We’re pleased to announce a series of new developments relating to our dedicated servers.

## New Server Specifications ##

We have just released new specifications of dedicated servers available to order today. Changes include:

o Increased range of servers for greater flexibility
o Upgrades to include the very latest Intel processors
o Increased hard drive and memory specifications
o Inclusion of SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) RAID drives on our higher end servers
o Our “Ultimate” server now boasts 24GB of DDR3 RAM as standard, and a KVM for ultimate control.
o A massive 10,000GB of monthly data transfer and 100Mbit connection as standard.
o Extended range of operating systems available when ordering including Ubuntu, CentOS, Debian, Fedora, Windows 2003 and 2008.
o All servers benefit from free setup and are available on a monthly contract basis.

For a complete overview of the new servers please visit our site at:

www.icukhosting.co.uk/dedicatedservers/

## Customised Specifications ##

Don’t forget that we can customise these servers to meet your exact requirements. This can include changes to the operating system installed, additional drives, RAID configuration, or even high speed Private LAN connections between your servers. Most changes are provided as one-off charges with no impact on your server subscription. Please contact us to discuss your requirements.

## Revamped Off-Site Backup ##

Our off-site server backups have now been revamped with lower pricing and higher specifications: 50GB backups start at £50 per month; a 100GB service at £75. Further information about the Backup Service can be found at :-

www.icukhosting.co.uk/dedicatedservers/dedicated_managed_backup.asp

## Reseller Discounts ##

Due to popular demand we have discounted our server subscriptions for all resellers. The pricing for which is contained within the sign-up pages, and on the ‘Wholesale Pricing’ page found in the menu under ‘Admin’.

If you require some advice or help selling dedicated servers to your customers please get in contact. Dedicated servers can stretch further than website and database hosting and can be used for a range of services such as off-site data storage or providing mail facilities such as Microsoft Exchange.

As always, if you require any additional information on our dedicated servers or any of the products in the ICUK portfolio, please do not hesitate to contact us.

We are pleased to announce a significant enhancement to the FTP facilities. These developments have seen the introduction of a redundant proxy setup which forwards traffic to the appropriate FTP server. This new arrangement means:

a) You no longer need to use different FTP addresses for Windows and Linux accounts. Both the ftp. or ftp1. addresses will connect regardless of the account type you are connecting to. You can no longer connect to FTP using the domain name. It must take the form of ftp.domain.com.

b) We have increased the level of logging that is completed. This logging can now be accessed online by editing the hosting account within your control panel. The logs include:

– Login date and time
– Log out date and time
– IP Address
– Ability to view whois of the IP
– Country of origin
– Login status (including wrong password)
– FTP commands completed during session

We hope that this new enhancement simplifies how you connect and improves the security of your accounts.

We are pleased to announce the release of three new broadband packages. These have been designed for light or occasional users of broadband who simply want a cheap connection without long term contracts or short term price reductions for the first few months, for example.

These connections utilise unbundled equipment with over 900 exchanges allowing us to route traffic via alternative means without purchasing relatively expensive bandwidth through BT Wholesale. These savings are passed on to consumers with our low prices starting at only £10 per month including VAT for a 2GB download limit. Our ADSL availability checker has been designed to clearly show if this service is available to you.

These will connect with speeds of upto 8Mbps downstream and upto 800Kbps upstream. The ADSL Max predicted speeds shown in the availability checker will give you a good indication of the potential speeds of your line.

Migration to, or activation of a new connection, are being charged at £46 including VAT as a one off-charge. All connections are supplied with a 1 month contract as standard.

To read more please visit:

http://www.icukhosting.co.uk/broadband/internet_light_user_broadband.asp

If your exchange isn’t enabled you will be able to take advantage of our standard option 1-4 packages. Should you be lucky enough to be connected to an exchange which has our next generation broadband enabled then you can access to speeds of upto 16Mbps coupled with truly unmetered data transfer.

Should you have any questions regarding our services please do not hesitate to contact us.

For those who are familiar with Windows Vista, or the soon to be released Windows 7, you will know of the existence of gadgets that appear on your desktop. We have developed our own gadget which can be installed for free on these two operating systems which provides you with information of your peak hour download usage and quota. An alternative version for Apple Mac is due for release shortly.

This service is free and works for anyone with an ICUK ADSL connection. Once installed you will need to supply the following details into it:

- ADSL Username (user@interdsl.co.uk)
- ADSL Password
- ADSL Phone Number (including area code and without spaces)

You can read more about the gadget on our website:

http://www.icukhosting.co.uk/broadband/internet_gadgets.asp

To download a copy please use:

http://www.icukhosting.co.uk/gadgets/adsl_usage.zip

This is the first gadget we have written, and depending on the feedback we receive we hope to be able to extend the concept further. For example we could develop a gadget to provide you with:

- A daily summary of your phone calls if you purchase CPS from us. This would allow the manager of a company, for example, to keep a closer eye on call expenses.
- Alerts when broadband or telecom orders have gone live.
- Access to real-time service status feeds from our monitoring servers.

We would love to also extend the application to include other operating systems including mobile phones. The limitations are time and imagination. We have designed this to test the water and help allow users to keep a track on usage to prevent additional invoices being raised each month. We hope you enjoy this new feature and look forward to your ideas and feedback.

We have revamped the standard server specifications of our dedicated servers. These new upgrades include:

o Access to the very latest Intel processors
o Increased hard drive specifications
o Inclusion of 30GB solid state drives (SSD) in our Professional Plus and Enterprise servers. These are capable of far higher read and write speeds thanks to no mechanical parts.
o 50% increase in monthly data transfer usage – now 15TB (15,000GB)
o Wide range of Linux and Windows operating systems including Windows 2008

To celebrate the release of these new machines we are giving away double the memory in all new servers at no additional cost!

You can view full details of our new dedicated servers at www.icukhosting.co.uk/dedicatedservers/.

We have released version 7.1 of the control panel. This contains a number of enhancements to the Spam + Virus filtering platform including the interfaces and the cluster design. A few of the key points to mention are:

1. The Spam + Virus filtering cluster has been restructured to a 2-tier model. A diagram representing this can be found at:

http://www.icukhosting.co.uk/images/spam_cluster_large.jpg

This new design has helped improve efficiency and redundancy.

2. We have redesigned the interfaces for managing your Spam Filtering. This should be more intuitive and spread out over multiple sections as opposed to the one-page layout.

3. Increased sensitivity of the filter allowing you to adjust the required number of points by ±0.1.

4. Increased number of reverse DNS checks, available with three levels. We recommend leaving the default settings at the ‘basic’ level, although if you wish to restrict more spam try increasing this to the intermediate or advanced settings.

5. Improved statistics help show you how effective some of the checks are at stopping email. This includes information surrounding the black list checks which stop the majority of spam messages.

6. External Spam + Virus filtering customers that make use of our mail queuing / backup facilities will be please to see that you can now de-queue messages that are stored. We will store messages for up to seven days.

We are in the process of finalising details for release on our website and control panel, but we’re very close to releasing a truly unmetered upto 16mb ADSL 2+ package. Prices will be £25 (inc.VAT) with a free activation / migration route available with a 12 month contract. Our reseller channel will also gain access to this product. A further announcement will be made shortly, but for those who just can’t wait please email us

Customers can now follow our day-to-day happenings on Twitter:

http://twitter.com/icuknet

Or you can become a fan of ICUK on Facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/ICUK/7369724285

We hope you enjoy this insight into our company and the developments taking place.

ICUK Team

Welcome to ICUK’s blog! Here we hope to keep you informed of some of the developments taking place within the company, as well as useful information relating to our products and services.

Please feel free to add your own comments to our posts.

ICUK Team