Riverside Internet Services

Riverside Newsletter June, 2005

Today is July 5, 2008

Welcome. Although we have been offering quality Internet Services for almost 10 years now and only coming out with "News" when something out of the ordinary happens, we have decided that we are going to start sending you monthly updates on all sorts of events, products, services, anything that we feel that you might find interesting. We would also like to make you aware of some of the things that we at Riverside Internet have been doing to help make your Internet experience as rewarding and useful as possible. Just because we haven't been talking much, doesn't mean that we haven't been working very hard to try and keep you all as happy as possible with our services.

Each month the newsletter will be published on the last Friday of the month (it's a little early this first month). The first several months we will begin the newsletter by talking a little in depth about some of the services that make Riverside Internet work. We will try to give you a little bit of an idea of what we have done over the years to try and keep our services current.

We encourage you to send us feedback on what we present here as well as make request's for more information on topics of particular interest to you.

We will begin with something that is nearest and dearest to all of us. That is our email services. When we first started offering Internet Service back in 1996, email was something that most people weren't used to having and using. Back then, it didn't cost that much to provide, because it ran on the same server that handled our dial-in modems. SPAM was there, but, it was relatively manageable. Viruses also, were there, but, as long as you didn't open attachments you were fairly safe.

Boy has that changed! We could still be using a single mail server (although upgraded for speed and capacity to allow for more users) if it were not for the SPAM and viruses that are all too common on the Internet today. Riverside Internet now uses a server that you connect to just to receive mail, plus, an additional three (3) machines that do nothing but scan for viruses and SPAM. Although both SPAM and viruses are moving targets, of the two, the SPAM is the most difficult to keep up with. The virus profiles are automatically updated daily with not much human intervention. SPAM, on the other hand, is much more difficult to keep to a minimum. Our systems administrator is constantly updating the rule sets and other files that it takes to keep the SPAM from getting to you.

We know that despite our best efforts, neither Virus or Spam scanning can be 100% perfect, but virus scanning will be very close to it. SPAM scanning will always have small percentage of missed SPAM. Of course, each of you will have a different amount of spam coming to your email addresses based on your websurfing and other online activities, but, our SPAM filtering system blocks an AVERAGE of 1500 messages per week, per email address.

Perhaps most of you thought that the only way to visit websites is with Internet Explorer. Internet Explorer is what is known as a Web Browser. The fact is that there are many Web Browsers that are available for use, just as there are many mail program, chat programs, ftp, etc. Browsers such as Mozilla Firefox, Netscape, Opera, Safari, and of course the one that comes pre-packaged in your Windows operating system, Internet Explorer. Our favorite is Firefox.

Firefox is what as known as an Open Source, as apposed to Microsoft Internet Explorer, which is a highly proprietory Browser. The reason that we like Firefox so well is because it is more secure than Internet Explorer. That, plus the fact that it has many features that make it more fun and easier to use. Things like the automatic pop-up blocker, tabbed browsing, and a huge selection of extensions for things like ad blocking, chat, weather forecasts, etc, etc.

For a really good article that talks more in depth about how Firefox works and all about many of its great features, click here. To download Firefox and get more information about it security features, click here.

We did experience a problem with our email system on Thursday, June 16. The server that holds all of the mailboxes didn't want to stay running. We had the problem fixed at about 10:30 that evening.

You should not have missed any legitimate email, however. The Internet Email standards require that sending servers keep trying to send to servers that do not respond for a period of 5 days. So, your mail would still reach you, however, it could take up to a few days. This is because even after the server is back running it would be quite a bit in arrears and would have to process the normal incoming flow plus all the messages that could not be processed while the server was not operational.

Just a reminder that Riverside Internet does offer automatic bill payment via credit or debit card. If you're not already using this hassle free way to make certain that your service is always active and not shut off because you couldn't make it in to pay or you simply forgot to send the check, just click here and enter your current credit card information. You will be connected to our secure server.

This concludes the first addition of our Monthly Newsletter. If you have comments or topics that you would like addressed just email us at newsletter@riverview.net