15 Apr 2015
Is Chicago the best place for your dedicated server hosting?
Chicago, the windy city. It’s location central to the population centers and transportation systems in North America have helped Chicago grow tremendously in a number of industries. Web hosting is no exception. IOFLOOD.com offers dedicated servers in Phoeniz, AZ, but we recognize that other cities may be a better fit for some customers. Deciding where ...
09 Apr 2015
How to set up source nat routing (SNAT) in iptables to load balance outbound connections across multiple IP addresses
In our earlier days, before IOFlood, some of us ran web based proxy services. These were popular at workplaces or schools for accessing websites that were blocked there, such as gmail and myspace (remember myspace?). One common problem that came up, was that with so many users each sharing one IP on one server, our ...
03 Apr 2015
Why Host a Dedicated Server in New York City?
New York City has been a hub of commerce in the United States for hundreds of years. It’s no surprise that this location is a favorite for internet providers and hosting companies. But should you host a dedicated server in New York City? Here at IOFLOOD.com, we host all of our dedicated servers in Phoenix, ...
27 Mar 2015
Making sense of Linux memory usage, Part 1: how to read “top” in CentOS.
We get this question a lot, about “Why is my Linux server using so much ram?”. In many cases, it really isn’t using much ram at all, but just to be sure we always have to check. At least half the time, really very little is being used, but the way that Linux reports ram ...
21 Mar 2015
Dedicated Server Hosting Los Angeles: Pros and Cons
Los Angeles is a popular location to host dedicated servers. Although we here at IOFLOOD.com are partial to Phoenix, we understand that different locations are appropriate for different customers. When deciding upon your server location, it can be a difficult decision process with many things to keep in mind. So here we provide some pros ...
15 Mar 2015
Configuring additional IP addresses (virtual interfaces) on Centos Servers
You may have a Centos dedicated server or VPS, and you’ve been assigned additional IP addresses, which have not been configured by your hosting provider. There are good reasons your host won’t have configured these for you, because if you are using virtualization, many VPS control panels need to manage these IPs, and so it ...
09 Mar 2015
Dedicated Server Hosting in Dallas: Advantages and Disadvantages
Dallas is one of the major US peering points for internet service providers to exchange traffic. That fact has helped Dallas grow into a major internet hub, popular for hosting dedicated servers and other internet infrastructure. We here at IOFLOOD.com host all of our servers in Phoenix, AZ, but we do recognize that location is ...
03 Mar 2015
Installing Centos 6.x onto a dedicated server with hard drives bigger than 2tb (3tb, 4tb, 6tb, 8tb, or bigger)
I’m a big fan of Centos, but like anything, it’s not perfect. In Centos 5, it is nearly impossible to get a working install onto drives larger than 2tb. In Centos 6, it is possible, but not entirely straightforward. The reason for the difficulty, is that MBR (master boot record) was designed only to support ...
25 Feb 2015
Is Seattle a good city to host your dedicated server?
The greater Seattle area is not only the home of Microsoft and a large tech community, it’s also a major hub on the internet. With fiber landing points coming in from Japan and other Asian countries, and a huge number of local ISPs, Seattle has become a popular place to host servers in the Northwest. ...
19 Feb 2015
nf_conntrack: table full, dropping packet — A solution for CentOS Dedicated Servers
A common problem you may experience is sluggish performance or disconnections from your Centos dedicated server, even though there is sufficient CPU, ram, disk i/o, etc. After some troubleshooting, you may come to believe you are being DDoS attacked, but you don’t see an unusual amount of traffic, and there’s no single IP or handful ...