Google today unveiled more details of Chrome OS, a lightweight, browser-based operating system for netbooks.

With a strong focus on speed, the Chrome OS promises nearly instant boot times of about 7 seconds for users to login to their computers.

“We want Google Chrome OS to be blazingly fast … to boot up like a TV,” said Sundar Pichai, vice president of product management for Google.

The first Chrome OS netbooks will be available in late 2010, Pichai said. It will not be available as a download to run and install. Instead, Chrome OS is only shipping on specific hardware from manufacturers Google has partnered with. That means if you want Chrome OS, you’ll have to purchase a Chrome OS device.

Google is currently working with unnamed computer manufacturers to define specifications for these computers, which Pichai said will include larger netbook-style computers with full-size keyboards, large trackpads and large displays.

Chrome OS netbooks will not have traditional hard disk drives — they will rely on non-volatile flash memory and Internet-based storage for saving all of your data.

All the applications will be web-based, meaning users won’t have to install apps, manage updates or even backup their data. All data will be stored in the cloud, and users won’t even have to bother with anti-virus software: Google claims it will monitor code to prevent malicious activity in Chrome OS web apps.

“Chrome OS is a totally rethought computer that will let you focus on the Internet, so you can stop worrying about your computer,” according to a Google promotional video shown at the event, held at the Google campus in Mountain View, California.

As part of its announcement today, Pichai said that Google would be releasing all of the operating system’s code and design documents to the public.

Introduced in July, Chrome OS is a Linux-based, open-source operating system centered on Google’s Chrome browser. Applications will run exclusively inside the browser, Google said Thursday.

“As of today, the code will be fully open, which means Google developers will be working on the same tree as open developers,” said Pichai.

The OS’s focus on design is consistent with the company’s stance that the future is in the web. In July, Vic Gundotra, Google’s engineering vice president and developer evangelist, spoke on a panel about app stores, in which he said native apps (such as those available for the iPhone) would be obsolete in the future, and that the Web will “become the platform that matters.”

“Every capability you want today, in the future it will be written as a web application,” Pichai said Thursday.

Netbooks — lightweight, low-powered sub-notebooks — were the surprise hit of 2008 and 2009. However, with the growth of netbook sales slowing — and the prices of some full-powered notebooks dropping below $400 — the continued viability of the netbook sector is an open question.

Though netbook shipments are falling below manufacturers’ expectations, the inexpensive, low-powered devices appear to still be selling well. Pichai cited research figures from ABI research indicating that 35 million netbooks shipped in 2009, more than twice the number sold in 2008.

Manufacturers have yet to announce pricing on netbooks shipping with Chrome OS, but Google expects the cost to be about the same as current netbooks. On average, netbooks cost between $300 and $500.

Videos demonstrating Chrome OS’s user interface, security, fast boot and other features are below the jump.

Full Article:  @   http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/11/20/google.os/index.html

We are already a few months into 2010 and its time that we provide some updates on things we are working on and doing.

1) A new expanded Data Center in Toronto - As you can see here our corporate blog is growing and now fully developed. Our intent is to keep customers informed about events, actives, spot light customers, make it fun and enjoyable to read. Over the course of the year we will update this blog daily. We will also start allowing comments to be posted to articles starting some time in February 2009.

2) Exchange and Bes moving to Canada: One unified billing and provisioning platform for all our customers and the ability to pay in US or Canadian Dollars and British pounds without any conversations. We will also add the ability to  accept annual payments in almost all countries currencies. The price will be based on a US dollar price and a conversion fee at the time of payment.

3) Introduction of VMS: Although we will say Spring of 2009, we continue to evaulate virtual private servers as a viable soluiton and offering. Over the years, we have found that most providers over use those resources, thus provding cheap VMS or VPS and the net result is poor service and uptime, etc. We are investigating some new tools which could help in delivering VMS solutions at competative rates with the normal uptime and stability that RebelNetworks offers.

4) More strategic partnerships: We will be partnering with our customers, new vendors and suppliers and we intend to pass some of those savings onto our existing customers. This could mean discounts from Dell Worldwide, discount for joining certain groups, etc - watch for them through the year.

5) Strategic Partnerships : We want to share the wealth and have simplified our affiliate marketing program to single payments and made them maybe the best in the industry. The reality is if every customer referred one customer over to us the payout migtht mean we would be a free web hosting provider for 1 year. We really dont have an issue with that.  If you would like to  join our affilaite program - just go to: http://www.rebelnetworks.com/affiliates.htm

Now where we are, we we have been and we where we are heading:

We started in 2005 with a server in a data center in baltimore maryland, the first year we has successfull business grade web hosting accounts, In 2006 we purchased a few hosting companies and expanded and moved all our servers to Texas, USA.  Where we are today? Since that first server in 2005 we have grown to now manage 1oo’s of servers  and we have them accross multiple datacenters in the USA, Canada and the UK. We are not a cheap take all hosting company so the quality of service, the uptime, the stability of our servers is second to none. We also own only 3 servers, all others are leased. Our policy is to replace them every 18 -36 months, we do this to keep our customers on the newest equipment and operating at efficiecency. When you see a note that the web hosting company owns those servers just think of people that own that 10 year old car, dumping money in to keep it running, we simply return the keys to dell every 18 - 36 months and set up a new one.

So enjoy the year ahead no matter how tough it might be, enjoy our blog and our site and our service.

If you have any questions do not hesitate to contact me directly

Domenic Macchione

/Rebel Networks Mgmt Team

The Multi Router Traffic Grapher or just simply MRTG is free software for monitoring the traffic load on network links. It allows the user to see traffic load on a network over time in graphical form. MRTG generates HTML pages containing graphical images which provide a LIVE visual representation of this traffic. How does it work? MRTG uses the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) to send requests with two object identifiers (OIDs) to a device. The device, which must be SNMP-enabled, will have a management information base (MIBs) to lookup the OID’s specified. After collecting the information it will send back the raw data encapsulated in an SNMP protocol. MRTG records this data in a log on the client along with previously recorded data for the device. The software then creates an HTML document from the logs, containing a list of graphs detailing traffic for the selected device.

This is a “How to” for installing MRTG (2.9.17) on a cpanel server. Let’s start:

# Download the software (http://SERVER_IP/mrtg) and move it to your download folder on your server. Or use the RPM installation information further down below.
cd /root/downloads

# Unninstall any older version in case we have an old/broken installation
rpm -e mrtg

# Get the latest rpm. The RPM might not reflect the latest available stand-alone version
wget http://SERVER_IP/mrtg
# Or grab a newer version from here: http://SERVER_IP/mrtg

# Installing the application
rpm -Uvh mrtg-2.9.17-1cpanel.i386.rpm

# Moving libpng
cd /usr/lib
mv libpng.so.2 libpng.so.2.OLD

# Creating the symlink
ln -s libpng.so.3 libpng.so.2

# Edit language at and specify only “en_US”
pico /etc/sysconfig/i18n

# Restarting MRTG
service mrtg restart

# Configure MRTG to allow only your local IP to see the reports at http://SERVER_IP/mrtg – Important: If your local IP changes due to DHCP very often, you should skip this step.
# This can be happening often when being on DSL.

pico /usr/local/apache/conf/httpd.conf

#Search for the line (CTRL+W):
# It should look like this:

Options Indexes FollowSymlinks MultiViews
AllowOverride None
Order allow,deny
Allow from all

#After the last line () paste this and change allowed IPs:

order deny,allow
allow from [ SERVER IP ]
allow from [YOUR LOCAL IP]
deny from all

# Restarting httpd
service httpd restart

# Let’s put MRTG to start with the system
chkconfig –level 0123456 mrtg on

# Important: Add MRTG to the up2date skip-list of your server. If you don’t do this, after the system updates your MRTG installation will be broken.
up2date –configure
# Select the skip-list option
# Add mrtg to the skip-list
“mrtg*”

Thats it….

Criminals often register their own domain name to perform phishing attacks. Unlike the other common phishing site scenarios (including hacked servers, open redirects, and abuse of free webhosting), phishing sites that have their own domain name can be harder to remove, because the website owner and domain owner is the fraudster. Only the hosting and DNS providers and the domain registrar are able to take the site down and also likely to cooperate.

The operation of top-level domains is generally split between a registry, which operates the infrastructure that answers DNS queries, and registrars, which sell domain names and provide the process for owners to maintain their records. Registries generally are not directly involved in removing phishing domains, and refer those to the registrar through which the domain was registered.

However, it is relatively easy to become a registrar, so large numbers of hosting companies, web design firms and domain name resellers are able to handle registrations. Registrars may not all respond quickly to abuse complaints. And in unusual cases registrars themselves may be involved in illegal activity.

There is a particular problem with so-called fast flux phishing attacks. Here the attacker uses a large pool of compromised hosts — often personal computers on DSL connections — and from these randomly chooses a number to act as web servers to host the phish (and also some to act as DNS servers for the phishing domain). The set of hosts used to support the phishing site is changed regularly, so efforts to contact the owner of one hacked system would at best cause the phishing site to be temporarily unavailable. ICANN (which hands out the contracts to operate generic top level domains including .com) published a report earlier this year looking at whether it should intervene to encourage adoption of more effective policies by registrars to prevent the abuse of fast-flux setups; but it seems reluctant to compel registrars to stop a practice that may also have some legitimate uses.

The one common point for any phishing attack is the URL sent to victims. In the case of fast-flux attacks, the owner of the domain will not cooperate and there are too many hacked systems hosting the phish for contacting the hosting provider to be effective. The only place where the attack can be quickly stopped is for the registrar or registry to suspend its domain name.

The policies of the DNS registry for the top-level-domain containing the site are therefore important. The most practical indication of the relative success of these policies is to look and see which top-level-domains (TLDs) are most often used for whole-domain phishing attacks:

The high placement of .tk is unsurprising, given that it is possible to register .tk domains for free that redirect to any URL, completely anonymously. .com is the most common TLD for phishing domains, perhaps due to the ease of registering .com domains, and because the large number of registrars for .com domains gives an opportunity for fraudsters to look for registrars with weak checks or that respond slowly to abuse reports.

Finding an efficient escalation process in the case where the registrar is slow to cooperate will be the key to reducing the number of domains registered for phishing. The system that was designed to deal with domain disputes around ownership and trademarks is now looking too cumbersome when dealing with the problem of phishing attacks, where fast responses are essential to minimising fraud.

go to www.netcraft.com for full article

Web analytics firm Netcraft (www.netcraft.com) is expanding on its web server survey by offering a dataset of the most active sites, giving a truly global analysis of web hosts.

The firm explains that each website that is found on its monthly web server survey can be attributed to a hosting location using reverse DNS and IP address delegation information.

This information is then compiled into a list of parent companies, revealing a league table of companies of which control the largest number of websites.

The report comes on the heels of Netcraft’s most recent web server survey for April, which saw Apache as the most popular web server with a total of more than 106 million sites, followed by Microsoft-IIS’s 67 million and QQ’s nearly 29 million.

The information is produced for many different metrics based on the number of hostnames, active sites and IP addresses used by the company.

Displayed in an Excel spreadsheet, the data uses different filters and selections to provide a full analysis by country, operating system, and web server software, as well as the option of inspecting absolute numbers, rate of growth and technology deployed at individual companies.

Each spreadsheet release includes a full rundown of web host trends the most recent four months, as well as six and twelve month views.

For instance, February 2009 dataset saw Microsoft as the top hosted parent company with 7,578,608 active sites, followed by Google with 6,220,058 active sites and MySpace.com with 4,504,403 active sites.

However, Netcraft does point out some limitations to this dataset. For one, it does not provide the names of the underlying website hostnames.

Those interested in site details including hostnames, hosting location, operating system, web server software, traffic and content technologies can purchase this data separately.

Additionally, the firm says it only includes sites found by its monthly web server survey, which found over 200 million hosts running internet websites in February 2009.

Finally, since a reverse DNS server for the network must be supplied in order to attribute a site to a web host, some sites are listed as having an unknown web host in the case that a reverse DNS server is not provided.

The power of blog has been seriously underestimated, Blog is not for the kids, if you have this point of view, You are going to get left behind! There are some 9 million blogs out there on the net, and about 40,000 new ones starting up every day, So why are they so important to the evolution of your business?

Lets begin by looking at the fact that I have just mentioned, 9 million blogs are running on the internet, and 40,000 new ones start up every day. People are using them as a means of communication, they talk about just about anything - they could be talking about your business right now! If they’re not, my question is “why aren’t they? Blogs are fast becoming a part of the associated press, and can provide you the means to not only communicate but to advertise what you have to offer.

Read the rest of this entry »