First of all: do not panic. What may appear to be an outage, may actually be an issue with your network connection or Internet congestion. Once you have eliminated the usual suspects, there are a few steps you can take to resolve the issue quickly and get your dedicated server …
June, 2010
April, 2010
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21 April
Setting Time to Live for your DNS records
Time to Live or TTL refers to when the nameserver checks with the authoritative nameserver to get the latest record. I caches that record for however long the TTL specifies before checking again. The lower the number, the sooner records will be updated. Many nameservers are set to a default …
February, 2010
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10 February
Twitter uses BitTorrent to boost performance
To speed up performance on its one billion tweets-per-month network, Twitter has started using BitTorrent to distribute files faster. Codenamed “Murder,” the project involves transforming Twitter’s servers into BitTorrent distribution clients. User bandwidth is not be utilized, but rather, one seed server distributes files between thousands of other servers owned …
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2 February
What is 127.0.0.1?
Question: I have been setting up my own server, and a lot of help documents refer to the 127.0.0.1 address. What is 127.0.0.1? Answer: 127.0.0.1 is the standard ip address assigned to the lookback network interface in IPv4. Because it is a standard, all server should conform to it, and …
January, 2010
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29 January
What's 192.168.1.1?
If you’ve ever performed any administrative networking commands on your computer (such as traceroute), you may have noticed the IP 192.168.1.1. You’re not the only one to wonder what this address is used for. In fact, it is used by millions of devices around the world. So just what is …
December, 2009
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29 December
System monitoring with phpSysInfo
Sometimes you just need quick information about your server without having to click through numerous control panel screens or logging via SSH. A small PHP software application, called phpSysInfo, allows you to do just that. Installed like a normal PHP script, you can access a plethora of information about your …
November, 2009
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13 November
HP buys 3com for $2.7 billion
In a deal that could have far-reaching effects on the data center industry, Hewlett-Packard has bought networking giant 3com for $2.7 billion. HP’s goal is to combine its extensive range of server offerings with 3com’s networking products. By doing so, it should be able to compete much better against Cisco, …
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13 November
Making Use of User Agent Data
Question: What are user agents, and why are they important? Answer: In the context of web servers, a user agent is any network host that connects to the server. Most frequently, it is used to refer to web browsers, but it can be other things as well. Anytime a search …
October, 2009
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16 October
Linux Dedicated Server Logs
Question: Where do I view logs on my dedicated server? Answer: Most of the logs on a Linux operating system are kept in the /var/log directory. There you will find logs for the main system, kernel, network, hardware, Apache, MySQL, and often times other third-party applications that you might happen …
July, 2009
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31 July
West Africa struggles after cable cut
Yesterday, an undersea SAT-3 cable was cut between the Iberian peninsula and West Africa. It is apparently the only line connecting West Africa to the digital world, and the cut caused connectivity problems in Benin, Togo, Niger, and Nigeria. Nigeria’s banking sector, government and mobile phone networks all suffered from …