Failover Monitoring

However, round robin DNS strategy solves this predicament, by mapping your domain name to more than one IP address. Select hosting companies now employ DNS round robin technique in conjunction with 'failover monitoring'.

The DNS round robin failover monitoring process starts by a web hosting company setting up your site on two or more independent web servers (preferably with different IP blocks assigned to them). Your domain name will therefore have 2 or more IP Addresses assigned to it.

Then failover monitor watches your web server(s) by dispatching data to a URL you specify and looking for particular text in results. When system detects that one of your IP addresses is returning an error, and others aren't, it pulls that IP address out of list. The DNS then points your domain name to working IP address/s

If any of your IP's come back online they are restored to IP pool. This effectively and safely keeps your site online – even if one of your web servers is down.

The average failure detection and recovery time with a system like this can be as low as 15 minutes. This time varies depending on speed of your site and nature of failure and also how long other ISP's cache (save) your DNS information.

The time taken for other ISP's caching your information can be manipulated in failover monitor by lowering "time to live" (TTL) cache settings. These are settings that other ISP's will use to determine how long to cache your DNS information.

Of course you must bear in mind matter of how frequently data is synchronized between your website's servers. This will be hosting company's responsibility, and this may become complicated where databases and user sessions are involved.

The very expensive hardware based failover monitoring systems that point a virtual IP address to other ISP's, while behind scenes juggling a number of unique IP addresses on different servers, is of course most 'elegant' solution to multi server hosting.

That way, whole issue of ISP's caching your information does not come into play.

Therefore, for websites that need to have true 99.99995% uptime, without huge outlays of money, technology is readily available and certain proprietary failure monitoring systems are now relatively cheap to apply.

So here’s what Johnny does. First he configures his computer to use your wireless network instead of his own, taking an extra minute to make sure that he spoofs any information that may uniquely identify his computer. Next, he searches web a bit for perfect online vendor to acquire his product. He avoids biggest and smallest vendors. The largest vendors tend to be very thorough in credit card validation as they have solid resources at their disposal. The smallest vendors are often quite thorough as well as loss due to fraudulent transactions impacts them dramatically. He searches for a middle of road vendor, one with a reputation for lousy customer service, in hopes they won’t bother verifying that shipping address is valid for credit card being used.

Once he locates a suitable vendor he places order and has it shipped to your next door neighbor. Why there? Well, he doesn’t actually know that wireless network he is using is yours and doesn’t really care. What he does know is your next-door neighbor leaves house every morning promptly at 7:30 and doesn’t return until at least 6:00 in evening. This leaves opportunity to safely retrieve “tried to deliver while you were out” slip that will be left behind by parcel delivery driver. The following morning he will reattach delivery slip to door, with instructions to leave package on doorstep. A few hours later he picks up his package, leaving no trail leading back to him.

Conclusion ---------- More than likely this single incident will disappear without further involving you or Johnny. The owner of credit card will dispute charge, and credit card company or vendor will end up eating loss and story ends. Of course, there’s always chance that some motivated investigator will follow trail back through your internet provider and ultimately to you. You may not be going to jail over it, but you’ll likely be having a few uncomfortable discussions with some gentlemen wearing badges.

The fact is this isn’t an original scenario. This type of scam has been run over and over again and dates back decades before internet explosion. It has dozens of variations and permutations. What is important is that this time around you have become part of equation. By ignorance or by apathy you are in middle of something bad that you never imagined could have happened.