16 ms·

SimpleCDN has been effectively kicked off the Internet by its ISPs w/o warning

125 points by archon810 16y ago

dedward 16y ago
While they may very well win in court - their business will be destroyed. Why on earth was their CDN built around a single provider? Had they had multiple providers,this would have ended in reduced capacity, with buffer time to re-deploy elsewhere. Sounds like a good lesson learned - when I need bandwidth X for Y years, I make sure I have solid contracts to that effect - not just relying on a simple clause about severability. If your business depends on your providers, you make sure your providers know what business you are in and make sure the contracts are solid.
- timdorr 16y ago
  It looks like they built it around two: UK2 (under multiple brands of theirs too) and Softlayer. But both colluded to shut down SimpleCDN at the same time. The main problem is they went to the datacenter providers first, not the network providers. DCs make their money over the long term by selling hardware cheap up front (just a monthly fee) and hoping ongoing costs remain low. CDNs put a high operating cost on the system, so it is one place they end up losing out big time. What they should have done is partnered directly with a network provider. I was looking over at the MaxCDN offer they linked to on the page and they appear to have partnered with Mzima. That's a smart move (Mzima's an awesome network; akin to Internap, but a lot cheaper). Maybe if SimpleCDN recovers from all of this, they'll start approaching things differently and stop trying to put stress on a business relationship where it hurts the most.
  - dedward 16y ago
    That's odd - every datacenter (read: colocation facility) I've worked with had clear pricing for rack space, power, bandwidth, etc -I could use as much as I wanted, and I knew what I'd pay for it, and would re-negotiate if the regular usage was going to go higher. By DC's - do you mean some kind of web-hosting provider instead? Even the VM providers I use all have soft & hard limits on traffic stated clearly - in practice, anyone offering "unlimited" anything is automatically excluded from any kind of critical business hosting decision - because that's not realistic or maintainable.
  - joshfraser 16y ago
    UK2 is a reseller of SoftLayer. SoftLayer have been pretty reputable up to this point and many large companies use them. SoftLayer also offers unlimited bandwidth but charges an extra $2,000 for it. It appears UK2/100TB are the shady ones here, although SoftLayer may have had a hand in shutting them down due to the competitive nature of their product.
loganlinn 16y ago
SimpleCDN has provided fairly consistent service until now. Their customer service was always non-existant, but they were exceptionally cheap. We were forced to switch yesterday when SimpleCDN went down -- I actually wasn't aware what happened until I saw this.
moe 16y ago
The information is spotty but from what I gather it seems someone (SimpleCDN) took the "unlimited bandwidth" claims on 100tb.com a little bit too literally - and tried to build a business around them. The question remains why a supposed infrastructure company thought it'd be a good idea to rely on a single other company to provide their... infrastructure.
- jacquesm 16y ago
  Lots of companies have single points of failure like this, probably more of them than those that don't. This only goes to show that if it is too good to be true it probably isn't.
- bmelton 16y ago
  I hope that's the case, honestly, and I hope that it does go to court. I'm frankly sick and tired of the 'unlimited' advertising model, wherein unlimited really means limited to some arbitrary amount that is not disclosed. As a customer who has been kicked off of a number of unlimited hosting services for a site that only does ~30Gb or so in traffic in a month, I'd love to see hard limits advertised rather than 'unlimited'. I know that Dreamhost oversells on purpose, and that's fine, but I think they can still do that (though perhaps not quite as effectively) by just stating their upper limit. Of course, this means that more people are likely to hit or approach that upper limit, but at least they'll know when they need to grow into another 'slice' as it were, or whether or not to relocate from Dreamhost altogether.
  - carl_ 16y ago
    Dreamhost however is very open about the type of `best effort, use what you like` model. Compare the claims on http://vps.net/ http://vps.net/ to the reality of http://status.vps.net/ http://status.vps.net/
    - citricsquid 16y ago
      FYI status.vps.net doesn't include most outages they deem "too small" and only affect ~5% of customers. They only post there when it affects a large number.
acangiano 16y ago
On a side note, I haven't heard a single good thing from anyone about the ISP in question. One of their brands, VPS.NET, was an absolute nightmare and almost tanked the launch of one of our projects. A friend who made the mistake of going with them as well, had nothing but headaches. The main issues were reliability and poor customer care.
- citricsquid 16y ago
  Seriously, as much as their team "care" their product is absolute shit. My experience with vps.net has put me off UK2 for life, some of the things I've seen in the customer forum are just plain scary. Like the admission they don't have the infrastructure to handle DDoS attacks because it's "too expensive".
  - archon810 16y ago
    Wow, really? I've been pondering whether I should get off linode and try out vps.net due to the elastic scaling they have (burstable memory, etc), but damn, they're this bad?
    - citricsquid 16y ago
      I was with them for 1 year, September 2009 - September 2010 and I've now moved to Linode. I would highly recommend you stay away from them. The longest I went without downtime was 90 days, in total I've had well over 40 hours of downtime within 1 year, I've never had that much elsewhere even on dedicated hardware that isn't as "redundant" as they claim to be. Their product is amazing if you don't care for stability and then it beats the competition hands down, but if stability and uptime matter to you at all stay away. If vps.net had the stability and reliability of Linode they'd rule the world. Sign up for a daily node ($1) and then login to the customer forum, you'll see so many reports of problems and this is after they recently "revamped" the forum and removed over a years worth of posts. I can't provide links because they removed my access.
- felixge 16y ago
  Just a few fun experiences I had with vps.net: * A server reset itself to a 3 month old backup overnight, their support was unable to explain it. * Random disk I/O issues bringing throughput to < 1 MB/sec * My favorite: Some internal routing issue on their end would randomly route my ssh attempts to another machine on their network. Their solution? Grant me access to this machine which was rented by another customer! Oh and of course, there was plenty of downtime thrown in for good measure. That being said: I really like their offering in theory, I just wish they could pull it off in practice.
carl_ 16y ago
It's all a little bit silly. Everyone knows 100TB can't afford you to use the included bandwidth. When you start actually using your bandwidth then you cut into their profits and they'll want to get rid of you. When you start actually using the bandwidth _and_ undercut their own CDN using their _resold_ infrastructure, then they're losing out twice. It's important to remember that UK2 = OnApp/UK2/Midphase/VPS.NET/100TB/Hosting Services Inc/etc/etc. UK2 doesn't own much infrastructure, they're just a reseller and overseller.
- dhughes 16y ago
  It's just like insurance, you are required to have it but when you need it and have to use it the insurance company jacks up the price from that point on.
  - moe 16y ago
    It's a little bit worse than that. Most insurances will at least pay up and then jack up the price. 100tb.com is not paying up (as in: providing service), instead they canceled the contract, apparently on short notice.
- shub 16y ago
  The way I see it is, if UK2 wants to fuck customers out of the service that UK2 advertised and the customers paid for, the customers are welcome to fuck right back.
robryan 16y ago
As you would expect unmetered bandwidth from 100TB is truly unmetered and unshared, with no limits and no small print. Unmetered servers use exactly the same SoftLayer network as their 100TB equivalents and are fitted with 1000Mbit ports. Hosting plans page though has: Unmetered Bandwidth (324TB) add $399 / month
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- chrismiller 16y ago
  100TB a month = ~300mbps of constant use. The Unmetered upgrade means that you could saturate the full 1gbps for the entire month.
  - moe 16y ago
    means that you could saturate the full 1gbps for the entire month. Except for the minor inconvenience that they cancel your account when you actually do that.
foobarbazetc 16y ago
Not really seeing why they're "naming" SoftLayer here, when it's 100TB.com they're dealing with.
- carl_ 16y ago
  UK2 claims its SL forcing the disconnect.
  - meroliph 16y ago
    Since UK2 doesn't really have a CDN product themselves, as they resell HighWinds and Level3, their interest is a bit lower as opposed to SoftLayer which has million dollar contracts signed with InterNAP for connectivity and DC space, which also sells content delivery. My guess is it's not really about kicking out the competition but mostly the fact that they can't realistically offer the said bandwidth for the advertised price, which is far too low for a quality network blend.
    - to 16y ago
      you do know they host youporn and other huge streaming services? youporn host around 800 machines with them and i would guess use a lot of bw. softlayer is not a small hoster, theyre big.
      - SoftwareMaven 16y ago
        It's not a question of capability, it's a question of profitability.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
mbreese 16y ago
It's quite refreshing to see them provide a migration path for their customers, even if it is to another company.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
tybris 16y ago
Could this month get any better for Amazon? -It's December -Mastercard.com and Paypal.com went down making Amazon one of the few on-line shops that could still process payments -Since no Amazon service went down under DDoS, big companies will come crawling to them to use AWS -SimpleCDN goes down, no doubt driving lots of customers to bigger parties like AWS -They are making boat loads of money http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=AMZN+vs+GS+vs+GOOG http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=AMZN+vs+GS+vs+GOOG Boycott? Pfff. I predict record revenues.
- mdaniel 16y ago
  Does mastercard.com process payments? I got the impression that it was just the marketing/corporate presence that was affected.
  - tybris 16y ago
    Securecode was affected as well, which is the payment portal you need to go through for many on-line shops.
    - dannyb 16y ago
      I guess it didn't affect everyone since I was able to use it on the day in question to make a Ticketmaster purchase on 12/8.
    - skorgu 16y ago
      Securecode is theoretically optional in most cases, transactions that go through it generally cost less than non-securecode ones but it shouldn't stop all transaction processing in most cases.
- jonknee 16y ago
  "... making Amazon one of the few on-line shops that could still process payments" is a huge overstatement. Mastercard.com and Visa.com being down has no material effect on almost all eCommerce (I don't remember the last time I had visited either). PayPal does, but that affects Amazon as well since they accept PayPal at places like Zappos and Diapers.com.
wildmXranat 16y ago
I was a client of both Softlayer and 100TB/UK2 whatever you want to call them. Both instances were separate occasions and my experience with Softlayer was nothing but spotless. I had 2TB monthly bandwidth allotted, and the server was using up close to 80% of that. We were hosting 4 TF2 game servers, forums etc. Their customer service and services provided were top notch. 100TB on the other hand was not as pleasant. Even though we ended up not going with them in the long run, I have to say that the process of signing-up, managing the servers and canceling was ok. Nothing great. The factor that pushed us to another carrier was network speeds. There were moments when we were getting 10% of what we were paying for and that wasn't a fluctuation worth the risk.
joshfraser 16y ago
From 100TB's TOS (presumably just added): We will not provide services to those that are using our services for: A content delivery network or content distribution network (CDN) is prohibited from running on our network. Special requests to run CDN services may be approved on a case by case basis. Failure to comply with this policy will result in the disabling of all hosting services. http://www.100tb.com/tos.php http://www.100tb.com/tos.php
- moe 16y ago
  That's a hilarious tactic. Are they now going to blacklist bandwidth intensive business models one by one until only blogs and "under construction" pages are left on their "high bandwidth" plans?
  - tptacek 16y ago
    It's amusing in context, but it's not an absurd contract term. Hosting a CDN on an "unlimited" hosting provider is basically bandwidth arbitrage. It makes total sense that the hosting provider would want to limit their hosting to bona fide hosting customers.
    - wmf 16y ago
      Yeah, never arbitrage the arbitrageurs; they won't stand for it.
      - tptacek 16y ago
        Why should they? Companies have every right to choose their own business model.
        moe 16y ago
        In this particular case it comes across as more than a little bit shady. When you advertise aggressively with high volume/high bandwidth, when you even rename your company from 10tb.com to 100tb.com, then one would hope you'd handle it a tad bit more professionally when someone calls your bluff. I wonder if they considered that by pulling the plug on SimpleCDN like this they've also effectively terminated their own business. Nobody in their right mind will host at 100tb after this event.
xd 16y ago
My company had a server hosted with UK2. We bailed when they had no answer to why our server restarted randomly and made absolutely no attempt to look into the problem. The lack of respect from them, that our company depended on a reliable server, just astounded me. After reading this I'm doubly glad we moved away from them.
sadiq 16y ago
The WebhostingTalk thread makes interesting reading: http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1005111 http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1005111
jjoe 16y ago
This is a disgusting action from UK2/SL. If you promise 100TB of data transfer on 1Gbps, you have to keep your word (not matter what). Otherwise, don't venture in offering such deal. Essentially, they're kicking out the tail end of the "distribution". A lot of SL clients have been reporting network latency and sometimes packet drops over the last few months. SL is most likely seeing this in their MRTG graphs and have no choice but to enforce the ToS, which does have a CDN clause by the way. The right approach would be to expand their network and purchase additional bandwidth. But I guess they're there to increase their margins. I have to confess that, as a provider, one has to anticipate things like this for the sake of keeping the business afloat and the clients. The upstream could at any moment pull the plug on you (literally). There's so much one has to watch out for. These are things one loses sleep over. It's unsettling to say the least. I'm reevaluating SL/UK2 as a possible partner (it used to be high up there in the list but no more). Regards Joe

125 points by archon810 16y ago

While they may very well win in court - their business will be destroyed. Why on earth was their CDN built around a single provider? Had they had multiple providers,this would have ended in reduced capacity, with buffer time to re-deploy elsewhere. Sounds like a good lesson learned - when I need bandwidth X for Y years, I make sure I have solid contracts to that effect - not just relying on a simple clause about severability. If your business depends on your providers, you make sure your providers know what business you are in and make sure the contracts are solid.

timdorr 16y ago
It looks like they built it around two: UK2 (under multiple brands of theirs too) and Softlayer. But both colluded to shut down SimpleCDN at the same time. The main problem is they went to the datacenter providers first, not the network providers. DCs make their money over the long term by selling hardware cheap up front (just a monthly fee) and hoping ongoing costs remain low. CDNs put a high operating cost on the system, so it is one place they end up losing out big time. What they should have done is partnered directly with a network provider. I was looking over at the MaxCDN offer they linked to on the page and they appear to have partnered with Mzima. That's a smart move (Mzima's an awesome network; akin to Internap, but a lot cheaper). Maybe if SimpleCDN recovers from all of this, they'll start approaching things differently and stop trying to put stress on a business relationship where it hurts the most.
- dedward 16y ago
  That's odd - every datacenter (read: colocation facility) I've worked with had clear pricing for rack space, power, bandwidth, etc -I could use as much as I wanted, and I knew what I'd pay for it, and would re-negotiate if the regular usage was going to go higher. By DC's - do you mean some kind of web-hosting provider instead? Even the VM providers I use all have soft & hard limits on traffic stated clearly - in practice, anyone offering "unlimited" anything is automatically excluded from any kind of critical business hosting decision - because that's not realistic or maintainable.
- joshfraser 16y ago
  UK2 is a reseller of SoftLayer. SoftLayer have been pretty reputable up to this point and many large companies use them. SoftLayer also offers unlimited bandwidth but charges an extra $2,000 for it. It appears UK2/100TB are the shady ones here, although SoftLayer may have had a hand in shutting them down due to the competitive nature of their product.

loganlinn 16y ago

SimpleCDN has provided fairly consistent service until now. Their customer service was always non-existant, but they were exceptionally cheap. We were forced to switch yesterday when SimpleCDN went down -- I actually wasn't aware what happened until I saw this.

moe 16y ago

The information is spotty but from what I gather it seems someone (SimpleCDN) took the "unlimited bandwidth" claims on 100tb.com a little bit too literally - and tried to build a business around them. The question remains why a supposed infrastructure company thought it'd be a good idea to rely on a single other company to provide their... infrastructure.

jacquesm 16y ago
Lots of companies have single points of failure like this, probably more of them than those that don't. This only goes to show that if it is too good to be true it probably isn't.
bmelton 16y ago
I hope that's the case, honestly, and I hope that it does go to court. I'm frankly sick and tired of the 'unlimited' advertising model, wherein unlimited really means limited to some arbitrary amount that is not disclosed. As a customer who has been kicked off of a number of unlimited hosting services for a site that only does ~30Gb or so in traffic in a month, I'd love to see hard limits advertised rather than 'unlimited'. I know that Dreamhost oversells on purpose, and that's fine, but I think they can still do that (though perhaps not quite as effectively) by just stating their upper limit. Of course, this means that more people are likely to hit or approach that upper limit, but at least they'll know when they need to grow into another 'slice' as it were, or whether or not to relocate from Dreamhost altogether.
- carl_ 16y ago
  Dreamhost however is very open about the type of `best effort, use what you like` model. Compare the claims on http://vps.net/ http://vps.net/ to the reality of http://status.vps.net/ http://status.vps.net/
  - citricsquid 16y ago
    FYI status.vps.net doesn't include most outages they deem "too small" and only affect ~5% of customers. They only post there when it affects a large number.

acangiano 16y ago

On a side note, I haven't heard a single good thing from anyone about the ISP in question. One of their brands, VPS.NET, was an absolute nightmare and almost tanked the launch of one of our projects. A friend who made the mistake of going with them as well, had nothing but headaches. The main issues were reliability and poor customer care.

citricsquid 16y ago
Seriously, as much as their team "care" their product is absolute shit. My experience with vps.net has put me off UK2 for life, some of the things I've seen in the customer forum are just plain scary. Like the admission they don't have the infrastructure to handle DDoS attacks because it's "too expensive".
- archon810 16y ago
  Wow, really? I've been pondering whether I should get off linode and try out vps.net due to the elastic scaling they have (burstable memory, etc), but damn, they're this bad?
  - citricsquid 16y ago
    I was with them for 1 year, September 2009 - September 2010 and I've now moved to Linode. I would highly recommend you stay away from them. The longest I went without downtime was 90 days, in total I've had well over 40 hours of downtime within 1 year, I've never had that much elsewhere even on dedicated hardware that isn't as "redundant" as they claim to be. Their product is amazing if you don't care for stability and then it beats the competition hands down, but if stability and uptime matter to you at all stay away. If vps.net had the stability and reliability of Linode they'd rule the world. Sign up for a daily node ($1) and then login to the customer forum, you'll see so many reports of problems and this is after they recently "revamped" the forum and removed over a years worth of posts. I can't provide links because they removed my access.
felixge 16y ago
Just a few fun experiences I had with vps.net: * A server reset itself to a 3 month old backup overnight, their support was unable to explain it. * Random disk I/O issues bringing throughput to < 1 MB/sec * My favorite: Some internal routing issue on their end would randomly route my ssh attempts to another machine on their network. Their solution? Grant me access to this machine which was rented by another customer! Oh and of course, there was plenty of downtime thrown in for good measure. That being said: I really like their offering in theory, I just wish they could pull it off in practice.

carl_ 16y ago

It's all a little bit silly. Everyone knows 100TB can't afford you to use the included bandwidth. When you start actually using your bandwidth then you cut into their profits and they'll want to get rid of you. When you start actually using the bandwidth _and_ undercut their own CDN using their _resold_ infrastructure, then they're losing out twice. It's important to remember that UK2 = OnApp/UK2/Midphase/VPS.NET/100TB/Hosting Services Inc/etc/etc. UK2 doesn't own much infrastructure, they're just a reseller and overseller.

dhughes 16y ago
It's just like insurance, you are required to have it but when you need it and have to use it the insurance company jacks up the price from that point on.
- moe 16y ago
  It's a little bit worse than that. Most insurances will at least pay up and then jack up the price. 100tb.com is not paying up (as in: providing service), instead they canceled the contract, apparently on short notice.
shub 16y ago
The way I see it is, if UK2 wants to fuck customers out of the service that UK2 advertised and the customers paid for, the customers are welcome to fuck right back.

robryan 16y ago

As you would expect unmetered bandwidth from 100TB is truly unmetered and unshared, with no limits and no small print. Unmetered servers use exactly the same SoftLayer network as their 100TB equivalents and are fitted with 1000Mbit ports. Hosting plans page though has: Unmetered Bandwidth (324TB) add $399 / month

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
chrismiller 16y ago
100TB a month = ~300mbps of constant use. The Unmetered upgrade means that you could saturate the full 1gbps for the entire month.
- moe 16y ago
  means that you could saturate the full 1gbps for the entire month. Except for the minor inconvenience that they cancel your account when you actually do that.

foobarbazetc 16y ago

Not really seeing why they're "naming" SoftLayer here, when it's 100TB.com they're dealing with.

carl_ 16y ago
UK2 claims its SL forcing the disconnect.
- meroliph 16y ago
  Since UK2 doesn't really have a CDN product themselves, as they resell HighWinds and Level3, their interest is a bit lower as opposed to SoftLayer which has million dollar contracts signed with InterNAP for connectivity and DC space, which also sells content delivery. My guess is it's not really about kicking out the competition but mostly the fact that they can't realistically offer the said bandwidth for the advertised price, which is far too low for a quality network blend.
  - to 16y ago
    you do know they host youporn and other huge streaming services? youporn host around 800 machines with them and i would guess use a lot of bw. softlayer is not a small hoster, theyre big.
    - SoftwareMaven 16y ago
      It's not a question of capability, it's a question of profitability.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]

mbreese 16y ago

It's quite refreshing to see them provide a migration path for their customers, even if it is to another company.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

tybris 16y ago

Could this month get any better for Amazon? -It's December -Mastercard.com and Paypal.com went down making Amazon one of the few on-line shops that could still process payments -Since no Amazon service went down under DDoS, big companies will come crawling to them to use AWS -SimpleCDN goes down, no doubt driving lots of customers to bigger parties like AWS -They are making boat loads of money http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=AMZN+vs+GS+vs+GOOG http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=AMZN+vs+GS+vs+GOOG Boycott? Pfff. I predict record revenues.

mdaniel 16y ago
Does mastercard.com process payments? I got the impression that it was just the marketing/corporate presence that was affected.
- tybris 16y ago
  Securecode was affected as well, which is the payment portal you need to go through for many on-line shops.
  - dannyb 16y ago
    I guess it didn't affect everyone since I was able to use it on the day in question to make a Ticketmaster purchase on 12/8.
  - skorgu 16y ago
    Securecode is theoretically optional in most cases, transactions that go through it generally cost less than non-securecode ones but it shouldn't stop all transaction processing in most cases.
jonknee 16y ago
"... making Amazon one of the few on-line shops that could still process payments" is a huge overstatement. Mastercard.com and Visa.com being down has no material effect on almost all eCommerce (I don't remember the last time I had visited either). PayPal does, but that affects Amazon as well since they accept PayPal at places like Zappos and Diapers.com.

wildmXranat 16y ago

I was a client of both Softlayer and 100TB/UK2 whatever you want to call them. Both instances were separate occasions and my experience with Softlayer was nothing but spotless. I had 2TB monthly bandwidth allotted, and the server was using up close to 80% of that. We were hosting 4 TF2 game servers, forums etc. Their customer service and services provided were top notch. 100TB on the other hand was not as pleasant. Even though we ended up not going with them in the long run, I have to say that the process of signing-up, managing the servers and canceling was ok. Nothing great. The factor that pushed us to another carrier was network speeds. There were moments when we were getting 10% of what we were paying for and that wasn't a fluctuation worth the risk.

joshfraser 16y ago

From 100TB's TOS (presumably just added): We will not provide services to those that are using our services for: A content delivery network or content distribution network (CDN) is prohibited from running on our network. Special requests to run CDN services may be approved on a case by case basis. Failure to comply with this policy will result in the disabling of all hosting services. http://www.100tb.com/tos.php http://www.100tb.com/tos.php

moe 16y ago
That's a hilarious tactic. Are they now going to blacklist bandwidth intensive business models one by one until only blogs and "under construction" pages are left on their "high bandwidth" plans?
- tptacek 16y ago
  It's amusing in context, but it's not an absurd contract term. Hosting a CDN on an "unlimited" hosting provider is basically bandwidth arbitrage. It makes total sense that the hosting provider would want to limit their hosting to bona fide hosting customers.
  - wmf 16y ago
    Yeah, never arbitrage the arbitrageurs; they won't stand for it.
    - tptacek 16y ago
      Why should they? Companies have every right to choose their own business model.
      - moe 16y ago
        In this particular case it comes across as more than a little bit shady. When you advertise aggressively with high volume/high bandwidth, when you even rename your company from 10tb.com to 100tb.com, then one would hope you'd handle it a tad bit more professionally when someone calls your bluff. I wonder if they considered that by pulling the plug on SimpleCDN like this they've also effectively terminated their own business. Nobody in their right mind will host at 100tb after this event.

xd 16y ago

My company had a server hosted with UK2. We bailed when they had no answer to why our server restarted randomly and made absolutely no attempt to look into the problem. The lack of respect from them, that our company depended on a reliable server, just astounded me. After reading this I'm doubly glad we moved away from them.

sadiq 16y ago

The WebhostingTalk thread makes interesting reading: http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1005111 http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1005111

jjoe 16y ago

This is a disgusting action from UK2/SL. If you promise 100TB of data transfer on 1Gbps, you have to keep your word (not matter what). Otherwise, don't venture in offering such deal. Essentially, they're kicking out the tail end of the "distribution". A lot of SL clients have been reporting network latency and sometimes packet drops over the last few months. SL is most likely seeing this in their MRTG graphs and have no choice but to enforce the ToS, which does have a CDN clause by the way. The right approach would be to expand their network and purchase additional bandwidth. But I guess they're there to increase their margins. I have to confess that, as a provider, one has to anticipate things like this for the sake of keeping the business afloat and the clients. The upstream could at any moment pull the plug on you (literally). There's so much one has to watch out for. These are things one loses sleep over. It's unsettling to say the least. I'm reevaluating SL/UK2 as a possible partner (it used to be high up there in the list but no more). Regards Joe