I'm planning to start a webhosting company and thinking about using DialtoneInternet's AutoHost Servers? For a startup company, which AutoHost server package should I choose?

Dialtone Internet AutoHost Master
Pentium III 800MHz 256Kb Cache
512MB ECC RAM,
18 GB SCSI
323.6 Kbps/100 GB/month burstable bandwidth.
$749 per month

Dialtone Internet AutoHost Pro
Pentium III 650MHz 256Kb Cache
256MB ECC RAM,
20 GB Packet Switched RAID Array,
161.8 Kbps/50 GB/month burstable bandwidth.
$549 per month

Dialtone Internet AutoHost Plus
Celeron 600MHz 256Kb Cache
128MB ECC RAM,
20 GB IDE HD,
129.4 Kbps/40 GB/month burstable bandwidth.
$449 per month

Dialtone Internet AutoHost Starter*
*Minimum Configuration Guaranteed while supplies last

Pentium II 233 MHz
128 MB ECC RAM,
4 GB IDE Hard Drive
64.7 Kbps/20 GB/month burstable bandwidth.
$349 per month

DI gives unlimited IPs and they current don't use the 95th percentile system. What do you guys/gals think? Or should I go with UltraspeedUSA? I feel that DI is more reliable since it's bigger company and I don't have to worry about it disappearing/having financial problems. Thanks!


acetate

I personally went for the $449 option, as I can upgrade by adding additional drrives and memory! This is a great interface and enables me to have resellers and compete with big companies. Besides you are getting a good company, solid network. My sales person (referred by someone) was Rolando.

You can also start with the buttom server and upgrade later on, good luck! :-)

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Personally I would go with dynamichosting.com. I have worked with them before and they are fairly good at getting back to you. They have 100 KB/s dedicated machines for $175.00 a month. But you don't get a control panel so you have to know how to sysadmin =(.


James R. Clark II
Nethosters Inc.
http://www.nethosters.com

Well, for a hosting provider Sphera is by far the best software on the market, I know it has 3 interfaces, one for the owner, one for the customer/reseller and another one for end users.

I am not a host, but Dialtone Internet host a few of my servers and they are top notch...

The only bad rap they had from some of their clients was the 95% percentile and they changed that, so now the customer chooses to be bill by Actual transfer or 95% percentile.

Also, most important their network is the fastest, and network attacks do not take their lines out since they have so much redundancy.

I love them and I recommend them. If you want the best go with them, if you are looking for less money and you are willing to sacrifice up time, security, speed and support.. Go with one of the $99 per month dedicated server companies.

Good luck on your decision.

Romero

Can anyone show me a demo of Sphera's control panel? I haven't seen one yet and I keep hearing about it.

Thank you all for your comments and suggestions. I like Sphera but DI's packages are kinda expensive for me now. For those who wants to try out Sphera, what I did is I asked the sales rep for the demo username and password. It's pretty nice however a bit slow.


acetate

Personally, I would go with VDI.
Since they also have a great controlpanel and measure the bandwith usage at actual bytes transfered.

If you are looking for a good control panel for virtual hosting then I would recommend VDI or their Cpanel software on your own server. I tried out Sphera a few days ago and could not believe how horrible it was.... It still has a long way to come. I can see why I cannot find a host who uses it.

Scott

Scott and Sodapoint...

You guys will be crazy to compare VDI 280 servers and network to DI's. It is not even close.

I mean the Cpanel could be but they are always down, don't you see this forum is not hosted in their NOC anymore.?

DI's is slightly more expensive, but you get what you pay for.... VDI has a network attack and they are gone.. DI has redundancy up to the sky.

Also Sphera is much better than their CPanel, but again is higher price.

Again... What you are willing to sacrifice?

I am out.

Romero

[bdraco@flashback bdraco]$ /usr/sbin/traceroute http://www.webhostingtalk.com
traceroute to webhostingtalk.com (216.74.113.68), 30 hops max, 38 byte packets
1 router.hostnoc.net (205.162.50.1) 0.996 ms 0.917 ms 0.913 ms
2 sl-gw19-nyc-5-0-0-TS28.sprintlink.net (160.81.201.117) 28.964 ms 28.838 ms 30.702 ms
3 sl-bb22-nyc-1-0.sprintlink.net (144.232.13.203) 28.693 ms 28.683 ms 28.672 ms
4 ATM3-0.BR4.NYC9.ALTER.NET (137.39.52.21) 29.081 ms 41.833 ms 28.966 ms
5 0.so-6-3-0.XL2.NYC9.ALTER.NET (152.63.24.114) 29.321 ms 67.510 ms 32.001 ms
6 0.so-7-0-0.XR2.NYC9.ALTER.NET (152.63.23.142) 29.265 ms 66.726 ms 50.112 ms
7 280.at-1-0-0.XR2.NYC8.ALTER.NET (152.63.18.205) 30.728 ms 56.125 ms 30.803 ms
8 182.ATM6-0.GW3.NYC8.ALTER.NET (152.63.18.177) 30.616 ms 53.520 ms 30.809 ms
9 vdi-nyc-gw.customer.alter.net (157.130.59.14) 69.596 ms 69.262 ms 112.373 ms
10 216.74.113.68 (216.74.113.68) 69.400 ms 105.751 ms 69.082 ms

Romero,

I have used both systems... Have you? I can say from first hand experience that CPanel is far superior to Sphera. I would not even use Sphera if the price was the same as CPanel. At least CPanel works with IE 5.5. It all comes down to using the systems before you compare and I have used both.

Also, you may to check out things before you post... Otherwise it makes you look rather foolish. This forum is still hosted at VDI. And the 2 or so days it was moved from VDI had nothing to do with VDI. As far as VDI not being redundant, try looking over their connection again. I have also had dedicated servers at both VDI and your location, sorry I mean DI :) and can tell you that my customers have always been happier with the VDI connection. Maybe if you told the truth about where you worked we would all know why you are so one sided about these things and why you only post messages when DI is mentioned...

Scott

Scott,

I can tell you that this list was moved to Digital Nation for a few days and then moved back to VDI or Hosting Wizards, (Maybe some of the admin's can give a feed back here, I maybe wrong) I am judging VDI from this forum it was sometimes down at midnight (Not lately). Not I do not have experience with VDI, but I have seen posts here, and seen their site, it is not a fair comparison vs. Dialtone Internet.

I have the rights to not disclose my job, I mentioned before I work as a sys admin of a company that offers monitoring services and tools for servers, similar to red alert, etc. I don't know why you are always hot if I defend Dialtone Internet, don't you notice that I mention Digital Nation too. I just loved both companies and I express my happiness like that. Now you may have a double reaction about your post, perhaps you should say simply, "I have VDI because is cheaper and they have a better Panel" BUT not because is better, or maybe you are the one that have some type of relation there. So stop been sarcastic and foolish, if you need to communicate with me, I will give you my email and we can talk, but my privacy is important, you never know when you are going to be called to court when you say good things or bad things about a company, I like to keep it low level as possible.

I am out.

Romero

romero,

I don't have a problem with you defending DI here as long as you truely don't work for them... What I have a problem with is you comparing DI to other companies who you have never used. If you would of used VDI then you could of made a fair, honest comparison about their servers, CPanel and connection based upon your experiences with the 2 companies but you haven't.

Scott

I have to say that I have used dialtone and they are good. Go for the highest package you can afford.

Cpanel is not far superior to Sphera. Sphera goes so much farther than cpanel ever could. Have you even seen a demo of the latest Sphera, it has far more capabilites than cpanel. Call sphera arrange a demo, and see for yourself.

Hi, we can tell about our experience. We had a dedicated at DI and actually we're with Vdi using our own rack.
Sphera is a very good and stable panel and yes Cpanel has bugs somewhere.
We only sell to resellers and we can say we have to thank cpanel (even if it's not perfect) cause we've improved our company's customers very much lately. Vdi offers good and not costly services as well and (maybe God blessed us) since several weeks we had no down times.
Cpanel and whm are very powerful and cheaper than Shpera. We can say Sphera is a good company and doing good things since they decided to drop their price to $200/month- Well this is still too costly for italian market, where you can find companies who retail 25 Mb at just $19/year cpanel 3 included.

Hope this helps

tnx
http://www.globe-host.com
http://www.italia2.com

I still want to see a demo. I have been playing phone tag with dialtone all week. It took 1 week just to get my first call, and they won't email me anything, they have to talk to me about the demo first. I just want to get in and look around!

Andrew@mailserver.com.tj

I can give you a demo. My contact info is below.

Originally posted by romero
..so now the customer chooses to be bill by Actual transfer or 95% percentile..

Uhmm..since when DI charge based on actual data transfered?
As long as I know they only offer average or 95%ile rule.

It was pretty recent since they switched over. I can't recall the memeber who announced it, but someone mentioned it 2-3 weeks ago-ish. I believe it is a capped non-percentile method. Email them to be sure.

I have seen a sphera demo and is very slooow...
I think because it is a java based.

Anyway I think Sphera is superior than CPanel but beware of its slowness.

In march it will be sped up alot, because it is going to an HTML inteface.

I hope so... :)

Jay,

Like I wrote several times... I have used both systems. This is a matter of personal preference plus the feedback of our customers. Compare that with the fact that CPanel has been used by and proven with hundreds or even thousands of hosting companies where I don't know of one company who uses Sphera. I know one company who use to use Sphera but scraped it after only a few month since their customers hated it.

In my opinion, Sphera has a long way to come before it is ready for prime-time hosting. Just try to use some of the standard Unix/Linux commands in telnet and you will see how it is lacking. Add that to the horrible Java control panel that won't even work in IE and that is enough reasons for us not to use it even at the reduced price.

Don't get me wrong, they have a good start but only time will tell if they can convert it into what it is now into a product that people will want to buy. I for one am not willing to gamble on it especially with a company who relies on venture funding in this market.

If you do want a product similar to Sphera that creates virtual servers, then Enism is a solid product... Just be aware of the initial cost of 25,000.00 plus around 600.00 per virtual dedicated server.

Scott

scottlaw

Your antipathy towards shera appears to be based upon your hatred of Dialtone rather than the merits or otherwise of the product.

Nothing to do with the Cpanel/Sphera debate, but DI stopped using the 95th percentile method for new accounts at the end of January. They now measure by the monthly average use, not actual transfer, meaning they add up the bandwidth measurements for the month then divide by how many times they measured to get an average of your bandwidth use. I've seen a great improvement in my bandwidth consumption with them. For example, on one of my servers I checked recently it was running in the 80 GB range with the 95th percentile method but is now at 24 GB with the new average method. This gets very close to actual transfer, for me anyways.

BTW, they didn't switch over to the average method if you had an existing account with them. You have to request the change. Just call them and have them send you a new contract for your account using the average method and they will change it over.

AP

Originally posted by AP
...example, on one of my servers I checked recently it was running in the 80 GB range with the 95th percentile method but is now at 24 GB with the new average method. This gets very close to actual transfer, for me anyways....

That's right. And the additional bandwith fees up from $3 to $5 per gig.

Originally posted by romero
moved back to VDI or Hosting Wizards

Hosting Wizards .. damm, the domain is taken (got the .net ;) )

gotta keep my eye open for that one :)

It is clear by now to all that Mr Romero works for them ... he is an employee here ... i am not guessing .. i am SURE!

:) If you become enthusiastic abt someone more than u should be ... u r a black sheep !

All this talk makes me want to check it out (Sphera).

see control panel review at
http://www.plesk.com/images/upload/WHM_reprint_March2001.pdf