I just signed up for the $99 RAQ3 dedicated server plan from 4WebSpace.com. Since everyone seems to be interested in it, I will post all details of my experience with them. This will show the people here how good (or bad) they are.

All I've read on here are positive reviews. This website, and this website alone, is what drove me to sign up with them.

Just to clarify, 4WebSpace is run by tera-byte.

12/11/2000
5:50 PM Central time - Signed up. - a minute later, got an automatic reply.

Got auto reply:
We have recently received your order and will process it as soon as possible.
If you require further information, your order ID is *****.

Thank you,
Tera-Byte Dot Com Inc.


---- More details to follow as they come. ----

It's 9:15 PM central time now, and still no word from them. I assume that I signed up after business hours, so I will check again early in the morning, and during the day tomorrow (tuesday) and see when I get the setup details.

Patrick

patrickw,

Keep us posted on this. I will be interested to see how it all goes.

Webhosting talk has been down for a while, so I am behind!

Ok, I signed up at 5:50 PM on 12/11, and got my account information via email on 11:07 PM that night. That means it took them 5 hours, 17 minutes to get me up and running.

I sent them a support request to put my domain on their name servers, instead of using my own, on 12/12 at 11:30 AM. I got the reply to this one at 1:25 PM, which was only about two hours later. Good job!

I sent an email with a couple questions to them at 4:39 PM on 12/12, asking about "relaying denied" messages and to clarify how to put multiple sites on the same IP. This reply came on 12/13 at 3:00 AM - Getting close to 12 hours later for a simple support question.

Also, every CGI script I run generates an error in my log files about "cgi-wrapper" problems. I sent an email, asking about this on 12/12 at 5:52 PM, and got a reply, even though it was not an actual remedy, on 12/13 at 12:20 PM, a full one day, 7 hours later for another support question. The person who replied did not actually answer the question, but rather just asked if CGI was enabled. I am still waiting on a fix from them to get rid of this cgi-wrapper error.

So far - I am getting excellent speeds to the server, it seems to be fast and a few of my users have even emailed me telling me they noticed a speed difference. I haven't had any problems other than the cgi-wrapper error mentioned above - but the CGI scripts are working.

I was impressed with the pretty quick setup time, however the tech support seems to be a little slow. I'm sure they are very busy on account of everyone signing up for the $99 servers.

Anyway, my experience over the past couple days with them has been good.

I'll keep you posted.

Patrick

Well I think (personally of course) that if you want to get a dedicated server, you should know some general knowlege of the server you are getting.

Its sorta like learning how to run before you can crawl. There is alot of areas you can find these simple questions out, by subscribing to the cobalt mailing list, if you dont want 100 emails a day, do a search of their archives, if that doesnt work, do a search of Cobalts Knowlege Base, if that doesnt work, take advantage of your free 30 days of support from Cobalt / Sun

http://list.cobalt.com/mailman/listinfo/cobalt-users
http://www.cobalt.com/support/kb/index.php3
http://www.cobalt.com/support/contacts.html

So how do you fix this cgi-wrapper error?? I have it too, and although it doesn't affect the CGI script execution in any way, my logs grow really really fast. :(

I don't know yet... they have not replied with an answer.

I agree that dedicated hosting is not for newbies. When you sign up, you are not given any directions, such as your path to perl and sendmail, how to do this or that, etc. You have to have a basic knowledge of linux and hosting to figure it out on your own.

But, like I said, I am happy so far.

Patrick

Ok, a few updates for today.

First, they finally replied with an answer to the CGI-Wrapper error - they said to ignore it. While this sounds absurd at first, it is the same thing I have seen said in Cobalt support forums.

Next, I called their TOLL FREE number (toll free is good!) to order an extra block of IPs for my server. They answered the phone on the SECOND RING (good job!) and the man was very helpful. He told me to send an email to Network Operations along with confirmation, such as the last 4 digits of my credit card, etc.

I did that at 5:10 PM central time, I'll let you guys know when they reply with the setup information.

Hopefully this is helpful to anyone who is considering 4WebSpace.com. By the way, I have signed up with a network monitor plan to tell me if there is ever any downtime on the server - so far, so good.

Until later...
Patrick

yes patrick this is helpful to me im still considering 4WebSpace.com keep on a posting and thanks :D

Which network monitor did you signup for, I tried the free version of netwhistle and it worked for a while, but is flaky at best, sometimes they send reports sometimes they dont. I don't want to spend an arm and a leg getting a service to monitor my server, and Im extremely, very, absolutely, positively, cant praise them high enough, happy with my server at 4webspace.com

Coming from another provider that had complete blackouts for an hour or more per day, plus often times having to ftp and sit for over 14 minutes waiting for the listing of directories,it's refreshing for me to have the reliability and stability of my server at 4webspace.com I can now honestly offer my clients some of the best network connectivity possible. It makes me happy, it makes my customers happy, it's a win win situation.

Anyway enough of the praise, who are you using to monitor your server?

Thanks,
Bbox

Hello,

To answer the question, my local ISP offers a service to ping a host once a minute, then notifies you if there is downtime - sorry, it's only for the customers.

Anyway, about getting the extra IPs added, I got the reply from them Friday 12/15 @ 12:47 AM - since I requested it at 5:10 PM, that would make the reply time about 6 1/2 hours. Not too bad.

Still happy here.

Patrick

So your ISP's service is pinging your server 1440 times per day, how many reports does it send to you, does it notify you eachtime that the server is unreachable or only once perday. I ask because I could see that getting quite tiring to get 350 notices per day because at the exact second they tried it was congested or some other cause of non pingability.

Which ISP are you with? That might be worth paying for the isp just for the service if it's reliable and heck would give an extra isp account to work with when my earthlink, and msn accounts goes down the toilet.

Thanks,
Bbox


[Edited by brainbox on 12-16-2000 at 05:35 PM]

sorry for the delayed reply.

I use a local ISP here in Arkansas, called World Lynx. They're not nationwide.

In response to the question about false reports from the ping tool, there are several options which prevent such bad reports. If the host shows to be down, it re-pings it in either 30 or 60 secs, I don't remember which one. Actually, as far as I can tell, I haven't gotten any false reports.

I also use netwhistle, but it only checks once per hour.

Patrick