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.

Hurry!  These deals won’t be here for long!

http://www.readywire.com/blackfriday/

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.

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!

Shared Hosting-  99% off your shared hosting order

Reseller Hosting-  Free Account Upgrade & Free Domain Name!

Virtual Private Server Hosting- Free Disk Space & Bandwidth, and WHMCS!

Dedicated Servers-  Prices starting at $45.00

Hurry!  Time is running out.  Fetch these hot specials today!

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!

• The ability to view & pay invoices over your phone
• The ability to open a support ticket, view support tickets, and reply to open support tickets
• The ability to submit a reboot request
• And many more features

If you are a current ReadyWire customer, we could use your help!  If you would be interested in being involved with a mini-beta test of the Mobile Interface, please click here and send me an email.  We’re an all-Blackberry office, so iPhone users are sought after desperately.  I’ll see to it that you’re rewarded handsomely for your time and efforts. 

As soon as the mobile version is ready, we’ll be sure to include it in our next customer newsletter.

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.