Frequently Asked Questions

The NearlyFreeSpeech.NET FAQ (*)

Our Service (*)

What is adjunct access?

What is the fine print on the "two cents" free trial?

What is a resource accounting unit?

How do I set up TLS (HTTPS) for my web site?

What is an alternate emergency contact?

How exactly are storage charges calculated?

Will bandwidth charges apply to my ssh usage?

What are the default directories created when I set up a new site?

What is resource billing?

How do I transfer something to another member?

How do I set up two-factor authentication for my membership?

How do I set up TLS using my own key and a third-party certificate?

The IP addresses listed for my site have changed since I last looked. Should I be concerned?

How do I cancel my membership?

To manage services for multiple entities, should I create multiple memberships or accounts?

How did my account get overdrawn?

Can I change the name of my _____?

How can people contribute funds to support my site?

If I want to start my site over, should I delete it and make another with the same name?

Why was I warned that my PayPal deposit is nonrefundable?

How come I can't ping/traceroute stuff on your network?

Most synthetic traffic (i.e., traffic that does not represent a real person or computer making a real request of a service we host) is dropped at the edge of our network due to our network and firewall architecture. This protects our members' services from several types of denial-of-service attacks.

If you attempt to ping something on our network (e.g., your website), you may get a response. However, this response is a fake generated by our firewall and does not necessarily indicate that your site is reachable. We do sharply limit the number of outbound ICMP ping replies we send at any given time, which can mean your ping requests won't even get fake replies if someone is ping-flooding us; attempts to ping-flood us are very common and completely ineffective, largely because of precautions like these. Therefore, an (in)ability to ping your site does not indicate that it is or isn't working properly.

Some traceroute applications, like most under Unix, use UDP packets to probe network hops. These applications frequently show a "filter prohibited" response (usually "!X" or "!N") or a routing loop at the edge of our network. Others, most notably the tracert.exe provided with Windows, use ICMP to probe network hops and may be fooled by our fake ping responses. Both results are normal and, like ping results, should not be used as the basis for a problem report.

If you need to traceroute to our network to diagnose an intermediate connection issue, you can use the hostname traceroute.nearlyfreespeech.net for this purpose.

To accurately measure your site's performance and availability, you should complete an actual HTTP request to the site, checking both that it responds correctly and how long that response takes. This would be true even if we weren't playing games with ping and traceroute because overloaded or malfunctioning servers often respond quickly to pings but slowly or not at all to real traffic. Various utilities exist that can be used to test HTTP servers, such as wget, curl, and fetch.

How do I sign up my friend for NearlyFreeSpeech.NET?

I tried to change my contact email address but I never got a confirmation email. How do I get another one sent to me?

You forwarded me a DMCA notification affecting my site. Now what?

What is maintenance mode?

How do I transfer something from one account to another on my membership?

How can multiple people manage services hosted here?

Why does my bank's website say you charged my credit card even though your site said the payment(s) failed?

What is the "Excess Non-Production Sites" charge?

I don't log in to your site all the time. How do I stay up to date on news and announcements?

How do I remove or replace my two-factor device?

How do I hand over control of hosted services to someone else?

How do I see what users I have granted adjunct access to my site?

How do I transfer funds between accounts on my membership?

How do I remove TLS?

What are the IP addresses of your name servers?

Is my website non-production, production, or critical?

What is unbilled storage?

What is account sharing?

Why can't I cancel my membership?

How do I change the contact email address I gave you when I created my membership?

How do I get a receipt for a deposit I made?

Is penetration testing of sites hosted here allowed?

How can I send funds to another member's account or site?

Since your service is prepaid, how do I know when to add funds?

Do you provide refunds for services already rendered?

What do I do if I find a typo or mistake in your documentation?

What is NearlyFreeSpeech's backup strategy for user content?

Will my site still incur charges if it is disabled?