System Parameters
For those customers who are knowledgable
of WWW servers, or are just plain curious what type of computer their files
will be located on,we have put together this information page.If you have
any further questions about our system please feel free to email
us.
CPU : Our
main server called MAX is
a dual processor Intel pentium 266 mhz system. This means our main
motherboard actually has two seperate CPU chips working con-currently with
each other sharing the load of the www server requests. At this time we are running at
20% of CPU utilization. Many people ask why such a low CPU speed by todays standards.
We could easily install faster CPU's but serving up webpages is not a huge draw on a computers
system resources. 5 gigabyte of data transfered per month is not taxing our system at this time.
Motherboard : We use a Tyan Tomcat IV
dual processor motherboard on MAX.
Memory : Currently we
run 80 meg of system memory upgradeable as necessary to 512 MB. Memory is very cheap these days
we can easily install additional memory if we ever need to. Currently our available free memory
while under load is 33-40 meg free.
Harddrive : We use multiple harddrives
for various reasons, mainly to provide redundancy and backup reliability.
Maxtor is our drive of choice. Hence the systems name MAX
Operating System:We use
Windows NT 4.0 operating system, this provides us with various advantages
on our end. To our customers it provides a very real advantage: Upon uploading
your HTML files to our system, you do NOT have to set file permissions, world
read permissions, or change your file extensions to .html, as you would
have to do with a Unix based system.
Network : We have a network of
3 other computers we can turn online as necessary to either share the load,or
simply act as backup systems.
Backup Server: We maintain a completly seperate computer
and harddrive strictly as a backup in case the main computer should ever
fail.This lowers the turn around time tremendously! This also has a 2nd very real
advantage for you. If anybody ever breaks into the system, and destroys our operating system
they cannot attack the backup computer because it is turned off until needed.
A major attack cannot hurt the backup systems computer.
Backup Disk: We use 2 seperate
backup systems. For everyday useage and quick restoration of files. We depend
upon Iomega Zip drives running thru a SCSI interface. This way we
can quickly rebuild files or directories that may become corrupted. In addition, as meantioned above we also
have a complete backup computer, with its own memory and harddrive. If the main server
ever fails, all we need do is simply turn on the switch of the backup.
Backup CD Disk: We also use a
rewritable CD ROM of all customer files, we write to this disk biweekly,or
whenever a new customer is added. Hopefully one of these backup methods
will be useable in a crisis.
24 hr network connection: We use
specialized Software to maintain our www server 24 hrs a day. Currently
we are the only company in the United States to be using this software.This
software was generously written for us and does an excellent job keeping
the system online.We have the software set to poll the www server every
5 minutes, non stop, 24 hrs a day. If the www server ever goes down
or does not function properly this software will restart the www server
and bring things back online all unattended. We also use a seperate piece
of software that monitors the line quality of the connection. By pinging
the internet every 2 minutes it can tell how good the actual internet connection
is at any time. If our internet connection drops below a certain minimum
standard it will automatically; drop the connection, reset software, and
reconnect to the internet backbone. Finally we have a 3rd party company that
constantly checks our connection, if that company finds us down, they send an email to
us on a seperate account which we can access from our homes. This way we are made aware if
the system goes down over weekends or at night. Not to worry though, our system stays up for months at a time without problems.
WWW server software: We use AOLSERVER
as our software of choice. This software provides us with many options
and abilities not yet offered by some of the other companies. There are
still many features of this server we are still exploring. If you see something
missing you would like in a www server please let us know.
FTP software: We have picked
WAR FTP DAEMON as our ftp software this is the software you will see
first when you upload your files, once they are on our harddrives then
AOLSERVER takes over and does it's job. WAR ftp provides the option for customers
of Resume file downloads.If your connection breaks during access,you do
not have to restart the transfer from zero.
Post office,Email software: We
use IMS,EMWAC post office software for your email address's,we have installed
spam filters as well as anti relay filters to prevent,either your
mailbox filling with junk mail,and also to prevent email from being
relayed from your companys address that you know nothing about.
Bandwidth : Our system currently has the
capabilty of transfering 9 gigabytes of data every single month,as we
approach the 75% point of our bandwidth capacity we upgrade our existing
line capacity to the next available type. We believe in keeping our customers
happy and the only way to do this, is to increase bandwidth as the need
arises. Other major server companies brag about there fast T3 connections
but do not tell you the whole story,this is no good to you if the T3 is
95% saturated .Another practise which is never discussed is that,
yes a company may buy a T1 or a T3 connection,but
they do not actually use that T1 only by themselves
this same T1 may be resold to 50 differant companies.
Some server companies are network box's linked by the hundreds in a closed room,
all of these Hosting companies share the same T3 line. All of them say they have a
T3 and they are not liying,they do not meantion the fact that 99 other companies
are on that same T3 connection.
Think of bandwidth as 2 roads going to the same location.
One road is a 4 lane major highway in your city. If you drive on this 4
lane highway at rush hour, you KNOW how slow the traffic flows, sometimes
even coming to a complete halt, and you are stuck sitting in traffic,overheating
your cars engine and yourself as well ! Now imagine a single lane country
road,driving thru the mntnweb with only a few other cars on the same road,
you cruise along at 55 mph all day long and never see any traffic jams,arriving
at work relaxed and ready for the days activities. If
you are trying to get to grandmothers house or to your office, which road
would you drive upon, the 4 lane highway at rush hour or the country road
going to exactly the same place?
Additional programs: Many other
software programs are hidden in the background and are really to numerous
to meantion.If anybody is really curious we could send them a list of the
software behind the scenes,beware it is a VERY long list.
We hope this has been informative and has
answered some of your concerns in choosing us as your server company.
