After two ISPs shut down internet connections to web hosting firm McColo, the was a reduction in global spam by almost 50%. Yep, 50 percent.

To give you a comprehensible figure, shutting down that webhosting firm effectively eliminated 78 billion spam messages per day.

Probably explains why our spam filter at Node Six has not been complaining that much.

It won’t be a long term effect though, the site’s servers will be back up pretty soon. Money talks.

Interesting article from TechRepublic:

Several sources have stated that McColo Corp is the major North American host for international firms that control millions of subverted computers. Reportedly, these botnets are used to deliver spam focused on selling pharmaceuticals, designer goods, fake security documents, and worse things.

Two contracted ISPs stopped providing Web hosting firm McColo with Internet access, which immediately quieted several major botnets responsible for almost half of all delivered spam. Learning how and why this was done is worth your time.

Check out the full article at TechRepublic if you can handle the tech-talk.

We had a brief service interruption between 9:45 AM and 10:40 AM, East African Time.

The affected server was SENTINEL.NODESIX.NET.

There was an issue with the switch that powers the network for the
hardware node that our SENTINEL server is on.

A few of our websites were not accessible for the duration
of the outage (slightly under one hour).

Our server provider’s network engineers replaced the switch
and the SENTINEL server is back on now.

Please accept our sincerest apologies for any inconveniences caused.

The Node Six Technical Support Team.