The odd-musings of Jared, the Director of Network Security for IAPS Security Services.

Hello All,

I hope this email finds you well and in good spirits. The holiday seasons are fast approaching and safety is always a concern. Remember to keep those you love as well as those around you safe during the upcoming holidays.

I have some major announcements in this email that may become quite lengthy, but please bare with me as its needed information that you all need to know and how it will benefit you as clients of the IAPS family of services.

First and foremost: British based clients.

An opportunity was brought to my attention some time ago by the president of our current United Kingdom data center, in which I have a personal business relationship with him. Our current line speeds coming directly from the data center is on a 5 Gigabit line. Now this does not mean that we get all of that line. It simply means that is the full capacity of their primary network. Another limitation from the data center was how many ip addresses per server I could buy and obtain. IAPS has a primary and a secondary backup ip address allocation per server so we would never max out our available ip addresses. If we ever ran out of our primary range, we could always fall back on our secondary range. To date, we have only had to rely on our secondary range one time for one British server. So all in all, thats good.

Why does any of this affect you?

Some time ago our primary data center in the United Kingdom began a new partnership with another data center that was 5 times more powerful and could push 3 times the load of bandwidth and server power. This partnership will be signed, sealed, and ready for production within the next 2 weeks. Now, for how this will effect you:

A.) Once we migrate to the new data center which will be done server by server, most likely in a one server a day fashion, we will be guaranteed a new line speed from 5 gigabits to 15 gigabits. This means a higher bandwidth output to the entire world. Where we were having issues in China, Thailand, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, and parts of Australia, this issue should well be taken care of.

B.) IAPS has been offered an unlimited supply of primary and secondary ip ranges that will come with no pre-set limits. As this is the case, I will be lowering our prices for personal ip addresses from the standard rate of $49 USD per account life span to $20 USD. I do my best to cut you guys price breaks where I can, but networking, server management, and security is not a cheap business to run at all.

C.) I am nearing completion of our 64-bit custom built (by me) streaming platform that will deliver a better streaming environment for all of you. This has been in development for many months and I’m always striving for new ways to get data and streaming materials to you folks at the fastest possible rate. You folks continue to renew with IAPS every year and we want you to know that we are always listening and developing new ways to get the job done better. (We are listening, even for those of you that think we don’t.) The 64-bit streaming platform will be implemented on all servers that cross over into the new data center and will be provided at the server level for all accounts without any need for you folks to change anything at your local computer level.

D.) We are currently allocated 2.5 Terabytes of monthly bandwidth per server. Of that, we currently use around 2 TB per server per month. The new data center change will come with an automatic minimum of 4 Terabytes to ensure that we continue to operate within full capacity and have a small reserve available. Additional bandwidth will be provided automatically should we reach and exceed this limit.

E.) Server migrations will be in the following order: 1st: Secure9. 2nd: Firehawk. 3rd: Silverhawk. 4th: Skyhawk. The Seahawk server will not be moved at this time. If you are a client on that server your service will not be interrupted at this time. The data center change only affects our British based services. It does not affect our other service areas: United States, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Germany, Czech Republic, Malaysia, The Netherlands, France, Belgium, Spain, or Italy.

There are plans for 2010 to add Australia to our line up. For all those of you that have requested it, I have not forgotten. Budget constraints and available manpower have affected us all. New services that are planned for release in January 2010 will include the following:

A.) Managed Microsoft Exchange 2010 Server Mail Services.
B.) Sharepoint Portal Services.
C.) Microsoft Communications Server 2010 Services.
**More details about these services will follow in December 2009.**

New services to be released November 1, 2009:

A.) Microsoft Windows 2008 Enterprise Server web hosting.

Benefits of this hosting platform:

A.) 130+ web based applications that come with an auto installer. Categories for these website add-ons include: Analytics, Blogs, Content Management, E-Commerce, Forums, Picture Galleries, Guestbooks, Mailing Lists, Calendaring, Chat Programs (to host your own chat website), Web Portals, Project Management, Backup Infrastructure, Help Desk, Asset Management, Billing, and more.

B.) A built-in website builder that requires literally no technical knowledge. It features step by step instructions for each page of your website. You have total control over this and can add / remove content based on your personal choices.

C.) Email Service included: Web based or Pop3/SMTP. Anti-Virus and spam filtering will be performed at the server level before it ever reaches your account.

D.) Private & protected domain name registration through IAPS is always available.

Ok, as my final summary and to wrap up this email, please have a pleasant and safe holiday season and keep warm for those of you in the colder climates of the world. If any of you have any comments or questions regarding this email, please feel free to reply directly back to it. Thank you all for your time and your patience as we strive to give you the best possible service.

Warmest Regards,

Jared T.
IAPS Director of Network Security

https://www.intl-alliance.com/store

http://www.jareds-blog.com

Hi Folks,

I noticed a lack of bandwidth on the U.S. based NetNewz server over the past couple of days and started submitting multiple trouble tickets to the data center. Last evening they finally conducted an investigation and found out that they put the server on the wrong network segment. Finally, they physically moved the server to the correct segment of the network. They had to allocate a new ip range to the server as well. For those of you that are currently assigned to this server, please get in contact with us for the new ip address for your vpn service. Thank you.

Hi Folks,

I wanted to sit down and take this opportunity to explain whats been going on over the past 2 weeks. After over 18 months of client feedback, we’ve integrated several new features into a few selected servers. These new features took a bit to master but we believe we’ve finally got them down pat.

The team here at IAPS has been working over time and our phone lines have been flooded with calls, some with complaints and some with praise. As a few of you know, we’ve brought back the Goldenhawk server from the grave. We’ve rebuilt and redesigned it yet again and its functioning very well at this point. I wish to thank my beta tester volunteers for your time in testing and re-testing this server. You guys provided valuable support and information that enabled us to finely tune that server. If you are currently a client in good standing with IAPS and have an active account on any server in any jurisdiction and would like to become a beta tester as well, please send an email of interest to beta@intl-alliance.com and we’ll keep you updated as to when we’ve got new toys that need testing.

My apologies go out to all of you that have endured server outages and disconnections on the servers that we’ve been recently working on. Our goal was to provide the most up-to-date servers that provide the best bandwidth delivery system and provided the best overall experience we could provide. We feel now that we have met this goal and are proud of our recent accomplishments.

I’d like to thank all the branch offices and resellers for their help and participation in making this transition period one of the smoothest ones I’ve seen thus far. I’d especially like to thank the branch offices in Spain, Thailand, Bermuda, Germany, Ireland, France, and Canada for their utmost dedication in professionalism. You guys helped pull this all together and ensured we were on the right track. My utmost gratitude to all of you.

Folks, the polls are over-flowing with results on the new Silverhawk server. Many are surprised at the ease of the setup. Setup just once and its all one click from there. It really is that simple! We’re supporting both Pc’s and Mac at this time. We’ll get to you Linux users soon enough.

Reports are coming in quoting download speeds of 2.47 Mbps. Thats extremely fast folks and the premium bandwidth on this server is the best I can get. I’ll post another blog with further results later today when more people have had a chance to send in their results.