cPanel Announces the Launch of 11.34

Why your company needs a Private Chat Server?

There are various reasons why your company may need to track down all chat communication that happens within its infrastructure.

1. To make sure the communication is compliant with your security policy.

2. To log all communication for regulatory compliance and certifications.

3. To lay down a new security policy and you’re unable to do so due to the lack of transparency in existing communication methods.

4. There are clients who wants to use existing popular chat clients like MSN, Gtalk etc.

Easy way out, companies usually deals this with an iron hand, not realizing it doesn’t cost an arm and a leg to implement a private chat server. This seldom goes down well with your employees when they are left without a proper communication channel at work. You might also have clients who need to communicate using one of the popular chat client. It’s difficult to convince them to use a proprietary chat client since it demands a change in their work style. In the next section, we will see how a private chat server can help you resolve this problem.

A private chat server is nothing but a proxy server that allows chat communication securely in a cloud environment. It could be hosted within your network too, but you may need to invest more on redundancy and data backup, to prevent risking disconnection and data loss during a critical moment. The advantages of a hosted, cloud platform are as given below :

1. 1. Data backup.
   
2. 2. Redundancy
   
3. 3. Low maintenance.
   
4. 4. Easy access from anywhere.
   
5. 5. Allows multiple people from different locations to work together.
   
6. 6. Sync it with your website so that clients can chat using the same server.
   
7. 7. Supports various features like chat queues - to send chats to different people based on priority.
   
8. 8. Allows popular chat clients like MSN, GTalk to be integrated.
   
9. 9. Allows permanent storage of chat logs indefinitely or for a set period.
   

In a nutshell, a private chat server can do everything for you as a fully redundant chat server, but in a secure, compliant environment.

If you need a private chat server, we can set it up for you at no additional cost. Please contact us for more details : This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

LeelaHost now supports Tomcat 7.0

As we continue to accommodate customer demands we now support Tomcat 7.0 on our servers that run cPanel®. If you have any special requirement to support this version, please email us and we will be glad to take it up.

At tomcat.apache.org, Apache Tomcat 7.x is the current focus of development. It builds upon the improvements made in Tomcat 6.0.x and implements the Servlet 3.0, JSP 2.2 and EL 2.2 specifications. In addition to that, it includes the following improvements:

1. Web application memory leak detection and prevention
2. Improved security for the Manager and Host Manager applications
3. Generic CSRF protection
4. Support for including external content directly in a web application
5. Refactoring (connectors, lifecycle) and lots of internal code clean-up

Though native cPanel code does not support Tomcat 7.0 we implement it by replacing the default installation of 5.5, manually editing the components to suit the server configuration.

LeelaHost has been focusing on Java based hosting ever since its inception. Our expertise has grown to a level that can accommodate any open source Java deployments. I hope the new deployment will help clients who are planning to migrate to Tomcat 7.0 in a big way.

How our firewall works!

Recently, many of our clients have had issues with our internal firewall. While some get blocked while they are working on a wordpress installation, few others get blocked because of frequent login failures. In this context, we thought it would be a good idea to have to our clients educated on the type of firewall we use and how it operates to prevent future blocks.
In our linux servers, we use CSF (Config Server Security and Firewall) We choose this firewall because it is natively supported by cPanel® and can easily be configured along with another brute force tool we use ie. LFD (Login Failure Daemon). They work well in tandem and LFD passes on the IP information to CSF to get the intruders blocked.

If you have a login failure of more than 10 times in an hour using pop3, your IP gets permanently blocked. Same rule applies to FTP and IMAP login.

If you have a login failure of more than 5 times in an hour (outgoing email authentication) using smtp, your IP gets permanently blocked. The same rule applies to authentication via .htaccess (When you password protect directories) and when you try to access cpanel. If it fails for 5 times your IP will again get blocked permanently.

The IP block can be frustrating at times, but please be aware that every hour we receive hundreds of attacks on our IP addresses trying to get through our firewall. So, it is sometimes essential to have some discipline in place when you access the account or the server. When you set your POP3 or IMAP address, please make sure you set it to a time interval of at least 5 minutes between each mail check. Setting it to the minimum of 1 minute will increase the chance of getting your IP blocked on the server, with a single trigger.

Though white listing your IP address is an easy workaround to prevent future trouble, we always advise the clients against it. This is because your local IP or machines may get regularly infected with viruses and other spyware, if you are not in the habit of keeping your machine up to date and patched. When your IP gets whitelisted on the server, it opens up your account for further attack eventually causing bad IP reputation for your legitimate emails. This affects not only you, but all other users on the server, if you are hosted on a shared environment. Therefore, we always advise our clients to use caution and discipline when it comes to setting up passwords and also when their accounts are configured for mail access.

However, we understand that even with such precautions, you may time and again run into trouble. Don’t forget to reach out to our friendly support team whenever such an incident occurs. We will be glad to help you with it.
Happy hosting!

Sincerely,
Sharon Rose
CEO - LeelaHost.com

Are you IPV6 ready?

Recently one of our clients wanted to have ipv6 setup on their website. I was delighted! For one thing, reserving ipv4 addresses is getting more and more difficult after the ARIN announcement on February 3rd, last year that available ipv4 address pool is now fully depleted.  Even when we insist our clients to have a sufficient reason to have dedicated ipv4, most people fail to understand the reason. We need it for dedicated nameserver setup, dedicated mail server setup and almost everything dedicated to help boost their SEO standing.  Most data centers have now restricted ipv4 allocation only to requests for hosting ecommerce enabled websites with SSL. To make it short, we liked the idea of implementing Ipv6 for all dedicated IP requirements. LeelaHost already has ipv6 implemented on our website. You may test your local Ipv6 support by logging on to http://ipv6.leelahost.com and see if your network supports it. Unfortunately, BSNL in India does not support it on all its network and that is a down side. At the time of writing this article, I doubt if other providers do it either. Therefore, moving to IPv6 alone is a decision still premature under the present network scenario we have around the world.

One of the main reasons why most people opt for a dedicated IP address is their fear of losing SEO 'points' from google for not being on a dedicated IP address. However, google has reiterated its stand that virtual hosting is not something that differentiates ranking of websites.
http://news.namesonic.com/google-dispells-seo-myth-virtual-vs-dedicated-ip/
Having said that ending up in a bad IP neighborhood can have its down sides. For example, if your website shares an IP with a domain with bad reputation, it will affect your email delivery and related services. Your SEO ranking can also be hit if you link back to such websites holding bad IP. If you run your own dedicated server or VPS, such worries are ill founded as mentioned in the link above. In that case, your IP is shared by only the domains you know. Even if you host 100 domains on your shared IP on the server that you own, the IP reputation is entirely in your control. Since LeelaHost servers are fully managed, any such requests of bad IP reputation can be passed on to our engineers who can help you to fix it.

About the author:
Vivek Prasannan is a serial entrepreneur who co-founded companies like LogicSupport.com and DigitalExpertz Pvt Ltd. He has over 11 years of web hosting industry experience. He also serves as the CTO of Notrio.com and LeelaHost.com helping to achieve their technological and infrastructural scalability. He is also a full time consultant helping hosting companies streamline their operations and acquisitions.