RadioWest.ca's New Look

[Russ_Byth]

Wow Jon. Thanks very much for that explanation. I had no idea what goes into hosting a website or dealing with those that host it. I just turn on the computer and wait for the picture. I think we all need to 'chill' a bit and let those who know about this stuff do their thing. Overall I think this website is great. There's a heckuvalot more discussion about almost everything than the cut and paste focus of other sites. Take care of yourself first. We'll live!

[kat]

Jon for administrator

howabouthimself for town clown

John - I am find it difficult to believe you can find the bed each night

Top Dog for Village Idiot. Oh wait a minute, I hear he won that by acclamation.

By the looks of his current avatar, I'd stick my neck out and say he's hoping to add town drunk to his portfolio.

Oh by the way Precious Pup, did you fail Hooked On Phonics again? Check this sentence from above: John - I am find it difficult to believe you can find the bed each night

[Jack Bennest]

I love it when Kat trys but fails to insult me.


Kat - seriously I lub ya

[jon]

Any e-mail to radiowest.ca (or my personal e-mail address, which also hosted with the same company that hosts this site) is not getting through. The last time I know for sure that e-mail was "getting through" was at 1:30 p.m. Pacific time yesterday (January 21st).

If you are using Shaw as your e-mail "box" -- likely if you have Shaw Internet -- you will also not be receiving e-mail from RadioWest, myself and possibly others.

The problem is rejection at the Shaw end of any e-mail coming from our hosting company. "rejected due to poor reputation."

I am currently awaiting callback from Shaw to get the issue resolved.

[jon]

After a relatively lengthy, but productive, discussion with Shaw, I now understand the e-mail problem. The company those hosts this site and forwards my e-mail to my Shaw account, has a Neutral reputation due to some customers spamming (those customers may just have malware-infected sites). And they have to run some specific malware scanning software on their Mail Server before their reputation will be returned by Good.

From what I could tell, there is a common Internet database used by ISPs like Shaw, TELUS, Rogers, etc., that scores Mail Servers worldwide. There is special software that an offending Mail Server can have run on it that will scan it for malware and give it a clean bill of health (if it is indeed malware-free) and automatically update this common Internet database back to a Good reputation.

I have reported this problem to our web hosting company, and they have already escalated it to the Abuse Department.

Good thing: they even have an Abuse Department

Bad thing: they didn't catch this problem earlier, given it has been occurring since mid-afternoon yesterday. A pro-active approach would be to monitor that common Internet database at least once every 15 minutes to see if any of your Mail Servers were anything less than Good reputation-wise.

Back to the previous topic: Radiofan and I also noted that the poor response, or outright failure conditions, were occurring again between 9-10 a.m. Pacific time this morning.

[jon]

Several hours after I wrote the above post, I heard back from the Abuse Department, saying they were e-mailing Shaw. A short while ago, I finally found some cold hard evidence that this is, as Shaw told me, a universal issue. I have forwarded similar Bounces from hotmail and a smaller ISP in the Maritimes. And I got a rapid response, finally giving me background information and confidence that this might actually get resolved. There is no confidential details in the e-mail, so I will quote it here unedited:
We had spam outbreak activity ,the password for account on C2 server may have got hacked, we have temporarily suspended the account and reported the user, meanwhile we will wait 24 hours to see IP reputation improve and if emails are still rejected , contact Spamcop and MSN accordingly to unblock/delist IP from block list. Update us after 24 hours if issue persists.

As for the very rocky performance of this site, things seemed better today, though there were still some short duration outages that Radiofan and I felt, and a check of the logs showed that others were hit, too.

Radiofan and I are discussing alternatives. A "Go Forward Plan" as they say in the business world. The most interesting, so far, is a non-profit radio site (NOT a station) that has its own servers. And once offered free web hosting to radio tribute sites, but only ever got three takers. That was 6-7 years ago, but the three takers are still there, so I've just sent a detailed inquiry to the "owner" of the site, who I've known for more than a decade now.

I'll keep you posted on the progress.

[Jack Bennest]

Lets form a consortium. Everybody else does and issues business cards and paper "BMW"'s


If our servor is the answer - what is the cost?

I know there are five clients and maybe more that I dont know

believe it or not sometimes I think Telus might even be the answer.....but

give options jon

1. all the shopping around you have done has resulted in what?

2. if the answer is our own system - maybe money is not the problem - its the will

3. base the cost recovery on rental of the service and we all share

4. as soon as the service is paid for you upgrade - 1-2 years etc

[jon]

I never completed putting all the pieces together to create a DIY (our own Do-It-Yourself) server before realizing that hosting on the radio site I mentioned above makes more sense. One potential DIY "gotcha" that I hadn't explored was the cost of Internet connections that provide a Static IP Address (required to run your own web server), which is not offered with Residential packages, but requires a Business package. A potentially huge increase in monthly costs. And I'm sure there are other issues with dollars attached to them.

The other "gotcha" doesn't appear to have a solution "that will fly": how do we keep this thing running 24/7? Or, to turn it around, who fixes it quickly when it breaks?

I haven't fully thought that one out, but I just remembered a co-worker's story from my last job before I retired. She was doing some work on a server from home, i.e. - remotely, one evening and accidentally selected Shutdown instead of Restart. She then had no alternative but to jump in the car and drive into the Data Centre downtown here.

The point being that wherever we put our own Server, there has to be someone there, or close by, who will be able to, and willing to, physically touch the server 24/7. You cannot just assign different dayparts to different people across the globe, as they can't do everything "from afar".

Lots of things to think about.

[Jack Bennest]

I know you will research it well and come up with the easiest and most inexpensive option

I just like to empower people to go beyond the simple box and find out just what it does cost.

I knew a guy in Penticton who hated anyone one else being involved in his affairs.

He had servors in his office. Because the servors were primarily for himself he cared less if
they were down until he could get to them.

Build a system that has built in safe guards - power supplies etc

I think most systems that fail these days are where companies are getting bigger and cannot cope with the
demand and over extend their systems.

Its a complex world out there.

[jon]

It's funny, but in my first two years of retirement, I've learned many times more about running a web server than I ever did in my 30+ year career in Computing. One of those things I've learned is just how common Denial of Service (DoS) attacks are. Millions of hits on one or more of your web sites, specially crafted to create maximum havoc. Zero response to your "real" users.

That is just one kind of event that requires 24/7 availability of a good Support person. You cannot automate a solution to the problem because each DoS attack is unique. And they don't just stop after 10 seconds or so. Unless they are dealt with, they go for days at a time.

This is also a good example of a problem that cannot be dealt with from afar. You have to be attached locally to the server because the DoS attack would prevent you from getting access through the Internet, locking you out just as your users are locked out.

As I said, I have spent considerable time exploring the possibility of our own server. Current pricing and available technology at first seemed quite feasible. But there is just no way to get around the need for 24/7 technical expertise in human form. I, for one, don't presently have the expertise to handle all the things that can happen, DoS being only one. And that is not something you can learn each time something new happens. As I said above, I'm also not available 24/7.

[jon]

At the risk of using Funny to start two posts in a row, it is almost funny what a week this has been for our Web hosting company. e-mail hasn't been restored yet, but I haven't heard of any outages on this discussion forum in the last 36 hours or so.

But, as of mid-morning this morning, my "window to the world" on their site won't work because the license expired! 85 minutes to respond to my Help Desk Ticket reporting it, saying "we've just referred this issue to the right people". Thankfully, there is nothing urgent I had to do. But without the software involved, there is pretty much nothing I can do to manage our web sites. I can't even check how busy their processors are or see any information inside the database that runs this discussion forum.

By the way, it is only an educated guess, but I'd say it is more than likely that the hacking of the server we run on caused the outages/slowness this past week, as well as the loss of e-mail attributed by their support staff to the hacking event.

[jon]

I'm not aware of any problems that exist at this time with the web hosting. e-mail is finally working again, and my "window to the world" control software has its software licensing issue resolved.

I still want to formally document the issues that concern me with our web hosting company, and stare at them for a while, but I am still of the opinion that we have to move elsewhere. But at least it looks like we've got a little time to breath now.

[Jack Bennest]

Stay where you are for a spell. Document any lags or interruptions. As you know bcradiohistory.com is with Ipower
and I am not that happy but worry about making a move to another host that could present more problems


Ipowers FTP manager is a little wonky but once you get the hang of it - it ain't bad brother.


Do the research - find the alternative but move when you are ready and not before.

Everything here is okay now - I actually have no way of checking the two sites I have with
"hosting zoom"

time will tell

now jon that you have breathing room could you take down the jack's rant and the pleghm machine

[jon]

take down the jack's rant and the pleghm machine

Sorry, wrong department. That's Design, and Radiofan has the reins there.

[Mike Cleaver]

I think we all owe Jon a great deal for his work on maintaining and upgrading the technical side of this site.
I know he's been pulling his hair out since migrating to the new format and dealing with problems not of his making.
Finding a great host is hard work and they are expensive.
Again, Jon, thanks for all the work you do here to help keep us informed and entertained.