There have been a number of Denial of Service (DoS) on the CPanel hosting network over the last day or so. This may have caused periods  when website traffic though the server would have either slowed or stopped. A DoS attack is when a large number of IPs, often from compromised computers, flood the network, overwhelming it with traffic from multiple sources, resulting in all web traffic slowing down or stopping. This is similar to a gridlocked motorway, where the traffic can’t move.

Our network admins have been blocking the random IPs involved with this, and have also have tweaked portflood and CT_LIMIT values in the firewall which should help with blocking this. They will continue to monitor the situation and adjust settings to minimise future disruption.

Unfortunately this can happen with any network. The servers however were still up and operational during this period, however it may have resulted in websites timing out for certain periods during the DoS attacks, before the IPs were blocked.

CPanel Servers Maintenance - New CPanel Features and Security Updates July 21 2017 - July 24 2017

During this maintenance window, our upstream providers will be upgrading the version of the control panel software on the Cpanel servers. This upgrade will bring some exciting new features such as EA4, CPanel's new system for Apache management, PHP-FPM, and a host of security patches. We do not anticipate any major issues during this upgrade, although there maybe some small outages.

The update will allow you to be able to use a PHP selector where you can test upgraded versions of PHP simply by logging into your control panel and selecting the version you want to use. This is especially helpful for software upgrade tests and subsequent deployments. 

This announcement only applys to our CPanel based servers. It does not apply to our Business Class and Corporate web hosting plans.

It has come to our attention that some emails that may have been sent to us via our ...@loungenetwork.co.nz domain, may not have been getting through. Also forms on our website may have suffered from the same problem. This has been caused by out upstream provider Orcon, getting their mail servers IPs blacklisted, which has meant that emails sent to us may have bounced back to the sender. If you have been affected , please re-email us your message, and it should now come through. We apologise for any inconvenience. 

Please note that we have for the last few years moved to using our loungenetwork.net domain for our primary email addresses. So please use our …@loungenetwork.net email addresses from now on to email us, which are displayed on our contact page.

There are reports that Spark / Xtra / Yahoos email system is currently blocking authenticated third party email addresses, from sending via their SMTP server.

This problem is apparently causing emails sent via Spark / Xtra /Yahoos SMTP server, to bounce back with the following error 550 5.7.1 You are not authorized to send as name@yourdomain.co.nz

Read Full Article

Our office will be closed for Wellington Anniversary day.

As 2016 winds down, we would like wish all our clients a relaxing and safe festive holiday season. We thank you for your business over the year.

2016 has been another busy year, with a number of significant updates and advances on the hosting platforms. All of our hosting platforms have now been updated to now support PHP 7 and newer versions of MySQL. This allows clients to use the newest versions website publishing tools and website apps.

Our main office will be closed between the 23rd December until the 12th January. We will be offering limited email support during this period. If you however need emergency support during this period, please use the emergency support form (charges will apply). The servers will be continued to be monitored 24/7/365 as per normal, in case of any problems with servers or the network during this time.

We would like to wish all our clients a safe and enjoyable holiday over the Christmas and New Year break.

Merry Christmas

Kind Regards
The Team @ Lounge Network.

As you may already know Wellington and upper parts of the South Island were rocked by a severe earthquake this morning, causing quite a bit of damage. The regions continues to be rocked by severe aftershocks. We hope everyone is safe and ok across NZ.

Our main office has been disrupted by the Wellington earthquakes. As a result of the quakes, we have had periods of no power or internet  access. So this may affect our ability to respond to enquiries during this time. We may have more power outages as aftershocks continue to strike our offices. 

Our web hosting services however are not affected in anyway. The servers are housed in professional datacentres in Auckland, Wellington and overseas, and are designed to withstand these types of earthquakes. So please bear with us during this time.

Our upstream providers will be moving the CPanel webservers at anytime from  6pm on Monday 7th November 2016. They are moving the servers from an old rack to new rack as part of improving the infrastructure. There will be some downtime across all services while this is done.They are expecting downtime of no more than one hour once they commence the move, however it maybe longer.  If you notice your server is not responding, this will be why.