I was wondering what happened for the past couple of hours. Also, I'm not sure if this is true anymore, but I think passwird.com was with them too, but was still up.

Anyway, I read the post from last Tuesday's downtime, and I wasn't with Hostpacket until Wednesday. So, I hope that the CEO comes in here often.

Now, my site's back up. Been down for at least 3 hours before, though.

I was having enough trouble with Cyberwings, and this might be temporary until/if they get back on their feet. (Please don't comment on that, though.) Should I stick with this host, too, or start looking for another low cost host? I really love their fast support. Except now, I haven't gotten a reply, and their LiveChat hasn't been working. :(

Thanks!
Bryan
http://www.btvillarin.com
http://forums.btvillarin.com

Are you on server #1 or server #2?

Also, your name server profile is:

NS1.HOSTPACKET.NET
NS3.HOSTPACKET.NET

I'm not entirely sure whether that would have any impact though...?

Don't count on their LiveChat.

If you are losing money because of this downtime, then maybe it is time to switch, or maybe if you just "can't stand this anymore!". Otherwise, if you think everything else is okay and their downtime is 'acceptable', then stay with them. I don't think this matter of HostPacket.net's downtime should dictate whether you switch hosts or not...unless the downtime is quite constant.

I'm on server #1, I believe.

LiveChat worked once, right after I got my account activated. It was really cool, cuz I was actually talking to Kevin.

Anyways, I'm also going by their downtime last Tuesday. But, so far, I think I'll basically stay with them. My site is definitely faster than before, and maybe this was a minor maintenence. I'm not sure, but I'm just trying to get the facts.

I'm definitely not losing money from this. This is just a website helping people out with computers and Windows XP. But, I run forums on my site that the members definitely love. The speed is so much faster than the ones at Anandtech or Tom's Hardware Guide. I even got some donations towards better hosting, which I was truely grateful.

Bryan Villarin
http://www.btvillarin.com
http://forums.btvillarin.com

Besides the downtime they had for a few hours back around the 11th-12th, everything has been good with them for me, even the livechat. I notice hostpacket.net is down right now, but mine is still up.

Weird, but hostpacket.net is up for me. But yeah, that's what I was mentioning about the Tuesday downtime.

From what I know, they do provide 24/7 customer support, but their LiveChat is only serviced during certain hours. (6 AM - 6 PM EST, I think? :eek: )

24/7 support through what medium? Email or telephone? I'm not calling that far, though.

If LiveChat is from 6am-6pm EST, then I'll check if that holds true in the morning. ;)

Their site is down for me too but I can access it using their IP address (64.246.43.170).

hmm...this is unfortunate...more downtime this month? hostpacket is/was on my "shortlist" as a potential host... i still like their plans/prices and maybe okay for my personal site. i'm curious about cause of downtime.

something wrong w/ dns?

Originally posted by btvillarin
24/7 support through what medium? Email or telephone? I'm not calling that far, though.

If LiveChat is from 6am-6pm EST, then I'll check if that holds true in the morning. ;) By E-mail. (This is just what I've been told by a friend hosted by them, I haven't actually had any experience with their support systems.)

Maybe it has to do with their DNS then.

Caffeined: I'm not sure what to think right now. They have that 30-day money back guarantee, but so far, the support has been excellent. I think for me I'm staying with them, unless this becomes a regular occurence. Of course, my site is still a personal site. But, with donations, could I consider it more official than that? :eek:

I sent an email at 7:09pm Pacific, and haven't gotten a reply yet. It's now 10:26pm Pacific. Hmm....

I just emailed them again at their support address, instead of the help address.

There main site is down from here, hopefully they get everything back up. Seems to be a DNS issue.

if problem is w/ hostpacket's dns, they might not receive e-mails until problem is resolved...

hopefully, hostpacket will respond in a timely fashion...so far from what i've seen in the forums, they've been responsive n forthcoming in explanations...+pts for them there...i respect them for that...too bad for the downtime.

overall, have to admit 2 downtimes has me concerned about their service...taking a wait n see approach...

good luck to all!

Ah, good call! I didn't think about that. Anyways, I can be patient.

Also, my site's up, and now my subdomains have been cleared or something. I tried to reconfigure my single one, and got this error in CPanel:

SubDomain Adder
ndc: connect failed: connection refused The subdomain, forums.btvillarin.com has been added.

Any idea what this might mean? I was able to configure it, but I can't get to the intended page.

Your instincts were correct. My SMTP server (PostCast Server 2) can't send to my last email to hostpacket, concerning why I can't get my subdomain to work. So, once that sends, I think I'll know that everything is okay with them.

Its 11:30PM here and my site is down with HostPacket. Can't be good :(

And to top it off my SMTP is busted with my ISP :| (not a good day). Are they working on this or is it just me that hostpacket.net is down?

TIA.

eyow: I'm using this now. It's free...

PostCast Server 2

My description and comments about it can be found here:
http://www.btvillarin.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=117

eyow: problem is likely w/ hostpacket's dns...other hostpacket users having same problem as you.

btvillarin: sounds like they're working on it or at least the dns problem is resolving itself (if problem is outside of hostpacket's control)...not sure which... as usual it'll just be a matter of time before everything is ok. pls let me know how things go. thnx.

suggestion to hostpacket:
offsite/offservice channel of support could be helpful in case like this where hostpacket site is inaccessible. does their phone support work?

wonder how other hosts handle problems like this? anyone have insights?

Yeah, I hope it gets fixed...which I know it will.

Anyways, I know that some people can get to my site, while I know that at least one person can't.

Like Cyberwings, an IRC support channel might actually be a good idea. It's free...I think. I'm not sure about their phone support, because I'm not going to call long distance.

I wouldn't mind calling long distance if I can say "Hey server is down" and ask if they know what's going on, and if they are fixing it. I just hate being in the dark :|

btvillarin: Is that a link to a site hosted on HostPacket, because I can't get to it right now ;)

Sam

I noticed they are advertising for administrative help in the ad forums so that tells me that they may not know how to adminstrate a server; but at least they are trying to find someone to help them do it right.

but at least they are trying to find someone to help them do it right

A webhosting company? :eek:

LOL jk stressed like I said my SMTP on my local ISP is down, and my site on hostpacket is down which I had some ads running for. I just would hate for clients to be clicking on links, and banners and end up with DNS errors or can't resolve URL :(

Sam

Again

Did anyone notice when it went down? I noticed it was down for me at exactly 11:24PM Pacific Standard Time, and it is right now....err... one hour exactly its been down and I still don't know what's going on except for what Caffeined has said.

Sam

Originally posted by eyow
....
btvillarin: Is that a link to a site hosted on HostPacket, because I can't get to it right now ;)

Sam
I cannot go there too.

Originally posted by Caffeined
hmm...this is unfortunate...more downtime this month? hostpacket is/was on my "shortlist" as a potential host... i still like their plans/prices and maybe okay for my personal site. i'm curious about cause of downtime.

something wrong w/ dns?

Yeah it's annoying. They seem ok to me except for the downtime.

But why is it that the day I launch my Oz site we have an outage. Then the Day I launch my US and UK sites. We have an outage.

I'm losing people before I even start. And it always happens as soon as I send out a press release..

They seem ok to me except for the downtime.

That's how I feel. Kevin is great but it is the downtime that gets me. Like Crypto said "losing people before I start", and what happens if you have some ads or even a full color print story, or a front page news story on the New York Times, and the site is down...not only did you lose one person, but if they go on and say to their friends..."You know what Jim I tried that site once but it wasn't working, don't bother" Well there goes another person. :(

Sam

PS 1:00AM PST still down and still no word or anything from anybody at HostPacket... :(

hostpacket is still down :(

Well it's wierd.

Cpanel works, but can only see the top level files - can't drill down into a directory.

ssh works and can move around my directory structure. At least my files are there.

Wheeew after cpanel net being able to change directories I was worried...

DNS?

Do they even kow if we can't email them. Maybe they are kicking back thinking it is a quiet shift... Doh!!!!

interesting...

all of hostpacket's nameservers (ns1, ns2, ns3, ns5) ping back except for ns4.hostpacket.net...also nslookup timesout for ns4...no surprise... all of this just confirms what we already know...dns isn't working... this makes sense since hostpacket is accessible thru ip address (thanx for the insight "ginagamo")

maybe a dns guru can enlighten us re: nameserver timeout and dns resolution?

perhaps problem is something simpler...too much caffeine tonight. ;) time for sleep. good luck to all.

Yep - I was one of the first to join hostpacket when they first opened, support is good / excellent from Kevin and I have no complaints there.

What I do complain about is the fact their uptime "guarantee" is 99.9% - My domain has been down for over 7 hours just this month - well over the 45 minutes allowed under their "guarantee" the response to a previous three hour downtime was less than satisfactory.

Looks like it's time to move to another host.

Matt

edit : BTW - It's been down about 3 hours today (and still is so at time of posting, originally not responding and now DNS issues) sigh

My site went down at 11p yesterday. It's now 4:51a and it's still down.

Hope it goes up before 7a.

Originally posted by btvillarin

SubDomain Adder
ndc: connect failed: connection refused The subdomain, forums.btvillarin.com has been added.

Any idea what this might mean? I was able to configure it, but I can't get to the intended page.

This is a common error with cpanel, its no biggie, I get it all the time. Its definately an issue with DNS for hostpacket, your sites should be available via IP address, as theirs is available. I beleive their last downtime was DNS related. You may want to call them, as they may not be aware of this issue(possibily sleeping, as it happend at 11:30pm).

Originally posted by eyow


PS 1:00AM PST still down and still no word or anything from anybody at HostPacket... :(

Does anyone know if they have an email address that would not be affected by this?

I really would hate it if they didn't know they had a problem.

People tend to forget that when it is Sunday night in the US, it is Monday day time in Sydney. It is a bsiness day outage to us...:confused:

hostpacket dns seems to be resolving properly again...

<insomnia> :)

I can go to hostpacket.net site now

Nice...everything back to normal. I'm still going to email and ask what the heck happened.

BTW, can you visit that thread for PostCast Server 2 now???

Here it is again:
http://www.btvillarin.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=117

If you can't, then just go to their website:
http://www.postcastserver.com/

Also, I was down since around 7pm Pacific. So, there was basically 7 1/2 hours of downtime (which was until 2:26pm when Caffeined had access to it). *sigh* What does that calculate to? Is the guarantee diminished?

If you can get ahold of Kevin before I do, I hope y'all can let us know what was going on.

Thanks for the updates everybody!

Woo Hooo

Were Back

Crypto

www.hardyards.info

Hostpacket appears to back up along with my site.

(All times GMT + 9.5 hours)

Down 3.54pm
Up 7.12pm

Just over 3.5 hours. (DNS Issue)

Down 11.26am
up 1.20pm

Just under 2 hours (No reply)

Matt

edit : Added no reply error which also occured today which I forgot about.

By the way, how do you guys know the exact length of time you were down? I know because I wasn't able to access it at 7:00pm Pacific. Then, after sending to my mailing list, I got the response that it was down an hour before, and laggy for a couple of hours before that.

As for when everything was back up, I'm going by the first post saying that they could access hostpacket.net...even though I was able to at 11pm Pacific.

I'm only saying this because I'm curious how mattonline was only down for 3 1/2 hours.

Originally posted by btvillarin
By the way, how do you guys know the exact length of time you were down? I know because I wasn't able to access it at 7:00pm Pacific. Then, after sending to my mailing list, I got the response that it was down an hour before, and laggy for a couple of hours before that.

As for when everything was back up, I'm going by the first post saying that they could access hostpacket.net...even though I was able to at 11pm Pacific.

I'm only saying this because I'm curious how mattonline was only down for 3 1/2 hours.

I forgot the first outage - check my post again (I added the information) - It was actually 5.5 hours today so far.

Matt

Ah, mine was down for about 3 hours, then accessible again...only to me and another forum member in Austrailia. (In other words, the other 4 1/2 hours was the DNS issue, I guess.)

Where from mattonline? I'm wondering what Time Zone you're in?

I gotta go to bed now. I'm only up because I was moving into my brand spankin' new Antec SX1030B black SOHO File Server case. :D But now that it's done, I should really go.

Check back later...

Originally posted by btvillarin
Ah, mine was down for about 3 hours, then accessible again...only to me and another forum member in Austrailia. (In other words, the other 4 1/2 hours was the DNS issue, I guess.)

Where from mattonline? I'm wondering what Time Zone you're in?

I gotta go to bed now. I'm only up because I was moving into my brand spankin' new Antec SX1030B black SOHO File Server case. :D But now that it's done, I should really go.

Check back later...

I'm in Adelaide (CST Australia) - GMT + 9.5 - It always amuses me when people post times on here like EST etc - pretty amusing considering nobody knows which EST they're talking about - or does the world revolve around the US? :>

Matt

Originally posted by mattonline


or does the world revolve around the US? :>

Matt

Yep !!

And I'm in Sydney.

But someone in Oz should offer to provide follow the sun support for the guys in the US. Last time I was on a project, - last time I had a job - with a team in Dallas. we used to have phone conferences at 8:00 am Sydney time which nicely fitted into the end of their business day 18:00.
We could start where they left off. And where it got really interesting we had end of our day (Sydney) meetings with a UK team.

In effect you can work around the clock between the US, Oz and the UK. A bit of overlap to hand off problems and away you go.

Today is another bad morning, I apologize for the downtime again

After checking with my new tech, Apache failed at 11:00pm, then he rebooted server# 1, but at 12:30am Bind failed and he can't solve it, until at 5:30am J. found the problem (on vacation) and fixed the Bind conf file...

The most important is I made a big mistakes to set the monitor to supervise on servers' IP only, if I set it to domain or ports, I would be alarmed once Bind is down...

I sincerely apologize to our clients, especially who was affected during their business hours

P.S. uptime dropped to 99.0%, too bad luck this month... :(

Thanks for the explanation, dk2002. I'm just glad there was communication as soon as possible.

BTW, is it possible to have other means of communication handy if your main site is down? Perhaps a mailing list. I know freelists.org hosts them for free, there's no ads, and it's totally powerful.

Thanks for the explanation

We need a better feedback process though. Perhaps a cleaner recovery process. You shouldn't need to fiddle with files unless something changes.

Although I have to remember my VMS system admin course - yep I'm dated... where the System Managers where known as System Manglers due to the fact that the most likely cause of an outage on a VMS system, is the System Manager.....

Down again this morning (GMT + 9.5)

Down - 10.23am
Up - 10.57am

Another thirty minutes.

August so far - (times are not my timezone)

08.20.2002 06:52 No reply 33 mins
08.19.2002 12:26 DNS lookup failed 3 hours, 17 mins
08.19.2002 07:57 Timeout 1 hour, 56 mins
08.13.2002 15:19 No reply 5 hours, 57 mins
08.10.2002 15:24 No reply 1 hour, 46 mins
08.05.2002 07:00 No reply 30 mins
08.05.2002 02:40 Connection refused 15 mins

Over 14 hours of downtime in August so far - 98.118% uptime, well short of 99.9% advertised.

Someone told me it was down for him for about an hour. Anyway, start this in a third thread: "Hostpacket down again part 3". Maybe Kevin will look at it and explain why.

Originally posted by Crypto


Yeah it's annoying. They seem ok to me except for the downtime.

But why is it that the day I launch my Oz site we have an outage. Then the Day I launch my US and UK sites. We have an outage.

I'm losing people before I even start. And it always happens as soon as I send out a press release..

Please do NOT send any press release out anymore!!! Sites are falling due to the mass reactions you get !!:cool: ;)


I was also a victim, even today again.

btvillarin, I believe you're the real attacker of our company, two threads start by you, and just say "hostpacket down", "hostpacket down 2", and now want to start hostpacket down 3??

It's enough, and it's the last warning, I and my techs are trying to do the best

Give dk2002 a break. Stuff is going to go down. It is obvious he cares and it is obvious they are around to fix the problems. That is all you can really expect from a host.

dk2002, I would recommend that you setup something in another data center to help your customers in the event that your main site goes down. Take for example our support forums. These are hosted hundreds of miles away in another data center. This prevents us from loosing contact with our customers if our main server goes down.

That's true. I agree with Kevin, all these post aren't needed. They're doing there best. I'm hosted with them, i'm not complaining every 5 seconds either.

If I was that unsatisfied I'd find another host or try to contact them directly. If they email was down i'd contact them when it came back up.

Kevin,

I'm so sorry about posting these threads. The main reason why I just started these was because I knew you communicated in here. When you were down, we didn't know what was going on, and I was just concerned.

I really hope you don't think I'm the attacker. I promise that I'm not even like that. People that know me can vouch that I'm being thorough.

Anyways, you won't hear anymore from me then. Like I did with Cyberwings, I'll just trust that everything is going fine, and hope for the best.

To be a little more personal, I want you to know that I appreciate your sincerity. You've been nothing but kind, and I'm just glad that I came across you and your reputable business.

Again, my apoligies...and I hope you don't hold grudges or anything. But, no more from me.

Guys, any update on the server move? How are things doing?

Regards, WilliamK

What server move?

Originally posted by williamk
Guys, any update on the server move? How are things doing?

Regards, WilliamK I don't believe any mention was made of moving servers. They were having problems with their network provider, that particular day.