Daredevils With a Net

They deal with every problem imaginable on the Internet, so we called up webhosts large and small to ask them how they do it.

by Jim Thompson [November 19, 2004]

Like daredevil acrobats and death-defying lion tamers in a topsy-turvy world that often resembles a three-ring circus, webhosts juggle customer complaints, attacks from hackers, virus infections, and spammers. It's an act worthy of Ringling Brothers, but for the webhost it's all in a day's work. What keeps these daredevils of the Internet going? We asked a few of the top webhosts to tell us about their problems and what they see for the future of the industry.

Life is not easy for webhosts. Like the fearless lion tamer, they face fierce technical challenges and furious marketing obstacles as they leap through hoops to dazzle the crowd and keep them coming back for more. Among their biggest concerns are the constant flood of spam, never ending virus attacks, and creative credit card fraud schemes.

But for them, it's not the jaws of the lion or the stare of the dog-faced boy that sends shivers through their spines. Number one on their hit parade is spam. This menace is growing at an alarming rate and has become the number one concern for webhosts as well as for their customers. The problem is what to do about it. No company seems to agree, and solutions vary widely.

"Go Daddy takes an aggressive stance against spam, which we view as a huge detractor from the usefulness of the Internet," says Bob Parsons, president and founder of Scottsdale, Ariz.-based GoDaddy.com, which projects revenues of over $100 million for 2004. "We do not tolerate the transmission of spam from our servers, proactively shut down spammers, monitor all traffic to and from Web servers for indications of spamming, and maintain a Spam & Abuse Compliance Center to register allegations of spam abuse."

GoDaddy.com has also endorsed the Sender ID specification sponsored by Microsoft, which they see as a major weapon in the spam wars.

Albuquerque, N.M.-based FatCow webhosting, which reports approximately 32,000 customers and over $4 million in revenues, employs two highly touted anti-spam software programs to root out the offending e-mails. "We deployed early on Brightmail's anti-spam solution in tandem with an Ironport dedicated e-mail appliance," says Peter Ziesmann, marketing and development director of FatCow webhosting. "Since deploying [these two products], we've seen the system tag and route over 200 million unwanted messages, significantly decreasing our customers SPAM exposure."

GoDaddy.com and FatCow also operate their own Data Centers to further insure control over all aspects of the service they offer customers.

Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Ensim Corporation, which supplies software to webhosting companies, and Earthlink, one of the largest webhosts with revenues estimated at more than $1.4 billion, say the only way to fight spam is by constantly looking for and, hopefully, finding, ways to outsmart the spammers.

Both of these companies say most over-the-counter solutions didn't meet their needs. As a result, they have deployed proprietary software, written in house, not only to address the issue of spam (which they rank as the number one problem facing all webhosts), but also to counter e-mail floods, and Distributed Denial of Service attacks (DDOS).

Step right up
But there are other perils besides spam facing the poor webhost—some of which could potentially bring down their entire business. Like the leotard-clad beauty who tip-toes across the high wire, in the end, it's 'uptime' that's most critical to the webhost.

A spokesperson for Atlanta, Ga.-based Earthlink says DDOS attacks are among the most serious and, potentially, most dangerous. "These attacks utilize vast numbers of infected, 'zombified' computers connected to the Internet. The attacks are easy to launch, they do not require high levels of technical skill, and malicious software for launching them is not too difficult to find."

He adds that EarthLink uses a combination of tools, including router based filters, host security and specialized network gear aimed at protecting against attacks, proprietary software, and distributing load to guard against possible attacks.

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