It is common practice for service providers and consultants to become resellers of other services or products. These services and products are marked-up to their clients and the consultants pocket the difference. We could do that, we’d make some money at it, but we choose not to. In fact, we believe this behavior borders on the unethical. We are paid for our time, expertise, and advice. If our advice includes recommending the purchase of a service or product from which we will gain financially, it is difficult for us to be unbiased. So we do not mark-up.

Why become a reseller if we do not make a profit at it? That is simple. We like to make our clients happy. We have noticed that paying less money for the same service or product tends to make our clients happy. This policy extends to all of our reseller and partner agreements, and even to the simple act of purchasing retail equipment for reimbursement. We do not mark-up. So smile, because Mailtrust email just got cheaper for everyone, and even cheaper for you if you’re a Feedwire client.

Backup

Backing up data is important. Hard drives are machines that break. When they do it can be very expensive if not impossible to recover the data they contain. Fortunately, it is possible and affordable to make exact copies of digital information. The question is not whether you can afford to back up, it’s why you think you can afford not to.

Square Peg, Square Hole

Computers use different connectors for different purposed. Displays are connected via VGA or DVI, Keyboards and mice via PS/2 and USB, and copper ethernet networks are connected via RJ-45. Unfortunately IT is not a realm in which it is safe to adopt an “if the shoe fits, wear it,” or “if the connector fits, plug it” mentality. It’s common for both ends of one wire to end up plugged into a switch or hub, which creates a loopback on the network and generates infinite traffic and breaking the network. It’s also common for multiple routers to be connected to a network via their LAN ports, often with identical IP information, defeating the network’s ability to properly route traffic to the internet. Improperly connected network hardware and cables is a big cause of network downtime and can be extremely difficult to track down.

Reset Button

Reset =/= Restart. Restarting or rebooting a network device is a common troubleshooting technique. Routers and switches and wireless access points are actually little computers. They sometimes crash too, especially less robust models. In that case, rebooting can be a quick and easy and effective fix. Resetting the device, however, reloads the factory default configuration, which is probably not appropriate for your network.

Email and Scope

Email is the first indicator. There are many problems with the same symptom that people notice before anything else. When email stops flowing, our phones start ringing. These problems can exist at any step along a long chain. The local computer, local network, network perimeter, ISP, and the mail server itself are all required for email to flow, and a hitch in any one of them can cause the same symptom. Some of these problems might require professional help to solve, some you might be able to handle yourself. To determine where the problem lies, or at least a likely candidate, run down this list:

1. Does rebooting my computer solve this problem? If yes, it’s probably something on my computer that’s acting up.
2. Can I print to a network printer or see file servers on my local network? If yes, the local network is probably healthy.
3. Do I get a response from my router if I type its IP address into my browser? If yes, the perimeter is probably OK.
4. Can I open web pages? If yes, the ISP is probably in good shape.
5. Can I access my email via the webmail login? If yes, the mail server probably isn’t broken.

Knowing the answers to these questions might not fix your problem, but it will certainly help us fix your problem.

Internet

Businesses are internet addicts. Financial information, email, research, data shared with customers, data shared with vendors, business web presence, instant messages and more all require a working internet connection. It’s relatively inexpensive to upgrade your office to a dual-WAN configuration with automatic failover. Save yourself the worry and hassle of internet downtime in your office and make this small investment.

Preventative Medicine

One client insisted that their server’s hard drive was being backed up. It turns out that it was not. Data was recovered, but at a cost of $2,400. Another ignored our recommendations for managed switches. Network downtime cost three-quarters of a day of productivity. Both of these problems could have been identified and mitigated in advance for much less money than the eventual cost of cleaning up after a disaster. Rebuilding the levee is cheaper than rebuilding the city.

If you’re using someone else’s domain, such as gmail.com, hotmail.com, aol.com, comcast.com, or yahoo.com, this article isn’t for you. You are tied to the fate of that particular host. I could write an entire article on why it’s important for you to own and use your own domain for email, but I’ll let an anecdote suffice. In 2001, the ISP I used at the time, Primenet, was purchased by Earthlink. I was informed that my email address, rdamienc@primenet.com, was going to be terminated and that I had 30 days to pick a new email address @earthlink.net. It didn’t matter that I had years of contacts who would try to email me at the old address or that I had hundreds of dollars of printed promotional material, both on a shelf and in circulation, featuring the primenet.com address. If you’re using email hosted at a domain that you don’t control, I urge you to make the switch to your own domain on your own terms, not on terms set by big corporations. The costs are small ($40 a year or less) and your own terms will be better for you.

1. Registrar

The registrar is the company from whom you purchased your domain name. Companies like Network Solutions and Go Daddy are popular registrars. They perform a function similar to the trademark office — they enforce domain name uniqueness. There can be only one feedwire.com and only one aol.com.

It’s important for you to verify that you know which registrar your domain name is registered with, that your name is listed as the owner of the domain and not some third party or consultant, and what username and password you can use if you need to make changes to your domain configuration.

Registrars establish ownership of domains, but they don’t route email. The DNS (Domain Name Server) is the first step in the email routing chain.

• With which registrar is my domain registered?
• Is my domain registered to me?
• What username and password can I use to make changes to my domain?

2. Authoritative Domain Name Server

The DNS system is the white pages of the internet. Much like a telephone number, each computer on the internet has a distinct IP address. Names are easier to remember than numbers — I get much more traffic when I direct people to feedwire.com than when I direct them to 207.7.108.213. This is an important task. When DNS stops working, the internet effectively stops working.

In most cases, DNS is handled either by the Registrar (above) or the Email Host (below), but this is not necessarily true. Since your email is important to you, dear reader, it’s your responsibility to know the state of your DNS. Additionally, you should be comfortable with the redundancies they have in place and guarantees they make about their DNS service.

• Who is my DNS host?
• Do I have a username and password which gives me access to make DNS changes?

3. Email Host

Your email host is the big kahuna of this article and your email systems. This is the server to which your DNS directs other email servers seeking to deliver email addressed to your domain. Email is vitally important to communication throughout your organization and all of the organizations with which you interact. We’re all familiar with the idiom, “You get what you pay for.” What do most people pay for email hosting? Zero.

Most individuals and many organizations trust their email either to a free host or to their web host as a free bonus for their hosting account. Dreamhost, a huge web hosting company, reports that just over half of its customer service inquiries concern email. Can you imagine if you had to devote half of your staff and resources to servicing a product that industry habits force you to give away for free? Dreamhost writes about how much they hate hosting email here.

What’s better than free email? Business email. Companies like Mailtrust and AppRiver specialize in hosting email for businesses. They are email specialists, not hosting generalists. They have redundancies in place, automatic backups, fantastic webmail and management consoles. They understand how important email is to you and to everyone, and they want to host yours.

• Who is my email host?
• Am I comfortable with their service, redundancies, and backups?
• What username and password do I need to make changes to the email addresses at my domain?
• What is the username and password for my own email account?

4. Internet Connection

To retrieve your email from your email host, you’ve got to traverse the internet. Whether you’re using webmail, a mobile device, or a desktop email client, you’ve got to somehow be online. When the internet at your office goes down, email access goes with it. This is not as catastrophic as a downed DNS or Email Host — your email will be waiting for you when you’re able to get back online. Still, you need to know how to get back online.

• Who is my ISP?
• How can I reach them for service?

5. Your Computer

New emails are important, but old emails can be too. Once your email is downloaded from the server, it becomes your responsibility to ensure its safety and longevity. You’ve got to keep backups of your data, on separate physical media. This is a good idea in general, for reasons that reach far beyond email health.

• Do I backup my computer regularly?
• Is my old email included in this backup?
• If someone stole my computer, would I still have a copy of all of my old email?

Full Disclosure

Yes, we are a reseller for Mailtrust, but only because that enables Feedwire to offer Mailtrust email hosting to our clients at lower prices than Mailtrust offers directly, in smaller units, and better, faster management of the email hosting.