JPstream Blog

Official Blog on Web Hosting, Web Design, Email Hosting, SEO

All About Cloud Hosting

Otherwise known as cloud computing, cloud hosting is a process that involves the combination of a number of servers for the sole purpose of providing a more stable hosting solution. This is a more commonly used hosting system as it maximizes the use of the available resources as opposed to other systems.

The idea of combining several servers together was preferred as it improves the overall performance of all servers and the output is much better. Generally, the process involves an advanced form of web hosting that is designed to massively increase its hosting power whenever you have a huge traffic on your website.

By so doing, the visitors do not have a difficult time navigating through the site and they end up getting to fulfill their mission of visiting the site. The server design is quite resourceful as it lowers the hosting power when there isn’t much traffic so as to avoid wastage .

Cloud computing is entirely useful as in as much as it is effective in its operations, it is also cheap to have. The system works like the prepaid electricity billing method where you only pay for what you use. You will get to save on human resources costs as you don’t need to hire someone to take care of the servers for you. Another thing to say goodbye to are installation and maintenance costs as there is no such thing in cloud computing. There is no doubt that cloud computing has indeed gone mainstream . In as much as not every of its aspects is entirely perfect, there are quite a number of services that it is able to deliver successfully . That is why there is growing popularity on the use of the cloud hosting service .

The load of the servers is entirely taken care of by the combination of several servers. The system ensures that the work at hand is shared and none of the machines on the shared platform is left idle or overworked. This is a great idea to avoid a failure of the system, should any of the servers fail. By switching your systems to use the cloud computing technology, crashing servers will be a thing of the past .

Under cloud computing, the server to be used is never set up at the customer’s location. The servers are randomly distributed so that there is absolutely no chance of them experiencing any faults and should that arise, the system will work just fine without shutting down.

JPstream offers shared Cloud hosting service popularly known as Cloud Sites. With full redundancy and high uptime guarantee, it provide next generation hosting for web site with high requirement. Cloud Sites only starts from ¥ 990 monthly.

What is IMAP and what are its specific advantages over POP3?

IMAP stands for “Internet Message Access protocol) - a email service which helps accessing your mailbox from different computers and locations. The IMAP service allows the user to download only the message headers and decide if they want to actually download the rest of the message and the attachments.

IMAP was designed to overcome some problems with POP behavior and provide more features for delivery and management of e-mail. With IMAP, mail is kept on the mail server and is managed there by a series of commands sent to the server by your client. Copies of messages and attachments are transferred to a email client only when one request them.

By default, only descriptive information about your messages is sent to your client. This works very well over slow links or for access from devices with limited computing or storage capacity such as a PDA, mobile phone or dialup internet access.

This feature makes downloading large attachments on a slow connection more manageable and efficient. In addition, the IMAP service provides folders for the user to store emails and attachments on the server so that they can retrieve those stored messages when they log into the server from different computers.

In practical areas where POP is weak, with respect to online/disconnected operation, are strengths for IMAP, since online access was its original design center. These new features provide powerful benefits that allows the user to create folders for received and sent messages to be retrieved from any computer.

The advantages of IMAP is that it is more feature-rich and allows you to read your e-mail from any location and any device with IMAP support.

Some specific advantages of IMAP over POP include:

* Robust folders for storing received and sent messages
* Freedom for user to download attachments at will
* Provision for determining message structure without downloading entire message.
* Selective fetching of individual MIME body parts.
* Server-based searching and selection to minimize data transfer.
* Ability to append messages to a remote folder.
* Ability to set standard and user-defined message status flags.
* Support for simultaneous update and update discovery in shared folders.
* New mail notification.
* Ability to manipulate remote folders other than INBOX.
* Remote folder management (list/create/delete/rename).
* Support for folder hierarchies.
* Suitable for accessing non-email data; e.g., NetNews, documents.
* In IMAP, when a client program performs any operation on a mailbox, the server will automatically include in its response notification of any new messages that have arrived since the last notification.
* IMAP’s ability to manipulate remote folders other than INBOX is fundamental to online and disconnected operation. This means being able to save messages from one folder to a different one, being able to access archived messages subsequently, and allowing for multiple incoming message folders.

Premium Email Hosting

Can Your Business Afford Downtime?

Hardware failures, software failures or user error can all cause system downtime. Downtime causes customer dissatisfaction, additional customer support, lost revenue and impacts your reputation. When your web site goes down, you’re losing potential customers and risking existing ones.

The problem is, the majority of web hosting companies have no redundancy in place, with one server handling all requests. A hard disk failure, power supply failure or software issue will bring all websites on that server off line. It may take hours to repair the problem, leaving customers stranded. Carefully read the fine print when choosing a web hosting company. Most provide uptime guarantees that only cover network uptime, not service availability. That way, They guarantee this because as long as the network is functioning, regardless of whether or notif your web site is up, the uptime guarantee is being met.

High Availability refers to an architecture designed for very high uptime. A High Availability solution greatly reduces the risk of downtime by integrating spare devices that will take the place of any resource that becomes unavailable. A High Availability infrastructure has redundancy starting at the network level all the way to the server level.

A High Availability network will connect to multiple backbone carriers and have fully redundant routers /and switches. A provider, router or switch failure should not affect your website. Power systems should be fully redundant including auto transfer to a backup generator in the event thatof grid power failures. Power distribution units should be redundant and never overloaded.

Temperature and humidity should be controlled by multiple air conditioning units, with enough additional capacity to maintain the environment in the event of an AC unit failure.

Servers designed for High Availability include dual power supplies and a RAID (redundant array of inexpensive disks (RAID).) If a power supply fails, a backup will instantly take its place. The failed power supply can be replaced without bringing the server down. RAID refers to using multiple hard disks which appear as one. If one of the hard drives in a RAID fails, no data is lost and only a small performance penalty occurs while the array is rebuilt using a spare hard disk.

Redundant power supplies and RAID are key components in a High Availability infrastructure, although it can be taken a step further. Clustering is a term you may have heard before. Fail over is a type of clustering that dramatically increases service availability. In a fail over cluster, two servers are linked together. One is actively handling requests, while the other stands by. If the primary server should fail, the secondary server will detect this and automatically take over. The switch should take place within seconds, with little noticeable effect to your sites’ visitors. Fail over clustering can protect against total server failure, including file system corruption or critical hardware failure (such as the processor or motherboard.) It can take hours to re-build or provision a new server after a failure, clustering eliminates this possibility.

Monitoring the state of a High Availability infrastructure is equally important as the redundant hardware itself. The network, server and application layer need to be closely monitored on a continual, 24×7 basis. Technicians trained in High Availability need to be available around the clock to instantly respond to any issues that arise. Monitoring should be performed from an off site and off network location, to ensure a true perspective on service availability.

A hosting environment designed for maximum uptime includes redundant network, power, cooling, data storage, server hardware and proactive monitoring. If you have a mission critical web site that you depend on, make sure your next host has an infrastructure designed for High Availability.

JPstream Cloud Sites offer high availability and redundancy based on Cloud Computing Technology with multi-tier network. Apart from this, JPstream also have extensive network connection via Softbank, IIJ, KDDI and NTT Communication This ensures our clients fastest connection to Asia and the world.

(Source: jpstream.net)

Guide to Email Hosting in Japan

In context of the web world, email has become lifeblood of businesses having been the most obligatory connection between them and their clients. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to assume that email has been the source of inspiration for many a business to operate courtesy websites.Looking at email hosting from an inquisitive perspective, one might question its importance in web marketing and doing business over the internet. Doing business on internet might leave you with several things to deal with but with the existence of email hosting, things have become lot easier. You may even start a business on web along with an email server devoid of full emailing proficiency. As much startling as that might be, it is solely email hosting deserving the credit.

Need more elaboration on email hosting? Putting it very simply, email hosting is basically the component of internet hosting service that deals with operating email servers. Users can send and receive emails and while you could find a lot of services catering email hosting packages, predominantly, the service is meant for support to big sized business concerns. Best part of email hosting - you get to have certified email addresses without being involved in the complexities of web hosting. There is absolutely no need to have an e-commerce site. All you need is a program on your computer to retrieve and send emails or any computer with an internet connection. There are no barriers on the number of emails you would want to send or receive. There is an obvious advantage of managing your corporate emails with expediency and convenience. A mere email could open your doors to an extremely successful business.

Then comes the big question as always - How to look for the most appropriate Japan based email hosting company? List down your requirements and begin the search. Evaluate what your short-listed companies have to offer you. Be clear in identifying your priorities. Once you hand over your emails to an email hosting company, you may be relieved on a major front unless you have picked up the wrong option. This way, you can concentrate much better on all the other aspects of your business that require your vigilance.

JPstream provides email hosting services to more than 20,000 business users in Asia.

(Source: jpstream.net)

Most Popular Webmail Clients

The three most popular webmail clients that will help making your life easier.

General Features of Webmail

When we are talking about webmail client, it simply refers to an e-mail client, basically which is accessed using an Internet browser, therefore, it can be accessed from any computer having an internet connection, wherever you are. As long as you have Internet access, you always have the opportunity to read your emails. It is believed that the first webmail was disclosed in 1997 by Hotmail.

Squirrel Mail

It is a type of mail client, written in PHP. And it should be considered first and foremost by the fact that it’s free. A complete set of functions: from the list of emails to the address book looks great and easy to use.

You also have great opportunities to setup Squirrel for yourself. You may also choose your thematic design. With the help of different plugins you can extend the functionality, if you feel the requirement. For example, you can add a calendar to empower your address book or add spam filters. It’s a really wonderful webmail client!

Horde Mail

With it you can easily compose letters and manage incoming mail. To do this, there is a great address book, to structure your contacts. If you have an unfinished letter, you can easily keep it in the drafts and then continue it with Horde Mail.

Speaking of the Horde can be a kind of parallel with the widespread Outlook Express. The only difference – is that with Horde you can access your mail wherever you are, you may only have access to the Internet.

RoundCube Mail

RoundCube is a free webmail client and is probably the most common of the three webmail clients. It has got great potential when working with a mailbox, for example, drag & drop, protection of personal information, an integrated address book, as well as multi-level support – all integral elements of this first-class customer.

If you have any questions while working with your mail, RoundCube provides excellent customer support to help you resolve the existing problems. This webmail client provides a high level of performance.

You can enjoy all these three most popular webmail clients and features by choosing even any of the web hosting plans as well. These webmail clients are free and integrated with the cPanel and provides an opportunity to a user to access his/her emails from anywhere in the world.

Email Web Hosting: Aspects and Security

Email Web hosting solutions are designed for every business who do not intend to waste the resources and valuable time to set-up and manage the Business communication infrastructure. Email hosting packages have been designed with a sole intention of helping business cope with the communication requirements. We all are aware about the increasing volume of online threats and attacks, the chances of virus infections, hardware and software issues. Every such issue may hamper your business communication for hours or probably days. To have a secure solution that would eliminate these issues, is the requirement of each business.

It is a wiser decision to outsource the business messaging requirements to a reliable website hosting company. In this article we will try and understand the various aspects of Email Hosting.

Secure Access to the Webmail

Any reputable Japan Web Hosting company that offers Email hosting packages, provide the mail server with an 128 bit encrypted channel. This channel is alive throughout the webmail session. Hence, the data which is sent to server(s) and the data which arrives from the other server(s) is secure from the time a user signs in. This encrypted channel stays active until the user logs-out. It ensures the security of your business communication and avoids any interception of messages and the information.

Secure Access of IMAP and POP Servers

There has been a rapid increase in the demand for email hosting for business communication, mainly due to its feature which allows you securely access the desktop email clients via POP and IMAP. Every email is encrypted, even the username and passwords transmitted to the mailing server are not compromised. Every popular mail clients ie. Microsoft Outlook, Thunderbird, AppleMail, Outlook Express etc., are supported with the Email hosting packages. No matter how you choose to manage your mails (on/offline), email hosting solution assures reliability, efficiency and security.

Ample Storage Space

When you choose an email hosting plan, as a default feature, you are offered ample storage capacity for every mailbox you create. The basic and the personal packages offer storage space in MB’s whereas with the professional, business and corporate packages, the storage capacity offered is in GB’s. These packages are designed keeping in mind every possible business requirement of electronic mail communication. Users can upgrade the plans at any point of time. The upgrade is hassle free and you can start using the upgraded resources as soon as you place a request.

Spam and Virus Filters

A reliable email hosting solution is the one that filter the suspected traffic and keeps your network secure. There are multiple ways of dealing with spams, but usually, an anti virus scanner is integrated within the host SMTP gateway. Some ways that are pre-dominantly used are blacklisting, grey-listing and white-listing the emails. Once you’ve set these parameters to the email you receive, the suspected emails would be automatically diverted to the quarantine list instead of reaching to the inbox.

Shared Address Book

For any business, the address book is considered to be the most important feature. Every popular email client offer this feature, it is a convenient method for storing the contact details which can be also be easily retrieved whenever required. Users may categories contacts based on Private and Shared address book. The LDAP directory services are usually a default feature of every shared address book.

(Source: jpstream.net)