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    <title>Web Site Hosting Brisbane Australia by Ascent Hosting &#8211; Latest activity in forum &#8220;Announcements&#8221;</title>
    <link>http://www.ascenthosting.com/forum/announcements/</link>
    <description><![CDATA[General changes, upgrades, server status]]></description>
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        <title>New topic: &#8220;Antispam measure in place on Ascent servers&#8221; by admin</title>
        <link>http://www.ascenthosting.com/forum/announcements/topic-32/?recent=32</link>
        <description><![CDATA[As you know spam is a serious problem for web site owners and businesses alike.  Unfortunately spam and spammers are not only a moving target, but also a highly mobile target, making it difficult to impossible to get on top of entirely.  Detecting and responding to new forms of attack is, alas, an ongoing proposition.

At Ascent we take this issue very seriously, so this post is about informing both existing and potential clients about the multiple lines of defence we provide on all servers to try and minimise the productivity losses and costs attributable to spam.

Our anti-spam systems have been designed to drastically reduce the amount of spam that makes it to your inboxes. We have added many layers of spam protection which targets different types of spam while providing protection against many future methods of bypassing spam filtering. 

These include:

SMTP Time Filtering

When email is sent from server to server it is done via an SMTP exchange during which a remote email server will connect to the mail server here to deliver an email. The unfortunate side effect of this process is that it was designed many years ago without a form of identity confirmation so any email server can claim to be any other email server. With this in mind we have installed the following tests to attempt to combat this problem:

HELO Testing
This method of testing is designed to block servers that attempt to forge their HELO string to bypass less intelligent spam filtering systems. These filters are capable of blocking tens of thousands of emails per hour with a near 0% false positive rate due to the way the test was designed.

DNSBL Testing
This method of testing can mean many different things depending on which blacklists are used. We rotate blacklists frequently and keep up with the latest happenings so we know exactly what we are blocking by using the lists. Our choices in targets are known confirmed spam sources, known bad IP space (stolen IP space), and IP ranges where email should never come from. These are excellent methods of blocking spam with a few low false positive rate due to the specific targeting of spam only IP space.

SURBL/URIBL Testing
This method of testing is mostly unknown to the vast majority of the internet community and is one of the more promising new methods of blocking spam. Instead of targeting where spam comes from specifically as DNSBLs do, this method of testing is designed to block the websites spammers are attempting to send you to. This is also known as blocking spamvertised websites. This filtering reads inside the body of the email for the URLs inside the email and checks them against the SURBL and URIBL blacklists for any mention of spamvertised websites. An additional reason for its effectiveness is it will block emails that contain these websites no matter what IP address they are sent from so newly compromised servers cannot be used to spam when this method is used. The response time of Spamcop without the false positives.   

With all of this in mind we must come to terms with the thought that spammers will occasionally be able to bypass these blocking methods with tricks such as enclosing their message in an image or putting a * character in the URL in the email to prevent SURBL/URIBL blocking. This is where Spam Assassin is more effective due to its ability to parse and scan all parts of the email with a variety of tests before scoring the email.

Spam Assassin Filtering:

Image Only spam - This form of spam is typically when an image is included with a large block of random text from a book or website which attempts to bypass spam filtering by including no filterable parts of the email. Some methods for stopping this include OCR which allows the software to parse the image to find certain strings within the image, but this method is very resource intensive. 

We have found that by allowing Spam Assassin to look at characteristics of the Image Only spam such as a single large image with text below it we have been able to block these with a high egree of success without any false positives to note. This form of testing is not 100%, but combined with other testing it will block up to 99% of image only spam.

Collaborative network testing
This form of testing is much like spam cop in that it accepts reports from many different servers and uses its framework to process if an email is spam or not. Its effectiveness depends largely on the age of the email with its strongest point being is relatively short time between new spam being send out to servers around the world and the system marking those emails as likely bulk spam email. When used with other testing within Spam Assassin this proves to be a very effective method of blocking in addition to bayesian filters.

Bayesian filtering 
Up until now the bayesian engine has been used mostly as a secondary method of filtering, but recent improvements allow for much more efficient updates of the bayesian databases. After a few days or weeks (depending on the level of spam you receive) the bayesian engine will begin to help Spam Assassin block spam much more effectively for your account. Training is automatic and is setup to work without any additional setup beyond choosing the proper spam score.

SPF Record testing
As many of you might be aware a very common practice in spamming is to spoof the from address of the email. As this happens some websites will publish SPF records to help others block the spam that contains their spoofed from address. Spam Assassin at Ascent will now make use of these records to confirm if the SPF records match. No points are added or deducted for properly matching records, but if the records do not match according to tests then the message is scored higher as it will be more likely to be a joe job.

So we've made considerable progress in making spam blocking at Ascent Hosting as effective and efficient as possible.  I say as possible because too-aggressive measures to combat spam can have detrimental effects as well, including legitimate business emails being junked as spam and the addition of significant server overhead due to the amount of porcessing and lookups the filters have to do.  

Like everything its a balance, we won't get it 100% right, but we will continue to identify and exploit new opportunities to enhance your protection against email spam.]]></description>
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        <pubDate>Wed, 21 Nov 2007 19:58:26 +1000</pubDate>
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        <title>New topic: &#8220;Ascent adds fourth bandwidth provider to the  network&#8221; by admin</title>
        <link>http://www.ascenthosting.com/forum/announcements/topic-26/?recent=26</link>
        <description><![CDATA[We're happy to announce that Global Crossing has been added to our existing Tier 1 bandwidth providers, bringing to FOUR the number premium transit providers serving our valued clients - Level 3, ATT(Mzima), Savvis and now Global Crossing.

Global Crossing is a Top Tier 1 bandwidth provider which has multiple TRANSATLANTIC and TRANSPACIFIC lines. From their website, "Our customers include more than 35 percent of the Fortune 500, as well as 700 carriers, mobile operators and ISPs. "

What this means for our clients is that they benefit from  having their web sites on one of the most robust networks around, and one with the utmost in redundancy.  Should we have one connection ever go down, we immediately route to another of our connections. So if MZIMA ever goes down, we have the ability to route ALL traffic (both incoming and outgoing) through the other providers and visa versa. 

In addition to this, one of the most compelling features of the network now is our new hardware analyses the routes between you and our server and it sends you to the fastest path. For example, if it sees you are 14 hops from our SAVVIS link and 16 from MZIMA, it will automatically route you to our SAVVIS connection, in real time, with no delay at all. This allows for greater speed access to our servers. 

The additon of Global Crossing is a major benefit we're providing at no extra cost to you.   As ever it's our aim to provide you with the best network around and this is just one more step on that path.

More info on Global Crossing <a href="http://www.globalcrossing.com" title="click here to visit the Global Crossing web site" rel="nofollow">here</a>.

Enjoy.  :)

The Ascent Hosting team]]></description>
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        <pubDate>Wed, 06 Sep 2006 18:02:33 +1000</pubDate>
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        <title>New topic: &#8220;Welcome message from Ascent's founder&#8221; by admin</title>
        <link>http://www.ascenthosting.com/forum/announcements/topic-25/?recent=25</link>
        <description><![CDATA[From Ascent Hosting founder Robert Phelan

Welcome to our web site and thanks for seeking out more information about Ascent and our web hosting services.

Ascent Hosting is a privately owned , Australia-based web hosting business conceived and born out of my need to provide quality, business-class web hosting services at an affordable price for clients of Flip Interactive, Ascent's sister web design agency.

Like many web site owners, I was frustrated by my experience over a period of five years of failing to find a solid, focussed web host we could partner with for the longer term with confidence. Either the price was good, but support, uptime, reliability and features were lacking, or the support was good (rarely great), but at considerable cost to their price-competitiveness.

So the key idea behind Ascent Hosting was to create the kind of web hosting business that I would want to be a customer of were I looking for business-class hosting. What does that mean for prospective clients of Ascent?

Firstly, Ascent is NOT a web host that offers cheap plans with huge disk space and bandwidth allowances. We don't do budget hosting. The web hosting industry today (2006) is saturated with such hosts, and their failure rate and client turnover rate is frightening. In the short-term, such operators may succeed simply because of a basic lack of consumer knowledge of the hosting industry. In the long-run, this approach is not viable.

Worse, short-term business models generally means life for their customers is often very uncertain and stressful. Not a recipe for a quality business partnership.

Secondly, we are in it for the long-term, and this mindset ensures we stay focussed on growing by investing in the future through premium-grade equipment and high quality support. We will always ensure customer support is our highest priority.

So how is Ascent different? Basically, we have set out to distinguish ourselves in the business hosting marketplace in three main ways. Being a business-class web host means:

1. We offer you a premium web hosting service - with standard features many hosts don't even offer as for-cost optional extras. Your site runs on premium hardware, is served across premium bandwidth (provided by multiple bandwidth providers), and is protected by multiple levels of redundancy and backup built into all layers of our network operations.

2. In order to remain a strong viable business and stable, long-term partner for our clients we are clear and upfront that we will always charge realistic prices for our services. We don't discount or loss-lead. I see this as just basic business realism, and ultimately in the interests of both us and our clients over the longer term (there's that phrase again).

3. Ascent is a service business, not a technology business. So communication is a core focus. You will see that fact reflected in the quality and timeliness of our various client communications and support channels like the forums, tutorials, knowledgebase and heldesk on our web site, in the speed of our responses to helpdesk tickets and client inquiries, and in our planning as we roll out new services and upgrades to our network that improve our clients hosting experience.

These are the main ways we aim to be a better kind of web hosting provider for our clients.

Well, enough from me, over to you. I hope you find what you are looking for here at Ascent Hosting.

Don't hesistate to contact us or post a question in the "Your Questions" forum if you can't find answers to your questions here on our site.

Yours sincerely

Rob Phelan
CEO, Ascent Hosting]]></description>
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        <pubDate>Fri, 01 Sep 2006 12:26:12 +1000</pubDate>
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