will be restored by Friday, August 15, 4:00PM ET (20:00 UTC).

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By: Ken Schafer on August 14th, 2008
Posted in: OpenSRS Services
Tags: Email Service
Comments: 0

We continue to provide regular updates on the progress of restoration at http://status.opensrs.com/

We’re pleased to report that more than two thirds of users on Cluster ‘A’ now have full email service meaning they can log in via POP, IMAP or webmail, as usual, to send and receive mail.

The remaining users that are still affected by this outage (about 1/3 of users on Cluster A) have been provided limited access, by webmail only, to their email. They can log into their webmail normally and send and receive email as usual, and view any messages received since the outage began.

We’re continuing to monitor the rebuild of the additional two storage volumes. Our current estimate is that full service to the remaining affected customers will be restored by Saturday, August 16, at 4:00 P.M. ET (20:00 GMT/UTC).

Once again, we deeply apologize to you and your customers that have been affected by this service interruption and we appreciate your patience as we work to restore full service to all users.