Despite the enormous success of SSL for securing web traffic, there has been little technical change in the way that SSL is used for secure HTTP in the ten years since SSL version 3 was introduced. Although it has been around since 1996, most browsers have continued to make connections compatible with the older SSL version 2 protocol. But now the major browser developers are aiming to drop SSL v2 completely; export-grade encryption ciphers are also to be dropped.

SSL version 2 was supported by Netscape 1.0, back in 1994, and it was made obsolete by SSL version 3, published in 1996. But while SSL version 3 was soon widely supported — and over 97% of HTTPS sites also support its successor, TLS — most browsers have continued to make SSL-v2-compatible connections, in order to stay compatible.

The Mozilla project first suggested disabling support for SSL v2 a year ago, and now also plan to drop weak ciphers. Internet Explorer 7 will disable support for SSL v2, and IE on Windows Vista will not support weak ciphers. And Opera version 9 will disable SSL v2 and weak ciphers.

Up until a year ago, when developers began talking about dropping SSL v2, there were still significant numbers of sites that only supported SSL v2. But server operators have got the message now. Out of the top 20,000 SSL sites (as ranked by users of the Netcraft Toolbar), only 20 sites (0.1%) require SSL version 2. This is reflected across the wider survey, with around 0.1% of sites requiring SSL v2.

Network services provider Cogent experienced network outages this morning, which reportedly caused broader availability problems for web sites and networks that rely on Cogent for connectivity. Traffic on major backbones appears to have returned to normal.

Cogent's network spans 29,500 miles of fiber and connects with 1,750 networks in major U.S. markets. Our monitoring of Cogent's business web site (cogentco.com) shows a brief outage this morning:

A dynamically updating chart of Cogent's web site performance is available. Netcraft offers a web site performance monitoring service that provides similar charts, along with e-mail alerts when an outage occurs.

Domain reseller specialist Melbourne IT said today that it will acquire WebCentral Group for $61 million (about $45.7 million in U.S. dollars), combining two of Australia's most prominent Internet service providers. The deal is the latest in a flurry of acquisitions in the past month as consolidation accelerates in the web hosting and domain industries.

Melbourne IT manages domain names purchased by customers of Yahoo Small Business and Microsoft's new Office Live hosting service, along with many other hosting providers. WebCentral is Australia's largest hosting company as measured by active sites, with 25.8K sites. The deal continues a trend in which domain registrars and web hosts have expanded into one another's specialties.

VeriSign, Inc. will acquire its leading competitor in the market for SSL certificates, GeoTrust Inc., for $125 million in cash, the two companies said today. The deal will solidify VeriSign's dominant position in the market for SSL certificates, which are used to secure web sites for Internet e-commerce. The acquisition is subject to regulatory approvals, and is expected to close in the second half of this year, the companies said.

VeriSign certificates secure approximately 45 percent of the SSL-enabled sites on the Internet, while GeoTrust certificates are found on 27 percent, according to Netcraft's SSL Survey, which provides detailed analysis of trends in the SSL market. The companies have both announced their support for a new tier of high-security SSL certificates for e-commerce sites, expected to be introduced later this year.

This is the second time VeriSign has acquired its primary competitor in the SSL certificate market. In December 1999 VeriSign paid $575 million to buy Thawte, a South African company that gained popularity by selling certificates at lower prices. At the time the deal was announced, Thawte had a 38.5 percent share of all SSL-enabled sites, to 49 percent for VeriSign - meaning the deal gave VeriSign nearly 88 percent market share.

GeoTrust has been the strongest performer in the SSL market over the past several years, supported by a network of more than 9,000 resellers in 140 countries, including many of the world's major web hosting companies. That reseller channel will complement VeriSign's direct-sales SSL business, currently serving more than 3,000 enterprises worldwide.

The founder of Blue Security says it has shut down its anti-spam service, citing the impact of powerful DDoS attacks on its web site that began in late April. "After recovering from the attack, we determined that once we reactivated the Blue Community, spammers would resume their attacks." the company said on its web site. "We cannot take the responsibility for an ever-escalating cyber war through our continued operations."

When Blue Security's web site was hit by a distributed denial of service attack attack (DDoS) on May 1, the company temporarily repointed www.bluesecurity.com to a blog on Six Apart's TypePad service. The DDoS shifted to the TypePad blog, knocking all of Six Apart's web sites offline for eight hours. The attacks also caused caused network outages for Tucows, which provided Blue Security's DNS service.

Blue Security's web site was unavailable for an extended period on Sunday and Monday, and again this morning, as shown on this performance chart:

A dynamically updating chart of Blue Security's web site performance is available. Netcraft offers a web site performance monitoring service that provides similar charts, along with e-mail alerts when an outage occurs.

Germany's United Internet, the parent company of 1&1 Internet, has acquired leading UK hosting provider Fasthosts for 61.5 million pounds ($114.7 million US). The all-cash deal is the latest in a flurry of major deals in the hosting industry, and continues a trend of consolidation among European hosts.

1&1 expanded into the British hosting market in 2003, and had 280,000 UK customers at the end of 2005. The acquisition of Fasthosts, which was already the top United Kingdom host with 299K active sites, gives the combined company a dominant position in the UK market.

1&1 is already the world's largest hosting company as measured by active sites, and will extend that advantage with the acquisition. The addition of the Fasthosts' customers also brings 1&1 nearly dead even with Go Daddy for bragging rights for the most hostnames. 1&1 Internet houses 5.52 million hostnames this month, compared to 6.06M for Go Daddy. The two providers will likely be in a virtual dead heat once the Fasthosts deal closes, which is scheduled to happen before the end of this month.

In the May 2006 survey we received responses from 81,565,877 sites, an increase of 909K sites from the April survey. The Internet has grown by 7.2 million hostnames thus far in 2006, and continued growth at this rate would result in an increase of 17 million hostnames this year. That's close to the record pace from 2005, when the Web added 17.5 million sites.

This month 1.7 million hostnames at Go Daddy that were classified as "Other" in April are recognized as Apache sites running on Linux. Large blocks of Apache sites at Go Daddy have shifted back and forth between Apache and Other since January , due to changes in its bulk hosting service. It uses a front-end system that generates an HTTP redirect with no Server header when a site is first accessed — only once the redirect is followed, or if the site is accessed a second time, does it identify Apache as the server.

The latest shift helps Apache regain 2% market share after a drop of 5.7% last month, when Go Daddy shifted more than 4 million hostnames from Apache to Windows Server 2003. Apache's improvement this month has no effect on Go Daddy's continued hosting of parked domains on Windows Server 2003, which gains 143K hostnames at Go Daddy this month.

The investment firm GI Partners has purchased a controlling interest in The Planet and EV1Servers, two of the industry's largest dedicated hosting specialists, according to industry sources. The new owner has lengthy experience in the hosting and data center business.

The Planet and EV1Servers are the fourth and seventh-largest hosting providers in the world, according to Netcraft's Hosting Provider Switching Analysis, and the top two dedicated hosting specialists. Each experienced explosive growth during the past three years, driven by the surging popularity of dedicated servers. The Planet, which is headquartered in Dallas, hosts 896K active sites and 1.3 million hostnames, while Houston-based EV1Servers is home to 685K active sites and 1.2 million hostnames.

WorldCom.com has been taken offline, erasing the web's last traces of the brand that became a symbol of white collar crime and the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history. The domains worldcom.com and worldcom.net have been taken out of the DNS database, meaning requests for those URLs return no response. The domains continue to be owned by MCI, Inc. the WorldCom successor that was bought earlier this year by Verizon for $7.6 billion.

When a company is acquired, its domain names are typically redirected to the web site of the acquiring company to capture potential customers searching for the old URL. Redirection services are freely provided by most registrars. But worldcom.com and worldcom.net have no A record listed in their DNS settings, suggesting the domains have been intentionally taken offline to "retire" the name.

The spam-fighting service Blue Security has been under siege by spammers and digital attackers in recent days. On Tuesday it wound up sharing its pain with a large chunk of the blogosphere. When Blue Security's web site was hit by a distributed denial of service attack attack (DDoS), the company temporarily repointed www.bluesecurity.com to a blog on Six Apart's TypePad service. The DDoS traffic appears to have followed www.bluesecurity.com to its new home, overwhelming Six Apart's network and knocking its TypePad and LiveJournal services offline for nearly eight hours.

LiveJournal hosts more than 1.8 million active blogs, according to its stats page, while TypePad is home to thousands more, including many prominent blogs. In a status advisory, Six Apart said a "sophisticated" DDoS struck at 4 p.m. Pacific time and continued to affect its services until past 11:30 p.m. "This has affected all of Six Apart's sites, causing intermittent and limited availability for TypePad, LiveJournal, TypeKey, sixapart.com, movabletype.org and movabletype.com."

The DNS change for www.bluesecurity.com to an IP address on Six Apart's network (204.9.178.12) was first noted on the North American Network Operators Group mailing list Tuesday night. Internal links on bluesecurity.blogs.com indicate that the blog was configured to operate under the www.bluesecurity.com URL. Further confirmation came from other blogs, including The SunBelt Blog, which linked to a post published early Wednesday on bluesecurity.blogs.com and cited it as appearing on www.bluesecurity.com.

Rackspace is the most reliable hosting company site this month, followed by Datapipe and iNetU. Rackspace was perfect this month - it experienced no downtime, and not a single failed DNS request was seen from any of our monitoring points during April. This marked the first flawless month for a host since Datatpipe did it in January 2005, while German host Komplex had a faultless month in March 2004.

This month's top three hosts have consistently been among the strongest performers in our Most Reliable Hoster surve. Rackspace was the most reliable host six times in 2005, compared to four times for Datapipe. INetU made the top 10 six times last year, and was the most reliable host for the second half of 2003.

Three Linux sites are found in the top 10 this month, three on FreeBSD, two on Windows and two on Solaris.

A start-up headed by former MySpace.com chairman Richard Rosenblatt has bought domain registrar eNom, Inc., and is preparing a major push into domain-based advertising and commerce. Demand Media is backed by $120 million in funding from Wall Street investors and venture capital firms, and has been quietly acquiring a portfolio of more than 150,000 domains. Terms of the sale were not announced, as both firms are privately held.

The deal is likely to heighten investment interest in the domain name sector, which has been boosted by a trend trifecta - a surge in new domain registration, rising prices for resold domains and growing revenue from domain-based advertising.

eNom is the third-largest domain registrar with more than 6.4 million names under management. What is less widely known is that eNom is also the world's fifth-largest web hosting provider as measured by active sites - hostnames that contain content and thus are likely to be developed web sites generating hosting revenue each month. eNom hosts nearly 750,000 active sites, offering shared hosting plans priced at $7.80 a month.

The deal demonstrates that Wall Street and major corporation are watching the domain business closely in search of opportunities. "Media companies and advertising networks are now recognizing the central role a domain name plays in bringing users to Internet properties," said Paul Stahura, eNom founder and CEO, who will become president and COO of Demand Media.