While I have several machines in multiple locations I have the privledge to be able to voice my honest opinions and some facts about NOCs.

If you are considered large host, 10 or machines it is always advisable to spread out your Investment.

During the last 3 - 5 years I have had many experences with many carriers as well. I will be able to help explain why and where I make the most money.


Lets start off with Verio

Verio is a Public company, designed for Commercial accounts and resellers. Verio is high priced, and they will charge you for everything that you order. I have not seen or gotten any breaks. They Kiss your butt when you plan to use them, they promise the world. Once you sign up, you become a number on the list and have to push paper to get things done.

I have aprox 2000 Virtual domains with Verio, my profit margin is not what i would like it to be. I have seen a lot of Traffic brown outs, sluggish during the day.

I recomend verio for commercial accounts, not for the hosting regular web sites. The standard accounts do not have features that are needed, such as cpanel. The Tech support is a lot of paper work pushing, and it takes 24 / 8 hours to get work done. Bandwidth pricing is retail not wholesale. If you do not know how to run your servers, do not put them here.

I rate Verio C+

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Dialtone Internet

DI is good for low end accounts and regular hosting. The DI control panel is simple and not very usable for keeping the client base. The profit margin is fairly good for hosting and related. The tech support is fair to poor at times. Depends who is on duty that day. The reponse times for hardware repair is 24 / 48 hours and needs some paper pushing to get things done. The Bandwidth pricing is retail pricing, not wholesale.

Dialtone just recenty becam commercial attitude based, which means more paper pushing. I personaly do not like signing contracts or have to commit to how long i have to stay. I have been disapointed when they started calling me up to tell me that VDI was having issues and they were going out of business.

I have been told from people at DI that there are in the process at trying to purchase VDI. The outcome of that is not yet to be known. DI does support the servers fairly well, so you can be a newbie and get by. The bandwidth uptime is 99% and there are some daily slowdown. Since they are floridia based, during Hurricane season i get nervous.

I rate DI B -

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UUNET

I have several servers in a Worldcom data center, very high priced and full commercial enviroment. The profit margin here is very low. Everything requires paperwork and the high rotation of employees make it hard to have reliable support. If you do not know how to run your servers, do not put servers here. Worldcom will charge you for everything that you do. Bandwidth pricing is commercial, not for reselling. The uptime has been 100% with a rare slowdown.

I rate WC C

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Burst -

Since they have moved to thier own datacenter, I can`t make factual statments. But I can say they are a hard company to get a hold of when it needed. The Burst staff is slim to none. only 1 main admin and a handful of level 1 techs. Burst is geared to low end accounts, resellers and $100.00 a month servers.

I rate burst - Unknown ; I`ll place a server there in a few weeks to be able to review.

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VDI

I have a good chunk of servers located at VDI, the only issue I have with them is the last 4 weeks. The pricing scheme at VDI is wholesale. I do make the most money at VDI, and I have adapted well within thier enviroment. The VDI uptime before the 4 weeks was 99.8, the speed was outstanding. The Cpanel was very easy to use and to customize for my clients. The support has been fair and I was not charged for quite a bit of xtra work. The staff at VDI has always answered the phone, I have been very impressed with reboots, the online form they have is something that other host do not offer. The VDI colocation commercial pricing is the best pricing scheme I have seen in a long time. VDI is geared for hosting companies only, $600 for a dedicated and I do know they have extremly large accounts.

I rate VDI B+ assuming the OC3 will be up this week

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Alabanza

Alabanza has been a rough ride, they were a good hosts to be at 2 years ago, it is amazing how things change. The last year there has been quite a bit of downtime, I have seen a session of 1 to 2 hours a day at times. They seem to have improved a bit, don't know if they fixed the issues or that many host have left. There are a lot of host that have moved to VDI, there are too many to list, large accounts such as nomonthlyfees, webhostit, superiorhost and many others all moved over to VDI. This alone could have put a burden on the VDI Network. Alabanza control panel is very good for running a hosting company. The pricing scheme of Alabanza used to be wholesale, but now I can't even get much profit out of them. The tec support is not very good at Alabanza, they tend to blame end users for most issues. There has been many issues at Alabanza such as layoffs, Control panel programmer leaving, unusua charges on accounts. They seem to get as much money as possible out of your account, so make sure they charge you right. Alabanza has declined over the last year.

I Rate Alabanza - D
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The opionions here are my own, they are not based on outside feedback. I have reviewed many other NOCs and will look into reviewing them.

The most important feature of a NOC to me is that they can cater to your business. Special request and customizing the pricing scheme. The NOC must be able to answer phones on demand, DI and VDI seem to be good with that.

While there are many many NOCs out there that are better then the ones I have listed, there are not many that cater to the hosting company Business. A lot of Datacenters are starting to refuse colo hosting, unless you rent commercial space. Most companies need managed services to support thier servers. There are many freelancers out there availible for helping your company grow, I would look around and try to keep them within reach in case you need them one day.


My next review is Virtual hosting companies, and the gossip that makes them who they are.

Untill next time

Thank you for enlightening us all

Excellent review! ;)

boomer... let me just start out by saying how constructive this post actually is! the fact that you have had experience in this many NOC's is outstanding from a feedback perspective and leaves me wanting more :)

i wholeheartedly agree with your review of alabanza, as this is where stormwire.com originally started. so since we agree on one of these reviews (at the bare minimum) it is likely that i can listen to the rest!!

i noted that you said you were going to try BurstNET out next --> likely because of their extremely cheap specials & i will be interested in hearing if your review matches how i feel about them.

the last thing is .... site5.com. i have heard very very very good things about them and i have worked with matt in the past. i am very interested in possibly moving forward with this company, as they are in NAC & have a very good uptime. so you might want to consider giving them a whirl (since it appears that you have $$$ just laying around) :)

at any rate.. thanks for the reviews.. i found them interesting.

What do i need to do to get an A :)

Maybe pull your uptime above 90%? J/K. I am sure once the two OC3's are up you will have your A. :)

HEY BEEN 100% THIS WEEK AT LEAST :)

I have to agree with you there Bill, we only had two blips this month so far, one was because we were rebooting the server being monitored and the other was a connection timeout for some reason. Definately a big + over last month.