FAQ

What does VPS stand for?

VPS stands for Virtual Private Servers.

Why do I need a VPS?

Historically we all used to use physical boxes, one server, one box. However, this was a very expensive unfriendly way to build resilient and flexible systems, with the increase of CPU power without the increase in the need for this CPU, we saw a huge take off in virtualisation products (VMWare, HyperV, Xen, KVM etc) These products allowed us to run multiple guests servers per host. This reduced overheads for running a server, but also allowed for built-in resilience, we are no longer impacted for long if at all, but a single host failure, this is great news for you, as it makes resilience and flexibility much more achievable.

This also means you can scale much more easily, just reach out and we can help.

What does CDN stand for?

CDN stands for Content Delivery Network.

What does a CDN system do?

The easiest way to view a CDN is as an extension to your webservers storage, most people implement CDN’s to serve static content such as images, media, PDFs, etc. This takes load both via lowering bandwidth and CPU/IO’s from your system. Allowing your servers to generate dynamic content. We simply connect to your origin servers should we not have a copy of a requested item on our system. Once we have this copy we store this based on predefined rules and deliver directly to your clients.

As our systems are globally placed, this allowed us also to deliver items for a location close to your end user, improving the users experience vastly.

What does PALSS stand for?

PALSS stands for Proactive Accelerator Load balancer Security System.

What does PALSS do?

You’ve spent time and money building your web application, optimised it for SEO, and now you need to make sure you take the last step, ensuring the delivery speed and availability of your site. These 2 factors often take a back seat to almost every other aspect, yet are becoming more and more key to search engine rankings, but more importantly customer interaction and repeat visits.

In summary it’s a CDN, load balancer, security application, but with many other additional features.

At its core it’s a web accelerator system, designed from the ground up to provide fast global content delivery, achieved through a globally local advanced caching system, that can cache static items all the way through to dynamic pages to deliver lightening fast content delivery.

To minimise latency, and increase throughput, PALSS has Points of Presence (POPS) geographically disbursed to ensure your end users connect to a local POP, and we ensure our connection back to your servers are on the fastest network route to ensure blisteringly fast delivery.

Why is PALSS important to me?

Speed and uptime are everything. With search engines and users becoming more demanding about the delivery time of content, the best way to increase your market share is to ensure there is no delay in delivery.

So PALSS uses load balancers?

Load balancing is at the core of PALSS. We have built these from the ground up, with the core principles and requirements at the forefront of out design. A key factor in this is the ability for you to expand your webservers without having to configure, and pay for, expensive, and sometimes complicated, load balancers – we do it for you.

The choice of how, is entirely up to you. We can include active servers, or a back up to your principle server, or any combination that works best for you.

As more and more services move to the cloud, the flexibility for website owners has increase. The problem, however, is that most providers of load balancers only allow you to include their own servers. We are platform independent. If you want to have servers with Azure and AWS, we can handle that, no problems at all.

What does PALSS offer in terms of my server being offline?

We all know that your sever will need to be offline for things like upgrades or maintenance. PALSS will automatically display a simple landing page for you to ensure that, even when your main site is down, your users wont be met with the dreaded 500 error page.

Not only is this important for search engines, but also for your business. You can still supply important information to your visitors such as contact details, or details about when your site will be back.

PALSS can continually monitor your site, and if it returns anything other than a 200 response, will failover to your landing page instantly.

What security features does PALSS offer?

DDoS attacks are becoming a bigger and bigger issue for website owners. PALSS can help mitigate these by using our advance algorithms to recognise suspicious traffic patterns, and sideline them before it impacts your site.

We offer the implementation of a Web Application Firewall (WAF) to help mitigate SQL injection attacks and others that could be potentially damaging to your site.

SSL is now becoming the norm for websites, so much so in fact, that if your site isn’t secure, certain browsers will now present the user with a warning before they even get close to your content. We can help implement SSL for you, ensuring that your users have faith in your site, and trust that their data is being protected when being transmitted to you.

IPv4 or IPv6?

Whatever IP format you use, PALSS has you covered. With IPv6 becoming more commonplace on the internet, it can sometimes be hard to implement the protocol on your site. PALSS uses our global clusters that are fully IPv4 and IPv6 reachable, so whichever protocol you, or your client, is using, you’ll still be able to communicate.

What does PALSS cost?

PALSS is very affordable, and a must-have service for anyone wanting to ensure the speed and security of their site. You can find out more about the various packages we offer, as well as the costs, on our plans page.

Who is PALSS suitable for?

PALSS is suitable for anyone that cares about the users of their site, and the importance of having a fast, secure online presence. From small, single page sites, right up to industry-leading global sales sites, we can cover you. To talk to us further about your needs, please contact us.