Gateway Marketing Online

Your Gateway to Online Marketing

Appendices:
Expanded Answers to Your Questions

"Act of God"
This uptime percentage is a monthly figure, and does not include any scheduled hardware/software upgrades, nor "Acts of God". Our definition of "Act of God" includes; fire, flood, tornado, earthquake, telco fiber issues (ie...Verizon� cutting a fiber line somewhere), backbone peering point issues (ie...UUnet� having a router go down in Virginia that wipes out internet service for the entire East Coast), hard drive failure (faulty hardware is rare, but cannot be predicted nor avoided), as well as network floods, hacks, and attacks.

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Credit Card Transactions
Most Web Developers would recommend a Shopping Cart, Merchant Account, Keys, Digital Certficates and SSL. However, the annual cost of many such services often exceeds $50-$1,000! To find out how Gateway can help you set up an E-Commerce account for far less with the E-Commerce solution backed by "The Wall Street Journal", please visit our Security Center and read our Privacy Policy .

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Diversity of Dedicated Internet Connections
Gateway's connecting options include a full 2000 mbps (2GiG-E connections) supplying the data center. In OC fiber line terms that's close to 3- OC-12 lines and 1- OC-3 line. The use of non-blocking gigabit devices throughout the network ensures regional latency of a few milliseconds or less, suitable for the most demanding delay-sensitive traffic. Use of redundant fiber rings ensures network reliability and availability. The data center has connections to many different Internet backbones including Qwest, AT&T, Level3, Genuity, Time Warner and Yipes. By connecting to multiple tier 1 backbones, the data can be distributed through many sources. This architectural design also means that the network connections are not dependent upon a single Internet backbone. Thus when problems occur, traffic rerouting is automatic, thereby ensuring the integrity of the network and continued access for our high-speed servers. This takes the term "multi-homing" to a whole new level. Presently bandwidth utilization is 5% during peak traffic times. Therefore, the network is very flexible. If one of the backbone connections experiences problems, the traffic can simply be rerouted over other paths, thereby ensuring that users receive fast access times to sites hosted on our network. In addition, the network runs Border Gate Protocol (BGP4). BGP is used at a provider with more than one access point to the Internet. It helps create a truly redundant network. In fact, in an ideal situation, a lease line failure will result in the BGP routing session to close on the bad leased line and the router on a working circuit should then begin to accept the additional traffic. In other words, traffic from a down circuit is redistributed across other circuits, thereby maintaining network integrity. Providers that are multi-homed and correctly setup can actually be more reliable than a single backbone provider because they have multiple paths to multiple providers.

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Domain Name Transfer
1. When Gateway transfers your domain name to another web host, we download (copy) all files to a backup from your old host to ensure the whole site is downloaded.

A copy of your files are kept on the old host, while we transfer to another host, so you will not experience any downtime of your website.

2. We then open a new hosting account in your name.

3. Gateway changes the DNS (domain name system) or Name Server information on the current domain name to the new hosting company name servers. This can be found by going to the domain name registrar (the place where you registered your domain name).

Note: Your domain will take some time (24-72 hours) to propagate over the Internet, before it appears on the new hosting company servers.

4. We then upload all files to the new host; free of charge.

5. Finally, Gateway amends and tests your website. We check that all files have been uploaded and that your website appears exactly as it did before.

6. After you are satisfied with the transfer of your domain name to the new host, we then cancel the previous hosting account.

Just contact us to authorize the transfer and we will get started right away!

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Money-Back Guarantee
Gateway offers a 30 day money back guarantee on our web hosting packages. If you are not completely satisfied with your hosting within the first 30 days of service, you will be given a full refund on your server charges excluding setup fees, overages and/or programming charges; No questions asked. The only exception to a refund, is if you violate the Acceptable Usage Policy . Violations of the AUP are usually by Cyberpunks for spamming and illegal content/activity. Setup fees are only refundable for the following reasons:

your server order is canceled prior to activation

the domain name requested was not available at the InterNIC

For various security reasons, all cancellations must be placed via postal mail. To receive a refund, this request must be received within 30 days of account activation. Notifications via e-mail and fax are NOT accepted. Phone requests do not constitute acceptance of server cancellation and must be followed by a signed statement of intent.

No refund is available after the 30th day of service.

Cancellations placed any month after your initial 30 days must also be placed via postal mail and requires a 10 day advance notice. Any account that cancels service on or after the 20th day of any billing period will be responsible for the next months charges.

No partial refund will be given on the last month of service, as this policy provides our customers ample time to store or transfer files to a new location, handle a domain transfer via the Internic, etc.

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International Domain/Client Support
Gateway can host all international domains on its servers. We can accept foreign clientele, just please be advised that all correspondence must be conducted in English. The client is responsible for handling the registration process of foreign domain name(s). We can not handle the foreign domain registration process for you, as we do not speak all of the potential foreign languages that may be involved. We will assist you however, with any technical information to accomplish this.

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Back-Up Power
Gateway´s servers use a Redundant Power Supply - Reliability exceeds 99.999%. The main electrical room provides clean, consistent power via switchgear, UPS systems, multiple feeds and generator backup to ensure a consistent supply of power to the facility. No power outages here!

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What kind of security does the data center have?
You probably won't ask what floor the hosting facility is located on until there's a flood. Business people and Web developers often don't look at the Internet as something physical. But the virtual world exists on physical facilities, and competitive pricing is only one of the critical elements to consider. Many of Gateway's hosts include 24 x 7 onsite staff, 24 x 7 monitoring. Raised Floors, HVAC, Separate cooling zones with over 60 tons of cooling. Multiple Levels of Security, Card key access. Video surveillance, Multiple levels of Fire suppression. Early Warning System, FM-200 gas-based fire suppression system. Multiple redundant Power back-up, Continuous, uninterruptible power supply. Environmental Monitoring Systems maintain constant temperature and humidity.

Even more important is the security of the network. Hosts with weak network security are vulnerable to hackers. Individually hacked websites are rare. If such occurs, usually they are a target for a reason; hate sites, pirated software, etc. Gateway does not host such websites. If such material is found on a Gateway server, it is deleted immediately and the user's account cancelled. Usually the target is the whole server itself. Hackers usually go after a server just to say that "they did", or to use the server to bounce off of to hack something more important. Rarely are any users' files on the server damaged, erased, or modified. For this reason, once a hacker is detected, a server can usually be cleaned up and the hacker locked back out within a matter of hours. At that time the server is restored to full security levels, as if the hack has never occurred. Most hackers get into a system thru valid user accounts. We recommend you use complicated passwords for your account. We strictly review all orders for new clients, to make sure they are legitimate. Unfortunately, some fake orders do get thru the system, and that is one way a hacker can gain initial access. We run security checks on the servers daily, so even if a hacker does get in, they are found and dealt with quickly. Most hackers are not malicious, they are just playing or testing their abilities. If an individual attacks the whole data center, measures are in place to cut off such floods and attacks automatically at the backbone level and the router level. We also use firewall technology to fend off most common methods of flooding and attacks to the network.

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Software Upgrades
Gateway handles all software upgrades/patches on the shared hosting servers. We fully follow all trends in the industry, and monitor all support/bug announcement groups. If a new bug or security vulnerability is found, We immediately upgrade our systems. As new software is released, including new versions of operating systems, We evaluate the new software. If the software's new version does not have any security issues, or bug problems, the upgrade is implemented.

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Statistics
Once you start getting traffic, you'll want to know where it's coming from and what pages of your site are being visited. Some web hosts will throw stats tracking in with their standard package or at least give you access to your log files, which you can then use with third party software to run reports on the traffic your site is receiving. Gateway maintains internal and external monitoring systems for many servers in the Data Center. The servers are checked every 5 minutes via network monitoring software. We monitor uptime as well as individual features and services running on each server. Our staff is notified via alarms, email, screen popups, and paging, if a problem occurs.

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UNIX/NT
UNIX/NT: The two most popular hosting platforms to choose from are UNIX and NT. UNIX is by far the favorite, as it was the only choice way back in the early days of the Internet. It is easy to configure, great for setting your own file permissions and the platform for most of the free scripts available for download. It is flexible, reliable and supports scripting languages like Perl and PHP3.

NT is Microsoft's baby. One problem that we have found with NT servers is a lack of readily available scripts that work on this platform. Also, (unlike UNIX) many NT users need assistance from their Web Host Administrators to set file permissions. NT supports MS applications such as ASP, Access, Front Page and scripting languages such as Perl, Cold Fusion and ASP.

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Virtual or Dedicated
Dedicated hosting permits individuals and business to lease pre-configured, state-of-the-art equipment and connectivity from a web host, instead of simply sharing server space on a virtual server. This service gives you the opportunity to lease an entire server for your own exclusive use. With a dedicated server, you can exercise total control over your Web presence. You can choose the operating system and software you wish to use, and individualize settings for your multimedia and e-commerce requirements. This is a good choice for customers that require custom software or enhanced server control but do not want to make the significant up-front investment required in purchasing and housing their own server. However, it is much more expensive than shared hosting. Since Gateway's Virtual Servers are name based and use shared IPs, you are able to point additional domain, and subdomain (i.e. domain/subdomain.com) names to your account. We also do not have a set quantity of domains running on each machine. We monitor each server's performance level and attempt to maintain a low server load average and high cpu availability. As needed, we will upgrade the options to increase server performance. Individual domains that become to much for the server to handle, and utilize too many server resources, are moved to servers set up specifically for such resource intensive accounts.

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