December 22, 2004 - LFC HOSTING ANNOUNCES NEW INNOVATIVE E-MAIL, SPAM & VIRUS PROTECTION SYSTEM

Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada - LFC Hosting today announces the completion of its new 10 server clustered e-mail system, breaking new ground in mail processing, shared hosting e-mail features, Spam filtering, and e-mail Virus protection. Since 1996, LFC Hosting has remained a leader in bringing cutting edge technology to the door steps of SOHOs and small businesses by packaging it through a single affordable, automated, business-friendly system. Robert Sauchyn, LFC CEO says, "Our new e-mail system, an intensive six month project, is yet another way that LFC makes the latest technology accessible to small businesses, allowing them to leverage it to gain the distinct advantage online." At the core of the latest technology employed in LFC's new system lies the ultimate in fast and efficient high-volume mail handling, fault-tolerance, reliability, redundancy, security, and load-balancing. Load-balancing refers to a method involving several servers that serve the same function; routers send the traffic to whichever server(s) can offer the fastest response. Fault-tolerance means that if a server experiences a problem, the routers automatically avoid sending any traffic to it, allowing LFC to service it without any downtime. LFC's new e-mail system is comprised of 10 different high powered servers, with infinite room for easy expansion. Each server has at least one duplicate performing the exact same function. Andrew MacCorquodale, LFC VP says, "This makes the entire system easier to maintain as we can perform maintenance on any server or the server can fail without any disruption of e-mail services. It also means we can easily add additional servers to increase performance and/or handle higher loads without downtime. Lastly it means that adding new features into the system in the future will be much easier." New Features Following are a few of the new cutting-edge features of LFC Hosting's new mail system, giving its small business clients the distinct advantage over their competition: Advanced Virus Scanning on in-coming and out-going mail, configured per domain name (yourname.com) LFC Hosting uses the most popular e-mail virus scanning software in the industry - ClamAV. It allows LFC to scan both in-coming and out-going mail for viruses and prevents them from being delivered to the mailboxes of LFC's clients whatsoever. It also employees the latest detection methods and is updated constantly. LFC's new virus scanning system virtually eliminates the chance of one of its clients ever receiving an e-mail containing a virus, a growing problem on the Internet today. Advanced Spam Scanning, configurable per e-mail address or per domain LFC employs the latest and most widely used software for Spam scanning - SpamAssassin, a highly configurable mail filter that virtually eliminates Spam (also known as unsolicited commercial e-mail), an invaluable tool for increasing the efficiency of your business on today's Internet and one scarcely available with competing services. SpamAssassin is updated regularly, and LFC's new mail system allows them to easily implement other Open Source or Commercial scanning products to increase their Spam detection rates in the near future. Finally, LFC has fully integrated SpamAssassin with their own proprietary LFC Control Panel. With a click of a button, LFC's clients can enable or disable Spam filtering on each of their domain names and even individual e-mail accounts if they so choose. There is no configuration required; SpamAssassin accomplishes filtering without knowing the details of the mail accounts, mailing list memberships, etc.; no maintenance is required. LFC Hosting has also built a state-of-the-art, fast, and easy-to-use interface for SpamAssassin's native variety of optional configuration parameters, fully integrated with its own control panel, allowing its clients to optionally customize it through a familiar interface on each of their domain names, or individual e-mail accounts (overriding the domain name settings). Through the Spam Filtering Administration area of LFC's control panel, its clients are optionally able to configure the Spam detection threshold (sensitivity), elect to have the subject of Spam changed, setup whitelists and blacklists (e-mail addresses from which all messages are accepted/rejected), block e-mail worms, configure a variety of other advanced options, and manually alter any other SpamAssassin configuration option. LFC new mail system also includes the ability to have Spam deleted before it even hits your mailbox or simply have it flagged as Spam, allowing you to set your e-mail client to filter Spam to a specific folder in the event that you need to retrieve a message that was originally deemed Spam. Andrew MacCorquodale, LFC VP says, "Most competing services do not provide customization capabilities beyond customizing the actual text-based SpamAssassin configuration file (requiring advanced technical knowledge), if at all. None match LFC's level of automation!" Can handle multiple scanning platforms (for both Spam and Virus detection) LFC new e-mail system provides it with the ability to add multiple Spam and Virus scanners in the near future, improving filtering rates. RBLs (Real-time Black Lists - helps eliminate spam) Several organizations maintain lists of known spammers. LFC Hosting subscribes to several of these lists, and its new mail system checks incoming mail against them, automatically rejecting e-mail that comes from known spammers and preventing it from coming to LFC clients' mailboxes whatsoever. Robert Sauchyn, LFC CEO says, "We are currently blocking over one million e-mails each day from RBLs alone." Always-BCC Always (Always Blind Carbon Copy) allows LFC's clients to automatically send a copy of every e-mail that is received by one or more of their other email accounts to another address. This is useful for managers who wish to be aware of all e-mail sent to their staff members, or project managers who wish to be aware of all collaboration among team members. Blind refers to the fact that the original recipient is not aware that a copy was sent to the person overseeing their e-mail. Autoresponders, Rate Limits and Substitutions (customizations) Auto Responders provide the ability to send an automatic message back to anyone who sends you e-mail. This is useful if you are away on vacation or want to provide alternate contact information, basic information about your company and products/services (typically at your sales address), or troubleshooting info, an FAQ, etc. (typically at your technical support address) instantly in response to an email. LFC Hosting is unique in providing the ability to add attachments to autoresponders, allowing its clients to includes documents, price sheets, samples, images, etc. in autoresponse messages, typically for marketing purposes. Substitutions allow LFC's clients to customize their Auto Responses by having the system replace certain KEYS with dynamic information. For example, the key [DATE] in the Auto Response message is automatically replaced with the current date. This is useful for providing current information in your Auto Responders, appearing as though your Auto Responder was genuinely written by you. Normally Auto Responders will send one response for each message received. However, if a particular person (example: joe@schmoe.com) sends multiple messages to an account within a short period of time, you would not normally want that person (Joe) to receive multiple responses, making it obvious that the responses were not written by a real person. Rate Limiting allows LFC's clients to set the number of minutes that must elapse before the Auto Responder will send another response to the same person. Aliases Aliases are email addresses that simply forward to another e-mail address. For example, sales@yourdomain.com, info@yourdomain.com and marketing@yourdomain.com may all forward to the same staff member. "Catch-All" Account Through the control panel, LFC's clients are able to configure a "Catch-All" account that automatically receives e-mail that is send to an non-existing e-mail address at their domain (@yourname.com). This is useful to ensure that you receive all correspondence from customers and prospects; for example, a prospective customer may e-mail "sales@yourname.com" expecting to reach someone. Your "Catch-All" account would receive this message if you do not have a real e-mail account called "sales@yourname.com". IMAP/POP3 before SMTP Authentication To prevent spammers and other unauthorized users from sending e-mail, most new mail systems require you to login with a username and password to send e-mail. However, to accomplish this automatically, e-mail clients (programs) require complex configuration, particularly if the client is setup to use IMAP. However, because it is typical to check your mail shortly before sending out e-mail and because a username and password is required to check your mail anyway, to eliminate the need for this complex configuration, as well as other errors when trying to send mail out, LFC's new mail system allows its clients to send out mail without the username/password as long as they have recently checked their e-mail. Soft and Hard Mailbox Quotas These are size limits that LFC's clients can place on their mailboxes. A Soft Quota simply notifies you when you reach the limit you specify but allows mail to be delivered anyway. A Hard Quota notifies you and does not allow further mail to be delivered. This gives LFC's clients more control over how much e-mail disk space they use, and ensures that they are not billed for additional E-mail Disk Space if they do not wish to be. LFC Hosting's plans come with 30MB of E-mail Disk Space usage per account by default, well above the industry standard. Maximum Message Size and Message Count per E-mail Account These parameters let LFC's clients limit the size (in MB) and quantity of messages that they wish to receive in their email account. If a message is larger than the maximum size they specify or if they have more messages in their mailbox than their maximum count allows, the message will be rejected. Jim Nickel, LFC CITO says, "This is yet another way that we ensure that our clients are not billed for additional resources unless they wish to be. This goes along with our award-winning all-inclusive, "no hidden fees" business model." Expiry Date per E-mail Account This parameter allows LFC's clients to specify a date after which an email address will be automatically disabled, and will no longer accept e-mail if they wish a email address to be setup only temporarily. Bounce on Send Bounce on send means that, if Spam or viruses are detected in a message, the sender will automatically receive an error message while they are attempting to send it. In the odd chance that the message is legitimately being sent by a real person, they will typically simply try again. However, Spam and Viruses are almost always distributed by automatic systems that will not attempt to try again and will, in fact, remove your e-mail address from their list as it appears inactive to them. Jim Nickel, LFC CITO says, "This ensures that viruses and Spam are not distributed through our e-mail system, keeping it fast and reliable for all our clients and ensuring that LFC does not assist in the spread of viruses and Spam." Ability to enable/disable individual email addresses This feature allows LFC's clients to disable a email address without actually deleting it, and re-enable it later on. The mail that is currently in the account when it is disabled is not erased. It is only erased when the account is deleted altogether. Furthermore, LFC plans to implement the following new features in the coming months: Challenge Response verification POP3/IMAP/SMTP SSL - a security feature SPF (Sender Policy Framework) - a Spam filtering feature Domain Keys Grey Listing - a Spam filtering feature The ability to opt-in to using other, more strict RBLs (blacklists of known spammers), allowing LFC's clients to further prevent Spam from hitting their mailboxes Technology LFC has achieved the ultimate in fast and efficient high-volume mail handling, fault-tolerance, reliability, redundancy, security, and load-balancing with two new technologies working hand-in-hand: "LVS Directors" and "MySQL Database Replication". They are core of the system from a technological perspective: LVS Directors Phase 1 of this extensive project involved the implementation of new completely redundant and fault-tolerant main routers. Jim Nickel, LFC CITO says, "Unlike competing services, we are now able to sustain a main router failure with no downtime whatsoever. Moreover, these new routers feature the latest in security protection with firewall rules, port-blocking, traffic monitoring and more." More importantly, however, the routers provide load-balancing and fault-tolerance services to LFC's entire network. MySQL Database Replication Traditionally, designers of similar shared hosting e-mails systems were faced with a tough decision when it comes to the database that houses all of the e-mail accounts and other data, and its interface with the web host's Control Panel software. They can choose to centralize the database, with all servers as part of the mail system reading off that database. This means that all changes made by customers are active instantly as they are made to the central database. However, if the database server goes down, the entire system is down; mail cannot be sent and incoming mail bounces. It also slows down the entire system as the individual mail servers must read their data over the network (rather than their own hard drives). Alternatively, each mail server can house its own copy of the database. This eliminates the central point of failure and speeds up database reads significantly, but means that each server must periodically refresh its copy of the database from a central copy written to by the Control Panel. As a result, changes made by customers can take up to a day to become active. Robert Sauchyn, LFC CEO says, "If we were to build a mail system far exceeding industry standards, neither option was satisfactory. Instead, we surpassed this barrier and achieved the best of both worlds using a technology called database replication, the second piece in the puzzle of achieving ultimate efficiency and reliability. This was only possible through significant modifications to our own, custom built Control Panel (see http://lfchosting.com/support_cp.shtml). Web hosts using out-of-the-box control panels, such as Plesk or CPanel would not have been able to achieve this nearly as easily." LFC uses a central MySQL database server holding the "master" copy of the database. This "master" copy is the one written to by the Control Panel. However, each individual mail server also houses its own copy; the mail servers read from this copy. Using MySQL database replication, any changes made to the master database are automatically and instantly propagated to the individual "child databases". In other words, the individual "child database" are always in sync with the "master" database. This approach allows LFC's mail system to run as normal even when the "master" database server, or any of the individual mail servers, fail yet ensures that all changes made through its innovative Control Panel are instant, makes the control panel must faster than competing products, and allows the individual servers to read the e-mail account, etc. data from their own local hard drives (dramatically improving the system's overall efficiency and speed). Finally, LFC's new innovative mail system runs on a separate isolated Gigabit network, improving security and ensuring the fastest possible delivery of mail. About LFC Hosting LFC is a sound web hosting and e-commerce solution provider that has grown rapidly since their launch in 1996 because of their unique approach to web hosting: They offer a competitive, flat rate service including everything a business of any size needs to develop, deploy, and manage an aggressive, profitable, enterprise-level presence on the Internet, vital for survival in today's marketplace. LFC Hosting welcomes you to visit their website today to compare LFC Hosting with your current hosting service, and find out how LFC can allow your business to take advantage of new possibilities online, before your competition does. More information on LFC Hosting's innovative hosting services can be found at: http://www.lfchosting.com Quotes used with permission: "I've never found a Hosting Provider so committed to service as LFC Hosting. From my experienced standpoint (I worked from 1997 to 2000 as key account manager for UNI2 - the leading Spanish/French ISP and Hosting Provider), I know how difficult it is sometimes to provide high quality standards in service, and I feel impressed about the way you guys have managed my requests. At this moment I was browsing your technical FAQ while feeling so excited about the easy way things can be done using your services." - P. Deeleman "I am a current customer that is pleased to acknowledge LFC for its continuing efforts and, since 2000, for providing us with over 20 high traffic sites with excellent service, reliability and low costs. I would recommend LFC to the new and professional Webmasters who are looking for total web solutions!" - R. Shefferd