Well, after using both of these providers and still using both of them, I wanted to post up a review to compare them due to the amount of threads regarding both of these companies - good or bad.

We have used DedicatedNOW since sometime early December and now have 6 servers with them (7th very soon). We have 1 server with BurstNET, this is used to host our own website, helpdesk, forums etc. - no clients.

1. Uptime
Apart from the power issues at NAC back at the start of February the uptime with DedicatedNOW has been nothing short of fantastic. Apart from the issue in February and the general scheduled maintenance, which has been nothing longer than 30 minutes, there hasn't been much, if any downtime. Alertra shows 100% uptime for most of our servers there, we have them monitor each server every 3 minutes.

As for BurstNET, I am sorry I can't say the same. Absolutely shocking uptime. Alertra shows 3 hours downtime for March, 7 hours downtime for April and only 9 minutes downtime for May, luckily. I will be reviewing the uptime here over the next month or so and be making a decision as to whether we will leave this server with BurstNET or not. BurstNET also seem to have big issues with SPEWS and other blacklists.

2. Technical Support and Customer Services
The support at DedicatedNOW started off poorly. I think this may have been because the service had just launched. However, since January/February this year, I can only say good things about it. 99% of tickets (not that we send many in) are answered in under 10 minutes. I also have to single out Matt, he is very helpful with issues, whether it be DMS related (pwebtech control panel for remote reboot etc.) or additional service orders - things are always resolved and questions answered pronto.

BurstNET's technical support is generally awful. When they have network problems, for obvious reasons their support staff disappear off AIM, emails don't get answered until after the issues are fixed and when network problems are occurring they don't answer the phone.

A classic example of BurstNET's poor support would be the simple ticket we sent in regarding a SPEWS issue, it's now been open for 2 days, without even a single reply from anyone at BursNET. Support ticket ID is: 20955, if anyone at BurstNET would like to verify this. Hopefully these support issues will be fixed when they have finished their office relocation.

3. Value for Money and Overview
You get a much greater 'bang-for-your-buck' with DedicatedNOW, than with BurstNET - both support and network wise. At the present time, I would highly recommend DedicatedNOW and would advise people to be extremely wary when making a purchase from BurstNET.

Anyway, enough rambling... :D

Hi Chris,

Thanks for sharing your thoughts on both service provider. We are also using DedicatedNow services and very happy with them Matt is really help ful and prompt in answering queries. :)

I am in similar situation..

Our site server is in NAC w/ DedicatedNow (since dec 2002)
And the clients server is with Burst.net (since feb 2003)
***Big mistake*** should made BN for my site!!!!

However I cannot really comment on DN's support, as I NEVER needed it ;)

As for Burst.net support - I would say they have a decent team there and some are actually real good and follow through (Jeanine ;) )
However the upper management there needs a bit of attitude adjustments. (and this is just watching their actions/language when dealing with other clients, I can only imagine the treatment I would get.)

Network side -
Burst has gotten better w the hiring of Alex the new NOC Network Admin.
During issues it is harder to get a hold of someone but they can be gotten a hold of w enough effort.

SPEWS - MAJOR MAJOR Issue and the main reason I am now pulling out of burst completely!!!
They claim to be working on it, yet the situation progressively gets worse. When you look at SPEWS threads you can see the Abuse rep from BN getting into flaming wars w the SPEWS people and IMHO making the whole effort fruitless!

DN does have a great network :D

I just hope DN will offer SCSI drives with the P4 3.06 or any dual xeons:)

Cheers rochen, appreciate your analysis.

Originally posted by Esr Tek
As for Burst.net support - I would say they have a decent team there and some are actually real good and follow through (Jeanine ;) )
However the upper management there needs a bit of attitude adjustments. (and this is just watching their actions/language when dealing with other clients, I can only imagine the treatment I would get.)

That sums it up for me... But I see that Alex has actually started using the *apologies* word--gasp, never thought I would see that coming from nocster. :)

Originally posted by Esr Tek
SPEWS - MAJOR MAJOR Issue and the main reason I am now pulling out of burst completely!!!
They claim to be working on it, yet the situation progressively gets worse. When you look at SPEWS threads you can see the Abuse rep from BN getting into flaming wars w the SPEWS people and IMHO making the whole effort fruitless!

Check out the newsgroups on this -- BurstNET considers it "a step in the right direction" and a major accomplishment that they got their major spammer to... get this... stop trying to send mail to servers that return a 550 error.

Originally posted by McRox
DN does have a great network :D

I just hope DN will offer SCSI drives with the P4 3.06 or any dual xeons:)

Well, I doubt it -- DN is the budget division of Pegasus (pwebtech). As I understand it, Pegasus are the ones who handle the high-end stuff like dual xeons. You should get into contact with Jason or Matt and ask

SPEWS - MAJOR MAJOR Issue and the main reason I am now pulling out of burst completely!!!


Can anyone please tell me what is this SPEWS which is Burst.Net is using?
rochen has also mentioned this in his post. Just wondering if anyone here can explain it to me?

Thanks.

Originally posted by Shikha
Can anyone please tell me what is this SPEWS which is Burst.Net is using?
rochen has also mentioned this in his post. Just wondering if anyone here can explain it to me?

Thanks.

SPEWs is an anti-spam organization that publishes lists of ISPs that support spam organizations. BurstNET has quite a few listings, mostly related to Azoogle which is a very well-known spam outfit. Burst denies they are spammers, yet azoogle servers have done dictionary attacks on mailservers which NO legit mailer does, period.

spews record (http://www.spews.org/html/S421.html)

Basically, SPEWs appears to be holding off removing any blocks until Burst takes care of their uberspammer, Azoogle, and Burst's CEO has posted that they basically have no reason to "work with" spews anymore because they won't remove blocks because they're still hosting a spammer.

I guess a few were escalated to level 1 also, especially some rather large blocks. Without knowing the scope of all their IP blocks I can't say for sure, but it appears as if a very large portion of their network is now on level 1 spews.

Edit: actually it does appear that virtually every IP registered to hostnoc is on level 1 spews.

I'm not hapy with BurstNet/Nocster either... We purchased a firewall Friday May 9, 2003. I was told that it would be up middle fo next week (Wed) so I figured that was fine. Called Thursday wqhen I got nothing and asked what was up. Basically got the runaround. Called again Friday. Got moved to the top of thw queue. Today is Wednesday, and I still have no firewall, almost 2 weeks after we ordered it.

And they still havent told me anything.

Nice review, though I knew how BurstNET's would turn out before I got there.