Archive | July 2007

links for 2007-07-23

Jul22

Godaddy update

Jul22

As indicated in an earlier blog post, I was having bandwidth issues with Godaddy’s dedicated servers.

An outline of the problem so far: Godaddy claims the server should have access to 100mbit of bandwidth. Even in a busy datacentre I would expect atleast 10mbit acheiveble bandwith on this connection.

Speed tests done at the server show that its more like a residential cable/dsl connection with downloads in the range of 2mbits and upload in the range of 400 kbits.

They call this a dedicated server and assure you that they have redundant network connections, great uptime, dedicated bandwidth. etc. They sell you a maximum of 2000 Gb / month of transfer per server.

Showing the 2mbits connection sustained over a one month period:

2mbits/sec x 1 mB/8 mbits x 1 GB / 1024mB x 1 min/60 sec x 1 hour/60 min x 1 day/24 hours x 1 month/30 days

This gives a grand total of : 632 GB /month.

Anyone with any experience with servers knows that it is not possible to sustain any connection at 100 % saturation for extended periods of time.

I would be interested in knowing if any Godaddy dedicated server users are able to push more than 500 GB of data per month.

Getting back to the original problem, Godaddy claimed to have increased the port speed to 100 mbits after a support ticket request. No change in speed was realized though.

links for 2007-07-21

Jul20

Godaddy Dedicated Server Capped to 10 mbps – for ‘convenience’

Jul20

Came across this today after several days of back and forth with their customer support department to increase port speed on a dedicated server. Very frustrating as the customer support staff didnt know the port speed could be increased, and we didnt realize we were being capped at 10 mbps. (Thought it was due to Godaddy’s crappy Network overselling).

Have requested 100 mbps now, will see what the results are.

PS: the 10mbps maxed out at 2mbps for some reason.

Dave wrote:
Dedicated Hosting servers are on high speed, redundant networks, connected to our access switches at 100 Mbps. There is a policy on them that limits bandwidth leaving your server to 10 Mbps. This is a safety valve, for your convenience. For most customers, keeps them from grossly overrunning their bandwidth limit in case of a break out. For most, 10 Mbps is an adequate speed to host several web sites. If you need the full 100 Mbps, ask, our level 2 customer support staff can change you to a 20 Mbps policy or unleash you at 100 Mbps.

The performance of the Core 2 Duo systems is very good. It’s plenty of horsepower for the needs of our customers.
However, there is an untapped market for high end, like Xeon, and other goodies like private networks and load balancing. We’re investigating this exciting avenue with our market analysts and engineers.

Dave.

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CAPTCHA- Completely Automated Public Turing Test to tell Computers and Humans Apart

Jul19

A CAPTCHA is a type of challenge-response test used in computing to determine whether the user is human. “CAPTCHA” is an acronym for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart”, trademarked by Carnegie Mellon University. A CAPTCHA involves one computer (a server) which asks a user to complete a test. While the computer is able to generate and grade the test, it is not able to solve the test on its own. Because computers are unable to solve the CAPTCHA, any user entering a correct solution is presumed to be human. The term CAPTCHA was coined in 2000 by Luis von Ahn, Manuel Blum, Nicholas J. Hopper (all of Carnegie Mellon University), and John Langford (of IBM). A common type of CAPTCHA requires that the user type the letters of a distorted image, sometimes with the addition of an obscured sequence of letters or digits that appears on the screen. Because the test is administered by a computer, in contrast to the standard Turing test that is administered by a human, a CAPTCHA is sometimes described as a reverse Turing test.

Human solvers

CAPTCHA is vulnerable to a relay attack that uses humans to solve the puzzles. One approach involves relaying the puzzles to a sweatshop of human operators who can solve CAPTCHAs. In this scheme, a computer fills out a form and when it reaches a CAPTCHA, it gives the CAPTCHA to the human operator to solve. If the humans are dedicated employees who receive minimum wage this is not likely to be viable. Another variation of this technique involves copying the CAPTCHA images and using them as CAPTCHAs for a high-traffic site owned by the attacker. With enough traffic, the attacker can get a solution to the CAPTCHA puzzle in time to relay it back to the target site.

links for 2007-07-20

Jul19
  • RST returns are filed on a monthly, bi-monthly, quarterly, semi-annual or seasonal basis. How often you should file is based on the amount of RST you charge your customers monthly. Tax Collected Invoiced/Month Filing Frequency
  • New and Improved – well for gmail users at least. Their SMTP responds differently than other MTA”s. Make sure to enable the pop mail in the gmail account settings first
    (tags: php gmail)

links for 2007-07-19

Jul18

links for 2007-07-18

Jul17

links for 2007-07-17

Jul16