Does anyone else have any experience with this company? Currently, My page is off line and has been REPLACED with and add for them, saying get some space from us!! Who would want to buy from a company who is down and advertising in their clients space? How do I know they are not just replacing thier customers domain with this page temporarily for advertising. Plain and simple this is bullsh!@. I'm mad enough if its down, but they need to get their @#$$%%# add off my page!! on top of it I called technical support only to find out they no longer offer technical support over the phone, and chat is thier new option. I went to the chat and it is offline!!

#@$!

Tim

OMG. :eek: That's sus....:eek3:

Looks like they've suspended your site and that's the default error page that comes up when a page is suspended. :rolleyes:

Now I'm almost impressed :D
Welcome to Stargate, your premier ICANN accredited domain registrar and web hosting provider. As a leader in the global information technology services industry for the past twelve years, Stargate has become synonymous with the Internet. In fact, www.stargate.com was the second domain ever registered, the first being att.com.
The 2nd domain ever registered?? Can that be verified anywhere?

Originally posted by tpastor
Does anyone else have any experience with this company? Currently, My page is off line and has been REPLACED with and add for them, saying get some space from us!! Who would want to buy from a company who is down and advertising in their clients space? How do I know they are not just replacing thier customers domain with this page temporarily for advertising. Plain and simple this is bullsh!@. I'm mad enough if its down, but they need to get their @#$$%%# add off my page!! on top of it I called technical support only to find out they no longer offer technical support over the phone, and chat is thier new option. I went to the chat and it is offline!!

#@$!

Tim

Tim,

Yes, that is the default page that is placed on hosting accounts that have been suspended for non or late payments (60+ days). You can contact our billing dept. at 630-572-2242 xt. 13 or billing@stargateinc.com to determine if that is the reason for account suspension. Someone should resolve your issue within a matter of minutes.

Or feel free to e-mail me with your contact information (phone, email, etc.) at tchaffin@stargate.com and I will have someone contact you directly.

Tom

Originally posted by tpastor
My page is off line

It's back now, and a pleasure to visit. Well done with the site.

Gary

Originally posted by Aussie Bob
Now I'm almost impressed :D

The 2nd domain ever registered?? Can that be verified anywhere?

Yes it can, and no that wasn't. :) Hold your hat - I'm googling

*edit*
Ok, found it:
http://www.wia.org/dns-law/pub/timeline.html

SYMBOLICS.COM is first registered domain - 15 Mar 1985

*/edit*

Greg Moore

Ok, so how is stargate.com the 2nd domain ever registered? :confused: It also says that SYMBOLICS.COM was the first one registered, but stargate said it was att.com.

Not that this has anything to do with the thread topic. :D

The history listed on the domian name was provided to us by the original owner who worked on the "Stargate Project" many, many years ago. The history we have listed on our web site was taken almost word for word from the original stargate.com site.

Tom

Originally posted by Stargate.com
The history listed on the domian name was provided to us by the original owner who worked on the "Stargate Project" many, many years ago. The history we have listed on our web site was taken almost word for word from the original stargate.com site.

Tom
I find it fascinating about the first domains registered etc. Gets me into serious research mode. :)

Early net history is pretty facinating Bob. StarGate is very old (1986), so even though the information isn't correct, it might be pretty close.

Greg Moore

Originally posted by akashik
Early net history is pretty facinating Bob. StarGate is very old (1986), so even though the information isn't correct, it might be pretty close.
I wasn't doubting their claim. I was just curious as to how you could know etc. :)

http://amsterdam.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0102/msg00146.html

Gary

Originally posted by Editor
http://amsterdam.nettime.org/Lists-Archives/nettime-l-0102/msg00146.html


What it says on that page is that Stargate.Com was the first domain registered from the UUCP camp. Other domains certainly could have been registered by the other three camps before that.

Kevin

Sure Kevin. The statement was "the second domain ever registered". It's a (not entirely false) play on words. :-)

I meant to link to uucp.org as well...not enough caffeine.

Cheers

Gary

I have an account hosted with Stargate. They give you a lot of hosting options for the money but their service and tech staff sucks. They have help links to sites that have not been updated in years, they lose tickets, close them before the problem is resolved, if you click the sales dept link for email on their site it does not work. I have had open items for weeks with no solution, and average response time is 3 days. They will acknowledge your ticket in 24-36 hours but you will not get a fix for at least 3-4 days and up to 2-3 weeks. Complaining does no good they really don't care. When I needed some instructions on how to link to their SQL database which was already setup to my account thier was no FAQ and the tech support seemed clueless. They could not put their hand on a standard set of instructions when they offer this product with so many accounts. If it were not for their cheap price they would not last long.

Originally posted by DJBBIZ
I have an account hosted with Stargate. They give you a lot of hosting options for the money but their service and tech staff sucks. They have help links to sites that have not been updated in years, they lose tickets, close them before the problem is resolved, if you click the sales dept link for email on their site it does not work. I have had open items for weeks with no solution, and average response time is 3 days. They will acknowledge your ticket in 24-36 hours but you will not get a fix for at least 3-4 days and up to 2-3 weeks. Complaining does no good they really don't care. When I needed some instructions on how to link to their SQL database which was already setup to my account thier was no FAQ and the tech support seemed clueless. They could not put their hand on a standard set of instructions when they offer this product with so many accounts. If it were not for their cheap price they would not last long.

DJBBIZ,

1) Actually, our help links/faq's are fairly new and updated regularly.
2) I tested every page that includes a link to sales. They all worked perfectly fine.
3) If you could provide me with your ticket number(s) I would like to review your account. Please send me your ticket number(s) to tchaffin@stargate.com

Please feel free to send your questions or concerns directly to me.

Tom

This is part of the problem with Stargate -- Poor quality...I tellyou there is a problem and instead of checking closely
you say there is none. Here is the results of Web Hosting FAQ links as of 11/2/2002. I reported these problems in detail
to your tech group weeks ago.


http://www.squareonetech.com/ -- dead link

http://www.cgiarchive.com/cgi.ehtml -- This site's main page sports dates going back to 1999!
Here is just one excert from their front page:

Industry News
30/4/99 - Intel announces new 600 Mhz CPU
30/4/99 - Perl 5.002 is now available for download

This is your link to DaveCentral.com:

You have been redirected to this page because you have tried to
access a site within the OSDN Network that no longer exists.

Last month it was still DaveCentral.com just all the information was 3 years old.

http://wwwinternet101.org/ -- Dead Link

http://www.squareonetech.com/ -- Dead Link


Here is the response to email to Stargate "Contact us" link on the main site on 10/16/2002:

This Message was undeliverable due to the following reason:

Each of the following recipients was rejected by a remote mail server. The reasons given by the server are included to help you determine why each recipient was rejected.

Recipient: <sales@stargateinc.com>
Reason: not local host stargateinc.com, not a gateway


Please reply to Postmaster@cox.net
if you feel this message to be in error.

I tried this twice within a 2 day period and each time the mail was undeliverable.


This was one of my original ticket posts--I have lots like these going back months on all different issues.
-- Notice the dates -- :First Contact: 10/9 -- Stargate First Response: 10/13

8342315767
10/9/2002
12:07:27 PM
Customer

I have a subweb running at
www.xxx/xxx.
The site features a word search engine to look for links on the site. I am running a web server on my development computer with Win XP Pro and IIS 5.0 and have Frontpage 2000 extensions installed. The search feature works perfect. When I load it to the Stargated hosted site it does not work. I have checked the indexing feature under value apps on my control panel and although it does not show up like other programs as being installed it does say it is running. When I load and execute a search I get a "catalog not found message". The control panel app tells me that a catalog has been created. Since I know it works on my web server I assume something is not working at Stargate's servers. Please let me know.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


8342315767
10/9/2002
3:18:26 PM
Customer

My discussion Forum is not working either but it is working on my development server here. Both of these functions are heavily dependent on Front Page extensions. Maybe the Stargate server extensions are corrupt or out of date?


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


8342315767
10/9/2002
8:04:06 PM
Customer

I have uninstalled Frontpage extensions and reinstalled them but still get no results.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


8342315767
10/10/2002
3:23:40 PM
Customer

Are you working on this? Is it still an active open ticket?


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


8342315767
10/13/2002
12:14:15 AM
Andrew

Yes we are looking into the issue. Thank you for your concern. Please be patient while we work to correct the problem.

Thank you,

Andrew W.
Stargate Technical Support Team
www.stargateinc.com




--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


8342315767
10/13/2002
12:15:18 AM
Andrew

Can you provide direct links to the two features that are not working properly?

Thank you,

Andrew W.
Stargate Technical Support Team
www.stargateinc.com




--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


8342315767
10/13/2002
2:34:13 PM
Customer

If you go to www.xxx\xxx and select "Discussion Group" from the main menu and try to post a comment or reply and you will get an error message. Or go to the smaller submenu right below the main menu and do a "Search" of the site and you will get a "Catalog not found error". Both of these functions are working fine on my web server. They are standard functions built into Frontpage 2000. I am getting ready to launch a SQL based discussion forum to replace the one on this site which uses regular ASP routines instead of the frontpage extensions, but it should work anyway.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


8342315767
10/14/2002
12:31:26 PM
Andrew

I have corrected your discusssion board issue. A member of our hosting department is going to look into your catalog issue and get back to you.

Thank you,

Andrew W.
Stargate Technical Support Team
www.stargateinc.com




--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


8342315767
10/14/2002
1:08:00 PM
Customer

Thanks, just so you know the search function in the forum has the same problem as the search function on the main page. I will be loading up a new discussion page into a new subdirectory: \DiscussionForum which will be linked to the main page. The old FrontPage developed forum will be available if you need it in its current directory: \DiscussionGroup
For future reference will this problem happen again on other parts of the site or is it fixed anywhere?Was the problem with the server frontpage extensions?


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


8342315767
10/16/2002
12:55:49 PM
Customer

This problem is now a week old, web support should not take this long. Could you please give me an update status?


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


8342315767
10/16/2002
2:11:39 PM
Larry

Hello,

Please do not create any additional trouble tickets regarding this same issue as this will only slow the response time down to your issue.

We are still working on the issue.

Please Note you will only receive responses to this trouble ticket between the hours of 2 PM - 10 PM CST Monday thru Friday.

Larry
Stargate Support Team
http://www.stargateinc.com


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


8342315767
10/16/2002
2:15:43 PM
Customer

What are you talking about? What other ticket regarding this issue? I have one other ticket pending on another issue...and may I remind you this ticket is one week old?


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


8342315767
10/17/2002
3:43:15 PM
Customer

This ticket was sitting in the "waiting for information" category but it does not seem like you need any info. If so please respond again


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


8342315767
10/26/2002
3:07:35 AM
Customer

Reread the entire script above. On 10/14 the disc forum issue was fixed I think by giving write rights to the correct subdirectory but the Search function still does not work. Although it does not throw a catalog error now, it still does not find anything. It always comes up with no matches or results. The same page and site on my development server (Win XP Pro & IIS 5.0) from which I publish from works perfect and serves up search matches.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


8342315767
10/30/2002
4:00:47 PM
Customer

Is anybody home?


Since this was getting nowhere I opend another ticket and received this response:

5553515675
10/30/2002
4:04:00 PM
Customer

I have had an open item never resolved since 10/14 and a recent request again not responded to. See my open tickets...What's going on at Stargate...Its starting to look like a company in trouble, many links on the help site are way out of date, the link to send sales an email has not worked, problems go unresolved for weeks, tickets get lost, no communication for days ...


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


5553515675
10/31/2002
10:02:50 AM
Mirek

Please let me know what is wrong and i will check your issues.

Miroslaw K.
Stargate Network

5553515675
10/31/2002
10:57:35 AM
Customer

Go back to this open ticket follow the history. My Search function has not worked properly since I reported this problem on October 9. On October 14 they fixed the discussion forum and said that someone from the hosting department would get back to me re;the Search function. It still does not work.

Ticket Number: 8342315767
Contact Name: XXXX
Contact Email: XXX@XXX.com
Contact Phone: XXX_XXX_XXXX
Created Date: 10/9/2002 12:07:28 PM
Modified Date: 10/30/2002 4:00:47 PM
Subject: Search Feature
Domain: xxx.com




--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


5553515675
11/1/2002
9:52:00 AM
Mirek

We are sending this problem to the sphera so they can look this issue.

We will get back to you as soon we find out from them.

Miroslaw K.
Stargate Network

1) I can't be responsible for updating content on other sites. We place links under our faq's that customers have said have been helpful. If those pages are not updated on a regular basis, I cannot be held responsible.

2) Recipient: <sales@stargateinc.com>
Reason: not local host stargateinc.com, not a gateway

This error is being generated by your mail server, not a Stargate mail server.

This means your mail server is looking locally for the domain and cannot find the host on your mail server. This is the type of message you may receive if you host requires you to select authentication on your mail client.

3) I agree that the response was slower than normal. I will address this issue with my Support Dept. Thank you for your patience and providing me with the case information. For security reasons, in the future, just e-mail me the case number rather than posting the entire ticket.

I would suggest, since this post is off-topic and is a Stargate customer issue, to e-mail directly on any further communication regarding this subject.

Regards,

Tom

I am not sure about your responses. Anywhere you go on the net to discuss a good web site they will tell you the webmaster is responsible to keep links up to date. Dead links and information that is 3 years old means the webmaster is not keeping information fresh and current. The Stargate help site does not have as much general information about web sites as others and reliance on good links is important. You can't really think a link to a site that is reporting the latest news of 600Mhz computers is a good thing for Stargate. I have managed and owned companies of all different sizes. You can choose to offer a average product or strive to offer the best possible quality and value possible. The links although minor reflect on the quality image of the company. You guys are no different than me or anyone else, this happens to everyone, but when a customer points it out you need to hear what they are saying as others are likely viewing things the same way. This is free advice to improve your business, you can choose to ignore it as well.

Second, I am on Cox.net cable line which is my ISP. My Outlook setup uses the Stargate mailsever for incoming and Cox for outgoing. I send email all the time to links on web pages and have never run into this on any other site, ever except here. So I am not sure your answer is correct but I need further understanding of the message.

Last this is a forum for people to understand the quality of service and I think it is important for users to see the facts rather than somebody's skewed viewpoint. If you check my old closed tickets you will see I sent this information to technical support previously and got no response. I then tried to send it to sales but you saw the email response above. This is the first response I got. I even tried to call one day and never got an answer. I sent an email about the sales email link and did get a thankyou back from the tech group.

Besides all that I think you give good value for the product just weak service. If you are willing to fix these problems correctly and timely I will report that back here as well. A company that tries to improve itself continually and address its issues deserves your business as I know you can have service issues with most hosting companies. In your business though it is all about support and speed.

This is from the header of the email message that came bouncing back:

Final-Recipient: RFC822; <sales@stargateinc.com>
Action: failed
Status: 5.1.1
Remote-MTA: dns; mail3.stargateinc.com (63.143.220.250)
Diagnostic-Code: smtp; 550 not local host stargateinc.com, not a gateway

It looks like a stargate problem and I think the IP address might be bad.

Originally posted by Stargate.com
1) I can't be responsible for updating content on other sites. We place links under our faq's that customers have said have been helpful. If those pages are not updated on a regular basis, I cannot be held responsible.



How ridiculous does that sound? The other user pointed out links that are 3 years old and you can't be responsible for a dead link? Yes you can.... it's called keeping your site up2date.

Anyway... yes Stargate's services suck BIG time. I used them for a year as my primary domain registrar. Over a dozen times their sorry ass NT scripts they were using would fail on the last step when paying and at that point the domain was registered and my card charged.... BUT it was not registered to ME!!!! I couldn't login to make DNS changes and after it propagated a whois search showed Stargate as the domain registrant!!!!!!

Back when they had ONE person answering technical support it would take him two weeks to get it straigtened out and placed in my name but that was two weeks of not being able to get my or my customer's site up. Yes it actually happened over 12 times 'till I finally threw in the towel. I only kept putting up with it 'cause they were the cheapest for awhile.

I have tickets that were weeks old before they were closed with no answer

If you'll navigate their phone system and try different extensions you'll get at least 8 people's voice mail but NEVER an answer. I've reached billing by phone twice in 6 months. And this was not a fluke. As I mentioned I used them exclusively for a year and registered upwards of 100+ domains. And don't get me started on their crappy transfer service.

I also used their affiliate program where you get $1/domain from banner placements on sites... I called in one day to find out my balance because I knew personally of 30 referrals people ordered domains from and was told I had $8 credit.

Registerfly.com is only way to go now.

Well I am glad Tom is back on WHT after the banning of Stargate.com ended. By the way, I have the majority of my domains with Stargate.com as the Registrar - I use enom and GoDaddy as well - and although I have had problems in the past I have received timely support via email and phone (I have a bulk account with them).

Originally posted by timechange
Well I am glad Tom is back on WHT after the banning of Stargate.com ended.
Why were they banned? :eek:

An update on my experience on Stargate:

As of today they have not responded or resolved my search function issue.

The email to sales link on their site does work now, I assume its been fixed after I sent a note about it to the tech support group.

The site has been slightly redesigned. Bad links still exist.

It might be me bit it seems like Stargate.com as well as my site is flying right now. They may have done something to up their speed and or their pipes. I hope this is a positive trend.

As promised a final report. My final support issue to fix my "search" function was concluded about a week ago by stargate.com. I never received any info on what the problem was but it works now...it took about 45 days to resolve. In my companies when I see a customer problem I reach out to try and do something extra for them, what is with this industry? They don't do anything for anyone unless they are getting a large sum of money for the effort!

All in all the site works and it seems fairly peppy and I don't think it is down very often but my site does not have heavy traffic and I make little demads on the host provider.

For some reason my affiliate account with stargate is gone :(

Well, search problem fixed but my webalizer statistics module has not worked for 2 days now. Just put in a support request. I don't know how long the module has been out as I have not checked it in a few weeks at least...

Originally posted by AcuNett
For some reason my affiliate account with stargate is gone :(

Did you have any credit built up in it?

The problem with the webalizer statistics page is they changed the format and did not tell anyone. They moved the stats from inside the control panel to html pages available from any browser.

First they should have notified customers of this change, heck their is a spot for host announcements when you login to the control panel. Second the folder where the stats used to be, is blank with just the word "Webalizer" in it. They could of put a note and instructions there...that would have been to logical. By not telling me about the change, my table of contents field in my site now picks up this detail so anyone who wants it can find it...again no big deal right now but I am not sure every one of their customers would want this. I don't even really like it, I would like to make that decision myself. It should also be findable this way by the web crawlers since it is HTML.

Today my email is down. Our main account has been getting one email message every 5 minutes from the postmaster of our website saying that

"You currently have a total of 0 messages which are occupying 1 kybtes.

Your message quota is 0 kbytes.

New messages would cause your quota to be significantly exceeded will be rejected"

And they are! Although it does not bounce back just no delivery.

Mind you we have made no changes or updates to the account in months.

Checked my control panel all seems fine and tried to reset the email account and got an error message that "This mail management operation is temporarily disabled due to exceeding VDS mail quota" which is not true and really impossible. I am only using 60 meg of 300meg of space available, and less than 1% is email data and none of the accounts have any quota on them.

Went to my contact area in my Control Panel and noticed the last digit in my office phone number changed. Went to fix this and re-save and got an error messsage that the 9 digit zipcode that was already in the field was not acceptable. Messsage states it will not take negative numbers! Guess it thinks the - is a minus sign!

What a mess...these people really can't get that act together, I fee sorry for them...

In the interest of reporting facts as Stargate has claimed my facts in error here before until I was able to support the data with original documentation and real results...I am saving my documents.

And in the interest of factual representation I am updating my report that it is only the main email account that is down the others seem like they are ok. But Stargate has not yet even answered my "Emergency" ticket request put in 3 1/2 hours ago. I don't think they have even looked at it as it is still in the "new" status not "Work in progress".

what about company that registers domains names... shouldent it be 1st one with domain:]]]]]

Emergency ticket never responded to and never even looked at. The crummy email system sent well over 100 emails to us today all saying the same thing. No email in main account, it is down for the count. Forwarded multiple requests to sales as well, no answer from anyone. If you had a retail store up on this system you would be in trouble.

When does a web host have responsibility for injuring your business? I know the telephone companies are responsible for damages when your 800 line is down.

DJBBIZ - PM Tom directly or email him. I also had a nasty experience with Stargate's hosting. It took many emails, and weeks to have it fixed. Tom helped me out. Good luck.

Jessica

Originally posted by rastoma


Did you have any credit built up in it?

I had about $15 I think, so I wasn't too angry when I found my account gone. I just thought "oh well" I was never going to reach $50 anyway ;).

Thanks Jessicam, I post here to give information to those people who use this site to understand the different experiences they might run into with a certain host provider not to get their attention. They should be running thier system properly. Legally they have to provide the product they offer relatively error free and they are beginning to test those bounds. They collect their money every month regardless of the service they gave you. I have tried many times to directly contact tech support, sales and the corporate office with no satisfaction. They should give quality support because they want to run a good company, not because people complain on a forum. Tom has posted here and is aware of my problems, and you and I both know they scan this forum to see what is happening. So if they do that and choose not to work on those problems intentionally, what does that tell you about what they think of their customers?

I don't want high end $199 month service. I just want the product they offered to work. I just want email...how hard is that? I would like a simple apology. I would be happy if they just communicated. If tech support would at least tell me they were working to solve a problem rather than leave my Emergency ticket unread for over 8 hours and then only moving it to the "In Progress" file with no updates. I have had tickets in progress like this before for weeks only to have them closed when the problem still was not fixed.

By the way we are going on day 3 of this problem. They fix it in the AM and as soon as someone sends me an email it starts again and all the rest of my email after that is lost.

Tom, if you are reading this and you are an owner of the company, you better move quick your business is competing on price only...this is a dangerous strategy...like a toilet bowl swirling downward. If you are an employee who cares about his customers you should try to make a change from within the organization or go work somewhere that cares about the quality of their service and their customers.

DJBBIZ,

As I have stated before. If you wish to email me directly I would be more than happy to address your needs or concerns.

I do not feel, and based on other posts from WHT, that this is the place to deal with specific customer service or support issues.

I have escalated your ticket to our support team for their review and will monitor the situation closely. This is an isolated incident that seems to be only affecting your mailbox.

I apologize for the inconvenience. Stargate feels every customer is important and I think we have made great improvements in customer service and support recently. There is always room for improvement and I will address this particular incident with my staff.

Again, you are always welcome to email me directly if you feel the need to escalate a support issue.

Regards,

Tom
Dir. Internet Services
Stargate.com

Tom I appreciate your comments but this is only a forum for reporting web hosting issues and the quality of the service. I am reporting my service issues here for other members not for Stargate to solve. I have posted all my issues with Stargate tech support and Stargate sales. I know they have all the information they need. I don't think Stargate needs another location like this forum to look for service and support problems. I report here for other members not for Stargate. You should use this forum as a way to check up on the other parts of your organization. Your company has our email contact, biz address and phone. This is where Stargate should be communicating with their customers about issues. I am using the tools Stargate has provided for these issues.

Tom, I have owned, ran, consulted to and managed companies as CEO from startups to a $30 billion operation. I speak from experience and would like to see Stargate do the right thing, fix these issues and become a better organization. Nobody should wish a good company harm that employs people and contibutes to an economy that has to fight the war of the world in today's environment.

If in deed I am an isolated issue then I would expect you would be treating such a mess a lot better than your group has. You never really know who is using your service and what kind of influence they have. Every customer should always be treated as well as any other...this is one of the first rules in customer support. As such I would expect to get as gooda treatment as you would give any customer in your business. Therefore if I am the exception why am I getting treated with this level of service?

Enough commentary...get my issues fixed and I will report that sucess back here again. If I remain problem free I will report that here as well. I need to have a second account opened up but this one will be more mission critical, performance counts!

Going on Day 4...no email...

I decided to give then some time to resolve the problem before I reported back. Tech support kept trying to fix the problem but they could not, everytime they said it was fixed it started again. Before the week was out they went from just our main email being out to all our emails doing the same thing. Essentially noone could contact us. Then on Friday afternoon they said they would have to delete all the emails and reset them up and asked if they could do that. We gave them permission and waited...all weekend long...nothing...

On Monday they asked us again and we said do it. Our site was down for half the day Monday and we found that there seemed to be a language barrier between us and tech support as they nuked the entire host site and then asked us to re-do it all ourselves.

We then told them that since this was not our fault they should take the last backup of the site and restore it for us. As I remember they should have been backing up weekly which would have sufficed. They restored most of the site on Monday but with one critical directory missing which they did not find until today (Tuesday). The only problem was no SQL database. They claim they can't find a backup anywhere right now! This is the most critical aspect of the system and the main reason to backup. If anyone were running a customer database with sales transactions they would be gone as I am not sure if Stargate is backing up their databases as reported. As of right now they don't have ours.

Its like the three stooges over there...they did not even seem surprised or felt bad about telling us that they restored everything they had but no SQL database.

DJBBIZ,

Wow. That really sounds bad. :(

I can only say... I know how frustrating it must be! :(

Jessica

Thanks Jessica, a sympathetic ear is more than we are getting from Stargate.

The site is back up and running but we lost our SQL database. They nuked this and told us that they don't backup the SQL databases. Do they really expect us to backup every transaction all day to keep from losing our data. I could see a charge for this or at least backing up the log file. Otherwise, if you were running financial transactions, and even if you backed up yesterday, you would lose your daily information when it goes down like this.

Like I said, had we understood that they were going to nuke the entire site rather than just email and had we known their no SQL backup policy (I can't find any information on backups at all on their site anymore) we would have taken a data backup ourselves.

I hope this thread has been helping others determine issues regarding choosing a host provider. I have tried to give factual information and have kept documents to support all the information contained above.

I have been working all day and night to get a site up on Monday and Stargate has been down all night...and it looks like from other posts they been down even more

DJBBIZ,

After reading through this thread, only one question comes to mind. Why do you stay with them if you have so many problems? It looks as if it has been going on over 2 months. I am not commenting on Stargate's quality of service, as I have not worked with them. I would think it would be worth the effort to move, just for peace of mind.

I was wondering the same thing then noticed that Stargate is Windows hosting. I guess DJBBIZ needs those type services or they'd be long gone by now.

Email has been down all day...no response to tickets to tech support in 6 hours. Web site says everything is normal!

Why do I stay with them...couple reasons...first is one of my sites is brochureware and not mission critical and they are cheap. Second is I have been developing a mission critical sight and will be launching soon but have not had a need. I am using SQL Server for my mission critical sight and during the development stage they offer this option cheap...no support though you learn on your own. Last, it has sort of become a challenge to see how poor a service one company could possibly give. If you read my other posts you will see that they have promised to take care of the issues and respond to emails...my service never really improves and they don't take care of anything any better because I complain, but I know you two won't be signing up for their service anytime soon.:D

First 10 domains registered

SYMBOLICS.COM SYMBOLICS TECHNOLOGY, INC 3/15/85
BBN.COM BBN CORPORATION 4/24/85
CMU.EDU CARNEGIE-MELLON UNIVERSITY 4/24/85
PURDUE.EDU PURDUE UNIVERSITY 4/24/85
RICE.EDU RICE UNIVERSITY 4/24/85
BERKELEY.EDU UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY 4/24/85
UCLA.EDU UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES 4/24/85
RUTGERS.EDU RUTGERS UNIVERSITY 4/24/85
MIT.EDU MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY 5/23/85
THINK.COM THINKING MACHINES CORPORATION 5/24/85


i dont see stargate on there :confused:

Originally posted by ntwaddel
First 10 domains registered


There is actually some controversy about this list (although it has been cut and paste about 1000 times across the net :D). Some say that think.com was the first domain registered.

Does anyone know what the first 10 .COM domains were?

Originally posted by allan

Does anyone know what the first 10 .COM domains were?

There does not seem to be a list of the first 10 .com domains anywhere, but if you want to see the first 167 .com domains:

http://www.mit.edu/afs/athena/reference/net-directory/domain-info/domain-info.txt

The list includes all domains registered through Dec 15th, 1987. And Stargate.com was one of the first 167.

We (bu.edu) registered in March of 1986

Well for the past week I have been trying to resolve an issue with a website I launched which is a heavily modified Snitz based program.

On my development server which is on the Internet, just not set up for heavy traffic loads. But it works fine on mine. IIS 5, MDAC 2.7, Win XP. IE 6. All the latest patches and updates. The entire portal works on the Internet on this server just fine.

Launched on Stargate and I get an issue after writing to the SQL database, performance starts to degrade untill it finally brings my client browser to a halt.

Snitz forums report a few similar problems that lead everyone to believe that when a server may be configured in a certain way it does this with IE 6. They just can't figure it out as you really need to examine the server. Stargate read the Snitz thread I sent them and some articles I sent them from MS. They reported back to me just what they read and said sounds like a browser issue. So I guess they are stating that they won't support IE 6!

I think the issue is a combination of certain ASP functions, IE 6 and Server Configuration. Since the ASP works fine on other normal servers and Bill Gates won't take my calls about rewriting IE 6 for me, I think the solution is on the server setup.

I have asked them this and I am waiting for a response. The Snitz thread reported a similar issue with someone who got no support to fix it from Brinkster. He switched hosts and it went away instantly. My guess is good competent technical help is hard to find and its easier to turn customers away then give them quality service.

Well the problem has mysteriously fixed itself. 2 of the 3 machines started working and I was already starting to download a new IE on the 3rd machine.

As of last night a new ticket system seemed to be implemented as all old tickets dissapeared including the open and closed ones.

THis morning the old system was back and new tickets from last night were gone.

As of this afternoon, new system is back with tickets opened lastnight but old stuff is lost again.

I don't get it...

My shared hosting account with eicomm.net which according to netcraft.com was on stargate's netblock (so I presume eicomm is a reseller) but as of about two weeks ago they switched over to another netblock...Verio.

Anyhow, I wouldn't be surprised if the owner was having trouble with stargate....He wouldn't tell me, but somehow considering this thread, I wasn't surprised about the switch.

Update: we have been having problems all week. Today Email has been out all day...no ticket responses, I guess they are off weekends, although in another response as to why they did maintenance on our server for 3 hours in the muddle of the day last week, they said that this was a 24 hr business and there is no good time! Funny thing when they respond to tickets they have automated messages saying they are only there during normal working hours!

Tonight the DNS servers appear to be down...my web site is gone...what next? More of the same I am sure.

Hmmm...

Your comments do not seem to reflect our support system responses. I reviewed your 4 cases from the week and all have been answered and completed within 24 hours, with the exception of one case which was created yesterday at 5pm which and is listed as "Work in Progress".

The case you submitted this evening (8:52pm) was answered within 1 hour (9:53pm).

Also, I have support tech's in place on the weekends who answer and address support cases in a very timely fashion.

Our DNS servers are not down and I tested your website without error from outside our network.

tracert www.themanagementinstitute.com

Tracing route to themanagementinstitute.com [65.118.246.200]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 35 ms 15 ms 77 ms .client.attbi.com []
2 140 ms 133 ms 85 ms 12.244.106.161
3 25 ms 49 ms 19 ms 12.244.68.26
4 142 ms 27 ms 42 ms 12.244.68.30
5 150 ms 103 ms 37 ms 12.244.72.242
6 72 ms 39 ms 49 ms gbr1-p50.cgcil.ip.att.net [12.123.5.74]
7 124 ms 52 ms 43 ms gbr4-p00.cgcil.ip.att.net [12.122.5.218]
8 79 ms 43 ms 16 ms ggr1-p370.cgcil.ip.att.net [12.123.5.149]
9 105 ms 78 ms 89 ms att-gw.cgi.qwest.net [192.205.32.82]
10 38 ms 16 ms 68 ms chi-core-02.inet.qwest.net [205.171.20.137]
11 78 ms 44 ms 38 ms chi-edge-20.inet.qwest.net [205.171.20.182]
12 154 ms 42 ms 83 ms 65.119.156.142
13 91 ms 141 ms 105 ms 65.118.246.200

Trace complete.

Tom

Hello Tom at Stargate;

What's your business relationship w/ 123-web-host/Basic Networks?

Do you own Basic Networks/123-web-host? Do you provide hosting for them? Did they simply register their domain name with you?

Please, do tell...

I experienced a similar issue with them. They keep saying it was my ISP and it was not. After several tickets for over a week they finally fixed the problem. At that time they kept saying there was not a problem and would send me the same stuff saying they used an outside host. There is another issue I keep having is there servers are down quite a bit. They say there have a 99.# uptime. Maybe in there minds, but in the real world there servers are down quite a bit above normal. I have two sites with them and both sites are not up all the time. They blame power outages for this type of problem. My thought was maybe rover was running through the living room unplugging all of the extension cords. They act as they have never heard of a UPS, or diesel generators. If this is such a large Co. ( NOT ) it acts if it was being ran out an small apartment, using the living room as the data center. I know that they have a LOT of complaints or they would not HIDE behind e-mail as there only means of commutations. NO phone support. No operator, No live person ever. No one returns ANY voice mail. I guess they figure that if you can’t talk to them you can’t complain. Most people will not make the effort to leave a support ticket. If this continues your company will be out of business in a very short time. You make claims that you have the best this and that, but the truth is you done have s**t to offer other then the cheap price. Very disappointed site is down again. Has been all morning, cant reach there server stargate.com or anything that is connected to stargate. Maybe they got turned off. If we could only hope. I wonder what the phone number for the attorney general office is for the state of Illinois.

Tom I hear you but more and more the users here are all experiencing the same thing I am. One of the members on one of my ASP forums that I moderate said they were experiencing the exact same things I am with Stargate. Can we all be wrong?

As for your tickets, going from the new tickets to the WIP tickets category is not a response. An actual response is a response. In addition many of the tickets get closed by your techs and I have to reopen because the problem is not fixed. Just because you say the issue is closed does not mean it is.

As for the trace route, since we got your ticket response we have been keeping an eye out for this. But you know and I know and certainly the techs here know that a trace is only good for that second in time it is done. If we were not able to get to stargate at one point, your running a trace a day later is of no value.

And if your issue is with an ISP and or the route they take to get to your servers, yet we are all experiencing problems, doesn't this make it your problem? If the backbone providers can't get to your servers reliably for any reason, doesn't that kill your business. Shouldn't you want to investigate and fix this? I am on Cox cable, in Phoenix. I think it is a solid ISP provider. When we have problems getting to Stargate's servers we always immediately try other servers as well such as Yahoo, Ebay, webhostingtalk...and we never have a problem getting to them. How do you explain this. I have better things to do then make up stories, I just want a web site that works.

Last week we were experiencing SQL Server issues which mysteriously disappeared even though your tech guys said it was not their fault and did not know why we were having these problems. Although they have never told us why they are having any problem or how they fix them...its a dark secret. I then asked them if the servers and the software was up to date with all the most recent patches, at which they answered that they had the latest and greatest with all patches updated. Now yesterday we had a SQL 2000 virus attack which should not have affected your SQL Servers as this patch has been out for months and you guys are up to date. CrystalTech.com is up and running all day today, boasting that they had their patches in place and their servers were not affected. Stargate on the other hand has been down and right now as the main sites are up, all the SQL Server databases are throwing errors. Even your ticket system is not working. You could not have been effected by the virus. You could only have experienced the same problem that affected everyone; the denial of service attacks. Your servers have all the latest updates...so why is my SQL Server down?

Well I am happy for me and happy for stargate to report they are back up and the SQL databases are in tact. I guess we are lucky that this virus did not do any damage, just caused DOS issues. Next one may not be so lucky.

As Stargate does not backup SQL db's make sure you are doing your own backups.

Although the database is up it will not let me consistently connect with Enterprise Manager to do any backups. Ticket put in for support on this issue.

As for Tom's previous claims on answring tickets here is my history of 4 recent tickets:

Ticket 1
Customer submit: 1/13/2003 1:42:57 AM
Stargate (Chris) response 1/14/2003 1:44:45 PM

Ticket 2
Customer submit: 1/13/2003 1:45:43 AM
Customer submit: 1/13/2003 12:53:33 PM
Customer submit: 1/13/2003 6:49:13 PM
Stargate (Chris) response: 1/14/2003 1:43:33 PM

Ticket 3
Customer submit: 1/17/2003 5:04:41 PM
Customer submit: 1/18/2003 4:20:24 PM
Stargate (TChaffin) response 1/18/2003 9:55:22 PM

Ticket 4
Customer submit: 1/18/2003 8:56:17 PM
Stargate (TChaffin) response 1/18/2003 9:52:28 PM

I don't think the above accurately reflects your comments on response time. Your response times vary widely, and often if anyone who puts in a ticket, would be happy if they at least knew it was being worked on. I have copies of all these tickets and times, but for everyone here it would be greatly appreciated if you would acknowledge their accuracy. If you dispute the dates and times, please post here...I just work on facts and I just want a good functioning web site...nothing more.

It was a weekend and a busy one (although they insist they have weekend tech support) so I will give them some space here but this ticket is over 24 hours and still in the new pile:


XXXXXXXXXX
1/26/2003
2:00:37 PM
Customer

I have been using Enterprise Manager to maintain and backup my database for months now. SInce yesterday's fiasco, I am not able to do so today.

It connects, then disconnects, it lets me and starts a DTS import or export and then breaks. THen it won't let me connect. Then it will but it won't go thru the entire DTS routine. I can't make a backup of my db and you guys don't do backups. Since yesterday's SQl Virus problem shut down the network, I am very nervous about not being able to backup. Why is this happening?


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
1/27/2003
5:08:35 PM
Customer

Anybody there? My Enterprise Manager is not working like it was, it is having continued problems accessing the Stargate servers and data. Could I have some assistance so I may backup my database?


Any kind of info like we are busy atteding to virus issues...your system is being updates so it will not function properly yet...We are looking into it...Even a generic message on the web site if there is a virus issue they are still working on...

My ASP Portal site I moderate shows most everyone back up to normal, don't know why I should be having problems. Maybe its me, but who would know I can't get anyone to look at this.

Originally posted by DJBBIZ

I have been using Enterprise Manager to maintain and backup my database for months now. SInce yesterday's fiasco, I am not able to do so today.

It connects, then disconnects, it lets me and starts a DTS import or export and then breaks. THen it won't let me connect. Then it will but it won't go thru the entire DTS routine. I can't make a backup of my db and you guys don't do backups. Since yesterday's SQl Virus problem shut down the network, I am very nervous about not being able to backup. Why is this happening?


Many backbones are null-routing UDP requests to 1434, so there may not be anything Stargate can do about this.

That is what Tom was saying, but the system was throwing SQL Server error messages.

Have not heard from Tom in a couple days on the SQL Server issue. Today my site is gone. Forum is reporting that someone (hacker) broke into their DNS and stole passwords...No information on Stargate's site, the ticket system is throwing errors so you can't report anything, tech support mail box is full and noone will answer a phone. Had to leave a message on the general line.

:D

Originally posted by DJBBIZ
Have not heard from Tom in a couple days on the SQL Server issue. Today my site is gone. Forum is reporting that someone (hacker) broke into their DNS and stole passwords...No information on Stargate's site, the ticket system is throwing errors so you can't report anything, tech support mail box is full and noone will answer a phone. Had to leave a message on the general line.

That really stinks -- it sounds like Stargate has had a serious run of bad luck, combined with poor security planning on their part :(.