Even though the storm hit shortly after the end of rush hour, Chicagoans still had to deal with traffic nightmares, as two Chicago-area expressways were shutdown for a short period of time.  The Eisenhower Expressway was closed for nearly two hours in both directions because of flooding and both directions of the Stevenson Expressway were still closed at the writing of this blog entry.  According to WMAQ-TV, over 100,000 customers were left without power as a result of the storm.  Thankfully, ReadyWire.com was not among the thousands left without power.

Even though some Chicagoland area data centers encountered power outages as a result of the major storm, according to Panopta uptime reports, ReadyWire’s network remained rock steady.

ReadyWire and our data center partners take up-time seriously.  Millions of dollars has been invested in redundant gear from generators all the way down to network switches.  All of the datacenters that ReadyWire leases space in feature dual-city grid power feeds, meaning power does not come from one source.  Should power supplied by the electric company go out, battery backups will automatically take over by providing the necessary juice until on-site diesel generators can be switched on to power the facility.

Should you have any questions regarding how ReadyWire and our data center partners are prepared for contingencies, please do not hesitate to email us.

• Firewall Control-  If you or a client is being blocked by our server’s firewall, you no longer need to open a support ticket.  Instead, simply login to the ReadyWire Customer Portal and unblock IP addresses yourself!  For instructions on how to take advantage of this powerful feature, please click here.
• Server Reboots-  Is your server not responding?  Feat not!  We’re here to help.   Simply login and click the “Server Reboot Request” button.  A notification will instantly be dispatched to the ReadyWire Datacenter Team.
• rDNS Record Updates-  By filling out one simple form, you can update your rDNS records.  Simply click on “Modify rDNS Records.”

Without a doubt, Single Sign-on (SSO) has to be the number one feature request, meaning once you login to the ReadyWire Customer Portal, you can login to other systems (cPanel, Panopta, NetEarthOne Domain Name account, MS Exchange Control Panel, etc) related to your hosting account without having to enter another username or password.  A couple of these systems are already integrated into the portal (Panopta & cPanel), but we hope to have the remaining systems integrated soon.

Is there something that you would like to be able to accomplish yourself by simply logging in the ReadyWire Customer Portal?  Are you tired of having to open support tickets to have simple commands performed by our technicians?  If so, please click here and tell us!   We’re always looking for new features to add to the control panel.

ReadyWire Launches West Coast Hosting Operation

An official press release will be sent out soon, but I wanted to share some exciting developments with you.  We are growing!  By Summer 2010, ReadyWire’s hosting footprint will include California’s Silicon Valley.

The datacenter space that we will be moving into possesses a phenomenal Internet backbone and is consistently ranked as one of the best in the world.  When it’s all said and done, we will be connected to the internet via connections ranging from OC192, OC48, and 10GigE (10,000Mbps).

In layman’s terms, the facility is secure & conveniently located.  Frankly, the network is fast.  Very fast.

Let me put it this way.  The California datacenter space is roughly 2,500 miles from my home here in Chicago, whereas our main Chicago datacenter facility is located roughly 8 miles from me.  Although ping times to the California facility are a little higher in comparison to ping times to our Chicago facility, download times are surprisingly faster.  On multiple occasions, I was able to download a 1,000MB file from the California datacenter faster than I was able to download that very same file from our Chicago datacenter.  The results were astounding.

Now, I know that the aforementioned test isn’t very measurable or scientific.  However, I what I can tell you is that the datacenter in California operates its own international high performance fiber network.  The network is directly connected to 31+ major exchange points including Palo Alto Internet Exchange (PAIX), New York Internet Exchange (NYIIX), Ashburn, VA, 350 E. Cermak in Chicago, LINX in London, and many more.   All in all, the datacenter network is peering directly with over 1,250 major domestic and international networks.  To review more technical information about the facility, please click here. 

Our administrative team is almost finished with the contracts and our technical team is currently working on getting all of the equipment into place.  Once everything has been tested for customer use, the next step will be to start racking customer servers.

Are you in need of more power and control over your hosting experience?  Do you require the flexibility that comes from controlling your own server hardware?  If so, ReadyWire’s new colocation services were created with you in mind.

Down the road, we do plan on offering our standard portfolio of services (shared & reseller hosting, virtual private servers, dedicated servers, etc) out of the Silicon Valley facility, but for now the focus is on colocation.

Reserve your Colocation Space today!

The ReadyWire sales team is accepting pre-orders for colocation space now.  If you would like to receive an estimate or learn more about how ReadyWire’s Colocation Services can assist your business, please do not hesitate to contact us by completing the form on this webpage.

Here is what you will need to do to check and see if an IP is being blocked:

1.)  Login to the ReadyWire Customer Portal by visiting https://secure.readywire.com/.

2.)  Click “Manage Services.”

3.)  Find the appropriate hosting account and click “View Details.”

4.)  Scroll down to the section labeled “Firewall Control.”

5.)  Under the section labeled “Attention Resellers,” you will find a text box.  Enter the IP address that you suspect to be blocked.  Click “Reseller:  Search Client IP” when finished

6.)  Simply follow the prompts.  You will either be told that the IP address is not being blocked or you will be presented with the reason why the IP is being blocked.  If the IP is being blocked, you will have the option of unblocking it by clicking a button.

If the IP address isn’t removed from our firewall, or if we can provide personal assistance, please do not hesitate to open a support ticket by visiting http://www.readywire.com/support/.

Working in the office when you’re located in such an upbeat and vibrant city can be difficult.  That’s why you’ll frequently find me sipping coffee and typing away at my favorite coffeehouse, which is located about three or so blocks away from our office.  I love working while also being able to look out the big storefront window, watching cars, buses, and people pass me by.

I take security seriously — and connecting to the Internet via the City of Chicago’s public wifi or even the local coffeehouse’s wifi connection is something that I just won’t do.  You just never know how secure these connections are!  That’s one of the main reasons why I signed up for a mobile broadband card.

Not wanting to get locked into a contract with one of the major cell carriers, I turned to Ebay and bought a USB modem second hand and signed up for a month-to-month account with Verizon Wireless that went for about $50/mo.  Adding broadband to my Verizon account was easy and customer service had me up and running in minutes…or so I had thought.

As it turns out, the modem I bought on eBay was damaged and would only function if I was sitting outdoors.   After about a month of trying to get the thing to work, I canceled the service.

Enter Cricket Wireless

Cricket entered the Chicago market with CMDA broadband about a year ago, promising fantastic service at a low price.  I stopped by a Cricket retail store near the office and chatted with a sales agent for about 15 to 20 minutes and decided to give it a try.  They were offering a free hardware rebate (and still are, I believe), which made the decision all the more easier!

Let’s break down the charges:

* Cricket A600 Modem — $119.00
* Activation Charge — $25.00
* First Month of Service — $40
—————————————————-
Total: $184.00
- Minus a $69.00 instant rebate
- Minus a $50 mail-in rebate
- Minus a $40 instant rebate on the first month of service
—————————————————-
INITIAL INVESTMENT:  $25.00
Recurring Monthly Fee:  $40 (plus tax)

Cricket requires no contracts, early termination fees, or deposits.  The fine print even reads that they’ll give your money back (minus the activation fee) within the first 30 days if you’re not satisfied.  The plan that I elected is an “Unlimited Plan” (contract reads 5GB), at a rate of $40/mo.

I really wish I would have gone this route in the first place, seeing as it only cost me $25 to get started.    I’m using the A600 with my Macbook Pro, but have also tried it with my Win XP laptop and it worked just fine.

Next month’s bill just arrived via a text message and the amount is as promised:  $42.93.  Yes, $2.93 in taxes.  Yuck.

Is Cricket Broadband any good?

Surprisingly, yes!   While sitting right near a window at the coffeehouse, I received the following ping times:

Pinging readywire.com [80.251.16.142] with 32 bytes of data:

Reply from 80.251.16.142: bytes=32 time=52ms TTL=49
Reply from 80.251.16.142: bytes=32 time=52ms TTL=49
Reply from 80.251.16.142: bytes=32 time=52ms TTL=49
Reply from 80.251.16.142: bytes=32 time=51ms TTL=49

A day or so later, I took a seat in the back of a downtown Corner Bakery.  Because the restaurant didn’t have many windows, I didn’t expect to get good coverage, but I did:

PING readywire.com (80.251.16.142): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 80.251.16.142: icmp_seq=0 ttl=54 time=49.784 ms
64 bytes from 80.251.16.142: icmp_seq=1 ttl=54 time=57.569 ms
64 bytes from 80.251.16.142: icmp_seq=2 ttl=54 time=84.529 ms
64 bytes from 80.251.16.142: icmp_seq=3 ttl=54 time=67.656 ms
64 bytes from 80.251.16.142: icmp_seq=4 ttl=54 time=67.378 ms
64 bytes from 80.251.16.142: icmp_seq=5 ttl=54 time=57.301 ms
64 bytes from 80.251.16.142: icmp_seq=6 ttl=54 time=55.413 ms
64 bytes from 80.251.16.142: icmp_seq=7 ttl=54 time=90.172 ms
64 bytes from 80.251.16.142: icmp_seq=8 ttl=54 time=89.029 ms
64 bytes from 80.251.16.142: icmp_seq=9 ttl=54 time=86.732 ms

— readywire.com ping statistics —
10 packets transmitted, 10 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 49.784/70.556/90.172/14.855 ms

traceroute to readywire.com (80.251.16.142), 64 hops max, 40 byte packets
1  172.30.162.9 (172.30.162.9)  59.167 ms  50.577 ms  47.919 ms
2  172.30.162.2 (172.30.162.2)  50.031 ms  49.662 ms  91.970 ms
3  172.30.175.36 (172.30.175.36)  51.718 ms  52.449 ms  46.945 ms
4  172.16.8.18 (172.16.8.18)  59.933 ms  91.470 ms  46.651 ms
5  LEAP-WIRELE.car4.Chicago1.Level3.net (4.71.102.130)  65.815 ms  61.491 ms  60.025 ms
6  ge-7-17.car4.Chicago1.Level3.net (4.71.102.129)  57.575 ms  177.676 ms  53.829 ms
7  ae-13-53.car3.Chicago1.Level3.net (4.68.101.71)  167.831 ms  149.352 ms  222.871 ms
8  xe-0-3-0.cr2.ord1.us.nlayer.net (4.71.101.14)  110.127 ms  52.331 ms  50.115 ms
9  po2-30g.ar1.ord1.us.nlayer.net (69.31.111.138)  79.541 ms  58.401 ms  54.125 ms
10  as32475.te8-2-1101.ar1.ord1.us.nlayer.net (69.31.111.94)  59.859 ms  60.010 ms  55.212 ms
11  dr6506b.ord02.singlehop.net (99.198.126.246)  52.887 ms  61.542 ms  59.964 ms
12  corp.readywire.net (65.60.19.74)  63.799 ms  55.608 ms  72.000 ms
13  readywire.com (80.251.16.142)  61.867 ms  69.459 ms  57.010 ms

Not bad for a $40 cell phone based broadband service!

As a systems administrator, it’s important for me to be able to access the Internet without any sort of firewall restrictions, which is why I was hesitant in the first place.  At such a low cost point, I assumed that Cricket’s broadband service would have all sorts of filtering restrictions.  That does not seem to be the case.

So far, I have been able to access just about everything:  cPanel/WHM, HyperVM, SSH, and even our VPN!  I wouldn’t be surprised if you couldn’t connect your BitTorrent, but just about everything that a systems administrator needs access to is available via Cricket Broadband.

Overall Review

For $40 a month, I have no hesitation recommending this service to anyone!  Just make sure you get your rebate form filled out and postmarked in time.

We’ve been reading a lot on WebHostingTalk and other community forum sites lately about website hosting companies that are using illegally pirated software to help power their business.  From cracked versions of WHMCS to nulled versions of Kayako, the abuse is rampant.

ReadyWire Multimedia Solutions is not only an authorized reseller of WHCMS and ClientExec, we fully support the software community!

You can verify some of our licenses here:

• cPanel — Enter “80.251.16.140″
• WHMCS — Enter “secure.readywire.com”
• Kayako — Enter “secure.readywire.com”

Protect yourself from a DMCA complaint!  If your website hosting company is providing you with some sort of software license, check to make sure that the license that they’ve provided you with is valid.

To sign-up for a reseller account that features a REAL WHMCS or ClientExec license, click here.

Given the state of the global economy, more than ever, hosting companies can not afford downtime.  The market is saturated with hosting companies and if your clients encounter downtime, they’ll just hop to the next hosting company down on the Google search query.

Downtime is inevitable, given that our business is computers, networks, and electronics.  Machines fail.  It’s not a matter of if, but when.  What I’ve discovered over time is that what’s most important during the downtime is how you handle it.  Customers are typically much more willing to deal with a hosting company that is having technical woes as long as they’re kept informed as to what’s going on.

It’s time to put together an action plan for what I’m calling H-D Day…

Hosting Disaster Day

Scenerio #101

Sunday Morning.  Your sitting in church when all of a sudden your pocket starts vibrating.  You pull out your phone, tap over to your text messages, and there it is: 

PANOPTA OUTAGE ALERT:  SERVER-10 FAILED

Crap!  You can’t escape, as the pastor just started delivering his message.  You’re stuck in church and your shared hosting server has just crashed.  What to do?!?    Being the resourceful hosting company proprietor, you pull out your handy dandy smart phone and open up a trouble ticket with your hosting provider.  Now that they’ve been alerted, how can you keep your customers informed?

If you’re like most resellers that I know, your website and help desk is probabley housed on the same server that all of your clients are hosted on.  As such, since that server has failed, so has your help desk, email server, and website. 

You’re down and out until your hosting provider gets you back online!

Prepare for failure, courtesy of ReadyWire!

1.)  Sign up for failover DNS service from DNSMadeEasy.  Don’t worry, if you’re on a serious budget, this service is only going to set you back about $20/yr (about $1.66/mo)

If your main hosting account fails, DNSMadeEasy will automatically direct your website traffic to another server, which happens to be ReadyWire’s server!

2.)  Sign up for a FREE Network Status Backupaccount with ReadyWire Multimedia Solutions.  As a courtesy to the website hosting community, ReadyWire Multimedia Solutions is pleased to provide the following service to any interested website hosting companies:

* 100MB of Disk Space
* 10 GB Of Bandwidth
* 5 free MySQL Databases
* 5 free email accounts
===================
Monthly Price:  Free!

There are no strings to this offer. We only ask that you use this free hosting space as a backup to your main website hosting account.  In other words, we ask that you only send traffic our way when your hosting account is unavailable.  We’ll setup this shared account on a white labeled server, meaning your clients won’t ever find out about your relationship with ReadyWire!  Let us mirror your main account or simply host a backup WordPress blog with us.  It’s your choice!  We just want to help you keep in touch with your customers.

What’s in it for us?  Well, that’s simple.  I hope that after using ReadyWire as your backup provider, you’ll quickly realize that you’d use us as your PRIMARY host.     Of course, it’s ok if we never earn your full-time business.

If you’d like to take us up on our offer, please send an email to sales @ readywire.com and make reference to this blog post.  We’ll get you setup quickly and even help you with the DNS replication process, if you so choose.

(877) 44-READY or (312) 278-4446

Next time you find yourself being blocked by the firewall or you have a difficult time accessing webmail, pick up the phone and call (877) 44-READY and press option #2.

We’ve even attached a quick little Network and Server Status message to the extension.  Before you’re routed to the ReadyWire call center, you’ll be provided with a brief summary of the state of our network.  If we’re encountering difficulties, we’ll update the message and hopefully save you the hold time. 

Over time, we hope to make this a 24×7 option.  For now, we’re available to take your call M-F between 9:00A and 7:00P.  Outside of those hours, we’re always reachable through our 24×7 help desk, http://secure.readywire.com/.

You requested … we listened!  Now providing toll-free technical support for all ReadyWire Internet hosting services.

Have a fantastic week!

-Rick

Simple test: Find out the IP address(s) associated with your data center or third party monitoring systems uptime server and block it using iptables or your firewall software.  If you receive a notification, great!  If not, it’s time to find a new solution! 

In our case, the data center’s Nagios system was in fact monitoring the server, but a full mail queue kept it from dispatching email and SMS alerts.  Understandable … but totally inexcusable.

Enter Panopta!

I knew that something had to give.  If you perform a quick Google search yourself, you’ll find that there are dozens upon dozens of vendors that offer this service.  Assess your needs and prioritize what you’re in need of.

In our case, we needed a large number of service checks, SMS alerts, handy reporting features, and an easy to reach development team.  Panopta offered us everything that we were in need, at an affordable price.

Panopta monitors your servers and provides you with the tolls you need to minimize the impact of outages to your online business.  Panopta provides:

• Network service and server resource monitoring with checks every 60 seconds.
• Global monitoring network with 15 locations in North America, Europe and Asia.
• Intelligent notification with automatic team-based escalation.
• Email, phone and SMS notifications
• Management interface designed to scale to large numbers of servers.
• Setup wizard for automatic detection of services to be monitored.
• Mobile interface with iPhone support for responding to outages remotely.

My favorite part of Panopta has to be what they call “Intelligent notifications.“   Back when our data center monitored our servers, they would shoot me a text message when there was a problem with the server.  Because I keep my Blackberry next to my bed at night, it’s wasn’t unusual for me to receive a text alert at 3:30 in the morning alerting me of such problems!  We employ a 24 hour help desk, so why should I be pulled from my sleep when there is an office full of folks that could just as easily restart Apache as I could?

With Panopta’s Intelligent Notifications, I’m no longer the first person to receive SMS alerts of outages during the overnight hours.  Now, they immediately get pushed to our support team.  If after a certain period of time the service, Apache for example, is still unavailable, Panopta will go down the line and send the SMS to the data center technician on-call.  Finally, if Apache is still down after an alert has been dispatched to the data center technician, I’ll receive a SMS alert to my Blackberry.  Today, my phone rarely goes off in the middle of the night as a result of a server meltdown. 

Tomorrow, I’ll take you through a tour of the Panopta Control Panel.

–

[START Shameless Plug]

ReadyWire Multimedia Solutionsis an Authorized Reseller of Panopta, the Advanced Server Monitoring and Outage Management Service.  Through our partnerships with Panopta, we are proud to be able to bring our customers the service far below the usual retail price.

To get started with Panopta, click here.

[/END Shameless Plug]

Over the past few months, we’ve been studying trends in the streaming media sector of the hosting industry.  What we’ve come to find is that many streaming media providers are unwilling to place servers in high-quality data centers because of the high bandwidth costs that would come along with it.

And that’s where ReadyWire Multimedia Solutions is different.  We’ve selected a data center that is second to none.  CIMCO’s Chicago, IL facility offers only the finest in bandwidth offering, and as a result, ReadyWire streams are powered not by bargain-bin bandwidth, but premium providers like AboveNet, NLayer, & Cogent.

We’re in the process of relaunching our streaming media offering, enabling broadcasters small and large to take advantage of our services.  To learn more about stream hosting with ReadyWire Multimedia Solutions, click here.