Although the contents of this response were not reviewed by the moderator of this board, permission was requested and granted to post a response in this forum.

Please allow me to introduce myself. I am Robert Marsh, founder and CEO for Everyones Internet, parent company for Rackshack.net .I have followed this board for some time but have chosen to keep my personal opinions to myself. However, recent posts to this board have led me to try to clear up some of the mystery created recently.

Everyones Internet was founded in October 1998, went live in December 1998, and had grown to over 10,000 subscribers by July of 1999. By July of 2000, we had over 75,000 subscribers, and today we have just passed the 130,000 subscriber mark while currently adding over 450 dialup subscribers each DAY. It was in December of 2000 that we inked a deal with Cobalt for the purchase of over USD $1,000,000 of Cobalt Raq 4i servers and launched Rackshack.net in Feb. 2001. Again, in June of this year, we did yet another deal, now with Sun/Cobalt, for an additional 470 Raq 4i servers.

There has been much debate over how we can do the deal that we are currently doing. Some have referred to it as "illegal" and deceptive. You'll have to make your own choice on whom to believe but you won't catch me downing my competitors!

How can we offer Raq 4i servers for $99 per month? Volume! We have purchased more Cobalt Raq servers in the last 8 months than any other Cobalt customer. We always buy direct and not through distribution. Who do you think gets the best price on their purchases?

How can we offer 300 Gb of transfer? Volume! With over 130,000 dial-up subscribers, we have a quite extensive network in Texas and to the Internet. Our four primary upstream connections are to Savvis, Verio, ELI, and Time Warner. Up until now, these have been DS3 connections. Even when these were only DS3 connections, we rarely exceeded 50% utilization of the network even during peak times. Also, keep in mind that the dial-up subscribers use bandwidth the opposite way to our Cobalt Raq users. Late last month, we upgraded our Savvis connection from a DS3 to an OC3. On August 14,2001, we will be upgrading our Verio circuit from a DS3 to an OC3. On November 1,2001, we will be upgrading our Time Warner circuit from a DS3 to an OC3. Each and every one of these circuits was purchased on a "full pipe" basis meaning that we have the full pipe open and are not just buying a small part of an OC3. These upgrades have been possible as a result of the downturn in the bandwidth market. Backbone providers are desperate to increase billings to profitable customers with good credit. As a result, our gross cost to increase our bandwidth has been minimal and our per MB price has been reduced by 75% on average. These upgrades will increase our total bandwidth from 180 MBPS to 510 MBPS. These numbers also do not take into consideration our current negotiations with another backbone provider for an additional DS3 or OC3. In addition to the upgraded bandwidth, we have three new Juniper routers that will arrive on August 20,2001. These three Juniper routers will replace our current core of Cisco 7200 series routers.

Our Hosting Facility

Rackshack.net and Ev1.net share a colo facility that is part of a much larger facility. At present, with all of the new shipment of Raqs accounted for, our facility is out of room. Construction on the expansion will start in early September and be completed in late October. As part of the expanded facility, we will have about 1500 square feet of NOC and offices for our technical staff. When completed, we will then have our technical and NOC personnel onsite at our data facility 24/7. This will alleviate any problems we currently have on delays for reboot requests.

Technical Support

In the early days of Rackshack, we certainly did experience our fair share of problems with support and DNS. This had many causes including the fact that our automation procedures were not yet mature and our technicians needed additional training. We have replaced many of our Rackshack support technicians and have implemented a new and improved training program for our technicians. As part of our last purchase from Sun/Cobalt, we have a trainer from Cobalt that will be making monthly trips to conduct training classes in our facility. This Sun/Cobalt training will supplement our own internal training program.

Some of our Rackshack customers are also Ev1.net customers and have followed our development of our 'Just $10 Bucks" dial up offering. Over the past three years, we have gradually increased the number of free email accounts, increased the amount of free web space, and made other service improvements including email virus filtering and user-configurable Spam filtering all with never increasing the price.

As Rackshack continues to develop and grow, please don't look at improvements and enhancements as a sign of failure or weakness, but rather a sign of growth and prosperity. Only through revenue and subscriber growth can any company continue to improve itself. As with Ev1.net, I will continue to improve our service and the value associated with our offerings. Changes for the better cannot take place overnight, but will rather come a little at a time. We are far from perfect, but getting closer every day!

Robert Marsh
Head Surfer, Rackshack.net and Ev1.net
Ram3@ev1.net

One last thing. With regards to the Tropical Storm that recently hit Houston, there was no flooding at either of our collocation facilities. NONE. No water in the buildings. High and dry.
Although some of the providers that serviced EV1 experienced some outages, there were no outages at Rackshack as a result of the Tropical Storm. While there was a brief power outage, this was easily handled by the onsite generator.

thanks Robert that certainly cleared up a few things.

All you need is the online order form back up :)

Hi Robert,
the page with your Acceptable Use Policy doesn't work:

https://account.ev1.net/members/rackshack/signup/aup.asp

Not at this moment, anyway.

Ok, the AUP works again now. Here's how I think you can manage to offer 300 Gig:

20. Adult Content: - Adult Content or links to Adult Content are not permitted on RackShack Servers.

This isn't a critic,
just thought I'd mention,
:)

Yeah, an adult hosting clause and warez clause will keep cost low. As for the OC3's, I guess what I heard was true. Thanks :).

$99/mo for 300GB bandwith/mo?
Wow, I'm glad I read this thread.
So the line is DS3, and it will be upgraded to an OC3 connection?
When?
I don't plan to resell the space, but I need to host about 25-30 domains, Can I host this many domains?
This looks like a really great deal!
Thanks for posting the info.
:)

Very detailed explanation headsurfer. A RaQ 4i with 300 GB of monthly bandwidth is certainly the best offer I have ever seen. When I need more RaQ's, I'll certainly get them with you as well (already got one, which is great... only had one problem and that was due to a bug in Cobalt's software, nothing to do with Rackshack).

I have to admit that I was a bit skeptical about the amount of bandwidth allocated for $99, but not anymore. Keep up the good work. :)

Wow, I'm glad I read this thread. So the line is DS3, and it will be upgraded to an OC3 connection? When?

One of the OC3's are in place now. The currently have three circuits, Savvis, TimeWarner, and Verio. They upgraded the Savvis to OC3 last month. Verio will be on the 14 of this month and TimeWarner on November 1. So with upgrade to OC3 on the Savvis, they were able to start offering the bandwidth upgrades. When the others upgrade, speed is just going to get better.

I don't plan to resell the space, but I need to host about 25-30 domains, Can I host this many domains?

When you signup, you are purchasing a dedicated Cobalt RaQ4i. I have personally seen a RaQ4 handle 200 domains without any problems. You should be able to host 25-30 domains easily. And if you want, you can resell the space :).

Wow, this is an amazing offer!

Yep. That's why RaQ4i is sitting over in the Rackshack colo. :)

Hey HeadSurfer -

Thanks for the information. Hopefully it will help quell rumors. I have posted on this and another board iterations of my long experience with your company (seven whole weeks ;) ). Your front office and tech personnel have done everything they were supposed to do. I started with a RaQ2 to experiment and "test your service." I have recently added a RaQ4 and will move some of my serious work to it.

Keep up the good work and the planned expansion. I plan to take advantage of your growth and your offerings.

- Crabby

What are the server specs?
From what i've seen.
-256MB RAM
-DS3 or OC3 line
-Linux OS

--What's the processor speed?

What happens if I use more than 300GB bandwith/mo?
Do you have MySQL? I didn't see it on the list.

Will you upgrade the servers?
Maybe 512MB RAM?

Originally posted by Makeveli
--What's the processor speed?


RaQ4's cpu is 450mhz.

Will that be slow for a high traffic site? I'll also have forums, will they be slow?
Is there anyway to upgrade the processor?

Wow, $69.00 for the 512MB RAM upgrade.
That's almost doubled the normal price....Is it really worth it?
Would 256MB RAM be too slow?

Why would I want seperate IP addresses?
What's the advantage?
I can host all 30 sites off one IP, can't I?

You can host sites off of one IP, yes. The advantages could be another thread, but to sum up, you probably don't need dedicated IP's unless you want to run certain redirection scripts, have a secure cert., or have nameservers.

Re: ram
Busy mySQL/php forums such as this site and vBulletin like to have enough ram. How much is enough? Well, what you have until it isn't enough.

Re: processor
There is no way to upgrade the processor in that particular machine, no.

Re: mySQL and anything else
It will have to be installed. this isn't a shared virtual account, although it does come with php4, it won't have anything things that you haven't installed.

Originally posted by Makeveli:
Will that be slow for a high traffic site?


Depends on RAM. I have a friend (another provider :() who is running a few high traffic sites on his RaQ4 (256MB of RAM) and isn't having problems. I think he has 4 sites. The processor can handle a bit so my advice is to try it and see.

As for the IP's, like Chicken said, that would be a whole new thread. Basically, a RaQ can hold a little more than 200 domains on one IP. And the only real need for more is for if you want, like Chicken said, SSL certs or your own nameservers.

For mySQL, no, the RaQ4i doesn't come with mySQL. It does, however, come with Interbase 6 SQL which you can use. If you prefer to use mySQL, you can either download a version from mySQL's website and install it on your server (the hard method), or you can visit Cobalt's FTP, get the URL to the preformatted .pkg form of mySQL, and install it using your RaQ's install panel (the easy way).

As for any other software, you can install just about any linux version software on your RaQ. I installed Cold Fusion for linux on my RaQ with only one minor problem which took me about 1 minute to lookup and correct. Some of the other stuff I installed went flawless.

Ok...

So, MySQL could be installed pretty easily?
I want to use MPN (myphpnuke.com) for one of my sites, this would work, correct?

So 256MB RAM would probably run ok, but not fast? 512MB Would probably run fairly fast?

Could you post some of your friends sites that are on RAQS?
I want to see how fast they are.

What's more important the Connection or processor?
What would be faster a 450MHZ processor on an OC3 connection or a 1GHZ Processor on a T1 line?

This sounds like a good deal, but smells weird. I got a question for all of you experts. Isn't 316 GB like 1 mbit?. So if the rackshak guy has 180 Mbit network, so he can only rent 185 servers. Unless they don't care if they get over subscribed.

Can someone also tell me what is the DS3 costs from UUNet, or Exodus, or a Tier 1 provider this days?

Romero

Originally posted by romero
This sounds like a good deal, but smells weird. I got a question for all of you experts. Isn't 316 GB like 1 mbit?. So if the rackshak guy has 180 Mbit network, so he can only rent 185 servers. Unless they don't care if they get over subscribed.

Can someone also tell me what is the DS3 costs from UUNet, or Exodus, or a Tier 1 provider this days?

Romero

That is what he said. they have lots of unused bandwidth and also they are going for new connections soon. So now then have tons of bandwidth.

And perosnally i think they don't allow adult content on there servers so there should not be much load on the network. Also goto ispworld.com to get statics about the rates on T1,T3's etc.

Hello
Just a comment on Bandwidth usage.
I just checked our servers and our largest one (with nearly 900 domains hosted on it) is only using about 40GB per month.

We have no servers using more than 100GB per month (even those with high traffic sites on them - we put one on each server)

The Rackshack deal is very good, but I don't think many people are going to use 300GB off one server in a month.

Gordon

Well, If I did use around 180GB-220BG/mo would it still be pretty fast?
I don't have Zips, or anything. The bandwith is used from the forum, the gifs, and jpgs. I showcase my 2D/3D art, so some of the jpgs are pretty big files.

Originally posted by GordonH
Hello
Just a comment on Bandwidth usage.
I just checked our servers and our largest one (with nearly 900 domains hosted on it) is only using about 40GB per month.

We have no servers using more than 100GB per month (even those with high traffic sites on them - we put one on each server)

The Rackshack deal is very good, but I don't think many people are going to use 300GB off one server in a month.

Gordon

Gordon,

That's for sure. It's like any unlimited / high limit service on the planet. It's part marketing gimmick. The customer feels comfortable b/c he doesn't have to worry about excess traffic fees and the hosting company signs up more customers than if their limits were more restrictive. As long as revenue exceeds costs based on all of the customers put combined it doesn't matter if there are some 300 GB per month customers that perhaps are not profitable. If their average customer used 250 GB per month they might have some problems, but my guess is the average server hosted there uses no more than 1-2% of their 300 GB max. Of course I'm just speculating, but I have a good feel for what kind of traffic the typical customer uses since I do server administration and web programming for a lot of small hosting companies.

It is sort of like an "all you can eat buffet", if you will. In the hosting arena, the bandwidth is the buffet.

Many will eat their fill, which in all likelyhood, will not be a great amount. Others, unfortunately, will consume until they burst.

Our original idea was to offer an "unlimited" bandwidth option or an un-metered option. Prior to getting our experience with actual usage, we decided to be more conservative and set our original limit at 150 GB. While I'm not yet ready to make the "unlimited" jump, I am very much considering it.

We use the unlimited concept on the dialup side of our business, with some restrictions related to "continual use" and inactivity timeouts. No ISP around could survive if our unlimited subscribers stayed connected 24/7. Likewise, it would be quite difficult to have all of our Raq users pumping our 300 GB per month.

***** claims 100,000 customers (web hosting only) and now 425 MBPS of bandwidth. (270 prior to Quest OC3). Do the math.

I have always hated the nickel and dime approach which is why I moved the bandwidth limit to 300 GB per month. I don't want to bill for bandwidth. In fact, even though we have had customers run dramatically over the 150 GB former limit, we did not bill them for that traffic and we have no intentions to go back and bill them. Unless we have someone just go nuts, I doubt we'll ever bill for extra bandwidth.

You're right. It is part marketing. we want customers to feel confortable using our service and not be afraid of getting some outrageous bill.

In the end, though, we have to have the network to backup what we offer. I'd be willing to bet our network is more extensive than many of the larger hosts. Anyone can do the comparisons as we put the MRTG graphs on our web site.

Wouldn't it be cool if others also did the same so you could see what you were buying?

Again, that's just my .02. Please don't take anything I've said as a dig on another host. There is enough business out there for a lot of good providers.

I have a customer really taking my staff to the mat over IP address allocation/justification and a 12 hour response to add reverse DNS entries. I'd gladly wish him well if he chose another provider that follows these groups. You can find his posts in the HIP group.

Robert Marsh
Head Surfer Rackshack.net

I seriously doubt that the majority of your customers will get to the 300GB mark. That's a lot of bandwidth and for "normal" websites (i.e. websites that are not adult, warez, or download oriented), that mark probably will not be reach. It's good that you take the bandwidth issue the way you do. I have used some host that will charge you for using .1 kb over your bandwidth allocation. I understand that the price for bandwidth can get expensive, but that was too much. With Rackshack, I don't even worry. I never met the 150 GB mark and I doubt I will ever see 300GB!

I have a customer really taking my staff to the mat over IP address allocation/justification and a 12 hour response to add reverse DNS entries. I'd gladly wish him well if he chose another provider that follows these groups. You can find his posts in the HIP group.

I think the biggest problem people are having is the fact that you only offer 1 IP with the purchase of a RaQ. Some people have gotten used to other host who give multiple IP's to dedicated host. It does seem kind of strange, but most people can live with it.

I know close to nothing about networking, web hosting, or hardware in general, so my question is, is the speed (in megahertz) of the processor a big problem? A few places I've seen have dedicated servers with Linux running double 1-gig PIIIs. Is the difference important?

Originally posted by delemtri
I know close to nothing about networking, web hosting, or hardware in general, so my question is, is the speed (in megahertz) of the processor a big problem? A few places I've seen have dedicated servers with Linux running double 1-gig PIIIs. Is the difference important?

Rarely is the processor the bottleneck in a system. Usually you will find that it is the disks, connection, or lack of RAM that's slowing down a system. However there are a few times when it is usually the processor that is the slowest part - for example, if your whole site is made up of dynamic content and your scripts are not very efficient, or if there is a runaway script taking up 100% of the CPU.

Cobalt has always lagged behind in absolute performance. There are MANY, MANY othert linux options that will out perform the Raq.

Where Cobalt makes the difference, in my opinion, is the the user interface and per-configuration.

The Interface and reliability is vastly improved since its introduction.

Sure, you can get a faster box, but it is unlikely to result in increased performance for most applications and users.

If you plan to run 200 high-traffic sites with lots of dynamically generated content, you may want to consider an upgrade from the Cobalt. If on the other hand, you will be running up to 200 medium to high traffic site with mostly static html in addition to ftp and mail, the Cobalt will do great and will be a LOT easier to use and configure. For users without a lot of linux experience, the Cobalt is ideal.

Sun/Cobalt will soon re-introduse the Raq XTR with 933 GHZ or higher processors. As soon as we know its stable, we'll it to our offering.

Robert Marsh
Head Surfer Rackshack.net

Hello
Just out of interest, why do RAQ providers alwats say it will host around 200 sites?
Is there a technical limit on it?
We have Linux servers with over 700 accounts.
Most of those have no content, or are one page, but there does not sem to be a limit in normal Apache/Linux systems.
Have Cobalt built a limit into their system?

Gordon

headsurfer - ceo,

you have plenty of time to answer to forums, that is pretty good. i have a question for you, you do not have to answer in details but just for our understanding. with all respect:

if you have 45 customers going over the 300GB, (which you may have pretty good chances that you land 45 adult sites or download sites or game sites or just busy traffic sites), under this idea, that is $4500 on revenue for you. your cost for a DS3 searching on this forum is around $18,000/mo. what is your plan, in case this happen?.

now if you have 180 customers going over the 300GB that is 4 DS3s. This is $18,000 in revenue but almost $80,000 in DS3s expenses?

we are not taking in consideration your cost of the raqs per month. i want to see your answers before i resell this things back in my country because it looks like if your DS3s get busy, your will have many other customers with no traffic very upset, but then again is $99 dollars, so who cares.

kindly regards,

romero

Originally posted by GordonH
Hello
Just out of interest, why do RAQ providers alwats say it will host around 200 sites?
Is there a technical limit on it?
We have Linux servers with over 700 accounts.
Most of those have no content, or are one page, but there does not sem to be a limit in normal Apache/Linux systems.
Have Cobalt built a limit into their system?

Gordon

There is no limit. However, Sun Cobalt does not recommend that you put more than 200 sites on a RaQ because at that point, the hardware is likely to become stretched. Remember: a RaQ 4i only has a 450Mhz AMD processor and, by default, 128 or 256 MB memory. Also, the IDE drive included is relatively slow.

Thanks fro that clarification.
Presumably if they were simple forwards or 1 page sites you could go throught he 200 barrier.
We don't normally put more than 250 on a server anyway but I have one with over 700 and its quite stable (but its much beefier than a RAQ)

Gordon

HeadSurfer,

I believe the monthly price is very competative, however there are certain charges rackshack do make in addition, which seem a little steep.

For example, Allocation of IP Addresses, You are making a "setup" charge, for this however there is no apparent setup. Clients simply send an email request to support to request extra addresses, and then are emailed back the IP`s to be bound to the server. This process only involves a rackshack employee to look down an IP list and send an email!. Rackshack may want to review the inital setup fee for allocation of IP`s and simply keep a low monthly fee for each block of addresses, or even provide IP addresses for "free".

I definately think that a lot of clients would benefit from a second hard drive option, as long as you dont kill them with yet another setup fee. Also the initial setup fee could be reduced a little, to encourage existing clients to add other servers to their accounts (or maybe even offer existing clients a discount on a second, third etc server.)

Rackshack is doing a good job of being competative in the dedicated hosting market, however these things and more could be improved, so there are not setup fees and expense for every upgrade a server needs, as well as a monthly charge.

Thanks for the suggestions. Our setup fees, unfortunately, will continue to be about the highest in the business. This is the result of many factors including the fact that we have no contract and the lowest monthly fees.

Other hosts recover marketing, installation, and other miscellaneous (and REAL) costs every month. We just do it once. There will be a comparison posted in the next few days to our "Compare" part of our website. This will probably put in perspective.

As far as set-up fees on Ip addresses, we do plan to alter these fees when we are able to deploy additional automation in the process. The fee is also to discourage the use of IP addresses .. plus the first eight cost nothing .. no set up fee and no additional monthly fee.

Thanks again for your feedback and suggestions. I can't give everybody everything that they ask for, but I'll do all that I can for the customer.

In regard to our rackshack forum, a beta site is available at forum.rackshack.net . Our techs and sales people should start monitoring it next week.

My response on the bandwidth: We have tons of available bandwidth but we are careful to outline what we will host. For example, we absolutely do not allow adult sites. (This is in our AUP) The adult sites tend to be the ones that hog the most bandwidth.

We've done the math and are comfortable with the value proposition versus a cost perspective.

Very few Raqs take that kind of bandwidth as it is the exception and not the rule. In our offer of 300 Gb of transfer, we know by experience that most of our customers will not use it. A few will, but not many. The law of averages works out well in this perspective. We want to make it easy to host with us and not worry about getting nailed with a lot of extra bandwidth charges. That's the point of offering such an outrageous max transfer.

On your DS3 costs, however, you're way off. I would never pay $18k for a DS3 in this market, an OC3 yes, but not for a DS3. Also, remember that we get bandwidth both ways and the ISP side of the house pays the lions share of the bandwidth costs.

we're also comfortable with our network. When completely upgraded on November 1, we'll have over 100 MBPS more network capacity than ***** and they host vastly more customers than we do. I'd like to compare our network against other hosts but find the data very hard to come by. You can see our current network capacity and links by going to the network section under the "about us" on our web site.

Robert Marsh
Head Surfer Rackshack.net

:(

i'm a new customer to rackshack.net and know you have blocked the 203.x block of ips for the site's sign up page which coincidently the block i'm on. But you blocked it for your forum too? :bawling:

i get

Sorry. The administrator has banned your IP address. To contact the administrator click here

OK.OK.

I'll check on that one. It depends upon which server we put the Vbulletin software on.

We have blocked some IP address blocks from our signup and other, shall we say sensitive, areas.

Sorry you got caught in the middle but we are very anti-fraud and take every chance to kill it at the earliest stage.

Well one other "feature" request that would be nice, would be remote reboot w/console. I'm not sure if the RaQ can handle the remote console, but I'm sure you could plug it into a powerstrip that would allow remote reboots.

We have not needed a reboot yet, but I "hear" a lot of people complaining about the time it takes for a tech. to do a reboot.

I think a lot of people would be willing to pay a one-time fee for a remote reboot option.

Frank

The remote reboot powerstrip even for a setup fee cost is a very good idea.

Originally posted by headsurfer
Thanks for the suggestions. Our setup fees, unfortunately, will continue to be about the highest in the business. This is the result of many factors including the fact that we have no contract and the lowest monthly fees.

Other hosts recover marketing, installation, and other miscellaneous (and REAL) costs every month. We just do it once.

I can understand that to a degree... but you charge $29 setup and $69 a month for 256 megs of ram! SIXTY NINE DOLLARS A MONTH for a $30 (average) stick of memory. Now that is completely insane.... $857 a year! That one thing kept me from getting one of your servers. Even something extreme like a $100 one time setup would be more justifiable than this. Or $5 or $10/month. You have all this extra, unused bandwidth but you're wanting to make a higher profit on a stick of memory!!!

headsurfer ceo,

with all respect, you haven't aswer my question. Let me refresh
again >>>

if you have 45 customers going over the 300GB, (which you may have pretty good chances that you land 45 adult sites or download sites or game sites or just busy traffic sites), under this idea, that is $4500 on revenue for you. your cost for a DS3 searching on this forum is around $18,000/mo. what is your plan, in case this happen?.

now if you have 180 customers going over the 300GB that is 4 DS3s. This is $18,000 in revenue but almost $80,000 in DS3s expenses?

let's say you do not pay $18,000 for a DS3, even if you pay $250 to $300 per meg, this is 316GB, (your cost), and you charge $99.

my question is what if you get 180 customers with games, or download sites etc, just @what if?@. because you have @hope@ that this doesn't happen, doesn't sound too good to me. my only concern is that your network get's busy with high traffic sites and my customers could not reach the servers. i was/am planing on keeping my servers in other well known companies, this will be additional, [ i don't like to put my eggs in one basket ] i am planing on runing a reselling program in my country, plus offer some type of high traffic hosting via rackshak if i like your answer.

thank you for your time

romero

Good offer. But I can't run my IRCd on your server. Sure, possibly a flood will waste a lot of bandwith but if I get my RAQ at rackshack I will have 300 GB and really big floods are rare.

Romero-

The proof is in the pudding. Take a look at our network MRTG graphs and our existing network, without the 2 upgrades soon to come.

We have about 800 servers currently up and running (assigned to customers) with about 300-400 still in boxes. (We put them into service1 subnet at a time)

It is, in my opinion, a simple concept that all hosts use.

Of all the complaints you have heard about our service over the last 9 months, I don;t think any of them have been a complaint about the network.

I don't know any other way to explain it other than .. we do it and we do it successfully. Please don't take this the wrong way, but, I not really interested in getting into our business plan any further. Rackshack has gone from a nobody in the Cobalt hosting business to selling more Cobalt Raqs weekly than any other provider here in the states.

There are a lot of great hosts and many of them are mentioned here in this forum. We may not be the right one for you but I sure that there is at least one host here you can believe in.

Robert Marsh
Head Surfer Rackshack.net

Regarding IRC:

We have chosen not to allow IRC servers but have made rare exceptions that come with stiff stipulations.

Even on the Everyones Internet side, we have chosen not to connect our IRC server with any of the chat networks. Not because we could not handle thebandwidth, but because of the ptoential for frequent floods.

When our new Juniper routers are installed, we may revisit the issue.

Robert Marsh
Head Surfer Rackshack.net

PS On the memory issue, we have made recent improvements to the pricing including increasing our base offer to 256 MB with NO additional fees. I do think a change to our website on Friday was a little off ...I think the setup is $69 and the monthly $29 ... but I have had a couple of drinksbetween then and now. We gotta make a profit and the ancillary services, outside of the main offering, are where we will make a few bucks.

Originally posted by romero
if you have 45 customers going over the 300GB, (which you may have pretty good chances that you land 45 adult sites or download sites or game sites or just busy traffic sites...
As I mentioned already near the top of this thread: the RackShack Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) doesn't allow any adult content.

As for the comments of some other people concerning expensive memory upgrades, well, obviously that's not only to cover the cost of the memory itself, but also that of higher bandwidth usage. It's a transparent, "flat rate" pricing model and I find it really very correct. I mean ok, it's a little bad luck for those customers who just want the 512MB RAM to run e.g. the JSP/Servlet environment and not to serve a huge load of traffic. But well, from a marketing point of view I can very well understand RackShack: There's much more "normal" users attracted by hight bandwidth allowance, than high profile ones running RAM demanding applications. Restrictions on upgrade possibilities are very common for low cost offers, Rackspace.com did the same for their 150$/month managed hosting deal.

Also the restrictions concerning adult content are ok, that's simply part of the business model. Again, I think it's a simple, transparent and intelligable pricing structure, well done. Of course like with all things you try to put simple, there may be special situations where it doesn't fit. Maybe they are willing to negotiate special conditions like let you host adult sites if you agree to pay more, or give cheaper memory upgrades if you accept reduced traffic allowance etc. etc.

Well, such special deals give alwayse some administrative work I guess, so maybe they won't want to make them. But then maybe they will?

Anyway,
If they deliver good service (which I ignore), then I would probably like to work with this company. Well, I don't have any servers and don't need one right now...

That sounds interesting. What kind of stiff stipulations exactly?

I'm looking forward to run an IRCd on my new server and your offer sounds very good. So can we make a deal?

Some of the direct questions should be handled via email/PM. Please do not use the forum as a support forum, thank you.

Originally posted by GordonH
Hello
Just out of interest, why do RAQ providers alwats say it will host around 200 sites?
Is there a technical limit on it?
We have Linux servers with over 700 accounts.
Most of those have no content, or are one page, but there does not sem to be a limit in normal Apache/Linux systems.
Have Cobalt built a limit into their system?


Gordon, since the RaQ2 Cobalt has stated that the RaQ can host up to 200 sites. For the RaQ1 it was 75 and that was actually hardcoded into their backend, but could be easily modified. As a user, administrator and consultant who has worked with the RaQs since the RaQ1 I can say that the round number "200" limit was likely chosen for marketing purposes as there is no hard limit other than I believe no more than 255 sites can be hosted from the same IP. The number of sites that can be reasonably served from a RaQ or any server really depends on so many factors that a server appliance vendor can't really guarantee 200 sites can be hosted.

Thanks Steve
I always wondered where the 200 figure came from.
I suppose where I am coming from is that I may need a server to run 1000 tiny one page sites with no dynamic content,PHP or CGI.
I currently use small generic linux servers for this purpose which have similar spec to a RAQ but are obviously more than $99 per month.

Where does the 255 sites per IP address come from?
I have definitely never come across that limit on standard Linux servers and have gone past it on several machines.

Gordon

Now what's up with IRC on rackshack?

Well, I think it may interesting for a lot of people. In there Terms they talk about no IRC, now the headsurfer talks about IRC's that run under stiff stipulations...a lot of people run IRCds, so I think this forum is the right place for the question itself, not about a deal or specials or something like that as you said, that's right - it's easier done by email.

Hm...no reply yet...

Well, what's the problem with telling the world more about this Mr. Headsurfer?

If you have a direct question about a company's product or service, please email that company directly. There should be no mystery, as all infomation should be posted on their site regarding their TOS.

I just got off the phone with Brian, a technical support person at Rackshack. He says that you guys do not do colocation.

Have the terms "dedicated" and "colocated" become synonymous for the Head Surfer?

Brian did send me to this site which, it turns out, is a good thing! :)


-Daniel

P.S.- Either way, he didn't turn away a potential customer. I run adult sites.

You are getting the terms colo and colocating confused. The term colo refers to an area in which dedicated servers are connected to an internet backbone. The term colocation/colocating refers to sending your server/servers to a colo for hosting. No, Rackshack does not offer colocation at this time. As for your site, Rackshack will shut it down if it's an adult site. Adult sites violate their terms of service and are illegal to host in the state of Texas.

Hi!
Robert, I have just got into this post, And I would like to thank you. I agree with you on some hosts should reveiw there business plans. Remember Hosting still is business. ANd I think some people are forgeting that. I Am 14 years old, and I think you have really shed some light on the hosting industry for me. I only wish that more people would understand. Good job on Rack Shack and keep it up! I Cant wait to see whats in store next for rackshack! Thank you!

Chris Reid

Originally posted by Reg
You are getting the terms colo and colocating confused. The term colo refers to an area in which dedicated servers are connected to an internet backbone. The term colocation/colocating refers to sending your server/servers to a colo for hosting. No, Rackshack does not offer colocation at this time.

Thanks for clearing that up. :) What, then, is the term "colo" short for?


As for your site, Rackshack will shut it down if it's an adult site. Adult sites violate their terms of service...

That, I knew... hence my P.S. :)


and are illegal to host in the state of Texas.

That is incorrect. My host is located in Austin and is a law abiding company, as is ours. We also know several other amateur webmaster/mistresses within Texas who are plenty knowledgeable regarding adult law in Texas. You may be thinking of an adult video law which forbids the production AND sale of a professionally produced adult video title. One can sell the video here, but the same video cannot be produced here... unless it's of an amateur nature.

However, your confusion is understandable, as SOB laws are, at best, obscure and confusing here in Texas. Hmm... I wonder why they do that?? (sarcasm intended)

-Daniel

there is a 250 website software limit on the Raq4. I found out the hard way.

Originally posted by JKLIVIN
there is a 250 website software limit on the Raq4. I found out the hard way.

now where you seen that. Acutally they may mena it by account handling capacity of rack servers. if you put 1000 web sites which hardly get 1000 hits a month will work fine with rack. but if you have 1 web site with 1,000,000 hits per month then you will be able to host some on 1 raq.