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LaneChange.net Customer News - June 25, 2003
In this issue...
1. DNS Manager New Feature: Date (De)Activated Records!
2. LaneChange.net New Hosting service goes live!
3. What's in a CNAME?
4. Almost 500,000... Stored? (and forwarded!)
5. Email newsletter troubles - fixed
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DNS Manager New Feature: Date (De)Activated Records!
We have added a new feature to our DNS Manager; Date Activated and Date
Deactivated DNS records! Now you can set the exact time a DNS record
goes live on our server. Or, if your moving your server to a new IP
address, you can now set the time you want the old IP address to expire.
This is an advanced feature that should only be used by those who
understand the concept of Time To Live's (TTLs). Here's a brief tutorial:
TTLs are values we assign to all DNS records given out by our servers. In
short, it tells the server to remember, or cache, a DNS record for a
certain period of time before coming back to us and asking for the same
information again. The process of obtaining DNS information from an
authoritative server is a complicated affair, involving many servers,
thus its important to keep your IP address information as close to your
clients as possible, otherwise, the delay in resolving your site could
make your site appear slow.
However, if you need to move your server to a new IP address, you need
the ability to control the caching period of your data, so that your
move appears seamless; allowing traffic to flow from your old IP to your
new IP with little or no impact on site traffic. You now have this
control! When you set an expiry date for a record, our servers will
dynamically adjust the TTL for each request, so that your record expires
from cache exactly when its suppose too!
For more information on how to use this feature, just log into
your DNS Manager account click on a domain name and then click the Help
link at the top of the page.
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LaneChange.net New Hosting service goes live!
As mentioned in our last newsletter, we have now deployed our own
hosting server and its ready to take on all your hosting needs. If your
looking for web, ftp or email hosting, all controlled by you through a
web based control panel, LaneChange.net can help!
We can now offer your a complete business hosting solution at extremely
competitive rates! Visit our hosting page now for more information on
our new offerings at:
http://www.lanechange.net/html/web___ftp_hosting.shtml
We are also offering web developers and other computer professionals the
ability to resell our hosting packages. If your interested in adding value
to your existing offerings, or even making a couple of bucks on the side,
reselling is for you! Visit our reseller hosting page here:
http://www.lanechange.net/html/reseller_hosting.shtml
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What's in a CNAME?
If your a user of our DNS Manager, you've probably wondered about
CNAME's. Here's a little tutorial on when to use, and more importantly,
when NOT to use a CNAME.
Computers communicate with each other over the internet using special
addresses, called IP addresses (Internet Protocol). Computer names, like
www.lanechange.net, were invented only for us silly humans, so that we
can have an easier time at remembering where things are! ;-)
In order for a name to be translated into an IP address, we turn to DNS.
An 'A' record in DNS maps a name to an IP. A 'CNAME' record however,
maps a name, to another name! Well, if computers need to talk to each
other using an IP address, what's a CNAME record going to do for us?
Well, in certain instances, you may not have control over the domain you
want to route your traffic to. You don't want to point your clients to a
machine that can, all of a sudden, change its IP address because the
provider of that server decided to reconfigure his network! This is the
ideal place to use a CNAME record. For example, if your hosting provider
asks you to create a record for your domain, that points to their
server, they may suggest you use a CNAME. This way, they have complete
control over that machine and if they need to move it to a new IP
address, they don't have to tell all their customers about it, they just
change the A record YOUR CNAME points to.
When NOT to use a CNAME: If you control your own server and its IP
address, you should almost always use an 'A' Record. Since CNAME's point
a name to a name, that second name eventually needs to be looked up using
DNS, forcing yet another DNS query. Each lookup introduces delays that can
make your server appear slow, so avoid using CNAME's unless you have to.
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Almost 500,000... Stored? (and forwarded!)
It looks like we are about to break the half million email's handled mark on
our backup email server service! Since its inception, this service has been
gaining in popularity amongst small and large companies alike. If your mail
server, or the Internet connection its attached too tends to go down
frequently, you my be the ideal candidate for this great service.
For as little as $80 per year, we act as a backup to your mail server,
storing and then forwarding messages to you once your server is back online.
Check out our Backup Server information page here:
http://www.lanechange.net/html/backup_email_server_service.shtml
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Email newsletter troubles - fixed
Just a quick apology to some of you who may have received our last
newsletter more than once. As we grow and introduced new products and
services, we found that the email addresses we collected during sign up
ended up in several different places in our databases. This proved to be
a challenge when we attempted to collect and eliminate the duplicates
for our mailings! We have (hopefully!) fixed the issue responsible for
the "double-dipping" of our last newsletter.
We also had an issue with the unsubscribe link on the bottom of the
email for some of you. Again, I apologize for this. If you clicked on
the remove link in our last newsletter, are NOT a current customer and
are receiving this newsletter, please try the link again. We have fixed
the problem that was preventing us from properly capturing your request.
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As always, thanks for your patronage.
Robert Schwartz
President
LaneChange.net
1 800 403-1963 (USA & Canada)
1 613 860-1667
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