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newsletter://mv.com
July 2002
Antispam efforts
Recently we told you that we would be working to offer you options to
address the problem of unwanted email sent to you at MV, with the effort
expected to progress over a period of months. As we've looked at this, we
decided it would make sense to combine this project with another one that
we've had in mind for a while. That other project enhances the way your
mailboxes are handled on our server, and also involves a slight change in
the way you update your web pages. This change will help us in the anti-
spam effort and will help provide you with better functionality in dealing
with spam processing.
With your dialup IP account at MV, you may have one or more accounts
on our mailbox (POP) server. Right now (that is, before we make this
change), each mailbox account is used to access the incoming mail (the
inbox) for that account. Additionally, one of the mailbox accounts "owns"
the personal web page that comes with your dialup account (if you've cre-
ated one), and you use that mailbox account to update the web space.
After the change, each of your mailbox accounts will have a home
directory on the mailbox server. That home directory will give you access
to an area where you can store and arrange your email in folders apart from
your inbox. You could use an IMAP-capable mail program to manage these
folders (note that most email programs support IMAP as well as POP), or you
could simply continue to use POP to access the inbox as before.
If you have a personal web page, you currently manage it using one of
your mailbox accounts (the one that "owns" the web space) by making an FTP
login to that account. After we add the home directory to your mailbox
account, your FTP connection won't bring you right into your web space.
Instead, there will be a subdirectory that will bring you there: you will
have to go into that subdirectory. But as an added benefit, whereas previ-
ously only one of your mailbox accounts owned your web space, now you will
be able to have the other accounts own subdirectories in your web space --
letting each mailbox owner manage a corner of your web area.
You might be wondering how this ties in to antispam efforts. By giv-
ing each mailbox account a home directory, we can more easily maintain your
spam management choices. Furthermore, since you will have a mail folder
stored on MV's mailbox server, some of the options we will provide will
allow you to automatically direct incoming mail into different email fold-
ers for you to deal with. You will even be able to make rejected mail go
into its own folder in case you want to be able to see what you missed.
We'll keep you up-to-date on our progress.
.name registrations available
On June 26, registrations for a new Internet top-level domain (TLD)
.name went live. The .name TLD is the first domain name intended solely
for peoples' names. The guidelines are detailed on our web page, but
here's a capsule summary:
* You can register first.last.name or last.first.name;
* You can use an abbreviated first name such as "Don" for "Donald";
* You can add digits to either part of the name to make the domain name
unique (e.g. John5.Smith.Name);
* You must have a legitimate claim on the name;
* You can register your child's name, or you can register a name as a
gift to someone else -- as long as the legitimate name holder contin-
ues to be the domain name holder.
* You can register the name of a fictional character as long as you hold
a trademark or service mark for that name.
The .name registry also offers an email mapping bundle, wherein you
get a simple email address that's related to the domain that you register,
in the form of firstpart@lastpart.name. If you were to register
John5.Smith.Name, the email bundle address would be John5@Smith.Name. If
you were to register Smith.John.Name, the email bundle address would be
Smith@John.Name. While the registry offers the email bundle as a separate
option, there is uncertainty about whether you can get the email mapping
later if you don't take it right away -- that is, at the time you register
the domain name. Because of this uncertainty and the likely confusion
caused by not registering the email address along with the domain name,
we've elected to only offer the domain registration and email mapping bun-
dle together. When you register the domain name through our registration
service, we'll require that you take the email bundle as well.
Registration of a .name domain (including the email mapping bundle) is
$24 for a single year or $48 for two years. (Our standard domain nameser-
vice rate structure also applies.).
Free .name Web alias: Register a .name domain and use MV for its nameser-
vice, and, upon request, we'll map the complete domain name to your stan-
dard (personal) web space at no additional charge.
New server colocation offering
This month we are offering a new colocation plan designed for personal
servers. MV Communications offers server colocation at our facility,
allowing you to place your server at our site, where it has direct access
to our high speed Internet backbone connections. Colocation is typically
used by businesses or organizations that want to deliver high speed content
to consumers. Our standard colocation plan allows full access to our mul-
tiple T3 Internet backbone connections, while we charge only for the aver-
age data rate used over time. (Our standard colocation rate includes an
average 128Kbps usage, which allows your server to transfer up to 38 bil-
lion bytes of data per month in either direction.) ("earlier it was
incorrectly shown as 64 billion, we apologize for the confusion")
Our new personal colocation offering is intended for servers where you
don't need quite this level of access, but still want high-speed access at
an affordable price.
In this new offering, we have created a bandwidth pool, shared by the
servers in that pool. The pool still has access to all of our Internet
backbone connections, but is restricted to an average data rate that is
calculated as 64Kbps times the number of servers in the pool, with the
caveat that this pool will never be less than a T1's worth, or 1536Kbps.
Because of the way usages average out, your personal server will typically
be able to serve data on demand at rates up to the pool's total bandwidth.
(Don't worry about sharing with others who might use more than their fair
share: abusers will either be asked to stay in line or move out of the
pool.) The basic rate for the personal server colocation is $95/month,
with a $95 setup fee. See our web page for full details.
Specials
Colocation: this summer we are also offering a special on all new server
colocation. Pay the basic setup fee, and get your first two months coloca-
tion free!
DSL: we're pleased to continue the DSL specials through September 30, 2002.
When you order DSL/V and purchase the modem through us, we'll take $80 off
the modem price. When you order a new DSL/C account, we'll apply the nor-
mal $100 setup fee to your usage charges.
DSL modems: don't want to buy a DSL modem? You can use one of ours for a
small monthly fee. See our web page for details.
MV is 11
MV Communications, Inc. was incorporated as an ISP on June 21, 1991.
Now we go all the way up to 11! (That's one more than 10, now, isn't it?)
MV Communications, Inc. PO Box 4963, Manchester, NH 03108 (603) 629-0000