Attempts to hack me continue

Every day .. someone is trying to hack into the dedicated server and my PetLvr blog .. but, so far security features and anti-spam control has blocked everything and will continue to do so (I hope and have to believe that). This is really evident in my daily LogWatch reports – because I see at least one IP trying to ‘brute force’ a login into the root of the dedicated server. Now, most of this stuff is automated (I’m told) and sometimes scripts or bots jump around trying to locate unsecure networks or gain access. So far, I get IP addresses attempting this in the 2,000 to 50,000 attempt ranges per day (as seen on previous post about the moderation). At the end of the day, we add the new IP to the banned list and another day goes by until the next Logwatch report.

I hope this evil person will give up one day, and move on to somewhere else.

There is a limit to simultaneous activity on my entire network now

Apparently … tech support had reduced the simultaneously attempts of anybody accessing any of my sites at the same time down to 75 … I asked them to meet me half way and leave it around 100. That sounds pretty low, considering I have almost 50 active blogs now. It’s cut down the ‘brute force’ attempts from a 5 figure number each day to a 4 figure number now .. just by forcing a disconnect after 100 attempts. I guess that’s good.

But, what are the odds that 100 unique people are visiting any or all or just one site at the same time? Not likely, in the general sense … as my traffic as a whole network has dwindled to about 400-700 daily uniques since my server moves this summer. In the specific sense, if any of my sites have some social promotion happening (digg, stumble upon, reddit, etc) .. on the major blogs that I have these chances – well, I’ve reactivated my WP-CACHE wordpress plugin to help out. This is a weird plugin, as changes may not seem to appear ‘instantly’ and when you come here, it tries to pop out many pages into your cache to speed things up – and, that causes a slight initial delay. But, after that it’s pretty fast surfing!

Oh – I also upgraded the RAM on the dedicated server last week

In the past couple of weeks, it was evident that the number of blogs really affects the CPU resources and memory and other resources of the dedicated server … and I actually found myself upgrading the RAM memory of the server from 1GIG to 2GIG – for now. If I need to, I will upgrade from 2GIG to 4GIG, but I’m leaving that alone for the moment – until I need to upgrade – because when I will need to use that amount of RAM memory, I think I will have more situations to deal with and might have to split one or a few blogs away from the dedicated server into their own account or maybe split up the dedicated server into two accounts.

Meanwhile – all of this is costing me money … but, without spending money I would be shut down. Here’s what it is costing me, in case you are curious about moving your stuff to a dedicated server….

* Dedicated Server – $179 USD per month
* General Management Package – $69 USD per month
* Upgraded RAM Memory by 1 GIG – $14 USD per month
>> Total $262 USD per month.

For the amount of revenues that I am making, it certainly seems excessive. A lot of people out there shouldn’t be paying 30%-50% of their earnings for hosting cost. But, the accountant in me recognizes that this is a fixed cost, and the variable earnings has greater potential to increase and reduce that percentage – and, I’m not going to increase the HART-Empire Network or its revenues by having server problems, downtime, slowdowns due to moving servers, etc etc etc .. or, by having individual accounts everywhere around the internet. It just makes sense to consolidate everything and focus on the positives.

Local Problems with resolving DNS sites on my own ISP

On the oddball side of things .. yesterday, for the second time in 2 months .. I was unable to access any of my sites – meaning, I couldn’t see them .. no email … etc etc. My ISP was blocking the IP of the dedicated server! Last month, this affected all Sympatico users in western Canada. Yesterday (as far as I could tell) it affected both Shaw and Sympatico/MTS customers in Manitoba. Everybody else could see my sites. Also, after 3 hours back and forth with my server’s tech support people and my ISP’s tech support people, I was able to retrieve all my email by changing my settings from mail.domain.com to just the IP of the server. So, it was definitely some RESOLVER or DNS and NAMESERVER issue. Everybody from both sides of the tech support kept saying … “Don’t worry about it! It will eventually work itself out!” >.. but, when your sites are down, it’s not a good feeling.

But – the sites were NOT down, and in fact .. when that happens .. all I have to do is go to Kroxy.net anonymous server to view the sites! Also, bookmarking my public SiteMeter stats link and noticing Google Adsense Earnings gives me somewhat comfort knowing that at least it’s not my server’s fault.

SO – the HART-EMPIRE-NETWORK.com seems to be working, there hasn’t been any crashes .. my resource levels are not being overburdened .. and everything seems to be loading faster.

* At least, that’s what I think .. what do you think? Have you been surfing any of the sites and noticed anything different in the past two weeks? I’d like to know! Please leave me a comment!

On A Side Note .. if you are in Winnipeg .. Tuesday August 28, 2007 – 7:00pm

* www.petlvr.com/blog/2007/08/darcy-animal-rescue-center-and-pawsh-pet-boutique-present-fall-fashion-show-for-dogs-and-fundraiser-for-fipper/

I’m in the show … and our Papillon dogs Max and Sophie are walking down the “DOGwalk” with me! Instead of laughing at me (or crying because our dogs are soooo friggin beautiful ~sniffles~) .. come talk to me and say hello!

Take care
HART