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

Greetings Every One,

I hope all of you have started the new year well and things are going as expected. Things on our side keep developing and our pursuit of better technology never rests. I made an announcement several weeks ago now that our Switzerland services would all be switching over to the L2TP system for performance and security needs. This service is now complete and fully operational. (For you Swiss Zattoo fans boy do we have a treat for you!)

Speaking of Zattoo, IAPS has acquired several French and Spanish Zattoo premium accounts and we can get more on an as-needed base. What does this mean? It means we will be able to properly open up the live streaming channels that the Zattoo High Definition package for France and Spain offers. Currently standard accounts (any one with a French or Spain ip address) that does not have a Zattoo premium account can’t watch anything because Zattoo for those countries went subscription only. So now we can properly offer accounts for these countries. Zattoo Switzerland, Germany, and United Kingdom are still free accounts for streaming with just a normal ip address from those countries. (Zattoo Switzerland offers all their countries combined into one for Swiss subscribers only and its free of charge. So Switzerland ip addresses are your best value any way you look at it.)

As I mention the more secure and data speed friendly L2TP protocol, please be advised that the L2TP system is currently offered for the following countries: United States, United Kingdom, Switzerland, Italy, Germany, The Netherlands, Portugal, Poland, Belgium, Spain, Ireland, Czech Republic, France, and Finland.

I will be formally opening Finland and Lithuania hopefully by the 1st February 2010. IAPS is currently awaiting proper licensing from RIPE, which is the issuing authority for all of Europe.

As a simple matter of pure organization, last month IAPS re-categorized our VPN Services Category and also added a brand new VPN Combo Accounts category. We did this in an effort to offer a better and easier to use category layout for our store area. We hope this has fulfilled the requests we received for that.

For those of you not aware yet, during this past week we have also added Italian TV and Spanish TV to our store area.

IAPS is in beta testing phases for a new auto-dialer system that will take the manual work out of setting up a vpn connection on your local computer. Once beta testing has been completed, we will offer this system publicly. Public beta testing is not yet available but when it is, we will ask for volunteers.

As a parting note, please be advised that our 6 Month VPN Sales in our Store Area will come to an end on January 18, 2010.

Have a great rest of month folks and let us know if you need anything. Many Thanks.

I normally cruise the various Zattoo version from time to time when I have a chance to see whats on. I normally stick with the English channels as that is the main focus of many of our clients. This past evening was quite a shock. I normally ignore the enormous amount of channels in the German language (although I do speak and understand it fluently) and head straight for Euro News, France 24, or BBC News. But I decided for once to cruise the rest of the channels and was shocked to see numerous channels running tv porn.

I was always under the understanding that Zattoo was against that kind of tv. But its there for those of you that enjoy it.

As I promised several weeks ago to a number of you, I have made our newest Swiss servers all L2TP compatible. This further increases security for every one as well as brings the Swiss servers over to a 1 gigabit network for the fastest speeds ever. Additionally, I have now discounted all Switzerland VPN Service 6 Month Contracts down to just $40.00 USD for a limited time to introduce the power of these networks. If you have ever wanted the Swiss version of Zattoo which includes not only English language channels, but channels from Spain, Germany, and Italy, now is the time to satisfy that desire.

All new ip ranges are now available for almost every single country we offer and 95% of all countries are now on the L2TP service. Also, there are a vast abundance of Italian VPN Services available also at the discounted price. For you gamers, IAPS can provide you with nearly any European country you need for things live Xbox Live. Don’t miss those game demos or downloads because your restricted by country. All it takes is a little IAPS magic to remove those restrictions placed upon you just because your located in a specific country.

You can check out all our latest offerings on the IAPS Monthly Specials Page or see our Complete VPN Countries List at your convenience.

Hello Folks,

As part of the largest expansion the IAPS Security Store has ever released, we are proud to add the following countries to our list of service areas effective immediately:

Ireland
Belgium
France
Italy
Spain
Poland
Denmark

The addition of these new countries marks a new era for the IAPS Security Store as one of the largest privately owned and operated security providers on the internet today. With investments totaling over $150,000 U.S. dollars in machines, man hours, technical support personnel, and network availability, we have the capacity to serve a wider global clientele and can meet even the roughest demands.

Whether your into offshore gaming, online private trading, looking to watch streaming media from abroad, or are restricted by your isp, government, university, or employer for what and where you can go on the internet, the IAPS Security Store has a solution for you.

All new locations have been started out with a 25% off introductory rate. Once you’ve seen the power of these new networks, we hope to have you aboard for a long time to come.

For the many of you that have been asking me for ages to provide an Irish server, I have now answered this request and all the Irish streaming media awaits you to start viewing it.

I have looked into the French, Spain, and Belgium services offered by Zattoo. France and Spain do require paid subscriptions to view that media. This is not a fee imposed by IAPS, but rather directly by the creators of Zattoo themselves. Zattoo in Belgium is no longer offered at all. Zattoo’s free locations are still in the United Kingdom, Germany, and Switzerland as far as I am aware. I will check on the Denmark version and post an update on my blog whether its still free or not. Or you can simply reply to this email and ask what the results were.

If you want to know if a particular streaming media site works before you purchase it, please let me know so I can go test it. I know of a great many of them, but not all of them. So I’d be happy to accomodate checking into sites that you’d like to be able to view.

If you are in the middle east, such as Qatar, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, or United Arab Emirates etc., and cannot reach our site to place your order, (middle eastern governments are not IAPS friendly for some strange reason) please send a reply email directly to staff (at) intl-alliance.com and we will provide an alternative ordering solution for you.

For those of you not aware and use it, we do accept Liberty Reserve and Pecunix digital gold currency as a payment option. Money Bookers is also an option as well. We are considering several other payment options but are open to suggestions from the public as to payment providers who would be more convenient to you. If you have any questions, comments, or need to know if something works or not, please let us know accordingly. Thank you.

Folks, the preliminary news from our testing locations in remote countries have been impressive on our newest server code-named “Firehawk”. This new Supermicro Superserver has now been reported to have out classed the Silverhawk server. I was personally watching Zattoo in HiQ (HD) and I even impressed with the performance of HiQ and a large screen. “Firehawk” didn’t miss a beat.

Some of you have reported issues with Channel 4 so we specifically tested that site with its newest and greatest web-based player and it streamed perfectly without buffering one time. All the other “usual suspect” sites were tested and found to be very compatible with “Firehawk” and we are very pleased. The initial setup took less than 24 hours from start to finish and the preliminary tests are now over and “Firehawk” is now on the production line as a first rate server.

Personal ip addresses are immediately available for purchase on this server. A personal ip address for your account assures that only you have access to that ip address. Personal ip addresses are good for the life of your account and only incur a one-off fee of $49.95 USD + the normal cost of your account.

Keep in mind that the British TV Sale starts tomorrow at midnight (U.K. time) and lasts for 48 hours only.

Folks, we’re currently looking into streaming media support for the Xbox 360. We just installed one in the control center here and are looking into how to maximize the streaming ability. I’m impressed with its features so far: can play any normal dvd, (whether burned or store bought), can connect to your Windows Media Center enabled computer, can play any files on your computer over a wireless network, and so many more features to name.

I’m looking for a way to get applications such as Zattoo to stream wirelessly from the computer (laptop in this case) to the Xbox 360 and onto the tv screen. Once I can accomplish this, I’ll be more than happy to post the results and instructions here. If any of you are more familiar with the Xbox 360 than myself or the IAPS crew, please feel free to add your comments below.