It's weird today the people that have rung me up and the conversations we have had.

I had a call today from a vbc.net sales guy running through the various products.. I pointed out the new colo's that UK2.net are doing a few days ago, so I asked him casually to take a look at their "amasing prices" using their network infrastucture of level three providers (hey!?! aren't they small fry in comparison?) from the "biggest web hosting company in the world" (boldest statement of all time! *honest*) and it striked me just how dishonest webhosts can be and too often are..

Fasthosts once claimed their triple network connectivity thus if one failed services would continue and looks what happened over the last day+..

Just reading through a few webhosting ads and the list goes on and on...

Has the business gone this sour?!?

Originally posted by Adam@OpenHosting

I had a call today from a vbc.net sales guy running through the various products.. I was pointed out the new colo's that UK2.net are doing a few days ago, so I asked him casually to take a look at their "amasing prices" using their network infrastucture of level three providers (hey!?! aren't they small fry in comparison?) from the "biggest web hosting company in the world" (boldest statement of all time! *honest*) and it striked me just how dishonest webhosts can be and too often are..

It's pretty disgusting, and it makes things all the harder for those of us who aren't out their lying our a**es off to be believed.

Someone posted in a thread the other day that a rep at a large and prominent hosting company told them that their service was good because it was 'shared' and another companies was bad because it was 'virtual'. Too obviously hoping to take advantage of the customers supposed ignorance by using a different term for the same service.

I get accused of lying all the time about our uptime or our network, or our bandwidth, or the fact that we are facilities-based-because other hosts do. Being tarred with the same brush as companies like Tacid really makes me want to bite chunks out of my chair.

The nonsense in that guys email about Level this providers and Level that providers is pure hogwash. There are no levels in the ISP industry except that <dreadful insults censored for good taste> ISP Level3, although most ISP's with national backbones grandly call themselves Level 1 or Tier 1 providers because there are no industry standards for ISP's and they can call themselves whatever they want to.

it's like the wild, wild west out there...

The most fustrating, chair biting, hat eating, teeth grinding, hair pulling, black board scraping thing about this all is that they not only get away with it, but is the poor punters that fall for it all and never realise that they have been bitten in the nasty sense. And its the honest hosts that get the chewing since we "virtual" host instead of "share" (sorry for stealing your example).

I'm no lawyer, so what's the law on false advertising on the net and who prosecutes?

They realize it, but they just shrug, complain a bit and go on to another host and another-I talked to one poor guy who had been given the shaft by 9 hosting providers...

But because it's little amounts of money, it's not worth one person getting a lawyer and suing for-and so far there haven't been any class-action lawsuits that I've heard of against hosting companies that lie to their customers. False advertising is a crime-regardless of the medium, but it's something that lawyers duke it out over-you don't get arrested for it (more's the pity).

Verizon ("the" phone company in the East) got hit by a class action lawsuit recently for the very thing. They were lying in their ads on their website about how good DSL is-they were passing off a best-effort, no guarantee, sometime workee-sometime not, service as being 'always on', business critical, and there were a few goodly lies about their tech support, too.

I reckon its all that is needed. One or two major lawsuits against the bigger firms just to get them into shape.

An industry can't run on the whim that anything goes with sales and marketing. "If you can make them believe it, then it's true!". The industry will collapse under the pressure of insecurity surely.

Is UK2.net the biggest hosting provider in the world as they outrightly claim on their site? (ref: http://amail.co.uk/system.htm)

I'm guessing that tera-byte is bigger, and there is most probably a host even larger than them..

Surely lies like this are easy to disprove in a court of law?

Would make a good law students thesis! "How many hosting companies could be taken to court today"

Lying is in every industry and is not web-hosting specific. But it can be much harder for authorities to enforce laws when it comes to web hosts. How many people who reside in the US have accounts with companies which are in Canada, UK, Australia, India and now we saw Arsalan from pakistan and I bet there's lots more from many other countries. The question is:
what jurisdiction would a US court have over a foreign company that has no offices or bank accounts in the US?

Xensei , You say you don't lie.

"Today, Xensei specializes in bringing high-availability, high-performance web site solutions to its clients worldwide. Once again, Xensei pioneered in this area, offering high-availability hosting before its competitors."

This a lie. There are numerous host who years ago did this. Web Hosting .com, Hiway, Best, etc..

"Xensei offers a 99.99% uptime guarantee for all Xensei hosted web sites, and consistently delivers better than 99.999% uptime."

Show proof. Not even Yahoo has this! What you are saying is that you NEVER reboot!!!!!

Don't point fingers about lying Xensei. We all hype service. Every VDI and Alabanza Reseller says it is "Their Data Center".

Originally posted by UnlimitedBW
Xensei , You say you don't lie.

"Today, Xensei specializes in bringing high-availability, high-performance web site solutions to its clients worldwide. Once again, Xensei pioneered in this area, offering high-availability hosting before its competitors."

This a lie. There are numerous host who years ago did this. Web Hosting .com, Hiway, Best, etc..

According to their domain name records (http://www.samspade.org) :

===================
Xensei has been operating since July 1994. WebHosting.com began its operations around August 26th, 1998.
Hiway.com began its operations around April 1998.
Best.com began around August 1994.
===================

Get your facts straight before claiming this.



"Xensei offers a 99.99% uptime guarantee for all Xensei hosted web sites, and consistently delivers better than 99.999% uptime."

Show proof. Not even Yahoo has this! What you are saying is that you NEVER reboot!!!!!

Don't point fingers about lying Xensei. We all hype service. Every VDI and Alabanza Reseller says it is "Their Data Center".

While I'm not in a position to comment about their uptime guarantees, have you read their Service Level Agreement at http://www.xensei.com/policies/sla.html ? They offer refunds for any 'unacceptable' downtime.

You would have thought they'd gone out of business if they hadn't been able to keep up with their uptime guarantees.


Anyone else smell something? ;)

Yeh, I smell it. Smells like chicken S#%$ :D

Uptime means the site is UP. 1 reboot means they void the uptime guarantee. Right?

My point is simple. We all hype things up. We all stretch the truth or mold it to where it walks a thin line so we can sale. I also posted here to get the exact resonse I did. "Look at their terms". Well guess what? That is where unlimited bandwidth providers put their stipulations. However anytime an unliited transfer provider does it, the are *hiding* in fine print. Yet uptime guarantees are ok to put an * by. Same with Back ups.

Sorry if I offended someone. My english is not as good as it needs to be. I just get tired of reading the hipocritical post some do. I read the post to learn and get a feel for what is going on. There are some very smart host here. some just like to gang up and attack others.

That's a pretty intense reaction there, holmes.

I can speak as a customer who does a lot of comparison-shopping before he buys: I've seen it all, from hosts who flat-out lie and hosts who lay out all the facts on the table. To me there is no middle-ground or room for "truth-stretching."

Frankly, I'd never touch a host if I ever found out that even one fact was misrepresented. For instance, I saw a lot of hosts who claimed that they had their own NOC -- when they are actually leasing space out of someone else's machines somewhere a thousand miles away. This isn't to knock hosts who don't have their own NOC -- but it is misleading when a host claims, or implies, that it has its own staff nad equipment right there when they don't. My current host has clearly stated that they do not own their own NOC; but they made the case that their NOC was the most reliable and best -- I did the research and I agreed.

I've been burned three times before by incompetent hosts, and I don't like to repeat my mistakes. I treat even the little "harmless" lies like warning signals -- where there's smoke, there's fire, IMHO. My regrets to other business people who feel they have to stretch the facts to close the deal. My opinion has always been that if you're competent, if you know the business, and if you are 100% honest with your clients, you don't need to stretch anything.

Yeh, I smell it. Smells like chicken S#%$ :D

Uptime means the site is UP. 1 reboot means they void the uptime guarantee. Right?

My point is simple. We all hype things up. We all stretch the truth or mold it to where it walks a thin line so we can sale. I also posted here to get the exact resonse I did. "Look at their terms". Well guess what? That is where unlimited bandwidth providers put their stipulations. However anytime an unliited transfer provider does it, the are *hiding* in fine print. Yet uptime guarantees are ok to put an * by. Same with Back ups.

Sorry if I offended someone. My english is not as good as it needs to be. I just get tired of reading the hipocritical post some do. I read the post to learn and get a feel for what is going on. There are some very smart host here. some just like to gang up and attack others.

Just curious, does this sound like it is "Their" data center?

http://www.site5.com/info/

"Our network is currently home to over 60,000 websites and hundreds of enterprise webservers." No offense, but that to me is bending. It should say "Our colo facility .... " They do however explain elsewhere, that they host in NJ.

http://www.site5.com/info/index.html
"Our shared, dedicated and co-location solutions have helped set a high standard for thousands of our competitors. "

Really? This is not the truth. Come on. Who are the 1000 and what did they do no one else has???

Also,
http://www.site5.com/info/acquisitions.html

is the exact text from Webhosting.coms old Acquisitions page.

Also,
http://www.hostway.com/termofuse/index.htm
http://www.site5.com/info/legal.html

Looks like they are honest, yet they partake in the same infrindgement others get flamed for here. Maybe not as bad, but still infringement.

I know they are a good host. Customers like them. But the point stands, we all bend the truth to the services we offer and some even borrow material . Dig deep down inside and ask if you are 100% honest in your business.

Originally posted by bigmattyh
I treat even the little "harmless" lies like warning signals -- where there's smoke, there's fire, IMHO.

You are different - 95% of the people out there shopping for hosting would not look for this or don't even know for what to look.

Originally posted by UnlimitedBW

Uptime means the site is UP. 1 reboot means they void the uptime guarantee. Right?


No, and you are obviously a troll. A 99.99% uptime guarantee means just that: 99.99% of the time, aggregated over a certain period -- usually a month, the host is up.

In the case of a reboot, if your servers are properly tuned, you can reboot the machine and still easily maintain that uptime. In fact you can reboot it twice in a month and maintain it.

There are times where there will be problems, and that's why customers are compensated for not being able to meet that guarantee. However, as has already been pointed out, the fact they offer it indicates they are willing to stand behind what they put on their website.

About site5 and what they did...

Well, some of them created cpanel wich you probably use ;-)

Originally posted by UnlimitedBW
Yeh, I smell it. Smells like chicken S#%$ :D

Uptime means the site is UP. 1 reboot means they void the uptime guarantee. Right?

Not necessarily... I HATE the hosts who lie, but uptime as far as I understood was originally based on 'unscheduled' outages (which should be infrequent if people are doing their job).

Obviously servers need to be rebooted from time to time and whether the customers are advised or not is really the issue..

Also, network uptime and server uptime are clearly different issues which are affected by different problems.

---

Copying content for some pages is no different than the practice by lawyers of creating commonly used contracts and documents from a potpourri of other lawyers efforts... (and don't say they don't!)

I think that provided there is not a deliberate attempt to mislead anyone, that people can be excused from some degree of plagiarism.. after all, there are only so many ways you can say certain things... :)

Pretending you are something you're not is not excusable though...

Originally posted by uuallan
you are obviously a troll.

I was once told never to feed trolls.
Well, I think we should follow the advice. Dont feed the troll - send him back to his bridge to scare passing goats.

In the words of Anne Robinson, "UnlimitedBW, you are the weakest link - goodbye"

There are definitely better ways to start one's day than by having my President (who founded the company and wrote the site content) and myself accused of lying.

:kaioken:

You know what I hate the most, hosts claiming they have xyz connections.

The biggst example is hosts who are with nac.net. They all claim they have 15 DS3's. Nac may have 15 DS3's, but not all for use at their hosting facility.

When I took a tour of their facility early last year, the guy claimed that they had 15 DS3's. I asked him to take me to the router room and show me those DS3's. I only saw two there and told the guy you only have two in this building. He said yes, they only two but that they were still under maximum capacity.

There is nothing wrong with having two DS3's as long as their not saturized. I don't understand why hosts keep claiming they have outrageous amounts of bandwidth.

If I colocated 1 server at UUnet, can I claim that I have 10+ OC192's (or whatever) since UUnet may own those kind of pipes?

If I colocated 1 server at UUnet, can I claim that I have 10+ OC192's (or whatever) since UUnet may own those kind of pipes?

That seems to be the norm. It's the high tech way of saying 'my dad can beat up your dad'. Or my <censored> is bigger than yours. Instead, it's my pipe is bigger than yours is.

Most of it is meaningless, but it's become a bandwidth race to see who can say they have the most total bandwidth capacity on their network.

The biggst example is hosts who are with nac.net. They all claim they have 15 DS3's. Nac may have 15 DS3's, but not all for use at their hosting facility.

Exactly, I took a look at NAC.net's site. their network map: http://www.nac.net/map.asp shows that most of their DS3's are point to point transit circuits that run from their New York I facility, apparently where their local backbone network is housed and a variety of national backbone network providers: Linx, Digex, PSInet (that one will be up for grabs soon), AOL, and others, and that the rest of the DS3's are point to point circuits for routing traffic among the various data centers.

So the hosting traffic starts with only the two DS3's but is split up among the rest as it passes over the national backbones and out to the rest of the net. Saying that they have 15 DS3's is inaccurate from most points of view unless you look at it by squinting one eye and crossing the other.

Those DS3's are also probably split up from an OC-12 (unless they are old enough to still be on copper) but that would give even more to brag about. From an even more convoluted point of view, that hosting facility could be said to be served by an OC-12.

Originally posted by vizi
There is nothing wrong with having two DS3's as long as their not saturized.

EXACTLY! so long as the network is NOT saturated.... i can hang with NOC's that are running on multiple t3's as long as i'm their *only* customer :D


cheers,
elijah john

Some of these comments don't lend much confidence to a web hoster seeking a reputable (that means honest; stealing content is stealing content and "bending the truth" is not the truth) web host.

Just because most of your customer base doesn't know what to look for or the right questions to ask doesn't mean you milk that for all it's worth by lying or stealing a competitor's content ... I don't care HOW bad the market gets, that's just bad business.

Just because most of your customer base doesn't know what to look for or the right questions to ask doesn't mean you milk that for all it's worth by lying or stealing a competitor's content

Unfortunately, Wild Texas, that's become pretty much the norm in large sectors of the IT industry.

Lawsuits over Intellectual property are as common as fleas on an old dog these days. And Microsoft's antipiracy division, as well as the BSA are kept busy trying to keep people from stealing software.

The larger companies can't get away with as much as the small ones, but some years ago I worked (fortunately in a different area) for a small software company that also resold PC's and did network admin and desktop support for a few favored customers. I've talked to a number of others who worked for similar operations and found that what I saw there is not unusual in the industry. Far from it. And it was disgusting.

The boss would buy used, refurbished machines from onsale, and sell them as new, for more than what new computers with more capacity cost-that's fraud. He'd have the techs install from NFR (not for resale) copies of NT server on machines for customers, yet charge them the full price of a licensed copy of NT server- arr, matey, that's illegal in several ways.

When doing a development project, he'd pad the bills with his own 'project management' T&M, even though that was my job and it was already being billed for once.

He schemed to get a large customer to pay for a completely custom version of his software-windows instead of the DOS-based application currently in release-with the intention of retaining IP rights and releasing it for sale at pure profit to him as they were underwriting all the development costs.

He got away with it because his customers trusted him and they were ignorant about computers and didn't know about software licensing.

He did have a brush with getting caught, one of the clients he'd sold 10 copies of Office 97 to (and installed from the single copy that was kept in the library - buy once, install everywhere, was his motto) wondered why they didn't have 10 Office 97 CD's-although they'd paid the street price + 15% markup for it (about $400/each I think). He got 10 Office 97 CD's-from an online auction for $10/each, arr matey, and gave those to the client-rather than ordering them legal copies from the distributor.

Although I kept my hands clean of his crimes, I fought with him constantly over these and other fraud and piracy issues, and eventually got the axe for it. It really bothered me that he'd do this, especially to a vertical market that was all non-profit organizations, and that espoused a cause that he supposedly believed in.