Is this network prone to problems?
Are there any hosts on this board (not reselling) that have been having problems ie: connection delays lately?

Yes, there has been a problem with connectivity lately. I spoke to Alabanza and they are aware of the issue. Most likely a router problem that will be fixed soon.

Michael is this netmechanic test a result of Alabanza problems?
http://216.234.185.32/netmechanic/test.html

I can't say for sure, but it looks that way. This is affecting ost servers on Alabanza's network. Sometimes you get right into a site, other times you may not get in at all and get a site not found error.

I have had these problems on our servers all weekend, but at least there still wasn't any down time to speak of.

My mother who owns a poetry site and is at one of Alabanza's ISP and they suck, too many downtimes, I am concering to move to VDI based host, way much better than Alabanza!

GO VDI GO

We moved all our servers off of Alabanza... it was like they changed our routers, and all the sites slowed down. Then they completely stopped answering support tickets, and, well, quite a few other reasons.

We have been at VDI now with our own machines and things have been running great. Make the move. You will be glad you did.

Tim L.

We are still with them, and plan to be for as long as it is feasible. Too many people want their service. They are completely happy with it.

Although going with VDI is an option, it was not the right one for us. We are located in Phoenix and wanted the servers close to home. Even though we still have servers with Alabanza, we signed with Aperian so the connection is directly off of a tier-1 provider (UUnet and Genuity). Without having any telco loops, it makes for a superb facility.

Problem with going outside of VDI is the cPanel/WHM costs. So each has its advantages, and disadvantages.

The host that I'm with has both Alabanza and VDI. A few weeks ago it got so slow with Alabanza that I had them change my site to VDI and it has been a great move. Gee how things change quickly... not long ago Alabanza was the golden child.

We have more than 100 customers at Alabanza and each single site is down.

No answer by e-mail, no answer by phone! If this is how a company should work when it get's big... good night!

We move right-away to VDI and Alabanza is loosing us and our money but I am sure they don't care much.

Sandy

Originally posted by jiminsd
Gee how things change quickly... not long ago Alabanza was the golden child. Yep, which is why jumping around may not make a lot of sense. In three months or so that situation may well have reversed -- again.

And "downage" -- while it is a four-letter word -- is inevitable, I understand... but if it's excessive (as it appears to be, from what I've read) then jumping around DOES make sense for some customers.

I am one of those who cannot afford to be offline. I have made it clear to my former hosts and I am sure my current host understands... if they cannot provide me with good, reliable service, I will take my business elsewhere. My website is what puts food on my table and pays for my family's medications, literally. Hand-to-mouth. Not only is 3 months' time 25% of my income, but in concrete terms, that is thousands of dollars lost.

A slow site is as effective as a dead site. I learned that one the hard way too. :) There was a time where I didn't stay with a host >1 month at a time. Finding good service was darn hard. (And I was with Alabanza back in the golden child days, but thankfully moved before the current problems cropped up) I am happy where I am now but... thanks to the host-hopping experience... I know that if I NEED to move to stay "up" -- I can... and I will.

Pain in the butt? Yes. Necessary? Absolutely.

Of course, other's mileage may vary........... ;)


:D Bailey

I am not defending Alabanza here, but I am on their network. Yes, I have had a few connectivity problems, but tracerts have shown most of my problems to be related to AT&T not Alabanza. On top of that Sprint did some kind of patch work over the weekend that did not work out well. All of this combined has made it look like Ala is down. In reality, my servers have not had any downtime, it's has been the connectivity that has suffered, due to multiple connectivity providers having problems all a once. I don't think this is something to panic over. I seem to recall VDI having similar problems at one time with connectivity related issues. Does that make VDI a bad NOC? No, in my opinion they are one of the best out there.

Just my $0.02 worth.

I have been doing tests on a number of host since Friday and all of the Alabanza hosts have been having problems taking a long time to connect and with timeouts occurring. The problem has been ongoing for 5 days now.

Has anybody been given an explanation of what is creating the problem? I was in the final stages of signing with a host and now I am wondering if this present problem is a sign of more to come in the future.

This is directly from Alabanza

We are currently experiencing intermittent network problems. The first is a hardware issue with one of our network switches. The second is with one of our providers. Please be advised that this is only a temporary situation and Alabanza engineers are working with the vendor and provider to restore optimal connectivity. You may experience delays in accessing your server while we work to restore full service.

So basically, several things are happening at once. Sprints problems, AT&T's router problems, and a bad switch at the Alabanza NOC. All of these have compounded to make things a bit difficult at the moment.

I doubt very highly that because the Alabanza servers are experiencing some trouble lately that it is an ongoing problem. Every NOC has its problems. Some more frequently than others, but you have to take the good with the bad.

I wouldn't let this sway your decision, although I can see where you are coming from. Had this been happening to the VDI NOC, people would be crying about their sites as well..and with good reason. Once the situation is resolved, it will be fine. At least for a while.

My concern is this has been going on for over 5 days that I have been monitoring not just 1-2 days. In all my time on this and other boards I don't recall reading a problem which lasted for so long. I also get the impression from reading other posts that while the system hasn't been totally down this slowness and connection problem has been going on for weeks now not days.
My guess is that some of you hosts running through Alabanza are getting pretty upset by all this. Many clients probably are unaware of the problems people trying to connect to their sites are having. I wonder how many new accounts have been lost because in there due dilly they encountered this slowdown. I am trying to overlook this as there are other factors involved like service, price etc. that are making me zero in one particular host. But if this goes on for 2-3 more days my decision will be to look outside of this network.

I remember VDI having a problem that lasted a month, and this problem with Alabanza did not start for me until about Saturday.

The connectivity and switch problem with Alabanza appear to have been corrected. All is normal again from my location.

I seem to remember around the end of last year when Alabanza has some problems a lot of people jumped ship to 'flavour of the month' UltraspeedUSA. In light of recent events I'm sure many people would recognize now that wasn't such a good idea after all.

We had about 12 hours of slowdown which has disappeared now. Got no customer complaints at all, and actually got 4 signups during the problem, and I was remodelling our site a bit at the same time (graphic crunching/adding a few things). Today all is back to normal, and still no complaints. Had I decided to jump ship I'd still be trying to sort out a mess moving sites from one place to another.

Welcome to the internet.

Did I consider a move? Yes. But over 5 years of net time has taught me these things happen. If something breaks, people fix it. If they don't fix it then they aren't good enough for my business. This problem is fixed.

Sometimes a cool head and a less itchy trigger finger will save you a lot of extra hassle.

Greg Moore

While I'm not going anywhere yet we have noticed a gradual increase in customer complaints during the past 3 weeks which were intermittant and then things got a bit hairy this weekend. As late as this afternoon we were showing some problems but for the moment things appear to have calmed down. Now I just need to calm the e-commerce folks...

All,

The Alabanza network is now back to normal. Unfortunately
there were a number of problems, one of which concerning one
of the Foundry switches on the network, Another which was a
provider problem.

For the best part the Alabanza Network, is one of the most
stable networks out there, providing connectivity to over
500 web hosting companies.

Yes, providers do have problems, thats something one should
expect with an ever growing internet infrastructure.

Not so fast dream I have been monitoring with Netmechanic fo over a week and last night was some of the worst reports. Here are just 2 samples from different Alabanza hosts
http://scp.netmechanic.com/reports/066091207013518.htm
http://scp.netmechanic.com/reports/066091410013672.htm