What Is Domain Name Privacy? Why Do You Need It?

With a growth in cyber crime, there are chances that someone might take control of your domain and your business might come to a standstill. Any hacker who manages to gain access to your web hosting account and your domain name registration can control your domain name, divert your website traffic to his/her website and access your email. In case the hacker manages to steal your domain name and transfer it to their name, then you will have to take the legal way to get the domain name back which can be complicated and time consuming. This sounds scary!

You can safeguard your domain name by ensuring domain name privacy. Before you go about doing that, it is important to have complete knowledge about domain name privacy and its benefits. Here are some basic tips about ensuring domain name privacy:

Renew Your Domain Names Regularly

You might lose a domain name if you fail to renew it in time. It is simple to setup a renewal process for your registered domain names. The domain renewal dates can be set up in your desktop calendaring program so that it warns you a month before or a week before the domain renewal due date. Many web hosting companies and domain name registrars issue a month’s notice in advance to let you know that the renewal date of your domain name is approaching. If you have registered a domain name for a very long time span, be careful as there are chances that you might not remember the domain renewal date.

Keep Your Account Secure

If anyone gets access to your web hosting or domain name registration account, that person can potentially hijack your domain name or transfer it to a new owner or account; therefore it is important to maintain the security of your account. Make sure that your account is protected by a strong and complicated password that is difficult to guess and does not get cracked by any hacker. You can also use additional authentication methods like two-factor authentication, a security token or a one time pass code that is sent through an SMS to a mobile phone. It is also important to ensure that the account password is changed if the person responsible for managing all the domain names of your account leaves your company.

Opt For Private Domain Registration

It is always beneficial to opt for domain name privacy. There are many domain name registrars out there that will provide you with domain ID protection or domain privacy with an additional charge. This is totally worth the investment and it is the best way of keeping your domain name details secure. If you register a domain with domain ID protection, your details will be blocked by the domain registrar. When people try to find your domain name information on the WHOIS registry, they won’t be able to see information like your name, e-mail address, home address and contact number. All they will be able to see is the name of your host as the registrar.

Use Extensible Provisioning Protocol (EPP)

EPP provides a higher level of protection for your domain name. You are assigned a unique Authorization Information Code (AIC) for every domain and this code must be given to the new registrar before transferring a domain name. If your AIC is kept secure and confidential, it provides an efficient form of protection to your domain.

Use A Professional And Permanent Email Address

When you specify your contact email address while registering a domain name, avoid the use of a free email address that stands a chance of getting expired if not used on a regular basis. If your email ID is no longer valid, someone else could use it in an adverse way and he/she can use the ‘forgot password’ feature to have the password emailed to their email ID.

Protect Your Personal Data

Online identity theft is a common issue. We take extreme care while protecting our privacy when it comes to critical information like phone numbers, bank details and the information we share on the social media websites. The same precaution should be taken when it comes to disclosing your personal details for your WHOIS domain record to avoid identity theft. A WHOIS domain record contains sufficient data for a skilled hacker or thief to start creating problems. Use of domain privacy covers your real information and no one can view it.

Stop Unwanted Solicitations

As your personal information is visible along with your domain name record, it is an open invitation for the sales people, telemarketers and spammers. There are many services that search WHOIS data for getting contact information. Once you register a domain with all the information, it will not take long for you to start receiving calls and emails about various services like SEO, content optimization, mailing services, freelance opportunities etc.

Protect Your Email Address

When you opt for domain name privacy, your registrar usually creates an alias or a unique email address that is used in place of your original email address in the WHOIS record. This email address does not remain the same; it is updated on a regular basis. This is done to stop the unwanted emails from spammers.

Prevent Domain Name Hijacking

Domain hijacking used to be a big issue earlier. Now, the domain transfers are locked by default by many domain name registrars after acquisition. As a lock is set, nobody can transfer your domain name away from you unless the hacker somehow manages to get access to your domain registration email and account. Opting for domain name privacy and hiding your personal information makes it extremely difficult for anyone who wants to get access to your account.

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What’s the Ideal Web Hosting Plan for Your Business?

How to Select the Perfect Web Hosting Plan for your Business Website?

In the current commercial market, a website plays one of the most important roles in the success of a business. It is the second identity to your company and can act as your address, contact and even part of your brand image.

The quality and performance of your website depends a lot on its web host and the choice of the hosting plan. So if you don’t make the right choice, you are playing with the success of your website. It will eventually make an impact on your business, which could translate into a significant percentage of your profits.

So make sure that you have the perfect web hosting plan.

Your Web Hosting Needs

The first step to choosing the right web hosting plan is not to go around and do the research.

It is about evaluating your business’ needs from your site. We propose the following questions, the answers to which will help you begin your search.

◈ Are you going to host multiple domains?
◈ Are you going to have an e-commerce section on your website to support your sales?
◈ What will be your traffic volume?
◈ Where are your customers?

Ultimately you are simply choosing between the web hosting plans that fit best for your business. It is best to start to host with the provider that offers all major hosting plans, so you don’t have to jump providers, which they make extremely complicated while trying to retain their customer.

Major Hosting Plans

The next step will be to check the features of the 4 major hosting plans. Every decent web host will have these packages and many will have even sub-plans under these major plans. The features, benefits, and the limits can also vary from one host to another. Let’s check what each of these plans usually has.

Shared Web Hosting

If you have a small or mid-sized business website, a shared hosting plan can be an affordable and perfect option for you. Modern shared hosting plans offer a lot of disk space and bandwidth to meet the needs of small and medium sized websites. Shared web hosting can be good for small businesses that generate just average traffic.

As the name suggests, choosing a shared hosting plan means your website will be hosted on a server which is shared by many other websites. While your needs are fulfilled, it will be affordable. It is affordable because so many websites are sharing the cost of the server resources.

But there is something that goes against this plan too. Having so many websites on the same server could mean interference in the form of a decrease in performance. Other websites can have traffic spikes or software issues, and the results will have to be ‘shared’ by everyone on the server. If you can afford a little more (because quality comes at a little higher price) you should consider a dedicated hosting plan. A shared hosting plan could still have some restrictions in terms of traffic volume, software support and database support.

Dedicated Web Hosting

As the name suggests, a dedicated hosting plan will ‘dedicate’ an entire server to your website. Imagine the amount of disk space and bandwidth you will have at your disposal. But there is a catch to it – the price. It can be quite expensive because you will have to afford the cost of running and maintaining the server.

If your business fits into any of the following two categories, this can be the perfect hosting plan for you:

◈ You have a website that receive tons of traffic every day.
◈ You have an e-commerce business or some other niche operations that require the highest level of security for information.

So what are the other advantages of having a dedicated server? You will not have to worry about downtimes because of traffic spikes. The upper limits will be so high that your website will never slow down or have a downtime because the traffic just shot up. Besides, you will be able to customize the software programs and operating systems you want to install on the server. Dedicated web hosting is recommended for larger websites that have high traffic volume at all times.

This plan is usually available in two forms – managed and non-managed. The choice will depend on whether you can manage your server yourself or not. Many companies have their IT department taking care of their dedicated hosting plan. But if you want, you can choose the managed plan and get the web host to do the job for you.

VPS Hosting

A virtual private server (VPS) plan goes between the shared and dedicated web hosting plans. That may seem to be confusing. It is basically a shared server having other websites on the same server, but all the resources are divided in a fixed proportion. So you have an assurance that a spike in another website’s traffic will not affect your site’s performance.

As can be expected, VPS is more affordable than choosing a dedicated package. But it is highly stable and safer compared to a shared plan. It is similar to dedicated hosting in that it can handle a larger volume of traffic. If you have a large site that receives tons of traffic all the time, a VPS plan could be ideal.

The world of web hosting is quite complex. So we cannot just wrap up with these hosting packages. There is more to hosting your website than choosing one of these plans. Each of these packages will have several factors. You will have to consider them even when you are evaluating the above-mentioned 3 options. So these main factors are disk space, bandwidth, the quality and features of the control panel, technical support quality, guarantee of uptime, CMS and pricing. These factors will have certain limitations and it is up to you to determine that your chosen plan has these limitations meeting your specific requirements.

Cloud Hosting

Cloud hosting offers many advantages over both shared and dedicated hosting solutions. Your major benefit is being able to modify server speed based on your specific needs. For example if you are selling christmas lights, your traffic will peak few weeks before Christmas, this is when you will probably need more processing power and RAM.

Choosing cloud hosting also means additional security and reliability. Software issues in other cloud servers aren’t going to affect your servers. It doesn’t matter how the traffic surges take place in other cloud servers, your resources aren’t going to get affected. Besides, you will not have to worry about hardware issues too.

Cloud servers are known to have the best-possible reliability to cost ratio. They also offer you the benefits that come with cloud computing. If you are thinking of choosing or upgrading to standard dedicated servers, cloud hosting may prove to be more efficient economically. You will be receiving more resources and faster server for almost the same price. Even when you need additional resources, you could easily make adjustments. In cloud hosting traffic surges don’t cause any issues.

The major drawback is the storage location. Files to serve your website like images may be located quite far (distance wise) from the server that the request is being made to, thus extending the load time for the page.

Server Location

You should not only consider the choice of the web hosting plan, you should also take into account the location of the server. The ideal location will depend on a number of factors – your target markets, quality of hosting providers, and their connection to the communications network.

When choosing the location of your servers, keep in mind the distance for data to travel between the server and your users. This distance is going to affect the speed at which your website loads for your target audience. So if you have your target market in Germany, you should be choosing a web host that has servers located in Germany.

The hosting provider’s infrastructure and network are also going to have an impact on speed. So if your target market is the global marketplace, then having your servers in the United States could be a good decision. The communication infrastructure and connection to other networks is of the highest quality in the U.S.

Server location can also have an impact on your website’s search engine optimization. SEO is something you don’t want to compromise upon. Google takes server location into account for when trying to check if your site is relevant to a specific country. So if your server is located nearer to your target audience, it could be helpful in ranking higher. Besides, if your website is using distributed content delivery networks (CDNs) or if it is hosted in a location with better server infrastructure, it can also send a positive signal.

What is CDN?

Now that we have mentioned CDN, it will be worth explaining what it is and why you may need it. A Content Distribution Network or Content Delivery Network (CDN) is a server setup that enables faster and highly efficient “delivery” of your files, especially heavy media files. It will maintain copies of your files at different locations known as Points of Presence (POPs) across a global network. This helps speed up the process of file deliver and your website and content loads faster. This system thus eliminates the concept of server proximity to your target marketplace. So if your business involves delivering rich media such as photos, video or music to your target audience, you should consider choosing a hosting service that offers this system.

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What is DNS – Domain Name System – DNS Protocol – DNS Resolver

DNS is the abbreviation of Domain Name System which is a stratified naming system for services, computer and for any other possessions attached to the network or internet. DNS (Domain Name System) is responsible to links a variety of information with domain names allocated to each of the participants. The main task of DNS (Domain Name System) is the translation human language into the binary code. It is also serve as the distributed database that offers mapping among Internet Protocol addresses and host names. DNS makes facilitate the client to consign a domain name to groups of internet users in a significant way.

The DNS (Domain Name System) share out the conscientiousness of conveying domain names and mapping those names to IP addresses by delegating trustworthy name servers for each domain. Authorized name servers are consign to be accountable for their exacting domains, and then allocate other reliable name servers for their sub-domains. This method has through the DNS (Domain Name System) circulated and error understanding and has helped keep away from the need for a single central register to be constantly asked and updated. Usually domain name system restores different types of data such as mail server list that recognize email for a specified internet domain. In short DNS (Domain Name System) is a compulsory part of the functionality of the internet.

DNS Protocol

The DNS protocols contain various kinds of DNS messages that are progressions according to the data in their message fields. DNS protocols consist of message type which consists of queries; updates, and responses, DNS (Domain Name System) query message format has fixed length which is 12 bytes. DNS Header has fixed length and all other such as Question Entries, Answer Resource Records, authority Resource Records, Additional Resource Records have variable length. There are many other type of DNS (Domain Name System) messages or protocol such as DNS query message header, DNS query question entries, DNS resource records, Name query message, Name query response, Reverse name query message, DNS update message format, DNS (Domain Name System) update message flags, Dynamic update response message.

DNS resolvers

The DNS (Domain Name System) client side is called DNS resolver which is responsible for starting and sequencing the inquiries that eventually guide to a complete resolution of the sources required. DNS resolvers and DNS server are performing recursively on behalf of the resolver.

Resolving typically involve iterating through numerous name servers to locate the desirable information. Some resolvers purpose simplistically and can converse only with a particular name server and these all called stub resolvers which are rely on a recursive name server to execute the work of finding information for them.

DNS related files

DNS (Domain Name System) consist of boot which is a BIND boot configuration file, Cache.dns use for uploading, Root.dns which is a root zone file, and zone_name.dns which is a used when any zone entered and configured for a server.

DNS Resource Records

DNS Resource Records contains alphabetic list such as A which is a Host address (A) resource record, AAAA which is a IPv6 host address (AAAA) resource record, AFSDB which is a Andrew File System Database (AFSDB) resource record, ATMA which is a Asynchronous Transfer Mode address (ATMA) resource record, CNAME which is a Canonical name (CNAME) resource record, HINFO which is Host information (HINFO) resource record, ISDN which is a Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) resource record, KEY which is a Public key resource record, MINFO which is a Mailbox mail list information (MINFO) resource record, MX which is a Mail exchanger (MX) resource record, NS which is a Used to map a DNS (Domain Name System) domain name, etc.

DNS Architecture

The DNS Architecture consist of the following

Domain name space

Domain name space included a hierarchy of domain names and every node has zero or many source record having information linked with the domain name. The domain name space tree divided into zones starting at the root zone. A DNS zone contains of a compilation of linked nodes convincingly served by authorized name server because a single zone can host multiple server at a time.

Domain name formulation

Domain name formulation contains one or many parts which is technically called labels that are usually concatenated, and surrounded by dots. The right label express the peak level domain and it move down from right to left .every label to the left side classify a subdivision of the domain to the right. Each label has 63 characters and not surpasses a total length of 253 characters. Technically contains character signify as octet. The ASCII characters are allowed and included A to Z and 0 to 9, and hyphen. It is called LDH rule. The domain name relate as a minimum one IP address.

Internationalized domain names

The allowable character set of the DNS prohibited the demonstration of names and words of a lot of languages in their inhabitant alphabets or scripts. The IDNA system has approved by ICANN which diagram Unicode strings into compelling DNS character set. ICANN accepted the installation of IDN country code domain.

Name servers

The DNS system is upholder by a dispersed database system. This system employs the client server model and the knobs of database are the name servers. Every domain has minimum one authorized DNS server which distributed information about domain and name server of every domain subsidiary to it.

Authoritative name server

It is a name server which is responsible to answer about the configuration that it is held by an original source. Only Authoritative name server returned answer to inquiries related to domain name that have been exclusively configured by the administrator. Authoritative name server can be whichever slave master which uses an automatic method of the DNS protocol in contact in the company of its master server which maintains alike copy of the master account. Each zone of DNS ought to be a set of authoritative name servers. After the registration of domain name their setting up has need of the assignment of a primary name server and minimum one secondary server. The necessity of manifold name servers intends to make the domain still practical yet if one name server happen to unreachable or untreatable. The title of a primary name server is exclusively resolute by the precedence specified to the domain name registrar. For this reason usually only the completely competent domain name of the name server is compulsory.

Recursive and caching name server

The authorized name servers are enough for the process of the Internet. While with the authoritative name servers working Each DNS inquiry should start with recursive inquiries fro the root zone and every user have to employ resolved software competent of recursive operation. The effectiveness can be improved by dropping DNS traffic across the internet and boost performance in end user. DNS cache servers also supported by Domain name system which has ability to store information for a long period resolute in the configuration and these caching DNS server also called DNS caches. The amalgamation of DNS caching and recursive functions in a name server is not obligatory. These all can be put into practice separately in servers for particular reasons. All ISP commonly offer caching and recursive name servers for their client.

DNS and Active Directory

The active directory of windows server uses DNS as its domain manager location system. For any type of task such as updating, authentication, searching etc any computer based on window server use DNS to allocate domain controller of active directory and all these domain controller use DNS to trace each other.

DNS and WINS

The previous means of name declaration for a Windows network was WINS. DNS is unlike than WINS because WINS is flat and DNS is hierarchical name space. Those clients and application rely on NetBIOS prolong to use WINS for name declaration. WE can get maximum competence by the mixture both WINS and DNS for a variety of network resources and services.

DNS and DHCP

For DNS server of Widows the DHCP service offers default carry to register and update information for inheritance DHCP clients in DNS sector. DHCP integration facilitate a DHCP client that is incapable to dynamically update DNS sources records straightforwardly to have this information updated in DNS onward and undo lookup zones by the DHCP server.

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Difference Between Parked, Addon & Subdomains

What is the difference between parked, addon, and subdomains?

Customers who are new to the hosting industry, at times, get confused between the control panel – parked, addon, and subdomains.

Here is a brief explanation of what it is all about so that you know what you should be going for, to match your requirements.

1. Subdomain

As the name suggests, it does not have a new domain name. It is a is a second website, with its own unique content, but will always carry the name of the parent/main domain.

As an example, you have the domain domain1.com. Its document root will be /home/username/public_html (this could vary at times). Contents will be loaded from this location when domain1 is accessed in the browser.

You decide to have a wordpress installation in a sub directory blog (/home/username/public_html/blog), which you intend to access as blog.domain1.com

This is when you go for a subdomain. The same contents can be accessed as domain1.com/blog or blog.domain1.com

If you own domain1.com, you can have many subdomains (depending on the plan you are on) as blog.domain1.com, help.domain1.com, gallery.domain1.com

2. An addon domain is a second website, with its own unique content. This type does require you to register the new domain name before you can host it.

You host domain1.com and would also want to host domain2.com too. You then need to register domain2.com and add it as an addon domain under the hosting account of domain1.com.

The document root would normally be /home/username/public_html/domain2.com (in this case),

The addon domain will look completely independent to the outside world with no means for anyone to know that this is running on an account under another site.

There are 3 ways of accessing an addon domain:

a. domain2.com

b. domain1.com/domain2.com

c. domain2.domain1.com

3. Parked Domain

A parked domain is NOT a unique website. This is a mechanism where you would want more than one domain name to point to the same website.

You have a main domain domain1.com to which you want to point domain2.com, domain3.com and domain4.com

All you need to do is add domain2.com, domain3.com and domain4.com as parked domains of domain1.com. Anyone accessing any of these sites will be greeted with the contents of domain1.com

Parked domains, again, would require you to register the domain names in order to use them.

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The Difference Between Cloud & Hosted Services

It seems as if everyone has their own definition of cloud and hosted services. In truth, cloud and hosted are very similar — both are off-premise and are accessed through an Internet connection. While some believe that these services are essentially the same, experts argue that cloud services are more interrelated with other web-based offerings. When it comes down to it, the main difference between the two services is multi-tenancy.

Multi-tenancy

Multi-tenancy implements the sharing of resources and costs among a large pool of users and allows infrastructure to be concentrated in locations with lower costs, maximizing peak-load capacity and improving utilization and efficiency in systems that are often only used up to 10 to 20% of the time. Hosted services generally do not offer the same cost efficiencies, elasticity, or reliability as cloud services. As a result, cloud computing is more fitting for disaster recovery and business continuity.

The benefits for the cloud provider are amplified by only having to support a single version of software, the uniformity of its hardware environment, and its efficiency. The general rule is that if a solution is not multi-tenant, then it isn’t a cloud solution, and won’t have the same benefits.

Hosted Services

Hosted services are technology services offered by a provider hosting physical servers that are removed from the customer’s premise. A hosted service provider owns and oversees infrastructure, software, and administrative tasks at a private location. The system is available to clients, typically through a direct network connection that uses the Internet (VPN, Remote Desktop, etc.). There are three main elements of this service: Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). These three combined encompass software, network capacity, and the equipment used to support operations such as storage, hardware, servers, and networking components.

Cloud Services

Cloud services are a subset of hosted services. Hosted services, even those accessible using the Internet, cannot be referred to as real cloud solutions unless they have been built to capitalize on the collaboration and interconnectivity that is a fundamental part of the cloud. Cloud applications are web-enabled, meaning, instead of being based on physical hardware, they are based in a shared virtual environment managed by a cloud-hosting provider. Only server installation and a device with an Internet connection are needed. Many line-of-business (LOB) applications are adding this functionality to their offering. Cloud servers can be constructed to provide varying levels of performance, security, and control to configure to your business’s needs.

Cloud servers allow your business to optimize IT performance without the overwhelming costs associated with the purchase and management of fully dedicated infrastructure. These servers are the ideal fit for businesses of variable demands and workloads. Cloud services offer on-demand utilities, multi-tenancy features with seamless uninterrupted scaling, and features that are sure to meet your business’ needs to adapt and help you meet the demands of your client base.

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How to Choose Between SSD and HDD VPS Hosting

Modern-day businesses are beginning to realize the importance of agile hosting services. It has become evident that the quality of hosting will determine the success of several crucial parameters such as SEO, bounce rate reduction, customer retention, and to an extent even the sales numbers. Given the relevance of these factors in determining the success of any business, companies have begun to look for faster and better hosting services.

Gone are the days when companies would rely solely on the options provided by their website developers. Today, companies research the best possible solutions and evaluate what may be ideal for them. While most organisations have already made the move from Shared to VPS Hosting, smart organizations are diving further to determine the benefits between SSD vs HDD VPS Hosting. Let us try to find out what is the difference between Solid-State Drive and Hard Disk Drive along with your best possible option.

Mechanism

Before we take a look at the difference between SSD and HDD, it is vital to understand the underlying working mechanism of both technologies. HDD is a decades-old technology based on the mechanism of vinyl records. The HDD drive stores data in patterns magnetically. It has a thin metal disk which rotates at 7200 RPM to record and read data. Each driver is equipped with sensors capable of reading the data and sending it back to the motherboard.

The problem, however, arises with the fact that the disk will approximately spin 3.8 billion times a year leading to wear & tear and eventually some mechanical failure. On the other hand, SDD does not contain any moving parts. It stores data on interconnected flash memory chips. It can be seen as an upsized and advanced version of the regular pen drives. SSD uses a NAND-based flash memory making it more secure even when the device is turned off.

Speed

The working mechanism plays a significant role in dictating the outcome of SSD vs HDD Speed tests. HDD is equipped with moving parts bringing lesser read speeds and write speed as compared to SSD. SSD with its NAND flash memory is capable of clocking substantially high read and write speeds. The rotational latency in HDD leads to lower speeds when compared to SSD.

It is obvious that hosting servers employing SSD will offer better speeds than service providers using HDD storage. A faster loading website will give a significant boost to your SEO and improve your Google ranking. Search engine algorithms give importance to the website loading time in determining the rankings. Google and other search engines rewards websites with faster loading times as it provides better customer experience.

A faster loading website also gives a better customer experience as they can navigate without any lag and waiting time. Also, with the attention span of viewers reducing with ever increasing internet speeds, you have a narrow window to attract a customer before they decide to switch to another website. Web hosting with SSD ensures that your customer is delighted to visit your site and use your product or services.

Data Security

Data security is another crucial parameter that can severely affect your organization. The hosting servers are operational 24*7 which is different from the production environment. Overloading of hardware with I/O requests can lead to the failure of the hard disk. Such a failure could cause your website to go offline and raise uncertainty over the recovery of your data. While most data centres do keep a backup of the data, but there is always a possibility that you may lose some due to unforeseen circumstances. It is worth noting that the cost of data recovery with HDD is higher than that for SSD.

SSD comes with faster processing time reducing the risk of failure due to increased I/O requests. These also do not have any mechanical parts that could undergo wear & tear over a period of time and lead to mechanical failure. So, your data is extremely secure with SSD VPS hosting.

Environmental Factors

The usage of SSD drives in data centres results in lower power consumption when compared with the power consumed by the HDD drives. This is because the latter generates heat due to the mechanical moving parts and needs more energy to cool down. SSD drive, on the contrary, does not generate any such heat during its operation. Besides saving the environment, opting for SSD VPS hosting will also save your financial resources as the plans are comparatively cheaper.

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