A massive snowstorm has begun to hit the east coast and some cities are expected to get upwards of 2 feet of snow. Just like anything, you don’t really realize how much you rely on certain things until they no longer work – like electricity, cell service, or even your heat! (What do you mean I can’t heat up my frozen burrito in the microwave?! Oh and we all know how annoying it is when the power is out and we still try to flip the light switch when we walk into a room. doh.)

When such a massive storm is predicted to hit, everyone usually runs out and buys lots of water and non-perishable foods to keep them fed and comfortable during what could be a long time without power.  So, while you are busy doing things like that, why would you ever want to worry about the redundancy of your website and if it will “weather the storm”? (pun intended) Like electricity and heat, a website managed DNS is something that people typically don’t think twice about until there is a problem with it.

Managed DNS should be the last of your worries. The experts at No-IP are constantly monitoring and updating our network to ensure that our users never have to suffer any downtime, whether it is caused by mother nature, errors caused by changes to network configurations, hardware faults, or even wiring issues – if your domains managed DNS is configured right, your website will be up, 100% guaranteed.

Now get out there and build a snowman or something 🙂

Check out these helpful Managed DNS articles too:

Is Your DNS Diversified?
Why you Shouldn’t Wait For an Outage to Think about Managed DNS
What Is DNS? 

We are proud to announce that just this morning we hit 15 million users of our free dynamic DNS and managed DNS! We are the industry leaders in free dynamic DNS and one of the very few left. We pride ourselves in our company culture and our amazing and awesome support, when you call us, we answer!

Since 1999, our users have been spreading the word about No-IP and our awesome services that we offer. We wouldn’t be where we are today if it weren’t for all of you, so thank you! Thank you for choosing No-IP as your dynamic DNS and managed DNS provider!

We know… CES is SO last week, but we are excited to share some of the sweet stuff that our Business Development team saw there!

CES was a great experience.  Not only did we get to meet face to face with many of our partners and users it was a great opportunity to see what companies are really trying to get out there and meet the people.  This is a quick list of some of the more notable exhibitors that we visited:

Most Innovative
iPhone Multimeter (iDVM)
Redfish Instruments 

A digital Multimeter that communicates with your iPhone, allowing you to measure, record and share your test results.  Currently no Android version available, but I’m sure that is right around the corner.

Most Useful
Computer Eyewear (Gunnars)
Gunnar Technology Eyewear

Aside from improving your ‘cool’ factor with your co-workers these innovative glasses make an immediate and dramatic difference.  Who would have guessed that staring at a computer screen for 10 hours a day isn’t great for your eyes?  It is one thing to read that in a report from the Vision Council, but it is something entirely different to experience it for yourself.  From the moment I put the demo pair on, I felt this tension on my forehead disappear.  I flipped them up and it was back, put them back on and it was gone.  There is a very interesting description of the principals at work at thevisioncouncil.org, but you really something you need to experience yourself.  The first thing I did upon my return from CES was to order a pair – essential gear for everyone who stares at a screen all day.  Every computer should come with a pair included.

Most Unchanged
Ethernet Over Power

Taking the idea of the connected home to the next level, Ethernet Over Power essentially turns any wires in your house (power, phone, cable, etc.) into an ethernet cord, instantly giving you wired internet access to your entire home.  I was blown away when I first learned about this technology 12 years ago, but what surprises me today is that 1) the technology hasn’t caught on and 2) the technology doesn’t seem to be any further along than was over a decade ago.  Perhaps one is the symptom of the other, or maybe we just don’t need MORE wired connections in our homes.  Whatever the case may be this is an interesting technology that seems to be looking for its niche.

Most Real Estate
iPhone Cases

There were literally ACRES of iPhone cases: blinged out, leather bound, protective, waterproof, shock proof, bullet proof.  If you can put your IPhone in it, it was there at CES.  Two notables… Head Case offers a bottle opener case along with an app that counts how many bottles you have opened (and calls you a cab when you have hit your limit).  PureGear was also a standout with the way they have struck a great balance between design and phone protection – attractive, slim cases that are tough where they need to be.

Most Timely
Brand Agnostic (nearly) Home Device Controller

The MiCasaVerde smart home gateway is Dynamite!  It makes it possible to integrate and control over 700 Z-Wave protocol devices from different manufacturers.  They are also going to be adding Zigbee & X10 protocols soon.  The gateway handles the intra-device communication, and their innovative software allows you to thread and weave the inputs and outputs from your different devices into complete ‘Scenes’ (i.e. when my front door opens turn on my entry lights, open my blinds and change my thermostat).

 Routers

Of course, I’ve always got my eye out innovative, small routers and the show did not disappoint.  The power that can be packed into ever smaller devices is amazing.  The WR702N from TP-Link was quite impressive and their newest micro-router, the TP-Link is the Halo TL-WR706N packed a big punch.  Also, the Premiertek AP2403 was a show stopper with a footprint that is smaller than a business card and a profile just big enough to plug in an RJ45.

All in all, No-IP had a blast at CES. Did you attend CES? What were your favorite new product releases?

We recently had a user ask us if an email forward is the same as an email alias, so are they? Well no, but they are similar.

An email alias goes to another email address that is in the same domain.

An example of this would be emails that are sent to yourname@example.com, could also go to yourname-something@example.com. You could give an email like this out if you want to easily filter email, filter email lists you have signed up for, or other purposes.

yourname-something@example.com is an alias of yourname@example.com

An email forward is when you setup email from one domain to forward to another domain. So, if you have a Gmail, Yahoo, or other free mail account, you could have those emails forwarded to your work email, or an email on a domain you own. This would essentially consolidate all of your email accounts into one, eliminating the need to check numerous accounts a day.

yourname@gmail.com could forward to yourname@yourdomain.com

We offer both services with our POP3/IMAP service. Starting at only $9.95 a year, you can easily setup email for your very own domain name.

Do you have email aliases or forwards setup? How do you use them? Do you find them helpful? Let us know in the comments and share this if you enjoyed it.

We are a connected society, email, cloud, photo sites, social media, everything we do seems to be on the internet these days. So, what happens when all of your important data is online in the “cloud” and one of those services goes down? I myself, rely heavily on Google. Google Docs, Gmail, Youtube, Picasa, Blogger, etc, if something were to happen to my account, say someone hacked into it and sent a bunch of spam emails or something, they could easily shut down access to all of my accounts, in one swoop.

What can you do to safeguard yourself and your accounts against this though?

1. Backup your important online data once a week. If it’s important to you, back it up! Considering installing a NAS storage device on your home network for easy backups, wirelessly. Having two copies is even better in case something happens to the first copy.

2. Make sure your passwords and security questions are strong.

3. Diversify your cloud solution. If you rely heavily on one solution and it goes down, your kind of screwed. Be sure to note who your provider is using for backups too, most rely on a major provider that seems to have issues from time to time…

4. Backup your emails. You can back them up using Thunderbird, iMail, or any other email application.

5. Finally, test your backups by trying to restore a file. This will let you know how easy (or hard) it will be to recover a file. It will also ensure that you have everything set up properly.

Have you ever lost important documents or accounts online? What did you do to resolve the situation? Do you currently have a data backup solution? What is it? Leave your comments below and as always, be sure to share this if you liked it!

Last week, our web developer learned a hard lesson, 3 times. He was away on vacation, and one of our favorite things to do at No-IP is to play pranks on our fellow co-workers when they are out of the office for an extended period of time. We brainstormed ideas and finally decided to mess with his computer a bit.

The only issue was that his computer was locked and we didn’t have the password until we looked at his password hint and realized it was the actual password. UH REALLY?! Anyways, we took it easy on him and decided to only update his DNS host, so when he tried to visit Reddit, it went to Digg, and when he tried to go to Google, it went to Bing. He came back from vacation and quickly realized something was awry. Did lesson learn right? WRONG.

Later that day, we decided to move all of the developers into the conference room for a few days so they could easily discuss and hash away at a big project. Jokes had been made about password security and network security, and everyone thought that he would wisen up and make the necessary changes. Turns out, he didn’t. His password was still the same one that we had hacked the day before. All jokes aside, we told him it was very important to choose a strong password and to keep it to himself.

He headed home for the night and we decided to see if we could hack his password again. After he assured us all that quote “we would never guess it”. We checked out his password hint and our brains instantly started turning. 10 minutes later, we had hacked his password. It was the same exact one, with a more subtle hint. We all stood in shock as we realized that we had just hacked his computer for the 3rd time and that he was too lazy to change his password!

The next day he changed his password and admits that it was stupid to be so blase about it. Strong passwords are very important to network security, online account security and so much more! We haven’t tried to hack his computer lately, but hopefully, he has learned his lesson. What are your tips for creating strong passwords? Check out these 10 tips for choosing strong passwords.

The question can be found by finding the txt record of christmas.no-ip.com and leaving the answer to the question in the following form!

Need a bit of help finding the Text Record? Check out this Dig Tutorial or Options Can Ya Dig It?

The question was “The real St. Nicholas was born in what modern-day country?” and the answer was “Turkey”

Congratulations to our winners!

1. Robert B.
2. Grant W.
3. Rob F.
4. Anthony P.
5. Ryan

Try version 4.0 beta of our Dynamic Update Client! This version is currently only available for Windows.

New features of Version 4.0 Include: 

• Windows 8 support
• Fixed run on startup/run as system service issues with older versions of windows.
• Ability to pick an internal network interface
• Easier to manage update interval (Plus/Enhanced), users
• Ability to create hosts from the client (Plus/Enhanced) users

We are committed to constant improvement and your feedback plays a large role in our updates and product development. Please contact us at duc@no-ip.com or leave your comment on this post to leave feedback. Download the new DUC today!

Last week, the social media giant Facebook suffered some unnecessary downtime that they are now blaming on an error that occurred when a change was made to their DNS infrastructure.

“Earlier today we made a change to our DNS infrastructure and that change resulted in some people being temporarily unable to reach the site. We detected and resolved the issue quickly, and we are now back to 100 percent. We apologize for any inconvenience.”

DNS is the core or backbone of the Internet, without it, the Internet would be a much different place; harder to navigate and browse. We talk all the time about how much downtime caused by mother nature, traffic overloads, and other issues can cost your website, but what about user error?

What can you do to safeguard your website against unnecessary downtime due to user error? Simple, out into practice this 5 tips for DNS management.

1. Only allow authorized and knowledgeable people access to DNS accounts
2. Triple check any updates and changes
3. Monitor your DNS. Make sure it is always running and that it is resolving to the proper address. We suggest using Nagios or Pingdom.
4. Don’t let your domain name expire on accident. Register it for a few years at a time, or let it auto-renew.
5. Make sure your DNS Servers are patched and if available, updated to their latest version to avoid vulnerabilities

Who manages your websites DNS? Have you ever had downtime due to errors in DNS updates? What do you do to safeguard your website against downtime?

Are you thinking of launching a new product, service, or have an awesome idea for a new invention or product? Don’t forget the most important part of the process: registering the domain. If you forget, it could cost you hundreds, if not thousands of dollars down the road.

Also, are you thinking of a name for your new product, service, idea? Don’t forget to see if the name is already a registered domain. Although it may be okay if you have to choose another TLD if the .com version isn’t available, it may confuse your customers, in the long run, costing you unnecessary time and money.

Check out this other helpful posts:

6 Tips for Choosing the Right Domain Name
Best Practices: The Top 4 Ways to Protect your Domain Name