Re: [cobalt-users] new to raq 4, email does not work

[Jeff Lasman <blists@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Sunday 25 April 2004 09:51 am, Rick wrote:

> When I contacted Charter regarding this endevour they assured me that
> this would work and even tried to sell
> me another years contract for this purpose.  It was a package called
> Charter Small Business account.  I am rather
> disappointed with thier setup anyway, because when I want to work on
> the system (always nite's) they have been
> shutdown for upgrades, ect.

If you're offering webhosting to clients, and their connection is down 
many nights, you won't be able to offer any kind of reasonable uptime 
to your clients, which will make it hard to get clients; hard to keep 
them.

The Internet is a 24/7 environment and no reasonably run segment of it 
should have to be down more than a few minutes a year for maintenance.  
For example, I don't remember the Level 3 connection in their 
colocation facility in Tustin ever being down since we've been hosting 
there.

By way of comparison, my SBC DSL connection to my office has been down 
almost monthly, for many hours at a time, and when it's down, we can 
never get any information as to how long it's going to be down; the 
last time it was from 6:30 in the evening until 2:20 the next 
afternoon; almost 20 hours.  When it's down we can get to a recording 
that miscommunicates the problem; the last time, at 7:30 am the 
recording still said 1 am was the scheduled time for it to be up; the 
message hadn't been updated since 8:30 the previous night.  I'm able 
(usually after about a half-hour or so of being on hold) to reach 
Second Tier Support, but all they'll say is that their policy is to not 
give out any information.  The last two outages resulted in one month 
service credit each, but I'd rather have connectivity than service 
credits.

>  the whole net!  I have access to DSL or
> a fractional  T1 through Centurytel our phone co.
> at roughly the same cost.

I'd go the fractional T1 if you can afford it; it may be spec'd as 
slower but as long as you set up mrtg to your router and make sure you 
always have at least double the bandwidth of your highest sustained 
rate you should be okay.  Our ISP (since closed down) ran on a 128 kbps 
frame relay connection from 1996 through the middle of 2000.  We never 
went above 65 to 70 kbps, so that worked for us.  Today if I were doing 
the same I'd probably go for at least 512 kbps (T1, not DSL or Cable 
though, only Fractional T-1 or Frame Relay) for webhosting and email.

If you're considering DSL from your telco it's very important you look 
into their response policies; for us DSL has been a disaster.  Also, 
remember that most telco DSL is aDSL, which means you get higher 
download speed than upload speed; if you use the capacities I've 
mentioned above as a guide, look at upload speeds, as hosting companies 
get very little download traffic.

> The commercial high-speed Internet access service provided to the
> Customer is being provided solely for use in Customer's business and
> any unauthorized access by a third party to e-mail, Internet access,
> or any other function of the Service is in violation of this Policy
> and relieves Charter of any affirmative obligations it may have.
>
> Customer will not resell or redistribute, nor allow others to resell
> or redistribute, access to the Service in any manner, except as
> expressly provided in any contract for service. The limitation on
> resale or redistribution of access includes, but is not limited to,
> hosting applications such as the provision of e-mail, FTP and Telnet
> access.

While they don't mentioned webhosting, they make it quite clear that if 
you allow outside entities to use your server for email accounts or to 
ftp sites to their webhosting acocunts, you're in violation of their 
AUP unless your contract specifies that you can offer it.

I'd say unless you have a modified contract allowing webhosting, email 
hosting, and ftp access, you're in violation, and your salesrep may 
have lied to you.

Talk to a Sales Manager, and let them know the only way you can consider 
keeping the service is if they'll modify your contract to specify your 
use.

And see my other response in this thread concerning email service, 
reverse DNS, and blocklists.

Jeff
-- 
Jeff Lasman, nobaloney.net, P. O. Box 52672, Riverside, CA  92517 US
Professional Internet Services & Support / Consulting / Colocation
Our blists address used on lists is for list email only
Phone +1 909 324-9706, or see: "http://www.nobaloney.net/contactus.html";