WordPress and IIS on steroids

WordPress traditionally runs on LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP). So when it is ported to run over on IIS 6.0 platforms, there is usually a performance hit. This hit is not noticeable for low traffic sites, but is considerable when the wordpress site starts to gain more traffic.

BNS has made several enhancements to the IIS 6.0 site to increase performance. These include: enabling content expiration, using IIS6.0 HTTP compression, switching to FastCgI and enabling Qcache on MySQL. These combined to make sites running WordPress on IIS 6.0 faster.

WordPress Security Update 2.8.4

From WordPress Site:

Posted August 12, 2009 by Matt. Filed under Releases, Security.

Yesterday a vulnerability was discovered: a specially crafted URL could be requested that would allow an attacker to bypass a security check to verify a user requested a password reset. As a result, the first account without a key in the database (usually the admin account) would have its password reset and a new password would be emailed to the account owner. This doesn’t allow remote access, but it is very annoying.

We fixed this problem last night and have been testing the fixes and looking for other problems since then. Version 2.8.4 which fixes all known problems is now available for download and is highly recommended for all users of WordPress.

Attend Tech Tutor Seminar

Technological achievements in the modern world are not only the convenience for the people around the globe, but also an incentive for the younger generations to review and develop their own thinking and ideas to advance the technology even further.

It is very important that every education, may it be from the lower primary to the PhD level, should all include the trace of technology in the process according to the level most suitable.

Even in any general education class or activity, the use of technology is highly encouraged for a better understanding and wider approach of the students from their very initial learning years.

The implementation of slideshows, computer research, and the involvement of latest gadgets and devices in the science subjects prepares the students for their upcoming challenge of living up to the expectations of the modern world solely dependent on technology. Therefore, it is also a major benefit for the upcoming generations to continue with the hold of the most developed technological field going on these days.

In this light, Jerry Liao of Infochat would like to invite you to join “Tech Tutor”, a seminar designed for Learners, Educators, Experts and Parents.

The conference aims to explore the impact of Web 2.0 on Technology Enhanced Learning. The next generation of eLearning, eLearning 2.0, will involve computer-based communication, information sharing, inter-operability, and collaboration to support learning. Evolving technologies that impact on learning include web-based communities, hosted services, and applications such as social-networking sites, video-sharing sites, video and audio podcasting, wikis, blogs, social bookmarking, RSS, and social tagging. The conference aims to examine the impact and potential exploitation of these technologies in an educational setting.

The aim is to:
– facilitate collaboration between learners, educators, parents, and experts
– explore the potential impact of Web 2.0 on technology enhanced learning
– spread good practice in the use of Web 2.0 and learning technology
– consider evolving pedagogical approaches using Web 2.0
– raise the profile of research in learning technology

Techtutor will also be joined by more than 20 industry leaders showcasing their latest products, services and solutions.

So don’t be left behind – Discover the next generation of learning by joining Jerry Liao’s Techtutor seminar on September 16 and 17 at the SM Megatrade Hall 3. Tickets are available at all SM Ticketnet outlets.

For more information, call Ticketnet at 911-5555 or visit www.infochat.com.ph/powertips

Globe’s Update on the Fiber Outage

Globe is doing all possible options to augment loss in bandwidth and to deliver a workable traffic to you our partners.

Earlier, we have activated our 10G capacity to Hong Kong to augment our Internet backbone, upcoming 2.5G in the next few hours.

With this additional IP capacity, we expect significant improvement in connection.

Further, Japan and US IP upstreams activation is ongoing.

On behalf of the Globe team your partner, I would like to ask for an apology for this unfortunate incident.

Regards,
FMCC

Dear Valued Customer,
As of the morning of 12 August 2009, several undersea cable systems have been reported down. While harsh weather is suspected, the precise cause is being investigated. More specifically, the following cable systems are down: APCN1, APCN2 and SMW3. In the case of APCN2, this morning’s outage has completely impaired all traffic coming out of the Philippines due to a pre-existing fault in the process of restoration.

Other systems such as C2C, EAC and TGN-IA are not affected, and we have not received any outage advice from their respective network administrators.

Customer circuits carried on APCN1, APCN2, SMW3 are affected. In addition, you will experience slow internet browsing because a significant portion of the internet bandwidth is carried by the affected cable systems.

We are currently working on restoring the affected circuits at the shortest possible time. We have other alternative routes (TGN-IA, EAC) available for use.

We appreciate your patience and understanding of this catastrophic event affecting the Asia Pacific. We will provide you with our first update at about 8:00pm tonight. You may also contact your Account Manager for further details.

Sincerely,
Gil Genio
Head, Globe Business

This is PLDT’s update on Cable Cut

PLDT Slowdown?

If your Internet seems slow….its due to the Asia Pacific Cable Network fiber cut! . Initially, the report was that only 2 segments were affected. Actually 8 segments were affected by the Typhoon Here is the update for today from PLDT:

As of today, eight (8) cable systems have already been affected by the problem in the Taiwan waters. 4 out of these 8 systems are being utilized by PLDT for our voice, data and internet services.

The cable owners are now busy restoring the services via other cable systems that are not affected by this Taiwan problem. Cable repair operations have also commenced to immediately put these cable systems back into operation. The updates on the estimated cable repair completion are as shown in the table below.

Cable Segment No. of Cable Faults Repair Cableship Estimated Repair Completion Date
1 SMW3 Taiwan branch Cable Retriever 9-Sep
2 APCN2 Sng – Mal C/S Asean Restorer August 14 afternoon
3 APCN Hk – Taiwan C/S Asean Explorer 30-Sep
4 EAC Hk – Twn BU1 No info yet wk of Aug 17
5 C2C no detailed information FLAG
6 no detailed information
7 FEA no detailed information
8 NACS no detailed information

While waiting for the repair completion, we have and are restoring some of our services via other cable facilities. We will be releasing further updates as soon as we receive new information.

Thank you very much,

Fiber cut slow down Philippine Internet

Advisory: There is a major fiber cut in the Southeast Asian region that is affecting internet connectivity. Thankfully, BNS hosting is multi homed. This means our BGP routing automatically re-routed traffic to other internet gateways that were unaffected by the fiber cut.

From PLDT Advisory:

The APCN2 multiple fiber break is currently causing major slow down in ALL PLDT/IGATE internet access. Also, their EAC Cable is having multiple troubles as of the moment. Re-routing were already implemented thus incurring heavy traffic in the said cable systems.

From ASTI.Dost.gov.ph

Now confirmed that APCN2, C2C and EAC are cut. also unconfirmed reports of SMW2 and SWM3 are out. FLAG and TGN seems to be not had any issues so far.

It seems at this point, the fault is more on the South China Sea and the alarms I got seem to confirm that. For the geography, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:South_China_Sea.jpg

Circuits from Japan to SG, TH, PH are down, but not to HK. My perspective, yours may vary.
– -gaurab

From ZDnet:

A cut in the Asia-Pacific Cable Network 2 (APCN2) undersea submarine cable crippled connection speeds for users in the Asia-Pacific region on Wednesday, particularly in Singapore and the Philippines.

Users were sending updates to local forums and Twitter, complaining of slow connection speeds to sites hosted outside of the region.

According to a notice sent by Malaysian telco, TM Net, the cable fault was traced to segment 7 of the APCN2, which stretches between Shantou, China and Tanshui, Taiwan. TM Net traced the outage to Typhoon Morakot, which hit the region over the weekend.

Additionally, segment 1 of the APCN2 is also currently under repair. Repairs on segment 7 are expected to commence after work on segment 1 is completed.

Internet connection speeds are expected to return to normal late evening Aug. 13, according to the advisory.

Singapore operator, SingTel, confirmed the cable fault in an e-mail to ZDNet Asia, saying that customers can expect to face high latency as a result. It added that its STIX (SingTel Internet Exchange) Internet backbone provider is working on rectifying the issue.

A status update posted on InternetTrafficReport.com showed SingTel’s Singapore gateway registered a score of only 34 points, compared to the global average “health” of network connections, which was 86 points as at 3pm Singapore time on Wednesday.

The site first started registering slower response times and packet loss in Singapore at 8pm Tuesday evening.

Back in 2006, the APCN2 was taken out by a powerful earthquake in Taiwan. Internet access was reportedly badly disrupted and halted in some parts of Asia after the quake

Philippine Web Developer Listing


Join Philippine Web Developer Listings
BNS Hosting is joining a tender to provide up to 2000 websites a year, in this regard, we are looking for web developers to join our central database so we can farm out the web development work. If we win the tender, we will need a lot of web developers for this project!

Benefits of Listing in Philippine Web Developers

  • Get referrals from us for companies looking for web developers in their area. If your name is on our list, we will refer you to them.
  • Get notified of offers and promotions that are targetted for web developers like free training and events like web developer competitions.
  • Get to join exciting web developer opportunities like Microsoft’s Bizspark project.
  • Heres how to get listed in Philippine Web Developers
    To join web developer listing, kindly email team[at]bnshosting.net with the following details:

    In the subject line, please put “Philippine Web Developer Listing Submission
    In the body of the email, please indicate the following:

    Firstname, Lastname, MI
    Contact hand phone,
    Street Address
    City, State, country, zipcode

    Web Development software used
    Web Development reference works

    Invitation to Bid: SRPC Web Site

    PR No. 002463:
    Supply of services for the hosting and re-structuring of SRMP website

    The technical conference will be scheduled on August 6, 2009 at 9:00 am, which will be held at SRPC Administrative Office (OCSR Building) Barangay San Roque, San Manuel, Pangasinan. You may confirm your attendance in writing via e-mail or fax number (075) 614-2045 on or before July 4, 2009.

    Please look for the following SRPC/BAC representatives:
    Engr. Percival Pedro
    Technical Purchasing Assistant
    San Roque Power Corporation
    Barangay San Roque, San Manuel,
    Pangasinan
    Tel. No. 781-9651 to 55
    percywp[at]srpc.pangasinan.com

    Digital Filipino Web Awards

    This coming late July, we will opening the 3rd DigitalFilipino Web Awards(http://digitalfilipinowebawards.blogspot.com) and start accepting nominations.

    To make it more meaningful, a 2-days E-Commerce Summit is being planned to take place on October 20 and 21 at the AIM Acceed Conference Center, Makati City (we already have a booking to occupy the entire SGV area).

    The winners in more than 40 categories will be recognized on October 20 and given the chance to attend this event for free. Some will be asked as well to share their best practices / experience that made them winners in this year’s awards.

    In this regard, as club members, your active participation in this activity will be greatly appreciated through the following:

    1. Nominate and help out in the DigitalFilipino Web Awards judging at http://digitalfilipinocom.ning.com

    2. Propose topics that you are interested to learn about or even volunteer to be a resource person.

    3. Send participants.
    This 2-days conference shall be free to active DigitalFilipino Club Members where:
    – individual members (participate themselves, no proxy)
    – SME members (2 representatives)
    – Corporate members (3 representatives)

    Non-club member members shall pay a fee of P8000 to attend the 2-day event. They can also sign-up as a club member at http://www.e-commercephilippines.com on or before August 31 to avail of the free slot at current membership rates.

    4. Be a sponsor.
    We are targeting 150 to 200 participants for this event. Main audience will be club members, this year winners, past 2 year winners, and SMEs / enterprises / entrepreneurs at large.

    We have two major sponsorship slots at 100,000 pesos.
    Package includes:
    1. Keynote slot
    2. Logo at backdrop / website
    3. Post 4 horizontal banners at the event room.
    4. Send 2 participants at the event.
    5. Ten blog post campaign write-ups (via Blog4Reviews.com).

    We have four minor sponsorship slots at 50,000 pesos. Package includes:
    1. Presentation slot
    2. Logo at backdrop / website
    3. Post 2 vertical banners at the event room.
    4. Send 1 participant at the seminar event.

    Lastly, we have the DigitalFilipino Web Awards sponsor at P150,000. Package includes:
    1. Logo in all trophies covering more than 40 categories.
    2. Co-presentation of the award.
    3. Speaking slot at the awards proper.
    4. Fifteen (15) blog post campaign write-ups (via Blog4Reviews.com).

    I look forward to all club members active participation.

    Thank you.

    Regards,

    Janette Toral

    BNS is Major Sponsor to Charice: The Journey Begins Concert

    Charice: The Journey BeginsBitstop Network Services, Inc. is one of the Major Sponsors of the first major concert of Filipino international young diva, Charice Pempengco.

    This highly anticipated concert signifies the coming of age of Charice whose fascinating musical journey has taken her from humble beginnings to the pinnacle of international recoginition and achievement. The event, entitled THE JOURNEY BEGINS, symbolizes the emergence of a truly gifted Filipino singer into the local and worldwide music scene.

    Charice: The Journey Begins will be on June 27, 2009 at the SMX Convention Center, Pasay City. The concert will also feature Asia’s Songbird Ms. Regine Velasquez as one of her special guests.