Hi all,

We currently have our radius authentication server with what we thought was a good company - but the sheer volume of downtime on their network has been astounding. And what's worse, is that when you e-mail them with an urgent problem they never reply. So I'm fed up and searching for a new, RELIABLE dedicated server provider.

Who's RELIABLE? By that I mean, who has the most amazing, astounding, unbelievable level up up-time of anyone in the world, and on the very very very very rare occasions they *do* go down they actually fix the problem by themselves?

We use a colo company like that on the web hosting end, and love them, but they don't do dedicated. So we need a dedicated solution that can offer the reliability and quality of service that a dial-up radius authentication server actually requires.

Any advice would be helpful. Cost, while a factor, is not nearly so important as sheer reliability. When our radius server goes down, our customers can't connect to the net. Right now we're into hour 3 of an outage with our current provider who isn't even bother to respond to my urgent messages.

Jason

Originally posted by Jason Ellis
Hi all,

We currently have our radius authentication server with what we thought was a good company - but the sheer volume of downtime on their network has been astounding. And what's worse, is that when you e-mail them with an urgent problem they never reply. So I'm fed up and searching for a new, RELIABLE dedicated server provider.

Who's RELIABLE? By that I mean, who has the most amazing, astounding, unbelievable level up up-time of anyone in the world, and on the very very very very rare occasions they *do* go down they actually fix the problem by themselves?

We use a colo company like that on the web hosting end, and love them, but they don't do dedicated. So we need a dedicated solution that can offer the reliability and quality of service that a dial-up radius authentication server actually requires.

Any advice would be helpful. Cost, while a factor, is not nearly so important as sheer reliability. When our radius server goes down, our customers can't connect to the net. Right now we're into hour 3 of an outage with our current provider who isn't even bother to respond to my urgent messages.

Jason

Your best bet it to look for providers that have mutiple backbones.. For example if there first link goes down the second picks up etc. That is the networking side.. As far as the hardware side there is NO host that can guarantee 100% uptime its just life hardware breaks and thats just the way it goes. Best bet is look for a colo with atleast a 99.5% uptime GUARANTEE that they actually back.. good luck..

rackspace.com - little expensive but VERY reliable

I would recommend a host with at least 99.9%. Hardware does break yes but with a good maintenance program in place and redundancy you can prevent catastrophic events like these from occuring most times.

You might also want to post your requirements of what you are looking for machine wise.

You wont get any offers here in this section if that is what you are looking for because of the rules but if you ask a mod they can move it to one the allows it.

Originally posted by OKIHost


Your best bet it to look for providers that have mutiple backbones..

We *supposedly* have that. We've jumped through hoops (renumbering IP addresses at least once, etc.) with our current provider because of the ridiculous amount of downtime.

At this point I don't trust what any dedicated server provider *tells* me. That's why I posted in the "Dedicated Hosting Forum" and *not* in the "Hosting Wanted" (or whatever it's called) forum - I want to hear from actual, legitimate *users* who can tell me who they think has the best reliability.

I don't trust the provider to be honest. It's sad, but in 4 years I've used 4 different dedicated server providers and have been incredibly unhappy with all of them. In the same length of time we've had only 1 colocation provider and never had so much as a single complaint.

There seems to be significant problems in the dedicated server industry. And that's why I simply don't trust what providers tell me anymore. I want to hear *recommendations* from *customers*.

Name a company that you know is good and reliable. I don't need the advice (I've been doing this professionally for over 4 years, I know what to look for, what I simply have no way of knowing is if a provider tells me the truth. That's why I'm here.

I'm sorry if it seems I'm biting your head off - I don't intend to, and I don't intend to be rude. I'm just very, very, very frustrated right now since it's been about 4 hours since any of my dial-up users have been able to connect, and it's prime-time which is when the outages always seem to happen with these people.

Before I had a server with this company which I won't name but you can figure out pretty easily, I thought they were great. I even knew the owners pretty well and I had a great deal of respect for them. Now... well, let's just say I'm not happy and leave it at that.

So... does anyone have any actual recommendations for companies that they use and know to be uber-reliable?

Thanks,

Jason

Originally posted by DigitalXWeb
You wont get any offers here in this section if that is what you are looking for because of the rules but if you ask a mod they can move it to one the allows it.

I don't want offers of any type. I want real-world end-user recommendations from people who are using these companies.

I've reached the point where I wouldn't trust an offer made to me as far as I could throw it.

Jason

Originally posted by DigitalXWeb
Hardware does break yes

I'm not worried about hardware breaking. That's a complete and total separate issue.

What I need is a network that isn't going to go down every other day. And, equally as important, a support staff that will actually respond to a request placed via e-mail within a few minutes if the server or network does go down. It's now been over 4 hours since our current provider lost connectivity and they still have not answered the trouble ticket I placed (despite the fact that the owner made the time to post on these boards - shouldn't he be answering his own customers' tech support requests before going into PR mode????)

I need a good, solid, honest, and capable company. Rackspace was a good suggestion. I'm seriously considering them right now. But I'd like to get some other recommendations.

Thanks,

Jason

rackspace.com is known to have one of the highest uptimes. RackMy.com and affordablecolo.com also have extremely high uptimes.

Uptime promises are mostly just marketing crap. You might get your money back, oh boy -- but not your server users!

In the Internet of today, and likely the next 3+ years, the best thing to do is go redundacy.

We run three sites in three cities. Each can take over for the other two. Even then it gets scary when two sites at once have problems (both our east and west coast sites, with different providers, were hit with DDOS attacks today!)

www.eservers.biz
They have 100% network uptime guaranteed.

I would suggest you get a hold of Mr Jass from Superb.Net they offer high-quality service and also good prices on server colo and dedicated.

I have a colocated server there for many months and network uptime is more than excellent. Not a single hiccup since I'm there. They have 3 providers and they really seem to know what they are doing.

Plus they are located in Edmonton, Canada. Nothing bad can happen to their datacenter as nothing never happens there :D

I can recommend www.skynetweb.com. I use them for two years now and I can't remember any network outages in this time.

- dom

peak-10.com , Jacksonville Florida

58 days of 100% uptime is my personal experience

Cheers
Balaji

Originally posted by Jason Ellis


I don't want offers of any type. I want real-world end-user recommendations from people who are using these companies.

I've reached the point where I wouldn't trust an offer made to me as far as I could throw it.

Jason

Jason,

Completely understood. Good luck in your search.. BTW I would also have to recommend RACKMY.COM or Affordable Colo.

Originally posted by DigitalXWeb

Completely understood. Good luck in your search.. BTW I would also have to recommend RACKMY.COM or Affordable Colo.

Based on my dealings with them and what I know about their networks, I would also recommend either RackMY or Affordable Colo.

One other suggestion: most providers use dual RADIUS servers (usually one on each coast). When users dial in, if the primary RADIUS server cannot be reached, the equipment will try the secondary RADIUS server (I'm sure you know all this already), why don't you colocate in two locations, this will give you an additional level of redundancy?

I'd have to say I've only heard good things about rackmy.com and affordablecolo.

Thanks everyone. It looks like I've decided on Rackspace after all. But I appreciate all of the suggestions, they were helpful in evaluating.

Originally posted by uuallan
One other suggestion: most providers use dual RADIUS servers (usually one on each coast).

Yes, this is something we want to do. Unfortunately the carrier we currently buy our ports from isn't capable of providing fail-over capabilities right now. They are working on it and as soon as they give us the thumbs up we'll implement it. It's one of those things situations where it's a lot easier said than done, it turns out.

Thanks,

Jason

Originally posted by Jason Ellis

Yes, this is something we want to do. Unfortunately the carrier we currently buy our ports from isn't capable of providing fail-over capabilities right now. They are working on it and as soon as they give us the thumbs up we'll implement it. It's one of those things situations where it's a lot easier said than done, it turns out.


Oh, are you reselling dial up service? I'm sorry, I got the impression from the first message that you had deployed your own equipment. Sorry about that.

Originally posted by uuallan


Oh, are you reselling dial up service? I'm sorry, I got the impression from the first message that you had deployed your own equipment. Sorry about that.

We are buying ports from wholesale carriers. We operate our own radius, e-mail, and web servers, but the actual modem ports are owned by CLECS (Broadwing in the northeast, Allegience in the south and mid-west, and O1 and ELI in the west, with some overlapping of course).

Jason

Another host you may want to look at is Q9 Networks - http://www.q9.com. We had three servers in there for six months, and only moved them out due to cost. They GUARANTEE 100% uptime - if their network is ever down, you don't have to pay for that entire month of service. Over the course of the six months, their network was never down.

Their support is amazing - phone, email, anything - and the facilities are incredible, too. Guards, biometric scanners, backups upon backups (even backup water systems for cooling, and enough electricity backup to power the whole city of Toronto for a month).

Definitely an AMAZING company - I have no complaints about them at all. They're not cheap, though - we were paying $1,800/month (Canadian - so ~$1,100 USD) for a half rack and 1.5mbps sustained bandwidth (burstable to 10mbps) - assuming my memory still works.

I've got a server with RackSpace now, and had a dissatisfying support incident - but, I think I'm one of the rare few with them. And their compensation for downtime (5% for every 30 mins after the first hour to a maximum of 20%) is atrocious. A $60 credit for three hours of downtime is insulting.


Darryl Ballantyne

Well, I couldn't come to terms with RackSpace, so I'm back in the hunt.

Any additional suggestions would be very much appreciated. I am looking for *dedicated*, not colo (if I wanted colo, I already have a colo provider I'm *more* than happy with).

Thanks,

Jason

Jason

I know you have more to woory about than answering questions right now. But I too have been considering Rackspace for similar reasons to your own.

I was concerned to read that you changed your mind about Rackspace, was there some kind of problem that worried you regarding their reliability or was it more to do with pricing/terms ?

You may want to consider eServers.biz for dedicated or colo solutions, best I have found out there.

100% Network Uptime

Originally posted by Jason Ellis
Well, I couldn't come to terms with RackSpace, so I'm back in the hunt.

Any additional suggestions would be very much appreciated. I am looking for *dedicated*, not colo (if I wanted colo, I already have a colo provider I'm *more* than happy with).

Thanks,

Jason

Jason,

We have had some problems finding a provider with good uptime too, we are getting a machine with affordableservers.net (same company as affordablecolo), so you may want to take a look there.

Good luck,
Matt

Originally posted by Darryl
Another host you may want to look at is Q9 Networks - http://www.q9.com. We had three servers in there for six months, and only moved them out due to cost. They GUARANTEE 100% uptime - if their network is ever down, you don't have to pay for that entire month of service. Over the course of the six months, their network was never down.

Their support is amazing - phone, email, anything - and the facilities are incredible, too. Guards, biometric scanners, backups upon backups (even backup water systems for cooling, and enough electricity backup to power the whole city of Toronto for a month).

Definitely an AMAZING company - I have no complaints about them at all. They're not cheap, though - we were paying $1,800/month (Canadian - so ~$1,100 USD) for a half rack and 1.5mbps sustained bandwidth (burstable to 10mbps) - assuming my memory still works.

I've got a server with RackSpace now, and had a dissatisfying support incident - but, I think I'm one of the rare few with them. And their compensation for downtime (5% for every 30 mins after the first hour to a maximum of 20%) is atrocious. A $60 credit for three hours of downtime is insulting.


Darryl Ballantyne

you're right about that one, q9 is top notch, you can't go wrong with them. I've been in their Datacenter before, and it is amazing in there...:)