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MINNEAPOLIS, MN - August 26, 2003
Items of interest.....
I. CEO’s Corner
II. New Computer Worm Blasts Companies
III. Digital North Technology Update
IV. Spam Fight: Round 2
V. Visi.com -- New Infrastructure Partner
VI. Online Store Grand Opening
VII. MindwareOnline.com -- Making Kids Smarter
I. CEO’S CORNER
I want to thank each and every one of you for being a customer of Digital North. Can you believe
that it is August already? Where has the Summer gone?
The Summer went by quickly for us at Digital North. We added many new clients such as Best Buy
(www.bestbuybusinesssolutions.com), MindWare (www.mindwareonline.com), and Hound-Dog
(www.hound-dog.com) -- just to name a few. We spent significant time and energy improving our
service infrastructure. We implemented a whole new backup network to improve data backup
performance and scalability. Our tech team installed new e-mail systems to increase performance
and to improve spam filtering. We undertook a major effort to reduce incoming spam e-mail. You can
read more about this effort in the Spam Fight article.
We partnered up with Visi.com to bring online a new hosting network in St. Paul for greater
redundancy and flexibility. We added another secondary DNS server. We now have three total -- two
at our Minneapolis facility and one at the St. Paul facility. We made countless other service
improvements. As always we will continue to invest the time, energy and money to improve services
to our customers.
If you have any ideas or suggestions on how to improve our service I would appreciate you giving me
a call or sending me an email. Also send me your shirt size and I will see that you receive an
exclusive Digital North shirt. One lucky person, drawn at random, will receive a pair of lower level
seats to a Minnesota Timberwolves game this upcoming season.
Enjoy the rest of the Summer!!
Mike Sowada
CEO
Digital North
msowada@digitalnorth.net
952-924-2450
II. New Computer Worm Blasts Companies
A new computer worm which exploits a bug in Microsoft Windows unleashed its fury last week. The
so-called MSBlaster worm uses a flaw in the Remote Procedure Call feature in Windows to infect
unprotected computer systems. The RPC flaw was first reported by Microsoft in mid-July. The flaw
was designated as serious and all Windows users were strongly encouraged to update their computer
systems. The Digital North staff monitors several different security services on a daily basis.
Our tech team immediately updated all customer servers after receiving the notification regarding
the RPC bug.
We are pleased to report that our services were completed unaffected by the recent MSBlaster worm.
We use several layers of protection including firewall systems, Windows updates, and Virus scanning
software to ensure that our services are safe and reliable. We strongly recommend that all customers
review their Windows computer systems to make sure the systems have the most recent Microsoft software
patches installed. The easiest way to audit your computer system is to go to the Windows Update
website at http://www.windowsupdate.com.
III. Digital North Technology Update
Digital North implemented dozens of new technical service enhancements over the past two quarters.
Technology is the fuel that drives our engine towards greater performance and reliability.
Do you have videos or presentations you would like to add to your website? How about adding a message
from your CEO or references from some of your key customers? Digital North now provides streaming
media services using the Microsoft Windows Media platform. We can stream videos of any size and
quality. Media streaming is a great way to differentiate your website and increase potential customer
interest in your services.
Digital North is now supporting the latest version of the Miva Merchant e-commerce platform. Version
4.19 supports more shipping options and credit card merchants. The new version is also the fastest
version of Miva available. We can upgrade most existing Miva customers for a small nominal fee. Did
you know that Digital North is the only Miva hosting partner in Minnesota?
Digital North made a significant investment in a new data backup system this past quarter. Data
backup is a critical part of our security service offering. We are now using NovaNet software by
Novastor to manage all backup services in all our facilities. NovaNet provides very reliable Windows
and Linux backup services. The software also provides backup-to-disk capabilities using a virtual
tape device driver. The virtual tape feature is important as our capabilities continue to grow in
the future. More and more companies will switch from tape to disk for their backup storage needs in
the future.
We have also implemented a brand new data backup network to take advantage of our new backup system.
In the past all of our data backup traffic shared the same bandwidth with customer website traffic.
By physically separating the data backup traffic from the rest of our network we were able to greatly
increase the performance of our data backups while increasing the performance of customer websites.
The bottom line is that our customers' websites are faster and our backups are faster.
Service monitoring is one of the most important services we provide. We are responsible for
monitoring and maintaining the services of hundreds of customers in multiple facilities. It is a
daunting task for most companies. Fortunately we get a little help from an automated system called
Nagios. Our new Nagios monitoring system watches the CPU, memory, and disk performance on all of our
equipment. Nagios also checks to make sure that our website and email services are working properly.
The monitoring system will immediately notify our technical staff via email or pager if a problem is
detected in one of our networks. Nagios will typically detect a service problem within five minutes.
Oftentimes we can resolve a service problem before your customers are impacted.
Digital North recently installed a new bandwidth tracking system called Cacti. The system allows us
to measure and report customer bandwidth utilization. Cacti also provides computer server, website,
and database utilization reports. We use this information to forecast network and computer upgrades.
We can also use Cacti to help diagnose rare performance problems. We plan to offer these reports to
our customers in the near future.
Many of our email customers noticed a speed improvement in our email services. Digital North
installed a brand new primary mail server a couple weeks ago. The new Dell server combines fast dual
CPUs, a large amount of memory, and plenty of fast disk drives to deliver superior performance. We
also took the opportunity to upgrade to the latest version of our award-winning mail server software
-- CommuniGate 4.1. The upgraded software provides new groupware functionality as well as improved
spam fighting capabilities (more about that later).
IV. Spam Fight: Round 2
Spam seems to be a topic of conversation around the Digital North office lately. Every day we talk to
a customer who is concerned about the impact of spam on their workplace. It seems like the amount of
spam we receive has doubled over the past year. In fact, recent studies have determined that almost
50% of the messages sent and received are now spam. Obviously spam has become a big problem as the
volume has changed from a trickle to a flood.
Digital North is entering the spam arms race with several new defensive technologies. The only way to
fight spam effectively is to use better technology than the spammers. We have implemented several
perimeters of defense around our mail servers. No single layer of defense can protect against the
onslaught of spam. The defenses acting in unison present a very challenging barrier.
Let's follow the path of an email message through our mail systems to better understand the
treacherous journey. First, our email server will check the credentials of every email sender.
The server will check to see if the sender's email server is located on a "Black List" (also known
as a RBL). If the sender is on a RBL our mail server will refuse their email message. The RBL tracks
mail servers that are open relays or are known senders of spam email messages. We utilize three
different black lists. Why? Well, if one is good then three are probably better. Every incoming
email message is checked against the three separate lists. We follow the one strike rule -- one
strike and the message is discarded.
Next, the email message is intercepted and processed by our new Spam Assassin filtering system. Spam
Assassin performs hundreds of tests on the content of the email message. The system looks for well
known spam keywords and phrases within the email message. Spam Assassin also uses a special feature
to adapt to new forms of spam that it was not initially programmed to recognize. Yes, it actually
learns. Spam Assassin produces a spam score for every email message. If the spam score is above a
certain threshold then Spam Assassin brands the email message with a special header ("Possible Spam"). We let each customer decide how they want to deal with the spam message. Customers can automatically move the messages to a spam mail folder or they can automatically discard the spam email messages.
The email message has almost made it to the front gate. But we have one more surprise. Every email
message is also interrogated by a system known as Vipuls Razor. The Razor system is a distributed
real-time database of known spam senders. Thousands of email providers participate in the Razor
network and report new sources of spam every minute. When a spammer sends out millions of email
messages those messages reach thousands of email providers. If one of the email providers reports
the spammer to the Razor network then the other providers can block the offending sender.
Spam Assassin, Black Lists, Vipuls Razor, Spam traps -- you would think we have descended to the
Middle Ages. These are all defensive tools in the new offensive war against spam. Digital North
will continue to upgrade our technologies to provide the very best tools to win the battle.
V. Visi.com: New Infrastructure Partner
Digital North is pleased to announce that we have signed a new agreement with Visi.com as an
infrastructure partner. Visi.com is one of the most well known Internet Service Providers in
Minnesota. Visi.com, a DSL.net company, is the largest regional business-to-business ISP.
Digital North now provides website and database hosting services from the Visi.com datacenter in
St. Paul, Minnesota. The state-of-the-art datacenter complements our hosting networks at Inflow
and Golden Gate. We now have three hosting datacenters to meet customer needs.
VII. MindwareOnline.com -- Making Kids Smarter
We had the opportunity this past week to speak with Ryan Iverson, Manager of the MindwareOnline.com
online store.
Digital North: What is MindwareOnline.com?
Ryan: MindWareOnline.com is one business channel for MindWare. MindWare is a direct mail company
that sells brainy toys for children. We started our web
presence in early 1999 utilizing a Yahoo storefront. The potential on the web was soon realized and
MindWare began work on a custom-built web site in June of 2000. The new MindWareOnline.com site was
launched in September of 2000. Since then MindWare has realized about twenty-five percent of its
sales through the web channel.
Digital North: Who are your typical online customers?
Ryan: Our typical online customer is our catalog shopper. They will usually have their catalog in
front of them while shopping on the web. The demographics of the group are women between the ages
of 35 and 50 with an above average income. We are also starting to build a strong market in schools
around the nation.
Digital North: What technologies drive your website?
Ryan: MindWareOnline.com's storefront was developed in ColdFusion, and started out with a Microsoft
Access database. As we grew we converted the Access database to Microsoft SQL Server 2000 which we
are currently running. At this time the web database is entirely separate from MindWare's catalog
management database. All interaction between the two systems is done by performing batch imports
and exports.
Digital North: What types of online marketing do you use? What impact have these efforts had?
Ryan: Currently our catalog mailings do the majority of marketing for our website. We also send out
emails to our house list with featured products and product
specials. MindWare also has an affiliate program that we are trying to grow. This has been a
successful way of marking in the past and we would like to grow a channel of affiliate partners to
increase our web exposure.
Digital North: Why did you select Digital North as a service partner?
Ryan: MindWare selected Digital North as a partner after they came recommended by another mail order
company. After a few meetings with Digital North they we
an obvious perfect fit for MindWare. We moved to Digital North in June of 2003 and have nothing but
good things to say about their performance. It was virtually a flawless transition from our previous
ISP and the support and communication has been nothing less than superb! Thanks a million.
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