{"id":5169,"date":"2003-10-21T17:49:03","date_gmt":"2003-10-22T00:49:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/?p=5169"},"modified":"2003-10-21T17:49:03","modified_gmt":"2003-10-22T00:49:03","slug":"technical_diffi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/10\/21\/technical_diffi.html","title":{"rendered":"Technical difficulties"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over the last three or four days, Hosting Matters <\/a>(the company I use and that hosts this site) has been knocked out by a Denial of Service (DoS) attack<\/a>. The attack was, according to what HM has posted, originally targeted at a pro-Israel\/anti-terror site that is hosted on HM. The site was moved and the IP address being DoSed was blocked.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, the attack has continued, and because of how Qwest and AT&T handle routing and logging and flapping and the like, it’s continued to knock out HM. This impacts me and any number of other sites (Doyce <\/a>and Instapundit<\/a>, as two of many examples).<\/p>\n

As I read the HM forums (as a sign of HM’s responsiveness to dealing with these problems, they quickly set up special support\/discussion forums off of their main network), I see various folks who have business sites resold through HM talking about moving to a different host. Without any indication HM is mishandling things, moving to another host seems an exercise in futility; DoS attacks are ubiquitous, and major companies (Amazon, Microsoft) have been knocked off the air by them. Heck, my own employer has, too. <\/p>\n

There’s another principle here, though, too. This is — well, I hesitate to call this a terrorist<\/i> action, since it doesn’t seem to be designed to coerce through terror (though the target site itself specialized in identifying terror sites on the Net<\/a>). Regardless it’s a politically motivated assault on free speech, and on a business, and as a matter of principle, I don’t want to see that assault succeed, either in knocking out the site they want, or in hurting the company that hosts that site. Let the bullies and vandals and brownshirts win, and the next time the target may be me. Or you. For that reason, as much as any other, I’m sticking with Hosting Matters.<\/p>\n

It’s easy for me to say that, sure, since my site is personal; I don’t have a business losing money because our web site is down, or because the folks to whom I’ve resold hosting services are down. By all the same, the futility of trying to run away, the message that sends, and the fact that HM’s service has been not only very reliable, but their personal service extraordinarily good, leads me to say I’m staying here.<\/p>\n

Whether you can read me or not.<\/p>\n

P.S. In today’s technical arena, there’s a tendency to treat business as a commodity. Compete on price (or create a monopoly), and screw the customer when it comes to service. What I’m seeing on the HM boards belies that philosophy. Person after person is making it clear that the reason they are sticking is because of HM’s quality of personal service, going the extra yard, even in the face of technical problems and catcalls. If they treated their hosting as merely a commodity — “Well, if five people go out the door, five more will come in shortly anyway” — an attack like this would be devastating, because even if there’s no great reason to think that elsewhere is better, there’s no great reason to say, either. HM’s customer service clearly earns them customer loyalty.<\/p>\n

A lesson a lot of businesses could learn.<\/p>\n

HM rocks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over the last three or four days, Hosting Matters (the company I use and that hosts this site) has been knocked out by a Denial of Service (DoS) attack. The…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogging"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":8736,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2006\/04\/28\/dont_let_the_ba.html","url_meta":{"origin":5169,"position":0},"title":"Don’t let the bastards bring your server down","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 28-Apr-06 11:52am","format":false,"excerpt":"My hosting company, Hosting Matters, got hit by a Denial of Service attack this morning, directed at one of the sites hosted there. It knocked this site down for a...","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging & Internet"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging & Internet","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5197,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/10\/17\/back_in_the_sad.html","url_meta":{"origin":5169,"position":1},"title":"Back in the saddle again","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 17-Oct-03 6:30am","format":false,"excerpt":"One of the sites at Hosting Matters was targeted by a Denial-of-Service attack (think of it as a massive, automated \"ding-dong-ditch\" game) last night -- which is why, if you...","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging & Internet"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging & Internet","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging"},"img":{"alt_text":"dos.png","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/images\/dos.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5167,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/10\/22\/technical_diffi.html","url_meta":{"origin":5169,"position":2},"title":"Technical Difficulties (update)","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 22-Oct-03 6:54am","format":false,"excerpt":"Here's some discussion of the DoS attack on HM, and who was affected, who was behind the attack, including some chortling over it (be sure and check the charming subject...","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging & Internet"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging & Internet","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11939,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2007\/12\/27\/back_on_the_spam_front.html","url_meta":{"origin":5169,"position":3},"title":"Back on the Spam front …","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 27-Dec-07 10:57am","format":false,"excerpt":"I've been working with the Hosting Matters folks to get FastCGI up and running on the server I'm on.\u00a0 The biggest problem (from a spam perspective) that Movable Type...","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging & Internet"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging & Internet","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging"},"img":{"alt_text":"spam","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/images\/spam.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2820,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2002\/09\/18\/head_bonks.html","url_meta":{"origin":5169,"position":4},"title":"Head bonks","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 18-Sep-02 1:36pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Not a good morning. Not 'tall. I go in this morning, after a late, rather stressful evening before, pull up my web page, and ... Blank. Nada. Zilch. No content....","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging & Internet"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging & Internet","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4170,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2003\/01\/24\/why_we_shouldnt.html","url_meta":{"origin":5169,"position":5},"title":"Why we shouldn’t fight","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 24-Jan-03 10:09am","format":false,"excerpt":"Andrea took this particular letter-writer in the Sydney Morning Herald for a bit of a fisking, but I feel obliged to throw my two cents in, too. \"HM\" begins: Not...","rel":"","context":"In "Geopolitical Brouhaha"","block_context":{"text":"Geopolitical Brouhaha","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/geopolitical-brouhaha"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5169\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}