When I woke up this morning, I was shocked to learn that Foonet/CIT was under new management. Unfortunately, I have not received any official statements or letters from either the new management or the old one. As a customer this makes me really uncomfortable not knowing what is going on. I would have liked to be notified or contacted personally but I guess, they decided otherwise. I have only heard rumors. The only news that has been made available to me has been the brief statement left on the Foonet/CIT website.


So I am wondering if anyone has received any official words on what will happen.



Cedrick :mad:

Here's the official statement from their live chat rep:

As of January 1, 2004, Creative Internet Techniques is under new management! This is an exciting time for the company! Now with an established customer service department available 24 hours a day, higher quality hardware, an improved firewalling availability, and years of managerial and marketing experience, Creative Internet Techniques is finally able to take a necessary leap into the future of Internet providing. We are very excited about these changes, and think our customers can only stand to gain from the many improvements this type of an investment opportunity affords us.


- Matt

So someone bought Paul's house, or just his basement...err, I mean NOC? Neat - now you gotta wonder why AeternamTech and Sharpnet are completely offline.

Andrew,

I thought you and Paul were pals. What happened?

Originally posted by Dragoon
Andrew,

I thought you and Paul were pals. What happened?

The business relationship that we had with CIT/Foonet is long since over, however I am still pro-Paul and pro-Foonet; I am still confident in the service he provides is unbeatable for stability.

I am however, questioning why he sold, to whom he sold, and what are the finer details of the sale (IE. pricing changes, support changes, employee changes) if any. I also wonder why no communications were sent to his customers, which I am not one of, but I have many friends and business associates that rely on Foonet connectivity for a lot of their Core-Business.

On top of all that, I'm very curious as to why 2 of the largest (Atleast publicly claiming to be largest) resellers of Foonet/CIT are completely offline.

Sounds bad, then probably one of my old clients' site is offline too :D :D daveyk

Only other thing I was able to find was a post here:

http://www.acky.net/forums/DCForumID14/322.html (only seems to work in IE, FB doesn't work)

Also in the chan on EFNet
#foonet No topic is set.

Pretty interesting tho.. Wonder what happened.

Just thought, I'd add that we have been contacted by the new owners after listenning to rumors for a whole day. The main thing is that we are still up and running.

One major change has been in the way they bill their customers. Customers who were billed at the end of the month will now require to pay at the begginning of the month. This beeing said, we are approaching the end of January and the beggining of February, which means some companies will have to pay both those months at the sametime.

In addition, there should be a slight increase in price or so we were told.


Cedrick

From what I understand this is definately not a good situation. Its completely unreasonable to change a billing method to this magnitude. For new customers, perhaps, but not existing.

To see large resellers go completely offline is disturbing to say the least :(

I'm not sure why Sharpnet is offline.. It could be because of many reasons.. i.e not paying their bill, something network related wrong... *shrug*

As we know, FOOnet is now under new management, and all shell providers more then 45 days past due on their bill have been cut today for non-payment (see http://www.httpd.net for more info). From this, it appears a lot of the providers from within FOO's datacenter are now offline.

Originally posted by WebNinja
As we know, FOOnet is now under new management, and all shell providers more then 45 days past due on their bill have been cut today for non-payment (see http://www.httpd.net for more info). From this, it appears a lot of the providers from within FOO's datacenter are now offline.

Yeah even httpd.net is offline. They forget to pay themselves? lol
Probably a ddos attack from all those pissed off clients from the ones they cut off.

Originally posted by Dilhole
Yeah even httpd.net is offline. They forget to pay themselves? lol
Probably a ddos attack from all those pissed off clients from the ones they cut off.

The domain was hijacked I believe, a previous whois on the domain showed it now pointing to hacked.com DNS servers with an address of "We Got Owned".

A lot of speculation has been floating around; but here are some facts that I will share:

1) AeternamTech and Sharpnet were disconnected without notice or without request for payment.
2) Yes, AeternamTech and Sharpnet were past-due accounts, but received no prior notice, nor are they receiving any support at the moment to make a payment and get back online.

I have also heard from people that are current customers, and still online, that the rumor is of Orbitz Communications Corp is the new owner. Http://www.orbitsat.com - would be their URL, their CEO is a "J.R Echouafni". In recent conversations with a former CIT Employee that I talk to regularly, he stated that the new owner, JR, was most likely out buying boats and jets and not paying attention to the business. The link between one JR and the other, of course, could be just a coincidence. Rumors + coincidences + ARIN lookups:

Search results for: 66.252.22.100

CREATIVE INTERNET TECHNIQUES CRTV-NET1 (NET-66-252-0-0-1)
66.252.0.0 - 66.252.31.255
Orbit Communication Corp CRTV-66-252-22-0 (NET-66-252-22-0-1)
66.252.22.0 - 66.252.22.255

Result in some great information, and hopefully customers of CIT won't need to suffer much longer.

I just received update on sharpnet! Thought I'd share with everybody.

Yes, sharpnet has been cut! My friend spoke with ddunam (Shaprnet owner) apparntly he owned foonet $800, so they pulled the plug on him. BTW; AKavanaugh.. I have no updates about the domain.. I'll get on IRC and talk to some sources. Thanks for that info anyway.

<20:32> <Maverick`> any words on when things are coming back up?
<20:32> <Maverick`> or why they went down?
<20:40> <ddunham> Tomrrow
<20:40> <ddunham> It went down
<20:40> <ddunham> because foonet is under new management
<20:40> <ddunham> and I owe them $860
<20:40> <ddunham> and I had prior payment arrangements, which weren't adhered too
<ddunham> I made the payment today, waiting for it to clear..
<Maverick`> !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
<20:41> <Maverick`> u owe them $860 because of new management?
<20:42> <Maverick`> or just pulled account because of new management
<20:42> <ddunham> no
<20:42> <ddunham> I owed them $860
<20:42> <ddunham> and i had prior payment arrangements
<20:42> <ddunham> they disc'd me
<20:43> <Maverick`> bastages
<20:43> <ddunham> ya
<20:43> <ddunham> No biggy
<20:43> <ddunham> I have nothing to hide from my clients

I was a client of Paul's at foonet for a long time with one of my IRC companys and I remember paying around $450/month for a dedicated server with paul, I have heard some news that those prices are going to increase about $200 more a month. I don't know this for a fact but I know sharpnet and all the providers offline are really going to be hurt from this downtime. I can see the HURT in my inbox already.

I really hope sharpnet can prevail, I hate to see this happen to ANY provider.

Originally posted by Crucial
I was a client of Paul's at foonet for a long time with one of my IRC companys and I remember paying around $450/month for a dedicated server with paul, I have heard some news that those prices are going to increase about $200 more a month. I don't know this for a fact but I know sharpnet and all the providers offline are really going to be hurt from this downtime. I can see the HURT in my inbox already.

I really hope sharpnet can prevail, I hate to see this happen to ANY provider.

well, when you don't pay your bills, what do you expect to happen? get congradulated?

Free Market works well for a reason, it always prevails over poor business practices.. someone will always be ready to step up and meet the challenge.

Well sharpnet or any other shell company for that matter is always in competition with all other shell co's, but in the same respect there is a small market and high demand for shell accounts and IRC access. We grow together and some become frineds and some foe's but in the end we are all there for the same reason.

I do see what your saying and yeah they deserve the downtime and clientele lose, but where I will come forth and protect them is at the new managment level. They had a agreement prior to the change and that should of been resolved with paul (foonet owner) and the new company prior to business agreements being signed.

For example:

If you had an account with someone and that company was bought out but you had an outstanding balance of $800 but made prior arrangments with the host, and the new host without ANY collection attempt just pulls the plug on the server.

This is not common business ethics for ANY host! Just using it as an example.

Just goes to show the new management isnt messing around. If anything it will weed out some of their crappy clients that cant pay their bills on time.

it is not good business to pull the plug on one of your largest resellers because of an $860 balance, especially without *any notification and any request to pay immediately*. i am pretty sure devon would have paid and avoided the downtime.

paul

i just hope prices will not change . because this will affect more customers , and if stability will be lost everything will be lost . let`s see how it will go ..

Whilst new management may have to change how things are run in the company and cut back on non-payees, as Paul said, immediate suspension is pretty extreme and doesn't give the initial first impression that they would want to make.

The downside is that all people that were disconnected, were making payments. CIT's decision to disconnect customers without notice of disconnection or without demand of payment could be held against them if things get taken to court. There are also customers, whom are still online, that are having their contracts reviewed to see how many breaches were made with all of these changes that are taking place. Things will get uglier before it's over, of that I am sure.

AeternamTech is moving to a new datacenter, SharpNet is being reconnected, lot's of current customers of Foonet are also moving to new datacenters - regardless of still being online.

The new owner of CIT decided to show up on EFNet, #foonet, last night and make some statements - I heard from 4 or 5 of CIT's largest customers that the new owner is doomed to failure because of his attitude, insanity and lack of proffesionalism. His exact words were:


<CIT> and it my company
<CIT> I will do what I want


Which of course caused lots of comments, to which he replied:


<CIT> you got Paul will ship you all of your servers
<CIT> you are done
<CIT> I am kicking you out


Earlier rumors of Orbit Communications being the new owner, have turned out to be correct. You can view the new ownership structure here:

www.delinked.us/newfoonet.pdf

Out of curiosity...

Did Paul make a statement as to why he decided to sell Foonet? This seems strange considering he was claiming that the company was doing so well. Also, is Paul leaving or will he be staying on as an employee?

Does anyone know who Jay Echoufani (the new owner) is? Does he have any experience with Shell/IRC providers?

Paul had a lot of debt on his hands. Ranging from a $300,000 house - to the new juniper equipment he had. Jeremy, Heather and Paul were the only 3 employees that had access to the datacenter to perform work; and Jeremy had just moved away so this left only Paul and his 5 month pregnant wife to run around and service 450 servers and the network.

With all of the debt, having 2 children and 1 more on the way, no more backup employee's, I'm pretty sure this was his motivation to allow someone new into the company. Paul has been struggling a lot lately to keep his service up to the level of stability it once was. He had to get his own block from ARIN as Qwest was disconnecting him - he then switched to GBLX, whom have also disconnected him. He's now on MFN and TWTC, with supposed clauses in the contract for allowance of DDoS without disconnection.

Paul will be staying on with the company, as he is the only person on staff with the level of knowledge required to do the filtering services that Foonet is now capable of doing. New hardware has been added to the Firewall Solution (Dual NetScreens according to my sources) - Paul will spend some time managing that. They have outsourced Sales & Live-Support, they have also hired another tech (Jim) to replace Jeremy & allow Heather to take care of the children, instead of servers.

I don't think the new owner understands the Shell or IRC business. During the conversation, he mentioned that "Nobody understands how much it costs to run an IRC Channel" - not only did he say "Channel", but he was also making this statement to some of the largest shell companies around. He has much to learn about PR and the IRC business, and he's about to get a crash course in both.

Unfortunately, this is damaging Paul's reputation, and his dream of what Foonet could have become; but I cannot blame him for looking out for the well being of his family. I have known Paul a long time, and even talked to him last to warn him to look out for his best interest now that there is new ownership; I worry about him and his family, just as much as I worry about my business associates that rely on Foonet connectivity.

Family is #1..... I think paul should of had more intensive contracts with the new owner.

For example:

Foonet Ethic Code and plenty more!

you can only do so much.....

i disagree on the contracts. anyone that buys a company has it in their best interest not to screw the company he/she just bought. this expectation seems to have fallen short, because the new owner is a crazy mofo =]

paul

Well you should atleast explain how the business is currently ran. If the new owner don't adhere to it. Then in all respect he is going to screw himself over majorly.

Lemme rephrase contracts, just some verbal understanding on the current ethics would be good.

does anyone have any updates on this situation?

i can't reach http://www.foonet.net , http://www.httpd.net , http://sharpnet.net , or http://www.orbitsat.com

I can reach them all from here.