August 2012 Summaries

Alex has over two decades of experience in B2B hosting, web and video conferencing, mobile, voice, VoIP, call center, internet, and data network products and services. Currently, he is the Sr. Director ISV & SaaS Alliances at Parallels. CloudFlare recently integrated into the Parallels APS catalog during their beta phase partnership, with an official launch planned for later this fall. Alex mentioned that Application Packaging Standard makes it easy to connect CloudFlare to thousands of service providers worldwide. Parallels, founded over 10 years ago, has more than 9,000 partners in 130 countries and helps service providers deliver cloud services with ease. At HostingCon 2012, CloudFlare co-founder Michelle Zatlyn had conversations with 28 industry experts to discuss the latest trends and news in hosting.

On August 28, 2012, John Graham-Cumming from Cloudflare introduced the concept of I'm Under Attack mode version 2.0 as a potential "I'm Doing Some Good" mode. This feature aims to utilize idle processing power during attack verification checks on websites using JavaScript delivered by Cloudflare. The idea is inspired by distributed computing projects like [email protected], Folding@home, and GIMPS that harness the power of internet-connected machines for collaborative work. The end users would not experience any difference in how I'm Under Attack Mode works today. However, this approach could potentially put idle processing power to good use by running distributed computing projects without any additional effort from website owners or end users. The challenge lies in selecting the right project that can be broken down into chunks and written in JavaScript. To gather suggestions for potential projects, Cloudflare invites the community to contribute their ideas in the comments section. The best and most implementable solution will be chosen by Cloudflare and implemented to turn a bad situation into a positive one.

On August 28, 2012, Dax, General Manager of ServerBeach (a part of PEER 1 Inc.), spoke at HostingCon 2012 about recent acquisitions and announcements from PEER 1. The company has acquired NetBenefit, a French-based firm that doubled PEER 1's UK presence and marked their first entry into continental Europe. Dax also mentioned upcoming announcements in November at CloudExpo, including updates on ServerBeach, ZuniCore, and other changes within PEER 1.

Jared is the online community manager for name.com, responsible for maintaining the brand's presence on social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. He emphasizes that name.com focuses on domains, websites, and hosting services with exceptional customer support. As a community manager, Jared believes in constantly trying new things, listening to feedback, and fostering conversation among users. He also highlights the importance of creating a positive work culture by allowing employees to explore beyond their job scope and encouraging them to enjoy their work.

Endurance International Group (EIG), a prominent provider of hosting, domains, and online solutions for small and medium-sized businesses, recently acquired HostGator. EIG's Senior Project Manager, David Gardner, expressed excitement about the acquisition due to HostGator's large customer base and strong reputation. Additionally, EIG has partnered with CloudFlare through Bluehost, launched a University Program offering hosting services for educators and students, and expanded its offerings to include dedicated servers and VPS through the acquisition of HostGator.

Joe is a co-founder and technical fellow at DotNetNuke, a leading Web Content Management Platform for Microsoft that powers over 700,000 production web sites worldwide. Recently, DNN launched version 6.2, which they call the social CMS for business. This new offering integrates social functionality similar to Jive, Yammer, or Chatter directly into the core CMS platform. The company has seen strong uptake in their social offering and is focusing on growth in cloud, mobile, and social areas.

Maxim Weinstein, leader of StopBadware since 2007, is a non-profit anti-malware organization focusing on protecting people from malicious websites. He suggests three key measures to be more prepared against computer and website attacks: basic web maintenance (updating software), using different passwords for various sites, and keeping computers clean. Most hacked sites belong to everyday consumers and small businesses. These insights were shared at HostingCon 2012 where Michelle Zatlyn interviewed 28 industry experts.

Shridhar Luthria, ResellerClub's business head, has played a significant role in transforming the company from a start-up to the world's most popular platform for domain names. Traveling 20 hours from India to Boston for HostingCon 2012, he shared that ResellerClub is one of the largest web service providers globally and among the fastest growing registrars. The company is now focusing on hosting products such as shared hosting, reseller hosting, VPS, and dedicated servers. Their growth extends internationally to regions like India, China, Turkey, Brazil, and Russia.

Verio is a wholly owned subsidiary of NTT Communications, providing web hosting, application hosting, and SaaS applications to small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) worldwide. Founded over sixteen years ago, Verio's primary focus is on shared web hosting, VPS, and SaaS products. The company serves a diverse range of clients, including telcos, OEMs, and resellers, with significant presence in Latin America, Europe, and Japan. In response to customer demands for easy-to-use solutions, Verio offers turnkey options that require minimal setup or configuration time. Recently, they launched their Cloud End offering at HostingCon 2012, where industry experts discussed the latest trends and news in hosting.

On August 22, 2012, CloudFlare launched its latest data center in Seoul, Korea, marking the completion of their expansion into nine new cities. This brings the total number of data centers to 23 and increases their presence in Asia to five locations: Seoul, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Sydney. Seoul is known for having one of the fastest internet connections globally, with broadband penetration rates among the highest worldwide. However, fast connections can be hindered when they need to travel across over-subscribed trans-oceanic cables. CloudFlare's presence in Seoul helps maintain fast end-to-end connections by caching content locally and mitigating DDoS attacks. The company plans to continue expanding its network, targeting regions such as South America, India, Africa, and China, with unique challenges that require innovative solutions.

CloudFlare has opened a new data center in Warsaw, Poland, making it their 22nd worldwide and 8th in Europe. The facility will improve performance in Northeastern Europe and Russia while reducing load on the Frankfurt data center. The company selects data center locations based on demand for its services and aims to have backup facilities in case of issues. In the short term, CloudFlare plans to double the size of their London facility, and longer-term expansion may include Moscow, Milan, Madrid, Sofia, and Istanbul. Additionally, one more Asian data center is set to launch as part of this round of expansion.

CloudFlare has expanded its global network by adding a 21st data center in Stockholm, Sweden. This expansion is expected to decrease ping times throughout much of northern Europe and improve web performance for the region. The company's CEO, Matthew Prince, highlighted that he was excited about this development as it would provide him with an opportunity to visit Stockholm and associate more than just the Swedish Chef with the country.

Elya, VP of Customer Care at SoftCom Inc., has over a decade of experience in web hosting. SoftCom is an industry-leading provider of Cloud Hosting and Business Communication services to 2.5 million users across 140 countries. Elya focuses on improving customer experiences through initiatives like the three-stage customer onboarding process, which includes calls within 10 minutes and throughout the first week. At HostingCon, she sought partnerships to enhance the customer experience and emphasized the importance of executive involvement in connecting with customers.

CloudFlare has updated its Terms of Service and Privacy Policy to address issues that have arisen over the last two years. The changes are mainly due to the introduction of CloudFlare's Apps Marketplace, which allows users to install services to enhance their websites. The updates clarify that it is always the user's choice as to what apps are enabled and provide more information about how these apps may modify content on a site. Additionally, the abuse section has been simplified to reflect CloudFlare's role as a network provider rather than a content host. Other changes include removing a paragraph related to hyperlinking and updating jurisdiction information.

Ben Uretsky, a serial entrepreneur and Chief Strategy Officer of Midokura, shares his insights on cloud technology during HostingCon 2012. He explains that cloud services can be compared to furniture shopping, with Infrastructure-as-a-service being like building your own furniture at Home Depot, Platform-as-a-service similar to assembling Ikea furniture, and Software-as-a-service more akin to purchasing finished products from Crate & Barrel. Uretsky believes that cloud technology is becoming increasingly popular among hosting providers, but the term "cloud" has lost its meaning due to excessive marketing. He predicts significant growth in cloudy hosting providers, enterprise offerings, and startups filling gaps in the cloud space over the next few years.

Kenny Li is the co-founder and VP of Operations at Cloud Spectator, a company that provides comprehensive market metrics for the cloud industry. They offer industry reports, pricing comparisons, benchmarking software, and customized services to both enterprises and service providers in the cloud space. The company aims to provide detailed information on what cloud users are looking for by using open source benchmark tests and pegging data to pricing. Cloud Spectator plans to attend expos like HostingCon to network with cloud providers and understand end-users' needs better, allowing them to optimize their products accordingly.

CodeGuard is a cloud backup service for websites founded by CEO David Moeller, who has two successful exits under his belt. Launched publicly at TechCrunch Disrupt – NYC in May 2011, the platform provides daily automatic website backups and monitoring capabilities with undo/restore functionality. The company's clientele includes a diverse range of professionals such as lawyers, doctors, florists, and fitness experts who lack full-time web IT staff. CodeGuard is often seen as a superhero for these individuals, offering an easy solution to manage their website content and fix any hacks or issues that may arise.

Cloudflare has observed a significant increase in layer 7 DDoS attacks, with a 10% rise for the first half of 2012 and a 21% increase in large-scale attacks. These attacks are characterized by an attacker making numerous HTTP requests to overwhelm the target server. The source of these attacks is traceable due to the need to establish a TCP connection, with 95.5% of layer 7 DoS attacks originating from just 0.05% of IP addresses connecting to Cloudflare's network. The largest layer 7 attacks occur during nighttime in California and Europe, keeping the team busy around the clock. Interestingly, there are noticeable dips in layer 7 DDoS activity on certain holidays such as Mardi Gras, St. Patrick's Day, Earth Day, Memorial Day weekend, and July 4th. The top five countries from which attacks originate include the US, China, Turkey, Brazil, and Thailand. Cloudflare continues to defend against these attacks using both automated systems and manual tools like "I'm under attack mode."

Ryan Tarr, Vice President of Product and Business Development at Basekit, spoke about their platform for small businesses to create professional websites easily without coding. Basekit's customers include a diverse range of small businesses such as photography sites and ecommerce sites. The company aims to provide flexibility and ease of use in website creation.

CloudFlare's Network Engineer, Tom Paseka, will be visiting Hong Kong at the end of August and hosting a meetup for users and interested parties. The event will feature a presentation on new updates, added features, and upcoming plans from CloudFlare. Following this, attendees can ask questions. Both CloudFlare customers and non-customers with an interest in web performance and security are welcome to join. The meetup is scheduled for Saturday, August 25 at 5:00pm in Hong Kong (exact location to be determined). RSVP and more information can be found on Meetup.com. Suggestions for a venue are also welcomed.

Vid Luther is the founder and CEO of ZippyKid, a WordPress-focused hosting company that provides services for securing, scaling, and hosting popular websites. The company has recently raised funding from 500 Startups, some Rackspace founders, and Jason Seats, the founder of Slicehost. ZippyKid's clientele includes large corporations like Revlon and Estee Lauder as well as small businesses and professionals. Looking forward, the company plans to build more partnerships and expand its workforce.

On August 14, 2012, a new data center (#20) was launched in Prague, Czech Republic by Matthew Prince. This follows the recent addition of data centers in Vienna, Toronto, Seattle, Atlanta, and Sydney. The Vienna data center has been handling high traffic from Eastern Europe, which will now be partially taken over by the Prague facility to reduce load on Frankfurt and Amsterdam data centers. This move is expected to improve performance for web visitors in the Czech Republic region. The network map will soon be updated to reflect all 20 global data center locations. In addition to the Vienna data center, a new network provider was also enabled for incoming traffic. CloudFlare utilizes Anycast, which allows routers across multiple facilities to announce the same IP addresses and enables the network to choose the shortest route when transmitting data over the internet. This helps ensure that visitors reach the closest data center while also allowing better mitigation of DDoS attacks and other threats. However, managing network routing with Anycast is challenging. It requires significant effort to maintain traffic within the correct region and prevent connections from "flapping" between multiple facilities. Tom and Terry, who lead CloudFlare's network operations team, have been working diligently to ensure that as more data centers and transit providers are added, the network remains stable. Three additional data centers (two in Europe and one in Asia) are planned for launch soon.

LuxCloud S.A., founded by Marco, LuxConnect, and Datacenter Luxembourg in April 2010, is a leading provider of cloud computing services for small- and medium-sized businesses. The company aims to streamline the sales process and automate it, positioning itself between software providers and channel partners. Currently, LuxCloud is expanding internationally, opening operations in the U.S., Singapore, and planning entry into South America by 2013. Marco believes that cloud computing and SaaS services are driving the world's economy, emphasizing the responsibility of industry leaders in this field.

Mladen is the CEO of Atomia, a platform that automates control panels, billing, domains, and DNS for web hosts. He also leads Troxo, a web development company, and Dear Future Astronaut NY, a mobile development firm. With experience in managing projects for large web hosts, Mladen believes the future of hosting will involve usage-based payment models where users pay based on their consumption. Atomia aims to make it easier for hosting companies to start and serve customers by automating various processes. The company launched in 2011 and is focused on gaining exposure in the industry.

DreamHost, a popular web hosting provider founded by Dallas in college, is known for its fun atmosphere and laid-back employees. The company's personality-driven approach helps build their brand and differentiate them from competitors. Despite the focus on culture, DreamHost continues to develop new products such as an upcoming cloud computing service and expanding their network with a new data center in Virginia.

On August 10, 2012, Russ Reeder, President and COO of (mt) Media Temple, announced the acquisition of Virb.com at HostingCon. This acquisition allows (mt) Media Temple to expand its services beyond web developers and designers, catering to less tech-savvy individuals looking to create a blog or website quickly. Known for their customer support and culture, (mt) Media Temple aims to continue adding value to small business customers by providing more security and marketing services in the future.

Ryan, Chief Technology Officer for GlobalSign, discussed how the company is addressing SSL and website performance issues. They have partnered with CloudFlare to improve revocation services' performance and reliability. Additionally, they sponsored improvements to the NGINX platform to remove the need for customers to contact GlobalSign at connect time, enhancing overall performance. The company has also expanded physically by opening new engineering offices in Seattle and Manila (Philippines) and investing in API support and other platform improvements. These advancements were highlighted during HostingCon 2012, where experts shared insights into the latest trends and news in hosting.

Troy McCasland is the Co-Founder and Vice President of Business Development at Attracta, a company that provides the world's most popular search engine optimization platform. Their main service involves crawling websites and offering an XML Sitemap to major search engines like Google, Yahoo!, Bing, and Ask. This helps solve the problem faced by hosts when their customers' sites do not appear in search results. Attracta currently has over 2.3 million customers and adds more than 100,000 new customers each month.

Mike Auger, President and CEO of Pinnacle Cart, has announced that they are offering their ecommerce software for free. This move comes as a response to the increasingly competitive market and the commoditization of ecommerce software. By partnering with Chase and Parallels, Pinnacle Cart aims to empower entrepreneurs by making it easier and more affordable to start an online business. The hope is that once businesses succeed and grow, they will upgrade to paid services offered by Pinnacle Cart.

On August 8, 2012, Matthew Prince announced Cloudflare's expansion into Europe with the launch of a data center in Vienna, Austria. This marks their 19th global data center and fifth new city as part of this round of expansion. Eastern Europe is one of Cloudflare's fastest-growing regions, and the new facilities aim to improve performance throughout the region by reducing the load on existing data centers like Frankfurt. Additionally, they are increasing the number of transit providers in the region for improved overall network resilience.

Elliot Noss, president and CEO of Tucows Inc., announced at HostingCon 2012 their new mobile service, ting.com. Ting aims to reinvent the mobile industry by offering a flat-out mobile service with a kinder, gentler approach as a phone carrier. Currently available in the United States for Android devices, customers are already enjoying significant savings and positive experiences. The company plans to support iPhones in the future. Tucows' venture into the mobile market is expected to grow over the next couple of years.

Jack Zubarev, founder and President of Parallels, has played multiple leadership roles within the company since its founding. With over 800 employees, Parallels serves more than 9,000 service providers and over 10 million small businesses. The company recently released Plesk 11 and is focusing on improving their web presence builder product. Jack mentioned that they are constantly working on updates for future releases. These insights were shared during an interview with CloudFlare's co-founder Michelle Zatlyn at HostingCon 2012, where she spoke with 28 industry experts to discuss the latest trends and news in hosting.

Ben Metcalfe is an internet professional with over 11 years of experience, having worked on MySpace and BBC websites. He founded two companies, Swordfish Corp and WP Engine. WP Engine is a managed WordPress hosted platform that focuses on speed, security, performance, and scalability. The company actively uses Twitter for support and encourages its employees to have a social media presence. Ben's biggest mistake in social media was not claiming the @ben handle in 2006.

Chris Sheridan, Vice President of Business Development at eNom, has been in the domain and hosting business since 1998. The company is known for its large reseller network of over 8,000 resellers, primarily focusing on domain name registration. Recently, eNom has been concentrating on value-added services such as security services like SSL. Two major growth areas for the company are international expansion and the historic announcement in June about more than a thousand new TLDs coming to the Internet next year. Chris believes this will bring in a wave of new resellers and benefit everyone in the industry. Michelle Zatlyn, co-founder of CloudFlare, interviewed 28 leading experts at HostingCon 2012, offering insights into the latest trends and news in hosting.

In July 2012, a significant portion of attacks on Cloudflare were traced back to invalid or 'Martian IP addresses', which are valid but shouldn't appear on the public internet. These include internal network addresses and local private links. The largest source of these attacks was from China Telecom, followed by other networks around the world. However, it is important to note that the source IP address may be spoofed or forged in many cases, making it difficult to determine the actual origin of the attack. Additionally, some attacks involve legitimate DNS servers being tricked into sending packets to Cloudflare, resulting in a reflection attack with an amplification effect. Consequently, when analyzing layer 3/4 attacks, the source IP address is often unreliable and may not accurately represent the attacker's location.

CloudFlare has released a new version of its "Always Online" feature, which promises to keep web pages online even if the server goes down. The original feature was based on using search engine crawler traffic to build a site's cache, but this approach had some limitations. In the new version, CloudFlare runs its own crawler that periodically visits customers' pages and updates the cache accordingly. The frequency of page refreshes depends on the customer's plan, with free users being crawled once every 9 days, Pro users once every 3 days, and Business and Enterprise users daily. The company plans to allow users to "pin" or "exclude" specific pages in future updates.

Data from CloudFlare's network reveals that denial of service (DoS) attacks occur over 40% of the time, with peak times during the night in the USA. The worst period for DoS attacks is Tuesday to Wednesday night. Attackers use various IP protocols and methods such as TCP SYN flooding and reflection attacks using DNS and SNMP. Carpet bombing and drive-by attacks have also been observed. Despite these trends, CloudFlare's engineers work tirelessly to protect their web sites from such attacks, with the overall trend in attacks slightly decreasing over the last six months.

CloudFlare has expanded its global network by launching a new data center in Toronto, Canada. This expansion aims to improve performance for users across Canada and take load away from existing facilities in Chicago and Newark. The company's co-founder, Michelle Zatlyn, who is Canadian, played a significant role in shaping CloudFlare's user-friendly interface and focus on product quality. Additionally, she works towards ensuring a healthy internet ecosystem through her involvement with the United States Federal Communication Commission's Open Internet Advisory Committee. The company plans to open five more facilities across Europe and Asia in the coming days.

On August 2, 2012, CloudFlare announced its public availability of SPDY, a protocol developed by Google to speed up the internet. Initially launched as part of a private beta for select customers, the results were promising and led to its broader release. Currently, SPDY requires TLS/SSL encryption, making it available only to paying CloudFlare customers with SSL enabled. However, users can upgrade their plans or use CloudFlare's Flexible SSL to take advantage of SPDY. The protocol is automatically enabled for HTTPS traffic to compatible browsers like Chrome and Firefox. With this development, CloudFlare continues its mission to build a faster, safer internet.

A report from SolveDNS shows that CloudFlare has built one of the largest, fastest, easiest, and most resilient authoritative DNS networks in the world, ranking second among providers. The company uses Anycast technology to make its DNS network fast and highly available, with every server worldwide capable of answering any DNS query for clients. This focus on DNS has resulted in a faster, more fault-tolerant infrastructure than traditional registrar's DNS services. CloudFlare is also working on improving its DNS control panel and offering its massive DNS infrastructure to hosting provider partners.