As previously announced, the cost for .CN (China) domains has been substantially reduced to $9/domain year. Additionally, we’re also dropping the price for both .CH (Switzerland) and .LI (Liechtenstein) domains to $20/domain year.

Stay tuned for some further price promotion announcements in the coming weeks. The full OpenSRS wholesale domains price list has been updated to reflect the new pricing.

Well, as 2008 comes to a close, many of us are taking time away to spend with our loved ones, and so we have some reduced service hours to let you know about.

The table below lists the department along with any special holiday hours.

We’d all like to wish you a very safe and happy holiday season and best wishes for a prosperous new year!

Thanks to Michael Pereckas for the USB Snowman photo!

Ok, now that that’s out of the way, let me give you some background.

We first heard from Sun about the new Open Storage platform in April of 2008. The concept of mixing solid state drives (SSD) with SATA drives in a variety of configurations sounded really good, but our experience with Sun’s NFS products in the past had been less than stellar on the performance front.  When it comes to our business, especially the email side of the business, storage performance over NFS is critical. So in the past, Sun’s (and StorageTek’s) solutions were always left behind in favour of other providers (read: Netapp).

In October, Lucian Florea (our Director of Technical Operations and Planning) and I were down in the Valley talking to Sun about Tucows and OpenSRS, our challenges, and their solutions. Mike Shapiro and Victor Walker took us through a demo of the platform – it was real!  The web UI for managing the platform, replication, SSD, the low price; it was all there. This was, of course, still pre-launch, but Victor generously offered us an engineering evaluation unit to put through the wringer. I have to tell you, it was difficult to contain my excitement: in Canada, you get accustomed to waiting MONTHS before hardware released in the US is available north of the border, never mind getting a pre-release platform on site for extensive testing!

Since early November we’ve been putting the platform through progressively more demanding tests. Tests that many vendors fail miserably and which cause us to immediately halt further testing. Tests in which previous Sun/StorageTek equipment has not fared particularly well.

We start with Bonnie++, a tried and true disk subsystem benchmark suite. It’s interesting to note here that the Toro (Sun 7410) was very comparable to a Netapp 3040 in performance and beat the 3040 in many of the tests.

We next move on to a suite of tests using tools we’ve built to simulate the email storage subsystems: many threads, many directories, and huge numbers of files in the directories being randomly created, read, stat’d and deleted.  Many vendors have serious problems when directories become heavily populated. The 3040 has a serious performance hit when there are more than 1,000 files in a directory (the exact number is unclear, but somewhere between 1,000 and 5,000 files performance really drops off). I was happily surprised to see that the Toro we tested didn’t suffer a performance penalty until there were over 100,000 files in a directory and even then the hit was pretty minor.

We’re now working on getting the hardware deployed into our dev/qa environment for email so we can run our email platform on a Netapp drive side by side with the Open Storage hardware for some direct application comparison testing. If  that goes well, we’ll progress to our production test environment and then to limited production deployment on test mailboxes. Finally, if all this testing goes well, we’ll have the ability to slowly introduce the Sun platform into production. This is a painstakingly slow process, but it’s necessary to ensure the stability and performance of the OpenSRS platforms.

I’ll close with a reiteration of my opening:  I’m really impressed with this platform.  Sun’s done an amazing job, and the Open Storage platform is going to shake the (largely ridiculously overpriced) enterprise storage market to its core. Keep up the great work!

.INFO, .ORG, and .ASIA have a 4 hour scheduled maintenance window.

Time: December 20th: 05:00 - 09:00 UTC.
Your Local time: http://tinyurl.com/6rrwy2 to http://tinyurl.com/5wrcpq

Service Impact: Domain provisioning and WHOIS will be unavailable. Customers who have enabled provisioning queuing will have their orders queued until this complete. Domains will continue to resolve normally.

Earlier this month VeriSign released their last Brief of the year, which as usual was packed with all sorts of interesting facts. I always encourage our customers to read these Briefs, as they’re often full of data that can help our customers grow their businesses. For example:

• According to this quarter’s brief, the top five ccTLD registries in Q3 by domain name base were: .CN, .DE, .UK, .NL and .EU. All of these represent large domain markets which are experiencing significant growth. These also happen to be easy domain extensions to introduce to your business using OpenSRS.
• In Q3 2008, the .COM/.NET renewal rate industry-wide was 72 percent. If your renewal rates don’t hover around 70 percent, it can be a signal that your business may be experiencing retention/satisfaction issues. You can monitor your renewal rates and other business facts using the “Advanced Business Reports” link in OpenSRS.
• A surge in online video viewership and use, combined with an increase in quarterly .TV registrations, is making the .TV increasingly relevant and useful. The .TV extension is another easy opportunity to introduce a new domain name into your sales process.

I find that the Brief is rather well-hidden on VeriSign’s site, and that each one is released with little fanfare. I highly recommend bookmarking the site and checking it quarterly; I’m sure many industry participants still have yet to discover this data gem.

Devoted blog readers will remember that back in October, I posted an entry about my meeting with our Resellers in Iceland. Though the boss hasn’t let me travel since then, I have been in touch with some of our other Resellers and wanted to share some of their stories with you. This latest installment in the “Meet the Resellers” series features Eric Longman of zConnect. Eric was kind enough to answer some questions I sent him via email.

Eric Longman, zConnect

James McNally (JM): Eric, tell us how long zConnect has been doing business and about all the services you offer to your customers.

Eric Longman (EL): zConnect has been around for about 12 years now; we bought the company in 1999. The company was built on dialup Internet access and Windows-based hosting, and had about 50 (small) customers when we bought it.  Within a year, we had grown the customer base to something like 250 customers, and have been shifting the focus more toward small businesses. Today we’ve got more than 300 customers, and are focused entirely on small and mid-sized businesses (up to about 100 employees). We provide web and email hosting services, spam/virus filtering, web design and maintenance, and server co-location services.

JM: Where are you located and what makes it such a great place to do business?

EL: We’re located in Marietta, Georgia, just north of Atlanta. Atlanta is fantastic because there’s such a strong business community here, strengthened by several large universities in town (Georgia Tech, Georgia State University, Emory, Morehouse, Clark Atlanta, Spelman College, and others). There’s a strong entrepreneurial spirit in Atlanta, and a large market for our services.

JM: I understand you’ve been with OpenSRS since 2000. Can you describe what the domains business was like way back then. Any funny or interesting stories?

EL: We registered our first domain name through OpenSRS on February 17, 2000, and it was definitely like setting up shop in the wild west! The business models for selling domains were all over the map – some people signed up with OpenSRS so they could bundle domain registration with hosting plans (which was essentially where we were), while other companies built businesses specifically around selling domain names. We were so steeped in the notion that domains cost $35/year that it was unbelievable to be able to buy them for less than a third of that price. Everyone just seemed giddy about the possibilities.

At that time, the mail lists represented a fantastic community, with dozens of messages flowing back and forth daily. They positively crackled with discussion ranging from pricing and services to technical challenges and the competitive landscape. I think everybody felt like they were best friends with Scott Allan, Ross Rader, Tom McDonald and Chuck Daminato. Heck, I think there were resellers who cried when Chuck announced he was leaving Tucows!

One funny thing: We were probably the first Reseller to get the client code up and running on Windows servers, and actually published a HOWTO before Tucows even managed to get one online. In fact, for years, the semi-official HOWTO for setting up the client code on Windows was actually a link to a page on our website. We even created our own repository with the necessary Perl modules and made it available to the community. Improvements to the client code over the years obviated the need for our stuff, but it was kind of neat to be the “go to guys” for OpenSRS on Windows.

JM: How has your partnership with OpenSRS helped your company succeed?

EL: One of our biggest clients today started their relationship with us as a domain registration customer! Over the past eight years, it’s grown from a few domain names to multiple managed, co-located servers, web development work, and a really strong business relationship. We’ve got lots of clients today who started out with us because of OpenSRS services. Even when things haven’t gone well, it has actually helped make us better, because we grew monitoring and reporting tools that have helped us do a better job with all of our services.

JM: What can we do to make the relationship stronger?

EL: Just don’t forget that the relationship was based on an important understanding: that we always own the customer. The unusual and special thing about OpenSRS was that everything you offered was always based on the premise that we control the relationship with the customer, and that OpenSRS would simply fade into the background where our customers are concerned. By doing business with us the way we do business with our customers, we’ve been able to grow together.

The other important thing is to never lose sight of the fact that when things don’t go well, it reflects on my business. My customers don’t give a darn that I’ve outsourced service delivery for some aspects of my company, and they hold me directly responsible when it doesn’t go well. We put a lot of trust in OpenSRS to do a stellar job running services for us!

JM: Any other suggestions or feedback for us?

EL: We appreciate the relationship we’ve built with OpenSRS over the past eight years, and look forward to many, many more! Thanks for everything.

If you’re a reseller interested in sharing your story with our readers, get in touch with me (jamesmATopensrsDOTcom). We’d love to hear from you!

The .DE registry has a 3 hour scheduled maintenance on Tuesday, December 9, 2008.
Time: 8:00 - 11: 00 UTC
Your local time: http://tinyurl.com/5toozj to  http://tinyurl.com/6kcjxu

The .CA registry has a 30 minute scheduled maintenance on Tuesday, December 9, 2008.
Time: 14:00 - 14: 30 UTC
Your local time: http://tinyurl.com/63r7ft to http://tinyurl.com/5pezdc

The .COM/.NET registry has a 45 minute scheduled maintenance on Sunday, December 14, 2008.
Time: 01:00 - 01:45 UTC
Your local time: http://tinyurl.com/5qk4jd to http://tinyurl.com/5w92y6

The Service Impact for all the windows is: Domain provisioning and WHOIS will be unavailable. Customers who have enabled provisioning queuing will have their orders queued until this complete. Domains will continue to resolve normally.

(There were no maintenance windows scheduled during the week of December 1, 2008.)

This tool will replace the old System Status tool (formerly at http://status.tucows.com). Though we will be redirecting the old page shortly, please update your bookmarks to point to the new page.

Once a week, I will post all maintenance windows for registries and our vendors here on the Reseller blog. You can search the blog for these using the “maintenance” category. We will continue to send you our regular advance notifications via email for any of our own OpenSRS service maintenance windows.

To help you get familiar with the new tool, we created a screencast:

Email and RSS subscriptions for the old System Status page will not be migrated to the new OpenSRS System Status. To make sure that you continue to receive notifications, please subscribe to the new OpenSRS System Status. You can subscribe via email, RSS and Twitter. For more info on how to subscribe by email, either view the screencast or read the last blog post about the new Status website where we provided a step by step subscription set-up.

The business of spam, like all businesses, is a competitive one. When one large spam gang goes down, it leaves an open opportunity for other spam gangs to gain market share. It’s no surprise to hear that other spam gangs are ramping up their efforts, knowing that there’s money up for grabs. McColo is also likely scrambling to get back online in some shape or form before they lose too much of their market share.

The infrastructure in place today to protect most systems has not changed. The capacity to handle the spam as well as deliver it is still there and the gangs know that they must take advantage quickly. With the economy in a downturn, it’s not likely the people in these gangs will be able to find day jobs…not that they would ever want to.

Some Thoughts on Bots and the Personal Computer

According to the BBC News article, some 450,000 infected computers (or bots) were still trying to connect to the largest of the networks hosted by McColo. How does an innocuous home computer become part of this worldwide network of nuisance?

The process of formatting and re-installing the operating system of a personal computer has been improved slightly over the years but it’s still an arduous task that only real geeks actually enjoy.

I think about my parents’ home computer and how various “uncles” visit with contraband software; how they’ll download and install all sorts of seemingly useless computer software tchotchkes, unaware of any security risks. This is your typical bot PC. As users let their software subscriptions to anti-virus and anti-spam services lapse, their computers are left with minimal protection.

The format and re-install process should really be as simple as hitting the reset button and waiting a couple of hours and voila! Good as new. All PCs should be formatted and all software re-installed at least three times a year. I’m sure this is already a “best practice” out there, but how often does this really happen? Given the size of botnets out there, not often enough.

Can you imagine if all PCs were to be formatted and their software re-installed on the same day? Spam levels could drop by 80% or more in one shot! Let’s have an annual PC reformat day and let’s see what it does to spam levels worldwide! What do you think?

.UK
The .UK registry has a scheduled maintenance on Friday, November 28, 2008 UTC.

Time: 08:00 - 08:30 UTC
Your Local time: http://tinyurl.com/5z392m to http://tinyurl.com/6d5mgt
Duration: 30 minutes
Service Impact: Domain provisioning will be unavailable. Customers who have enabled provisioning queuing will have their orders queued until this complete. Whois is unaffected. Domains will continue to resolve normally.

.NAME
The .NAME registry has a scheduled maintenance on Sunday, November 30, 2008 - Monday, December 1, 2008.

Time: 23:55 - 00:25 UTC
Duration: 30 minutes
Your Local time: http://tinyurl.com/6juogs to http://tinyurl.com/5pevxg
Service Impact: Domain provisioning and WHOIS will be unavailable. Customers who have enabled provisioning queuing will have their orders queued until this complete. Domains will continue to resolve normally.

OpenSRS Storefront
We are migrating the IYD Affiliate resellers into OpenSRS Storefront. To complete this move, we have scheduled a 36-hour maintenance window. If you are not an IYD Affiliate, please disregard this message, and note that OpenSRS Storefront is in maintenance. This maintenance pertains only to Storefront. All other OpenSRS services will remain available.

Time: Monday, December 1, 2008 13:00 to Tuesday, December 2, 2008 17:00 UTC
Your local time: http://tinyurl.com/57a32x to http://tinyurl.com/5fo6sd
Impact: For IYD affiliates, your end-users will be unable to modify existing domains registrations and services during the migration. By mid-afternoon, December 1, 2008, new domain purchases via Storefront will be available.

This is our anticipated schedule for the migration. We will keep you updated on System Status of any changes.

December 1, 2008 13:00 UTC Migration Commences
In the first stage of the migration, managing your domains services through Storefront will be unavailable. This includes transfers and administrative changes to your existing domains. With your new Storefront, you can purchase new domains while the migration is in progress. Domain names will continue to resolve during this time.

During the migration, the registrar tag for the WHOIS record will change for your domains. WHOIS for your domains will be intermittently unavailable as we make the changes.

December 2, 2008 11:00 UTC

You will be able to manage your domains and services. Note, that any changes made at this point may take up to 6 hours to take affect. At 11:00 UTC, we will begin the last stage and change the nameservers.

December 2, 2008 17:00 UTC Migration Completes

Once the migration is complete, you will be up and running as an OpenSRS storefront users. All changes made to your domains and services will be processed as usual.