April 28th, 2008 admin
In a circular notice sent to local registrars, the CNNIC (China Internet Network Information Center) has sent a reminder that blocking customers who wanted to move to another registrar was unlawful.
Indeed, “domain holding” or “domain ransom” is quite a widespread issue in mainland China, with hosts refusing to release customers domains when they wish to change of company. As a web hosting company, we have been again and again confronted with customers who wanted to move to us from a local Chinese hosting firm (due to poor performance, email delivery issues, high costs etc.), just to find out that the old company is rejecting any assistance in terms of transferring the domain to us. In many cases clients who didn’t want to lose their well-marketed domain names ended up staying with that old company they weren’t satisfied with. The only option in many cases were to keep the domain with the registrar then change the DNS to us only for web hosting/email hosting.
The CNNIC rules are clear in terms of domain transfer: customers CAN freely transfer their domains as long as they are 60 days old and over 15 days away from their expiration date. The domain should not be involved in any dispute and there should not be any outstanding fees to pay to the registrar at the moment the transfer is requested. The registrar is obligated to provide demanding customers with the auth code within three (3) working days. The losing registrar shouldn’t in any case ask for additional fees to authorize the transfer.
If you are about to register a domain name or start a website in China, you should take the following measures in order to avoid finding yourself in such situation: 1. Make sure to use a reputable host who has a clear policy in terms of domain transfer. SinoHosting.net for instance make sure to register all clients domain names under their own names, and they are 100% guaranteed to be able to transfer away if required. 2. If you move a lot, it makes sense to keep your domain registration company different from the actual web hosting company. It might cost a few dollars at most but it may save your business from losing its most important asset.
The litigation process involving the CNNIC or even the Chinese courts for domain names can be very long. Make sure to start from the right foot when you develop an online presence in China.
Posted in Domain Names | No Comments »
April 22nd, 2008 admin
We are pleased to announce the upgrade of our web hosting plans starting immediately:
-Basic Plan: from 100MB to 200MB web space (2GB monthly bandwidth)
-Business Plan: from 300MB to 1,000MB web space (10GB monthly bandwidth)
-Corporate Plan: from 1GB to 5GB web space (25GB monthly bandwidth)
As previously, all the above plans come with free domain name registration.
Prices remain unchanged. We will manually upgrade current clients accounts over the course of the week, if by May 1st your account hasn’t been upgraded, make sure to contact us by email or open a support ticket on our website to get it done.
Please note that the service upgrade applies only to our international/overseas web hosting plans (Singapore, US and UK servers). There is no change for China hosting plans.
To learn more about our web hosting plans, or place an order, please go to our Web Hosting service page.
Posted in Service Update, Web Hosting | No Comments »
March 25th, 2008 admin
The dot cn domain names in February have passed the 10 million mark in February this year according to a report from the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC). This is yet another proof of the booming Internet industry in China, with an estimated 210 million Internet users, and growing.
The dot de (Germany) is the only other ccTLD to have over 10 million registrations. The dot au (Australia) has just passed the one million mark recently, with the dot es (Spain) and dot ca (Canada) expected to make it very soon.
SinoHosting.net offers dot cn domain names at RMB50, or free with most of our hosting plans. Protect your brand or get into the Chinese market by securing your .cn domain name today.
Posted in Domain Names | No Comments »
March 10th, 2008 admin
Beginning today, SinoHosting.net’s Small Business Email Hosting Plan can be used to set up up to 20 email accounts. Previously, the plan offered a maximum of 5 accounts. The total space remains the same, 1GB. The decision has been made following customer feedback, and we understood that many clients, especially those using Outlook, Thunderbird and other email management softwares, could use more accounts on that space without the need to upgrade to the higher plan (Enterprise Email Hosting, 2GB, 100 email accounts, RMB900/Year)
The package pricing remains the same, RMB500/Year (by the way one of the most competitive in mainland China). We use Singapore-based servers for our email hosting plans. The control panel is in English by default, but available as well in Chinese and over 10 major European languages.
If you are currently a client for on this package, your account should be upgraded automatically. If not, feel free to contact us immediately.
Posted in Email Hosting, Service Update | No Comments »
March 4th, 2008 admin
As you may have noticed if your site is hosted on our China servers, our Shanghai-hosted sites were down from late Sunday afternoon throughout Monday. This was due to a server suspension notice that came after some user hosted on the same IP range in the China Telecom datacenter (not from our company however), where our server resides, was found to have uploaded some “unauthorized” content. SinoHosting.net apologizes for the downtime caused, but it was beyond our scope of influence.
Sites are back online now, if you continue to experience any problems make sure to contact us immediately.
Posted in Customer Support | No Comments »
February 18th, 2008 admin
I have been rather astonished to read this report where after “investigations” an ICANN-sponsorized panel found no evidence of domain snatching…
Now I KNOW and many people do as know of the existence of this practice. Almost monthly we have clients who, after conducting a WHOIS look up for a domain, find the domain registered when they come back a few days later to get it registered. Most of these domains are so particular that the possibility of a coincidence just needs to be be dismissed. If that were a coincidence, why almost all those domains are registered by domainers, or for the luckiest, released to public domain after five days? There is clearly some malpractice going on there.
Now the domain tasting part. To justify not levying the 20 cents for domain returned, the same reports says that “many parties complained that the fee would penalize legitimate returns, such as ones to correct typos”. First, how many registrants do know at the first place that they can return domains within five days, and how many actually have this option from the registrar or reseller they purchase the domain from? Second, I believe that the incidence of charging 20 cents to someone who registered a domain in error, can completely be justified if at the same time it prevents or limits the companies involved in organized domain tasting, registering millions of domains, keeping them for five days with ads on them, returning them (and getting back their money) while keeping the better one (those which showed some traffic potential during the “tasting” period)…
Posted in Domain Names, International | No Comments »
February 18th, 2008 admin
We are working on expanding our current web hosting product line in the coming weeks with the addition of China dedicated servers and China VPS (Windows OS). We will keep you updated through this blog and our newsletter when these products are launched.
Posted in Company News, Web Hosting | No Comments »
January 31st, 2008 admin
One of the main worries our new clients have when signing up with us is whether their site will not be blocked from access. If you have or expect traffic from China, there is nothing worse than finding out that web visitors are unable to connect to your website.
Although most people know about wikipedia, blogspot blogs, BBC etc., well-known sites that are not accessible from China, the fact is there are thousands and thousands of unknown sites that also are out of reach from Chinese visitors. Most of them are not specifically banned because of their “improper” content, but rather victim of random blocking by the GFW (”great firewall”), or because they share the same IP (shared hosting) with a site that has been blocked.
Many clients that we have, both in China and overseas, were previously hosted by well-known overseas hosting companies (such as Godaddy, Hostgator and the like) but found out that their sites couldn’t be accessed in China. Other sites hosted by the same hosting companies did not suffer the same problem…
The fact is, no hosting company can guarantee a site to be unblocked in China. I would even say that no hosting company, at least the overseas ones, can guarantee its own website(s) to be unblocked here. However, here are six ways that will increase your site chances from not being cut from visitors located in mainland China:
1-Do not publish politically sensitive content (in Beijing’s standards), adult material or the like on your site, otherwise you will risk to trigger the automatic block from the GFW (which will affect by the way all the other sites on the same IP address).
2-If you host overseas, make sure that your host can move your site to a new server/IP address within a minimum time in case it happened that your site was blocked. As a reference, for our overseas-hosted accounts, SinoHosting.net has a system in place to move accounts to a new location in case an IP is found to be blocked, within 30mn after blocking is confirmed.
3-Choose a host who has a no-adult material policy. It will be more difficult however to find a host who will guarantee not hosting sites related to issues Beijing dislikes (Tian An Men, Taiwan, Falungong, Tibet etc.).
4-Get a dedicated IP. If you can afford it and if it makes sense for your site (in terms of potential revenue loss in case of site blocking), you should get a dedicated IP since it will reduce the risks of having your site blocked because of someone else wrongdoings.
5-Host in China. Chinese hosts are less likely to be blocked; downtime can happen only in case of server failure or the hosting company is found to be operating without proper licenses. However if the server is found to host adult or other forbidden materials, the authorities will have the server shut down pending further investigation, and it can take days for your site to be back live.
6-Make regular backups of your site, and make sure you retain your domain name servers (DNS) access. In case the worst was to happen, you will need to have the option to move rapidly to a new host without losing your site and files, within the shortest period of time.
Do you have your own opinion or more advices on keeping your site unblocked in China? Feel free to share.
Posted in Web Hosting | 3 Comments »
January 1st, 2008 admin
Our corporate web hosting plan now can be used for up to 5 domains. If you plan to create multiple sites for your company or organization, this is probably the most suitable option. The total web space (1GB), bandwidth (20GB), and e-mail accounts (500) will be shared between the five sub-hosting accounts, and each account will have its own control panel.
The current price of your corporate web hosting package is RMB1,450 per year. Furthermore, you can take advantage of our January promotion and have a 10% discount if you order this package before January 31st, 2008. For more details please visit our web hosting packages page.
Posted in Company News, Customer Support, Web Hosting | 1 Comment »
December 26th, 2007 admin
Based on Verisign’s quarterly Domain Name Industry Brief, the Chinese country coded Top Level Domain (dot cn) has passed the dot uk (Britain) to become the second largest worldwide. Germany’s dot de remains the top ccTLD. Now the six largest TLDs are, in that order, .com, .de, .net, .cn, .uk and .org.
The number of ccTLDs has grown to 54.6 million by the end of the third quarter of 07, a 38% increase yoy, and the surge in Chinese Domain Names registrations this year has played an important part of that.
To read the full report, click here
Posted in Domain Names | No Comments »
