Re: [cobalt-users] Kernel Update 2.0.1 C35

[Greg Hewitt-Long <cobaltusers@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>At 07:17 PM 4/13/2003, you wrote:
>> > > We're about to decommission one machine and plan on >moving clients on the
>>>other to a Boulder based machine >prior to moving the machine back to
>>>Colorado, or >another East coast colocation - any recommendations - >we'd
>>>like to keep at least one machine east coast for the UK.
>>>>
>>>
>>>We moved all ours in house. It isn't any more than we were paying for co-lo.
>>
>>Our co-lo in Boulder has 2 x OC12 connections - we can't afford that kind of connectivity - not many companies can... if you have that kind of connections, care to quote me a price for colocation?
>>--
>
>Hype.  What is your connection, 100 base T, 10 base T, metered or restricted.  You aren't getting more than the bandwidth of a T1 unless you have multiple servers clustered or the such.  Having 2 OC12's means they can server a bunch of you and hope you aren't all busy at the same time.  If you only have one or two servers that aren't real busy, a T1 would probably provide you with the same throughput.
>


Firstly, I want to preface this email with the statement that this is NOT an attack on you, or your business, but merely a (very long) explanation as to how our situation appears to me to differ from yours - and how your reasoning for being able to provide a service on a T1 line is simply never going to work for our situation.  Our businesses are almost certainly different in more aspects than they are the same.  It is not intended to be a personal insult, or the start of a "flame" war, and I have no intention of entering into a massive discussion on the merits of hosting some sites on T1 connections other than to explain how it simple won't work for our customers, or our servers.


Hype?  We have an unrestricted 100Mbit connection to their routers and we pay a flat fee for a particular amount of transfer - extra traffic is paid for by the Gigabyte of transfer to our drop (we won't get into this for quite a while) .  This is a model they at first refused to provide us, until we thought we might spend our $$$ with their competitors - now they accommodate us and our rather large IP allocation requirements without issues.  They are conveniently located an hour's drive south of us, and they now understand our technical nature very well.  Basically, they don't treat me like a Muppet, and we spend money with them each month.

Whilst I realise that these size of fiber connections aren't strictly necessary to provide a quality service for only a few servers (which is what we have), but this is a center with many servers - peak load is what it's all about, and the routers and redundancy or backbone connection ARE required for peace of mind - anyone thinking they can offer equivalent facilities with a T1 is delusional - but there are plenty of that kind of host around.  Proximity to a tier 1 backbone is more important to me than any cost benefit.  Our growth strategy actually demands a scalability that mere T1s can't provide.  Calling them and telling them I'm going to be there in 2-3 hours with a new machine isn't a problem - every tried scaling a T1 to T3 in any period of time??

You don't know (can't know) what traffic profile our servers have - you alluded to a T1 being sufficient if they "aren't real busy" - but you could not possibly know that at on each of the servers we have 30-50Mb downloads being grabbed all day long - these alone can cause a serious spike in transfer requirements, they simply don't zip across the network in a matter of seconds, no matter how fast a connection we have, our end-users almost always have DSL or slower and that means MINUTES of sustained data-transfer for just one site alone (simply a fact when using TCP/IP).

Many of our sites are e-commerce sites - some doing many thousands of dollars every single day... I'm not putting these on T1s - that would be playing with matches while doused in gasoline.  I looked at your site, and the links you provided would indicate a significant portion of the sites you host may well be of a type where snappiness and reliability are secondary concerns (you appear to have a high number of almost hobby type sites) - our customer profile is purely commercial sites - we don't do hobby sites - our name is Web Your Business - with an emphasis on the word "Business".

See this:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=business+web+design

that's us in #1 spot from nearly 5 million pages - purely business web design unless you consider:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=business+web+design+and+hosting

(#1 again) even if you think about adding hosting... ;{)

As to the local situation - in a state where the local loop is controlled by Qwest, T1 is bordering on a joke - anyone offering a "professional" service on such a connection (single pipe), is borderline criminal misrepresentation or fraud in my opinion.  T1s are supposedly on offer from "Colorado SuperNet" - or CSN.NET - a site which only responds rarely.  It matters not who sells you a T1 service - the fact remains that the copper/fiber to your location in Colorado belongs to Qwest - you have to beg those b@st@rds to get an engineer out when even a basic phone line is down - I'd not trust them as far as I can provide them for only a T1 either.  At least with an OC12 from Qwest and a 2nd from AT&T, the co-location facility we use has a decent amount of clout to get something fixed if they (Qwest) have a SNAFU or unexplained outage.

Perhaps your situation is different - but where I am, T1 lines wouldn't even be economical - with connections to this location running around $350 T1 service, plus local loop ($450), plus traffic, we would be looking at $1000+ a month for T1 access - that's 8 servers at our co-location - at which point, I'd be even more wary of having them here on a single line.

I am, and will remain the sole arbiter of what is necessary. My choice of provider is based on plenty of experience, both working for banks, venture capital companies and insurance/reinsurance companies in the UK, plus locally dealing with Telcos and the like - I'm NEVER going to put my faith and my company's reputation on the line with a T1 or other phone based system while Qwest has a strangle hold over the sole connection - NEVER!  Your situation may well be different, but please try to tell me that you know my situation or business better than me - you aren't even located in the same state as us.

regards

Greg Hewitt-Long
-- 
http://www.webyourbusiness.com/
Providers of E-Commerce Software &
Web Design Consultancy and Services.
PH: (970) 266-0195   FAX: (970) 266-0158