WDTalk

Hostirian is now offering FREE Uptime Monitoring For Everyone

Sign Up Now

Overview

We monitor server availability, performance and security externally from our monitoring stations located in carrier-class data centers.

24 x 7 x 365 Monitoring

Unless you are a robot, it is not feasible for you to keep checking your website or server to see if it is available. Leave this tedious job to our automated service, and enjoy peace of mind!

Support of major Internet protocols

Monitoring of the major server types found on the Internet:

• your servers (PING)
• your IMAP4 servers (IMAP4)
• your web servers (HTTP)
• your secured web servers (HTTPS)
• your mail servers (SMTP and POP)
• your MySQL servers (MySQL)
• your file servers (FTP)
• your domain name servers (DNS)
• your services based directly on TCP

Uptime & Performance Reports

Do you know the uptime and performance of your website or server? We make all these available to you in easy-to-read reports.

Downtime Notification

Be the first to know when your website or server is in trouble! We notify via email Easy to Use  No complicated software to install; all you need is a web browser.

FAQs

1. Can I use your software on my web site? We do not allow other sites to run our software but you may link to any of our pages from your site.

2. Do I need to download or install anything to use Hostirian’s Up Time Monitoring? No, all monitoring services work remotely from our servers. All you need to do is login to your password protected member area to use our service. You will be able to view account history details and have results emailed to you.

3. How can I contact Hostirian? You may send an email to support@hostirian.com

4. How do you determine if a server is up? Our software checks the server response code from your host and if the server response code is “200″, “302″, “301″, “403″ or “401″, your hostname is considered “up”.

5. How far back do you keep monitoring statistics for my account? Detailed statistics for each domain are kept for 2 months while statistic summaries are kept for the life of the account. All statistics for our premium accounts are keep for the life of the account.

6. How many domains can I monitor? You may select the monitoring interval that you want for each domain.

7. We already have an internal monitoring system. Why would we need your system? The Internet is a node/gateway based system. Your internal monitoring may tell you that a device is broken inside your network or even that the outbound gateway is having problems, but it may not inform you that inbound connections from different nodes on the Internet are able to access your website. Hostirian provides monitoring from various geographically diverse locations on different networks.

8. What are the costs for your services? Hostirian provides all of our basic services free of charge. We ask only that you register as a member.

9. What protocols do you support? We support: HTTP, FTP, POP3, SMTP. Additional protocols are available with our premium services.

Sign Up Now

River City Internet Group

River City Internet Group (RCIG) is an Internet delivery ‘holding company.’ RCIG (http://www.rcig.net) is a Missouri Corporation founded in 2001 that owns or invests in companies that are predominantly focused on providing Enterprise and Carrier class Internet solutions.

Through its wholly owned companies, RCIG offers a broad array of Internet solutions.

• Internet Access- MetroEthernet, OC3, DS3 and T-1 (Primary Network)
• Hosting - Colocation, Dedicated Servers and Shared Hosting (Hostirian)
• Network Monitoring Management (NPG)
• Off site data protection (E-Backups) for a variety of of industries including financial services, legal, health care, banking, state and local government, and manufacturing.

River City Internet Group is committed to fulfilling solutions for their customers in a complete, flexible, scalable and professional manner. Their customers rely upon Hostirian’s expertise in enterprise hosting, as well as other technicial matters – offering superior network connectivity, an unmatched guarantee and accommodating terms, making RCIG a logical business partner.

Hostirian

Hostirian (http://www.hostirian.com) is a leading web hosting and colocation provider in the Saint Louis area. By focusing only on web hosting and colocation, Hostirian is able to provide a level of customer support and consultation that remains unmatched by other providers, and at a cost substantially less than national web hosting companies. Hostirian offers shared and fully managed web hosting services, and colocation to businesses operating mission critical systems. Hostirian also offers web hosting services to a growing number of application service providers, enabling them to more efficiently deliver application services to their customers over the Internet. Hostirian also offers related value-added services, such as fully managed firewall services, and consulting services (including capacity and migration planning).

Hostirian provides 24x7x365 live telephone technical support, including customer requests for server re-boots (provided at no charge). Hostirian also manages two network operation centers, monitoring servers – then notifying customers when alerts are necessary - to ascertain what course of action the customer desires Hostirian to initiate. Hostirian guarantees a 15 minute response time to begin evaluation of any problem (24x7x365). The customer is given an Escalation List that contains the office and cell phone numbers of the actual engineers responsible for and most familiar with their hosted architecture.

Hostirian manages three data centers. See Tour and Technical Specifications at (www.hostirian.com/tour/)

• Network Services Headquarters
  11756 Borman Drive
  Saint Louis, Missouri 63146

• Bandwidth Exchange Building
  900 Walnut
  St. Louis, MO 63102

• Globe Building
  710 N. Tucker
  St. Louis, MO 63101

Hostirian understands bandwidth and network redundancy requirements. In it’s downtown data center, Hostirian offers free cross connects from the ‘meet me’ room for providers who supply an extension to the customer’s rack or cage. Current promotions include an assortment of plans with 2U, 10U, rack or full cage options – ranging from $99 to $4000. Each plan has an allotment of bandwidth in Mbps, power, set up options, and guaranteed uptime SLAs.

Hostirian is the fastest growing and most reliable web hosting company in the Saint Louis region. It is profitable, consistently adding significant new web hosting business each month. And it has a track record of greater than 99.9% uptime.

More importantly, every customer receives the ‘home town’ and individual attention that it deserves – so that they can do what they do best – run their business.

I remember when I first learned how to use print screen - to capture screen images. I thought to myself, “Wow, imagine the possibilities!” Technology has advanced so rapidly, it’s impossible for one person to keep pace with new developments and software, even with something as seemingly simple as screen capture programs.

Doing a Google search for “screen capture programs” just now returned over  – 37 million results. Some of the more highly recommended programs are:

SnagIt 10 by TechSmith® (free trial/$39.95)

Snagit gives you the tools you need to create engaging images for presentations, feedback, tutorials, and training documents.

The only con I saw was that it could only save video files in .AVI format.

FullShot 2012 by InBit. (free trial/$49.99+)

FullShot is a professional screen capture (print screen) application designed for any Windows user who needs an effortless, effective way to take screenshots of Windows screens. It’s perfect for capturing on-screen images you want to include in manuals, training handouts,presentations, marketing materials, and web pages.

Cons - This product doesn’t seem to offer the ability to capture video clips.

Jing and Jing Pro - by TechSmith® (free versus $14.95/year)

Jing Free - SWF Video | 5-Minutes of Screen Recording | Mark-Up Tools for Images | Screencast.com Free Account

What do I use? – the FREE version of Jing because it fits what I do for now. If you need to produce MPEG-4 videos, I highly recommend Jing Pro as it offers the best combination of features vs price.

A KVM switch (keyboard, video, mouse switch) essentially allows  - a user(s) to access multiple CPUs from a single monitor, keyboard and mouse. KVM switches are found in virtually every data center, because let’s face it; having hundreds or thousands of monitors, keyboards or mice in a DC is unrealistic.

Integrated KVM switching systems provide administrators – KVM, console, and remote power control of thousands of servers, which results in space savings, improved server management, reduced heat issues – and the bottom line, cost savings.

Data Centers typically use enterprise wide solutions – geared to Network Operating Centers (NOC), which allows their engineers to remotely access servers.

If you rent colocation space for your businesses rack servers – most KVM will usually take up 1U of space, up to a 42 port solution.  When ordering, be sure to remember rack mount kits and interface cables.

All KVMs are NOT created equal – variances can be in audio support, client platforms, supported operating systems, interfaces, sharing, remote power management and 208 volt power capability.

What about security? Enterprise level KVMs offer administrators complete control of all the devices that are attached, allowing them to set permissions for all other users.  They can create individual user profiles and assign access privileges. One example of an access privilege would be the ability to define which servers a user could view and access. Some allow time-out features for inactive users.

Run anti-spyware and anti-malware programs, and keep them up-to-date. I’ve installed Microsoft Security Essentials on all of my systems and it works great. Don’t mix anti-virus software on your system. This is a recipe for disaster. I had Malwarebytes and MSE on my Vista desktop and it constantly locked up. Once I removed MSE, no more lock ups.

Disable file indexing. Indexing extracts data from every file on your hard drive to create a searchable keyword index. The idea is sound – it allows you to search for words or phrases inside of documents, but it’s also VERY resource intensive.

Add additional memory. Memory executes in nanoseconds, while hard drives run in milliseconds, even at 15,000 rpm. Obviously, the more fast memory you have, the less often your system will have to access your slow hard drive. The same applies to CPU cache. A larger CPU cache adds another layer of speed to your system.

Not all systems use the same configuration of RAM modules. Check your motherboard manual or specs – find out the maximum RAM you can install and in what configuration.

Run a monthly disk cleanup. Temporary files can take up Gigabytes of space if allowed to accumulate over time – so schedule a monthly disk cleanup to delete these files. And even though a debate rages over rather to defragment large hard drives, in testing this has demonstrated performance boosts.

Streamline start up programs. Eliminate any programs you don’t really need from your start up routine.

Downsize programs via the Control Panel. Use the ADD/REMOVE Programs from within the control panel to delete programs you no longer need or use. Many of them run background processes that drain your systems resources. For example, if you’re using Windows Media 10 or 11, do you really need RealPlayer?

Perform Windows Updates regularly. Pay particular attention to critical and security updates.

Miscellaneous Stuff. Do you really need drivers for printers that are no longer attached to your desktop or on your network? Erase them. And do you really need 3000 fonts? Unless you’re a graphic artist, trim down the one’s you’ll never use.

Your accounting department has been complaining – about your network slowing to a crawl, but your sales reps are finally making cold calls – because they can’t surf the web or use email (Or they’re out on the golf course ).

What’s the problem? Could be a collision domain. Computer networks can be segmented physically as well as logically (Ethernet protocol), leading to circumstances where one single network device can send packets throughout a network segment forcing every other device to acknowledge those packets. Or it could be a group of Ethernet devices in a LAN running on CSMA/CD, connected via repeaters competing for network access. If two devices follow the exact procedure at the exact time, their transmissions will collide, and they will both become unusable. Simply put, a collision occurs when two or more network devices are trying to transmit packets at the exact same time.

As collisions increase on a network – the less efficient the network is. So how do you combat collision domain? Utilize switches and/or network bridges that filter and forward packets by their MAC address. A switch or network bridge will forward frames with addresses that are not in its domain, and will duplicate and broadcast frames to the devices inside its network.

Routers can filter, forward or drop packets – based on MAC addresses. Routers reduce collision domain by broadcasting to the LAN only packets that have addresses on that specific network. Routers are able to redirect packets not only by  IP or MAC addresses, but also by data type (email, graphics, plain text), function or port used (FTP, HTTP, SMTP, POP3) plus other variables and functions (acting like a firewall) in order to improve network performance.

Contrast your network to – data center networks that occupy entire buildings and house thousands of servers. They’re designed to host mission critical computer systems, with fully redundant subsystems and security zones. They contain routers and switches that transport traffic between those servers and the outside world. Redundancy of their Internet connection is usually provided via BGP bandwidth, blending multiple upstream providers.

How would you like to reduce your advertising cost - on Google AdWords or Facebook, yet improve your click through rate (CTR)? Without going real deep into how and why this works, price per click or impression is a factor of a quality score – and that score is determined by how well your ad performs. Essentially the lower your click through rate, the lower your quality score and the higher your resulting cost per click or impression.

Combining poorly performing - keywords, keyword phrases or interests with those that perform well lowers your overall click through rate and also your quality score. It’s far better to create multiple separate campaigns with fewer keywords or interests, first to sort out what works from what doesn’t work and second, to create better performing keywords and interests campaigns to improve your click through rate, thus improving your quality score and reducing the resulting cost per click or impression. Sometimes this means reducing the keywords, keyword phrases or interests in your campaigns to as few as two or three top performers.

Often, a poorly performing – keyword, keyword phrase or interest is simply a bad match with its associated advertisement. You’ll never know this though if you lump sum all your keywords or interests into one campaign. In Facebook, it’s easy to create multiple similar campaigns and simply change out interests. Stop paying for interests that perform poorly and focus on those that do perform well. Click through will improve, quality score will improve and the corresponding cost of your campaigns will decrease.