Technical FAQ

What sort of systems do you use?

All sites are hosted on rack mounted Pentium IV servers with a minimum 1GB RAM.

What sort of connections do you have?

We use two network providers - Easynet 100Mb link & Clara.net 100Mb link - with BGP4 routing.

What backups do you run?

We store daily, weekly & monthly backups of each web site we host. Our servers also have spare disk drives installed so in the event of a hard disk failure we can restore all sites quickly.

What operating system are your servers running?

Our web hosting plans are hosted on servers running Centos5, a highly stable operating system, integral to achieving 100% uptime for your web site.

What sort of DNS system do you run?

We use a distributed DNS system with primary name servers in the UK.

Many hosting companies run 2 name servers on the same server as your web site. This is insecure, because if the web server goes down the DNS needs to propagate out when the system comes back on line.

Our DNS system continues to work regardless of any issues with your web site.

Some hosting companies put 2 name servers on different physical servers in the same data centre. If the line to the first location goes down, all the sites they host will diappear from the internet.

2 name servers in different countries is not always enough if both are set to update from each other. When one goes down the other will update incorrectly.

By updating from one central server we avoid this problem. The master DNS server protected by a firewall sends updates to the servers that broadcast the DNS information to the Internet. This prevents the master zone file information being corrupted by worms, trojans or other exploits. In the event that the master DNS server fails we have a backup machine running in parallel.

Some think this system is overkill, take it as an indication of how seriously we treat the business of hosting your web site.