Hosting

Hosting Services

Dot has expanded its hosting services considerably in the last year. We now offer Web hosting on both Linux and Windows 2000 using Apache, PHP and IIS 5 to provide more choices for our customers.

Domain Name (DNS) Services

Registration / Domain Parking
We register domain names for you at Tucows/OpenSRS, or the registrar of your choice. We can optionally park the domain with an under construction page at no extra cost to you.

Primary DNS
We can provide customers with either primary or secondary DNS hosting as required. For Primary DNS, we host the domain name map that is first accessed when someone looks up your domain.

Secondary DNS
For Secondary DNS, we host a backup copy of the primary domain map on our server that it is accessed when the primary server is offline. Our secondary DNS server is located in a second facility in the event that our main facility gets disconnected from the Internet.

Dynamic DNS
Dynamic DNS refers to assigning a computer name to a computer whose IP address changes. This would typically be used for a computer that is hooked up to the Internet via a high speed DSL connection whose address changes every time it reconnects to the Internet. We currently provide Dynamic DNS through a third party service. We are investigating deploying our own solution in the near future.

E-mail

Dot provides POP and IMAP mailbox hosting as well as e-mail forwarding services to our clients. We can also perform e-mail relay for clients that have their own mail servers so that our mail server can act as their backup in case their connection goes offline. We have also recently added an optional virus scanning service for customer e-mail. Partitioned on a domain basis, this service can filter incoming and outgoing customer mail for viruses and automatically clean any infected attachments or quarantine them if cleaning isn't possible. It can also be configured to work with customers that have their own e-mail servers.

File Transfer (FTP / WebDAV)

Dot provides file transfer access via FTP or WebDAV for our customers who require it to offer downloads to their customers or who require it to access their Web site directories for updates. FTP is not a secure protocol for this type of data transfer. WebDAV (or Web Folders as they are called under Windows) is an extension of the HTTP protocol used for the Web and is better because it can be configured using SSL for secure communications. Protecting file transfers via Virtual Private Network (VPN) access to our server network is also being worked on to ensure the security of customer data.

Web

Dot provides Web hosting services via the Apache Web server on Linux or the IIS 5 server on Windows 2000. Which platform the customer requires depends entirely on their preferences and requirements. We intend to fully support both platforms.

Database

Dot currently provides database-hosting services via Microsoft SQL Server running on Windows NT, and MySQL on our Linux platform. We intend to support other databases such as PostgreSQL in the future and Oracle databases for high-end deployments should the need arise. Database / Web site integration is facilitated through either ASP/DAO on the Windows 2000 platform or Java/JDBC on the Linux platform.

Monitoring and Backups

Dot has monitoring software in place that can monitor our internal network behind our firewall, our firewall, and the firewalls our customers have deployed. This ensures that if anything goes wrong, we know about it right away and can deal with it as quickly as possible. We also try to keep an inventory of spare parts on hand should we need to replace any hardware or rebuild a computer that fails.

Dot has all of our web content, web site configuration, mail boxes and mail server configuration backed up every evening in case any data is accidentally deleted or any server becomes damaged.

Media Streaming

Dot now offers RealAudio and RealVideo streaming for our customers. This has been deployed to deal with small scale streaming needs at the moment but we are determined to scale this up as our customer's needs increase. We also plan on rolling out a Quicktime streaming service as well as soon as the software available is robust enough.

E-Commerce

Dot has finally entered the e-commerce market with the facilities to provide a custom shopping cart solution to our clients. We are offering all the back-end components needed to rapidly deploy a shopping cart for any customer Web site. We also have experience linking customer sites to external payment gateways offering a secure solution at an affordable price. We are a Certified Development Partner for the Skipjack MerchantServices network.

Reseller Program

Dot offers reseller discounts through our top hosting packages. These packages have reduced rates for all of our additional services and charges as a benefit to resellers. All package limits carry across all associated Web sites under one account to make efficient usage of the bandwidth and disk space limits of the package. This is especially useful for resellers that manage many small Web sites.