Dedicated hosting is, in theory, a nice way for the little guy to pay a monthly chunk, and get access to enterprise-level hosting facilities, hardware support, and bandwidth. In practice, it's just another one of those industry broken promises fueled by cut-throat competition and the constant downward slide of customer service and service quality that typically comes along with aggressive price undercutting. I can't find a reference to the first hosting provider that suffered from this, but it was some company in Canada that was offering 3000GB of bandwidth, reasonable hardware specs for the time, for $70/month. Network goes down, nobody can be reached. Seeya.
AIT - my most frustrating experience, even though i stuck with them for nearly four years hoping that the stability of the service would be good enough that i didn't have to *deal* with their crappy tech support / customer service department. dumb of me (although i make many decisions that could be considered dumb, simply on the basis of not having enough time to take the proper course of action). it seems that my loyalty/apathy had its own special reward (this is very much like The Brick Joke & The Cigar Joke)
Act 1: Josh Takes Command
| Information | | Ticket # : | [ 643467 ] |
| Callback Settings | | No callback currently set. | | | Domain : | ___.com | | Email : | james@___.com | | Phone : | 000-0000 | | Date received : | 12/5/2007 1:57:43 PM | | Status : | Closed | | Action : | Click here to reopen Ticket | | |
| Sequence : 1 | Request on :12/5/2007 1:57:43 PM | Topic : Dedicated Support | the ip address 216.117.148.140 has been assigned to me for over two years. today, i'm finding that suddenly when i browse to this ip address, i get a web page from some one else's server, instead of my client's website on my server. i have confirmed that my web server is up, working properly, that all dns entries are correct and the domain is in good standing with the internet registrar. this seems to be a routing issue within your network.
Submitted By : Unknown Unknown | i spoke with a first level tech, who asked me to clarify the problem in my ticket comments:
the ip address 216.117.148.140, which has been assigned to me for over two years, is now routing to some server other than mine.
for your reference, here are all of the ip addresses assigned to my account:
216.117.147.190
216.117.185.123
216.117.173.233
216.117.164.13
216.117.148.140
216.117.148.83
216.117.145.214
216.117.137.78
--
the contact that i spoke to asked me about the web site i had running at that ip address, and looked into the whois for the account, etc. these pieces of information only confuse a very simple issue - this ip address [216.117.148.140] is assigned to me, and the traffic to that address is not reaching my server.
Submitted on :12/5/2007 4:03:45 PM | | Reply Sent on : 12/5/2007 6:38:48 PM | By : Joshua Walton | Hello, I have looked into your issue and verified that these IP's are assigned to you and are no longer dually assigned. We have taken action against the customer who stole your IP.
216.117.148.140
216.117.147.190
216.117.185.123
216.117.173.233
216.117.164.13
216.117.148.140
216.117.148.83
216.117.145.214
216.117.137.78
Should you have any more issues, please contact our customer service. I apologize for the inconvenience. Thank you for hosting with us.
Joshua Walton
System Administrator
AIT, Inc.
| |
| Sequence : 2 | Request on :1/19/2008 3:19:40 PM | Topic : Fixed Contact Customer | i now appear to be having the exact same problem with the following IP addresses:
216.117.137.78
216.117.148.83
216.117.145.214
, all of which are assigned to me, confirmed per previous comments on this ticket. please confirm that they are still routed to my server, and that they are not assigned to any other server.
Submitted By : Unknown Unknown | | Reply Sent on : 1/19/2008 10:10:34 PM | By : Philip Eatherington | Hello, and thank you for contacting AIT.
Per my conversation with James, the three IPs are all now working correctly. The last, 216.117.145.214 had some more difficulty because Windows detected a conflict and dropped the IP. These had all been assigned to newly provisioned customers because an internal system was not completely up to date.
I have ensured these IPs are correctly marked as assigned to you so this should not occur again and have migrated the other customers to different IP address, which were initially going to be provided for your use. This was done because all three sites for the fully managed customers were still resolving to the default page, and were only a few days to a week old, indicating they were not yet underway. Should a future conflict occur, I cannot guarantee such a favorable outcome.
I have personally checked each IP in the list Joshua sent to you in the last iteration to ensure that these are properly assigned to you and should not be reassigned.
| |
Downtime: 9 hrs --------------------------
Act 2: Josh Giveth and Josh Taketh Away
| Information | | Ticket # : | [ 654365 ] |
| Callback Settings | | No callback currently set. | | | Domain : | ____.com | | Email : | james@____.com | | Phone : | 000-0000 | | Date received : | 1/14/2008 10:17:51 AM | | Status : | Closed | | Action : | Click here to reopen Ticket | | |
| Sequence : 1 | Request on :1/14/2008 10:17:51 AM | Topic : Abuse notice |
Submitted By : Unknown Unknown | I"ve been told by the last AIT tech that i spoke with, that we"re somehow under suspicion of stealing ip addresses. every ip address associated with our dedicated server has been assigned to us for OVER TWO YEARS, and i have the messages to prove it from your tech support.
please substantiate this claim immediately or restore our hardware to service.
Submitted on :1/14/2008 8:15:19 PM | | Reply Sent on : 1/17/2008 9:54:46 AM | By : Alton Hurley | | Closed ticket without sending reply. | |
| Information | | Ticket # : | [ 654442 ] |
| Callback Settings | | Callback Time : | 1/14/2008 1:35:00 PM | | Phone Number : | NNN-PPP-XXXX | | [ Close Callback ] | | | Domain : | ____.com | | Email : | james@____.com | | Phone : | 000-0000 | | Date received : | 1/14/2008 1:31:44 PM | | Status : | Closed | | Action : | Click here to reopen Ticket | | |
| Sequence : 1 | Request on :1/14/2008 1:31:44 PM | Topic : PTS | Server is down. Immediate reboot is needed, as client websites and email are down. This is a PTS immediate response needed - NOT a non-pts reboot issue. Please reboot asap.
Submitted By : Unknown Unknown | nearly 2 hours after it was determined that the reason for shutting our server down was invalid, it remains down.
Submitted on :1/14/2008 11:03:25 PM | | Reply Sent on : 1/14/2008 4:47:22 PM | By : Mark Greene | Thank you for hosting with AIT. Our system administrators have a ticket regarding this issue in their tier and will have your services backup shortly. We appreciates your patience and thank you for choosing AIT.
| |
| Sequence : 2 | Request on :1/14/2008 5:32:51 PM | Topic : PTS | This PTS ticket was improperly closed as it was NOT rectified. Please reopen. If you must consolidate tickets, close the original ticket from 10:17am, NOT this PTS ticket until the situation is fixed.
Submitted By : Unknown Unknown | | Update Sent on : 1/14/2008 5:44:30 PM | By : Mark Greene | Thank you for hosting with AIT. Our system administrators have a ticket regarding this issue in their tier and will have your services backup shortly. We appreciates your patience and thank you for choosing AIT.
| | Reply Sent on : 1/14/2008 6:20:40 PM | By : Alton Hurley | | Closed ticket without sending reply. | |
| Sequence : 3 | Request on :1/14/2008 8:16:32 PM | Topic : PTS | this issue has not been resolved, our server is still down, and we did not receive a call from tech support confirming that this ticket should be closed.
Submitted By : Unknown Unknown | our server appears to be up and functioning properly. i"m able to connect to a remote desktop, and am confirming that it is intact.
Submitted on :1/14/2008 11:26:13 PM | | Update Sent on : 1/14/2008 9:09:42 PM | By : Mark Greene | Thank you for hosting with AIT. As per our conversation, your server modeic.com had been taken offline because it was believed that the IP address 216.117.147.190 was in use on the server but was not allocated to you. However ticket number 643467 indicates that the IP address was in fact assigned to your account.
I have sent this information to our system administrators as well as to our Abuse manager. I apologize for the confusion and your services will be restored shortly. Thank you for your patience and thank you for choosing AIT.
Mark Greene
Technical Support Supervisor
AIT Inc.
| | Reply Sent on : 1/14/2008 11:34:06 PM | By : Mark Greene | Thank you for hosting with AIT. As per our conversation, your service has been restored and all services are responding normally. Thank you for your patience and thank you for choosing AIT.
| |
Downtime: 20.5 hours
Compensation offered: $37.50 (1/2 month hosting cost)
The Brick: The system admin responsible for shutting our server down at 3am with no notice at all was Joshua Walton, the one that said "We have taken action against the customer who stole your IP."
None of these cost-competetive providers gives a shit about the SMB impact of their crappy customer service and the downtime associated with their unresponsive staff. Their goal is to get your $$ for as little effort as they can put out, which translates to "get you off the phone" style phone banks. This one event cost our little business over $10K in lost business, but the most we can do about it is blog about it and hope to warn the next guy. Then get ready to hand over our wallets to rackspace, for the privilege of having someone actually be responsive when their network and server hardware fucks up.
I would say 'peace out', but...
war.
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