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.

Yes!  Until you receive an email from your hosting company telling you that you’re using more than your share of server resources.  Or, you found out that you have so many visitors hitting your site that it’s simply slowing everything down to the point that no one wants to bother clicking around on your website.  What do you do?

Time to Plan for an Upgrade

If you’re currently on a shared hosting plan, it might not be a bad idea to consider upgrading to a Virtual Private Server or a Dedicated Server.

Virtual Private Server–  a method of partitioning a physical server computer into multiple servers such that each has the appearance and capabilities of running on its own dedicated machine.

Plus Side-  Most hosting providers will offer you with a dedicated amount of CPU power and RAM, providing you with the tools to keep your website trucking along.

Bad Side-  This is still technically a form of shared hosting.  If others on the server are getting hit hard with traffic or doing something shady, your site may suffer.

Dedicated Server– is a type of Internet hosting where you can lease an entire server that is not shared with anyone.

Plus Side- It’s all yours baby!  Everything about this server is all yours and you don’t need to worry about others messing with your site performance.

Bad Side- There may be a bit of a learning curve.  Because it’s all yours, you more than likely will be responsible for some sort of server management tasks that you didn’t have to worry about under a virtual private server plan or certainly under a shared hosting plan.

Bottom Line

ReadyWire Virtual Dedicated Servers are fully managed, meaning we’ll take care of all of the technical aspects of your server so that you don’t have to.  Plus, plans start at just $49/mo.

ReadyWire is proud to offer the Intel Atom 330 Dedicated Server, which is a fantastic upgrade from shared hosting, for only $126.95/mo.

All in all, if it’s time to make a move off of shared hosting, ReadyWire has a solution to fit your needs.  Thoughts?  Comments?  Questions?  Please leave them as a comment so that we can all learn from each other!

Preventing fraud in WHMCS is quite simple! In this blog, ReadyWire shows you how!

This afternoon, someone visited ReadyWire.com, signed up for a reseller hosting account, and used someone else’s PayPal account to pay for the purchase.

Now, this is hardly breaking news.  Unfortunatley, in the ecommerece world, this sort of transaction occurs all the time!

To help offset her student loan debts, my wife recently started selling cosmetic products through one of the major independent sales programs.  At her first showing, a woman chose to pay for her purchases using her credit card.  When my wife told me about this, I grew jealous.  Oh how I wish there was a way that a web hosting business could be a ‘card present’ establishment.

Techniques used in online card-not-present fraud are becoming more and more sophisticated.  What happened today at ReadyWire.com is a prime example.  Here at ReadyWire, we employ minFraud’sonline fraud detection service to help us screen incoming orders through our website.  The fraudulent order that we received earlier this afternoon passed minFraud’s criteria with flying colors.  On a sale of 1 to 10, minFraud rated the order a 2.5.  Some of our longtime customers had minFraud scores much higher than that back when they signed up!

With this particular order, minFraud had this to say:

This order is slightly risky, and we suggest that you review it manually, especially for B2B transactions. The order is slightly riskier because the e-mail domain, gmail.com, is a free e-mail provider

Ok, so according to minFraud, the only reason why I should be hesitant is because the individual used a Gmail address as their email address.  How many people use Gmail these days?  That’s hardly a reason to get ultra concerned about the order, in my opinion.

At ReadyWire, we activate new orders manually and do not utilize the auto-activate feature in WHMCS.  If we would have setup WHMCS to auto-activate new orders, this particular fraudlanet order more than likely would have gotten activated, and the fraudster would have received an account on our server to do whatever illegal and criminal acts that they wanted to do.  Thankfully, a little human intervention kept this from taking place.

6 Simple Steps to Take When You Receive a New Order

1.)  Do a little happy dance!  I do one every time we receive a new order.

2.)  Check the address — Plug it into Google Maps and verify that the address really does exist.  We once received an order that listed the address to a McDonald’s franchise in Tupelo, MS.

3.)  Check the area code — Is the area code located anywhere near the address that the person listed?  However, keep in mind that many people are utilizing a cell phone as their primary phone number these days.  As such, it’s not uncommon for someone who recently moved from one part of the country to another to not change their cell phone number.  I’m a prime example of that.  My cell phone’s area code is no where near Chicago.

4.)  When it comes to payments, don’t take WHMCS’s word for it!  Login to PayPal and double check to confirm that the payment came in.  While you’re logged into PayPal, crosscheck to verify that the name on the account matches the name listed in PayPal.

That’s how we caught the fraudster today!  The first and last name listed on the PayPal transaction screen did not match the name that the client used to sign up their order.

5.)  Ask your client to fill out an authorization form.
Examples:
http://www.readywire.com/forms/creditcard_authorization.pdf
http://www.readywire.com/forms/account_authorization.pdf

This is how we were able to confirm that the order we received earlier today was not legit.  We asked the individual to fax us a copy of their drivers license and they sent us this image.   Again, I went to Google to find out what an Ontario Drivers License looked like, and to my surprise, I found the exact same image online as what came over in the fax. 

This criminal wasn’t the sharpest crayon in the box.

6.)  If the customer already has a domain name, pull up the WHOIS record and verify that the WHOIS contact/address matches the information listed in WHMCS.

And finally…
6.)  Ring the number and say hello to your new customer.  You don’t need to say anything like “I’m calling to find out if you’re committing fraud.”  Simply tell your customer that you wanted to take the time to say hello and to thank them for their business.  Two things are going to happen as a result of your phone call:  A)  You’ll have an opportunity to see if the number is legit and B) You’ll have an opportunity to build a relationship with your new customer.

Without a doubt, one of these online criminals will slip through the cracks.  However, there are extremely simple steps to ensure that this doesn’t happen to you regularly.

We Want to Learn From You!
Tips?  Tricks?  Comments?  Please leave them!  We want to learn from you! ]]> http://blog.readywire.com/2009/04/fraud-whmcs/feed/ 0 http://blog.readywire.com/2009/04/getting/ http://blog.readywire.com/2009/04/getting/#comments Sat, 18 Apr 2009 03:08:26 +0000 Rick Hall http://blog.readywire.com/?p=203 For almost a year, ReadyWire Multimedia Solutions has offered Virtual Private Server services.  Because all of our Virtual Private Serverservices are fully managed, we install a number of software titles before releasing login details to our clients.

CSF Firewall is preinstalled on all ReadyWire Managed VPS Servers

One of the many software titles that we install and configure free of charge is ConfigServer Firewall.  We’ve tried many of the open source firewall applications out there, and have found CSF to be the most efficient, easy to manage, and well developed software applications available to date.

If you are using a VPS container that is powered by Monolithic kernels (i.e.: VPS OpenVZ & Paralle’s Virtuozzo),  you’ll want to make yourself aware that a couple of the IP Tables modules running on the host node ( ip_conntrack & ip_conntrack_ftp) may not function properly for you.  If this does apply to you, you’ll need to make a couple of modifications to your FTP server’s configuration file, as well as CSF’s configuration file.

1.)  Login to your server as root

2.)  Run the following command:

A.  If you are running pure-ftpd:

# nano /etc/pure-ftpd.conf

Then, search for the line that reads “PassivePortRange” and uncomment this line by removing the ‘#”

B.  If you are using ProFTPD:

# nano /etc/proftpd.conf and then search for the lin that reads “PassivePorts.”  Uncomment this line.

3.)  Restart your FTP server.

4.)  Now, we need to tweak CSF’s configuration file.  Since we’re already logged into the server via SSH, we’ll go about making the changes through the terminal window.  However, you can always make the following necessary modification by logging into WHM.

In your terminal window, complete the following steps:

A.)  #  cd /etc/csf
B.)  #  nano csf.conf
C.)  Search for the line that reads “TCP_IN”
D.)  Add the port numbers you saw in your ftp configuration just a moment ago to this line so that it reads similar to the following:

# Allow incoming TCP ports
TCP_IN = “20,21,22,25,53,80,110,143,443,465,587,993,995,2077,2078,2082,2083,2086,2087,2095,2096,1891,30000:50000″

E.)  Once you have mad the above modification, save the file.
F.)  Restart CSF & LFD by running the following command:

# service csf restart

Is it time to find a new Virtual Private Server provider?  ReadyWire Multimedia Solutions Virtual Private Servers feature a combination of the latest server-grade hardware components and industry-leading virtualization software, OpenVZ. Each managed VPS is truly a unique and private environment with its own guaranteed resources and full root access.

ReadyWire Multimedia Solutions Virtual Private Servers are fully managed.  Each server includes our complete management solution, which includes hardware management and network management, operating system and software support, proactive security patches and updates, proactive monitoring, custom firewall configuration, spam prevention, server hardening and more.

Click here to learn more about ReadyWire!

If my grandma was with us today, I know that she’d love the “Live Chat” features that you’ll find on many websites these days.  If she would have simply clicked a button similar to the one  pictured here, she would have been directed to a customer service representative.

At ReadyWire Multimedia Solutions, we started experiementing with Live Chat a few months back.  To date, we’ve held roughly 1,500 live chat sessions, which is a phenominal number for our small business.  Our goal in 2009:  Double that number!

How can we do it?  InternetRetailer.com featured in an article about a year ago that contained simple strategies on how to best utilize your Live Chat feature.

When should I invite someone to chat?

Whether you’re using a commercial product like LivePerson or Kayako, or an open source application like Help Center Live, most live chat applications enable you to invite a website visitor to chat.  Once the “Request Chat” button is clicked, the a box will appear on top of the visitors, alerting them that an agent is available to assist.

But when is the right time to invite a customer to chat?  As a visitor, the chat invitation screen can be quite obnoxious and intrusive, especially when they’re reading and reviewing your website materials.

For more details & tips-and-tricks, check out this informative article, courtesy of InternetRetailer.com.

Typical scenario:  You’re away from the office, maybe shopping with the family.  Your Blackberry, iPhone, or other mobile device starts vibrating & making all sorts of noises.  A new ticket has arrived!  You immediately pull your phone out of your pocket and press a button in an effort to see who is in need of help and why.  No, it’s not a customer writing.  It’s a pesky SPAM message.  Rats.

If only there was a way to stop SPAM messages from reaching your help desk…

1. Login to the WHMCS Admin area
2. Go to:  Configuration->SPAM Control
3. Click on Blocked Subjects and enter ***SPAM*** into the text field (be sure to include all six asterisks) and click “Add New Spam Control”

Finally, login to cPanel and ensure that you have enabled SPAM Assassin on the account that WHMCS operates under.  Thanks to the magic of SPAM Assassin, SPAM messages will have ***SPAM*** added to the subject line.  Since you just told WHMCS to block messages that contain ***SPAM*** in the subject line, all messages containing ***SPAM*** will be automatically discarded.

I’ve tested this trick on a few different WHMCS installations and I’ve found that it works just fine, regardless of if you’re using POP3/IMAP Import or Email Piping.

Ready to get started?  Get started with ReadyWire!
ReadyWire Multimedia Solutions is an Authorized WHMCS Reseller!    WHMCS is the complete all-in-one client management, billing & support solution for Web Hosts & Other Online Businesses. Packed with features, WHMCS enables you to easily and effectively manage your business. It also automates many routine tasks including invoicing, order provisioning, suspensions, and more.

Don’t take a WHMCS license from just any provider…sign up with an Authorized provider today!  With ReadyWire Multimedia Solutions, you can rest assured knowing that your license is a genuine WHMCS license.

To learn more about reseller hosting packages that include WHMCS at no additional cost, click here.

Hot Deal:  Order today and save 15% when you use coupon code LC1229!

What is DDoS
Before one can stop a DDoS attack, one must know what DDoS is.  “A denial-of-service attack (DoS attack) or distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS attack) is an attempt to make a computer resource unavailable to its intended users…One common method of attack involves saturating the target (victim) machine with external communications requests, such that it cannot respond to legitimate traffic, or responds so slowly as to be rendered effectively unavailable (Source:  Wikipedia).”

My VPS Server is under DDoS Attack, now what?

Why do you suspect that your server is under DDoS attack?  One possible sign is that your server is running very sluggish for no apparent reason.  Another possible sign is that your server has hundreds upon hundreds of Apache child processes open.

The following is a useful command that you can use to check and see if your server is under DDoS attack:
(Run this command by logging into your server as root)

netstat -anp |grep ‘tcp\|udp’ | awk ‘{print $5}’ | cut -d: -f1 | sort | uniq -c | sort -n

The above command will list the top IP’s that are connected to the server.   The following is a sample output of the above command:

1 192.168.0.1
1 192.168.02
5 192.168.0.10
8 192.168.0.24
9 192.168.0.25
15 192.168.0.26
25 192.168.0.27
30 192.168.0.29
39 192.168.0.32
100 192.168.0.50
210 192.168.0.55
359 192.168.0.31

In most cases, there is no reason for one individual IP address to be connected to your server 100, 210, or even 359 times!  So let’s block these IP’s from accessing your server.

Firewall protection for cPanel Servers

• How to Install CSF Firewall- ReadyWire VPS servers come preloaded with CSF Firewall Protection.  We LOVE CSF Firewall because you can manage it from within your WHM Control Panel.  Just in case CSF Firewall isn’t installed on your machine, click here for click my click instructions.
• How to install APF Firewall- ReadyWire recommends this for customers who are comfortable with editing files at the command line (using SSH)

Now that your server has firewall protection, let’s learn bow to block the above IP’s that are connecting to your server more than 100 times.

• How to Block an IP using CSF Firewall
  Login to WHM using your root password.  In the left hand menu pane, scroll down to “ConfigServer Security&Firewall.”  A new page will load.  Look for the section that reads “Quick Deny.”  Enter the first IP that you’d like to block in the text field and click “Quick Deny.”  This IP address will be added to the blocked list instantly.  If you’re comfortable with the command line interface, you can always enter the command “csf -d 10.10.10.10″  Of course, make sure to replace 10.10.10.10 with the IP address your trying to block.
• How to Block an IP using APF Firewall
  Blocking an IP with APF Firewall requires you to be logged in to the server via SSH.
  1.  Go to the path of APF (Typically cd /etc/apf).
  2.  Edit the file deny_hosts.rules (nano deny_hosts.rules)
  3.  Add the IP that you’d like to block to the list.  Remember to save the file when finished.
  4.  Reload APF Firewall by typing command apf restart

If you’re still experiencing difficulty after blocking the offending IP’s using a software based firewall application, it might be time to call for help.In my experience, most hosting companies are more than willing to help you get rid of pesky DDoS attacks.  However, not all data centers are ready to simply block traffic from flowing through their pipes.  It might cost you a few pennies, but consider adding a hardware firewall to the mix.  Another thing to try is to install a script that will automagically search for offending IP’s.  Click here for an example of such a script.

If you’re a ReadyWire customer and would like some one-on-one assistance, please do not hesitate to open a support ticket by visiting https://secure.readywire.com/.  If you would like to learn how to become a ReadyWire customer, please visit our home page.

Rick Hall
Senior VP of Operations
ReadyWire Multimedia Solutions

To be perfectly honest, we have not altered our marketing in anyway to result in such a dramatic increase in traffic.  The only thing I can contribute it to is Website Grader, a free SEO tool that measures the marketing effectivness of a website.  Last month, we tested our sites using Website Grader and made adjustments per the report card’s recommendations.

This free tool has made a big difference in ReadyWire.  Take a moment and see what it can do for your website.

Click here to check out Website Grader.

Rick

P.S.  As you can see, we still have some work to do.  We’re shooting for a grade of at least 95%. 
And in case you’re wondering, we started with a grade of 35%!

Can I be honest for a moment?  It has been a long time since I’ve toyed around with ClientExec.  Here at ReadyWire, we made the switch to WHMCS about six months ago.  Prior to that, we were utilizing an in-house solution.  But I digress.

I just installed ClientExec on a sandbox server to experiment the latest features that this program has to offer.  Boy was I impressed with some of the new features.  Today, I’m going to focus on the Mobile feature that I believe comes standard with the latest version, 3.1.4.

Using your mobile device such as an iPhone, Blackberry, Motorola Q, Sidekick, Palm device, etc., point your browser to:

http://yourclientexecinstall.com/mobile/

The following will appear:

Enter your username and password and click submit.  A screen similar to the following will appear:

As you can see, it’s quite easy to activate and delete pending orders as well as respond to urgent technical support tickets.  I very well may be the only one who didn’t know about this valuable feature but I thought I’d share it with you anyway.    WHMCS offers this feature as well, however it’s a $39.95 upgrade.

If you’re a ReadyWire customer, who is in need of upgrading, please open a support ticket.  We’ll provide you with a link where you can download the latest version.

–

Just for reading this blog, I’m happy to extend a special offer to you.  Utilize coupon code “BLOG806″ and you’ll receive a 25% off discount.  Experience the difference that ReadyWire can offer your business.  This offer is eligable with any website hosting purchase (shared or reseller).  Sorry, this offer does not apply to Exchange, VPS, or Streaming hosting.