As a system administrator, one of my recurring duties is to work on fine-tuning servers our company and client servers. Fine-tuning allows us to squeezing every possible ounce of capability out of each server so they are utilized to their fullest potential. Due to its popularity as an easy to write and implement language, PHP [...]

Get ready folks! We’re about to go behind the scenes with SingleHop’s Operations team, focusing on what we do (and what we do differently) when deploying a SingleHop location. Some may think that turning up a new location for SingleHop is a daunting task. However with the years of automation we’ve put in place it is actually [...]

This is thought to be common knowledge by most, but there are quite a few tech people out there that still do not know what happens when you trace to an IP address. And troubleshooting traceroutes can even be more complicated. We will cover the basics here, and if you are looking to delve into [...]

So far, you have updated your packages and configured your firewall for statefully packet inspection, now we get to the final step. The last, and by no means the least important, step would be some manner of obfuscating your SSH access.  There are a few great ways to do this, many of which far beyond [...]

Last time we discussed updating your packages. Now it’s time to setup your firewall. In this step we are going to install a SPI (Stateful Packet Inspection) Firewall program, CSF. It is worth noting that CSF is by no means the only option, however it offers a robust feature set along with some fantastic management [...]

It’s 3 am. Your phone goes off. An urgent e-mail from abuse@singlehop.com is claiming that your server is sending large amounts of spam. How did this happen? How do you handle it? What can you do to prevent it? Here is what you can do to ensure that your server stays clean and problem free. Our abuse [...]

It is often said that the only manner in which a server can be secured would be to disconnect it and power it off. Kevin Mitnick, a rather well known Cyber Security Analyst, has gone so far as to add that all I/O devices should be removed from the hardware and the server should be [...]

Avoiding single points of failure has been part of our philosophy—and design—since the origins of our company. The philosophy includes avoiding single points of backhoes and diggers as well. Avoiding backhoes is no laughing matter, as the actions of heavy equipment operators, whether in front of your building or miles away, are beyond your control. [...]

Over the years, we’ve been fortunate enough to receive a lot of attention for the way we leverage automation in the data center to operate efficiently, provide a better quality of service and improve the customer experience. When we first set out to automate our business, we weren’t trying to set any records or anything [...]

As you may already be aware SingleHop works hard to remain on the cutting edge when it comes to our network infrastructure. We invest a lot of money in upgrades in order to supply our clients with as little latency as possible. After all, what good is Infrastructure without reliable transport to connect it to [...]