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  1. #1
    Join Date
    May 2006
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    Thumbs up Staminus 3+ Year Review

    I'm not sure if I ever posted a staminus review before. I know I always meant to but anyway, here is my 3+ year review of staminus.net.

    Prelude
    I started my hosting company in Aug 2005. It first started with a site I had that got pretty popular and I needed to get a dedicated server cause I was getting kicked off shared hosts and the ones I didn't get kicked off of were fly by night ops that quickly folded. So I get the box and all and start learning about linux and everything else. My first server was at rackmounted.com - a truly great bunch of people that helped me in every way and never lost patience with me. I will never forget the guys there.

    The first few months I had enough site donations to pay for the server but I eventually spent more time experimenting and learning my linux desktop and server that I didn't update the site much no more. Then the donations came to an end. Then I started selling hosting under felosi-inc.net domain. I ended up getting enough clients to pay for the server and then some. By that time I was spending all my time on hosting related things that I pretty much abandoned the site. Now I was hosting full time.

    I quickly found out that it was very hard to compete with regular hosters. The people I knew and myself always was having problems with ddos so I decided to specialize in ddos protected hosting. At first it worked out but eventually I had to leave rackmounted because they didn't have ddos protection. This is where my journey for a good network began.

    The Journey for a Good Network
    The first ddos protected network I tried was sharktech, I was there around 5 months. The network outages, not so nice support staff, lack of any ddos stats and null routes instead of filtering made me leave there. Had I stayed I would have went out of business.

    My second ddos protected network was awknet. Justin is good guy and all but he is the only one. I could never get no definite answer on how much he would filter for how long from him. It also seemed he had to manually add filters and such, the server stayed down until I could get ahold of him. There was a few fairly long network outages, one lasting 2-3 days if I'm not mistaken. After that and some other issues I decided to try another.

    My third ddos protected network was gigeservers. I found out the first day it would not work as there was 80 mbits incoming syn to the server making it unresponsive. When asked they said they just rate limit the attack not filter it all and would not do anything to help me. So I left that server within a week.

    My fourth ddos protected network was softlayer. This really didn't work out. Their sales people told me "oh yeah, ddos protection, cisco guard, ya ya" but I came to find out at that time they had to manually add the ips to the cisco guard and would only filter it for 24 hours. After a month or two of doing this I experienced downtime each time until the ip was added and I also had to haggle with their techs to get them to even add it. I asked to speak to a manager once and he told me their network was not for frequent ddos and if I continued as I was doing they would have to let me go.

    My fifth ddos protected network was justedge which was no protection at all. Everything came through, he did refund me though and told me that he gave me the login for some firewall at first to mitigate the attacks. He never gave me any information for any firewall.

    Home at Last
    I had dealt with staminus before as I had a friend who I helped manage his server there. At that time I didn't think staminus was any good as this was the time those low bandwidth dc++ syn attacks were prevalent and I got creamed. I actually went in IRC and argued with Matt for a while over this. Eventually I found out that the attacks that was creaming the server were only around 5-10 mbits, but they was still a b**ch to mess with.

    I got a server at staminus, moved all my clients over there. When I seen their custom firewall and attack alerts I knew this was what I needed. Also another great feature of staminus is that any huge attack will be auto null routed instead of consuming the server. Every place I went to before I had the server consumed many times, At staminus this has never happened to this day!

    And finally the loyal clients who had stuck with me through the journey was happy and I started to get more clients. There has been a few network outages but nothing worth leaving for. The protection is also the absolute best you can get for the money. The secureport protection is amazing as well at a fraction of the cost of other specialist services.

    At first I thought since staminus was only Matt I would have pretty much the same situation as awknet where I had to wait until he came on, but Matt is truly a 24/7 on call person and now he has John there to help him - another great guy. But in reality you rarely ever have to contact support as everything on their end is usually good. Their support is great, fast and they have never lost patience with me. I cant put a number on the times I have put in emergency tickets saying the hardware is bad only for it to be something on my end

    I just cant say enough good things about staminus, had it not been for me finally settling down at staminus I don't think I would have the business I have today. For ddos protected networks there is no better then staminus hands down.

    Now my entire high risk operation is hosted at staminus and I don't plan on leaving ever. Thanks Matt for the awesome service, support and not losing patience with me, you are the best.

  2. #2
    Quote Originally Posted by felosi View Post
    Now my entire high risk operation is hosted at staminus and I don't plan on leaving ever. Thanks Matt for the awesome service, support and not losing patience with me, you are the best.
    Not even to come back to rackmounted.com???
    (kidding of course... thanks for the mention in your prelude -- very cool to see that you are doing so well)

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Nov 2007
    Location
    Dallas, TX
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    9,064
    Thanks for posting. The 3+ year reviews are always a treat to read.

    -mike
    Mike G. - Limestone Networks - Account Specialist
    Cloud - Dedicated - Colocation - Premium Network - Passionate Support
    DDoS Protection Available - Reseller Program @LimestoneInc - 877.586.0555

  4. #4
    Join Date
    May 2006
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    Quote Originally Posted by datarealm View Post
    Not even to come back to rackmounted.com???
    (kidding of course... thanks for the mention in your prelude -- very cool to see that you are doing so well)
    You guys were so good to me. Deacon helped me out no matter how minor the issue. I remember times when he actually drove to the datacenter to fix my problems. Not only did I receive top notch support with rackmounted but I got pointers and lessons with each ticket.

    I know you guys probably forgot me by now but I have not forgot you and I always recommend you to beginning hosts or anyone needing a non-ddos-protected solution.

    Also as many have seen with some bandwidth tests we have ran here on wht on different networks rackmounted has always blasted everyone else. I remember being able to totally saturate the 100 mbit pipe on download tests from any location.

    I don't know I guess no one ever forgets their first datacenter but my experience with you guys was outstanding. You are truly a great bunch of guys and I am forever thankful for the knowledge and kindness I received there, Only if you have ddos protection I would still be there,

    I sincerely thank you from the bottom of my heart

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Jun 2003
    Location
    The Netherlands
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    277
    Nice to see such a detailed and constructive review.

    One question: you said that any huge attack will be auto null-routed at staminus. I thought that a null-route is something you wanted to avoid and instead have the traffic filtered. Or are we talking multiple gbp/s of flood traffic here?
    There are 10 kinds of people, those who understand binary and those who don't.

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Aug 2003
    Location
    Taiwan
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    Nice review.

    I've been with them too for about 5 years. A+ for staminus.
    © www.hostinginside.com AS9678 √
    © Taiwan Colocation and Dedicated Server
    © Taiwan, Singapore, US, UK & Germany KVM Based VPS with RAID 10

  7. #7
    Join Date
    Jun 2007
    Location
    Australia
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    820
    Thanks for the insightful review

  8. #8
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    Quote Originally Posted by Talence View Post
    Nice to see such a detailed and constructive review.

    One question: you said that any huge attack will be auto null-routed at staminus. I thought that a null-route is something you wanted to avoid and instead have the traffic filtered. Or are we talking multiple gb/s of flood traffic here?
    We are talking about multi gbit or attacks with lots of packets per second that exceed the standard protection allocations. Most ddos protected networks I have dealt with I have had to beg them to null route in some situations.

    So instead of completely consuming your server the ip will be auto null route for 15 minutes at a time until the attack dies down. Trust me, this is a very good thing. In cases where an ip gets nulled with the standard protection they have an advanced secureport protection you can purchase.

    The secureport may seem high to some people but compared to other networks or setting up your own thing it is very cheap. I guess you could say ddos protection is like insurance, If everyone needed it at once or you had continuing attacks for days on end then it wouldn't work.

    For example, lets say you buy a 2gbs/200k packets per second secureport for $1500-2000. Sounds high eh? But imagine having to purchase 2gbs bandwidth from a carrier and rent or buy the hardware to mitigate it. You are looking at around $10k-15k per month. So you see that the ddos protection is actually very cheap.

    For most victims they are under attacks they get protection and when their site is up for 2-3 days the attacker will usually quit. They keep the same level of protection in case it comes again. So basically its like insurance, best way I can put it.

    But back to the auto null route - staminus doesn't auto null route unless the attacks are huge or ongoing for a long time. I'm not sure how it exactly works but I think for the standard ddos/irc ips it is like a pooled protection and if your attack exceeds your given allocation at that time it will auto null.

    Another benefit of this auto filtering and auto null routing is you will NEVER hear staminus bitch about the amount and size of attacks you are getting. Nearly every other ddos protected network I been on will tell me to get rid of certain clients, that there are too much attacks, they need more money to continue, etc.

  9. #9
    Join Date
    Aug 2002
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    Seattle
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    Quote Originally Posted by felosi View Post
    For example, lets say you buy a 2gbs/200k packets per second secureport for $1500-2000. Sounds high eh? But imagine having to purchase 2gbs bandwidth from a carrier and rent or buy the hardware to mitigate it. You are looking at around $10k-15k per month. So you see that the ddos protection is actually very cheap.
    In today's market 2000 Mbps of ingress transit can be had for under $4000.00 from a handful of carriers. Some will even come around this price for full transit.

  10. #10
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    Quote Originally Posted by IRCCo Jeff View Post
    In today's market 2000 Mbps of ingress transit can be had for under $4000.00 from a handful of carriers. Some will even come around this price for full transit.
    wow, I guess prices have went down in recent years. I was comparing to like if you was a server customer and had to get such bandwidth off your network. Being just a guy who rents servers, no one with any contracts or contacts with these places I believe it would cost a lot more.

    Last time I looked around at 100mbs dedicated pipes they was from $600-1500 depending on the network so I just figured that 20 times that would be in the 10-15k ballpark.

    But you would have to admit though that someone just renting servers and having to buy the bandwidth from their network would pay a pretty penny

  11. #11
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    The bigger problem is that the average renter wouldn't have the technology to combat such attacks, with costs close to $10,000 just for a 100 Mbps DDoS appliance.

  12. #12
    Join Date
    Jun 2003
    Location
    The Netherlands
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    Looks like your positive review brought them bad luck

    http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=901330

    If they can manage to keep such outages down to a minimum, they would appear to have a pretty solid service.
    There are 10 kinds of people, those who understand binary and those who don't.

  13. #13
    Join Date
    Sep 2004
    Location
    CA, US
    Posts
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    Staminus has been there during the times I have needed them the most. They do a excellent job, and are upfront with the issues they may encounter.

    ALL providers have issues, absolutely none are exempt.

    If your endeavor is mission critical, then its up to you to pick from the best, and the combination will yield you the best results in those rare occasions one of them should have an issue.

    I once colocated through a company who lost my server over a contract dispute, or not paying their bills to their upstream - somehow they are still around. Costly unexpected surprises can happen, keep backups.

    Think about skydiving, you get 2 parachutes, one or the other may fail no matter how good they are, but the chances of them failing at the same time are extremely statistically unlikely. Its a reality most easily observed when human life is on the line.
    Last edited by janderso; 10-31-2009 at 09:07 AM.
    http://FreeDNS.afraid.org/ - Vanity DNS sharing service

  14. #14
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    Jun 2003
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    Quote Originally Posted by janderso View Post
    Think about skydiving, you get 2 parachutes, one or the other may fail no matter how good they are, but the chances of them failing at the same time are extremely statistically unlikely.
    Yes, and that's why it's the standard for almost every DC to have multiple parachutes (i.e. to be multi-homed). As I understood from Jeff's point in the other thread, Staminus has a SPoF issue.

    Since the experiences (as expressed by you and the OP) are otherwise very positive, it seems reasonable to say that if they can fix the SPoF issue, they will have an even better service.
    There are 10 kinds of people, those who understand binary and those who don't.

  15. #15
    Join Date
    Aug 2007
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    Thanks for a very detailed review. Glad to hear the positive experiences. 3+ years of hosting with the same host is great and your experience sharing is a very valuable one.

  16. #16
    Join Date
    Dec 2007
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    Im not at all surprised to see a positive 3 year review from Staminus.

    We hosted a few servers with them over the years and never had any issues that would of made us go elsewhere. We tried some of their west coast competition and they don't stack up at all to Staminus.

    Staminus's network appears to always be improving.
    James Paul Woods
    Operations Manager
    HostKitty Internet Services

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