576 per day.. wow - pretty impressive :)

that sounds like opt-in and members to me..

so if its not on natnet, then you must be spamming for somebody elses paysites? hmmmmmmmmm.

If it's double opt-in, there's a valid return email address, and a link where the person can opt-out, I'm not sure I would consider than spamming! Sending bulk email is NOT spam if the people who receive the email WANTS to receive the email.

Biggy you obviously have no idea what you're talking about, you're just regurgitating what someone else told you.

Nat Net is one of the, if not THE oldest adult host around. They came around back in the day when hosts were asking adult sites to leave because they had "too much traffic"
To think that you have any idea how to run a network better than Sweet T and his crew is ridiculous.


Oh and Brad's 576 complaints....those are just the ones he gets in bed :winkwink:

I've been following the NationalNet thread thus far, and have had a hard time restraining myself from making loud gagging noises in response.

First, let's take a look at their corny network diagram up at <http://www.national-net.com/2003/ima...astructure.jpg>. They claim to be connected to "five bandwidth providers", yet a quick look at route-views.oregon-ix.net, fixedorbit, and friends shows us less destinct AS-paths (geek speak, which translates loosely into the number of providers they're connected to). What's up with that? And, what kind of connectivity do they have between "pop1" and "pop2"? How diverse is it? How long will they be down if it is severed? Where are "pop1" and "pop2" physically located in the first place?

Second, could someone please explain for me what role the "pop2 routers" and "gig switches" serve in their network hierarchy? Are they trying to introduce additional potential points of failure into the mix, without any clearly stated technical benefit, as to introduce additional IP hops (which we all know webmasters love!) and decrease overall customer satisfaction and retention metrics, thus boosting churn rate, or are they just void of clue?

Now, the issue of spam. Contrary to popular(?) belief, operating under different netblocks is *not* a long-term solution which prevents a spammer and his/her upstream from being blackholed by SPEWS and other blackhole lists. And an admission of "yes we spam, it's ok" on the part of NationalNet's employee(s) does nothing to help their case either. A quick review of www.spews.org, or a Google search of spam-l and the NANAE newsgroup should clear up any confusion.

Then we have the issue of cost. $499 for what they offer just isn't sustainable -- unless their plan is to attract customers who only use a small subset of the capacity at their disposal, like a couple of megs. If you think otherwise, clearly you're not taking into account the amortized costs of server hardware, and the routers and switches needed to maintain their insanely retarded infrastructure depicted in the afforementioned diagram. Nor operational expenses such as power, datacenter space, employees, and bandwidth.

You'd be surprised at how many of the Hosts on this thread alone will let you mail on their network.

My experience with Nat net is that they will not allow mailings that are not true Double Opt in.

They are one of the better providers on the block.

You know, I watched this thread grow and grow and somehow it has gone from "can any other host match Natnet's special price" to a "bash Natnet" thread with some pretty nasty and un-enlightened responses from some people here (I always have to wonder about the "1 post wonders")

Let me address these issues.

1. Spamming:

No...we do NOT allow spammers. Do we allow our customer's to do mailings? Yes....if they are opt-in lists and have an opt-out link on the mailing and they have a method/policy for dealing with complaints (and no matter HOW clean a list is, you are going to get complaints). Have we ever terminated accounts for spamming? Absolutely. In fact, about 3 months ago, I terminated a $5k/month account after they refused to heed my warnings.

This business is getting tougher every day due to the saturation and the lack of any "entry fee" to enter this business. ANY ONE can buy a domain for $10 bucks, get on a free host with stolen content and call themselves a business man.

Any good business person finds a way to work with their customer so that both the vendor and the customer can be profitable. That's what we do at Natnet, and we do it quite well. There's a reason we host some of the biggest customers in our business, and we have become one of the biggest and most reputable hosting companies out there.

2. Pricing:
This is something that most non-business people don't understand. Is our show special profitable? If you JUST look at the profit made on the plan, absolutely not. We are selling this plan at this price for a number of reasons (most of which aren't worth explaining if you don't already know).

Suffice to say that the cost of my bandwidth is the smallest cost I incur. I have a staff of over 20 people providing FAST and RELIABLE support (this doesn't count the billing/AR/sales/etc staff). I OWN my own data center, UPS, generator etc. ALL of this comes at a cost, and these other costs are 4 times what my bandwidth costs are. Are we the cheapest host out there? No....and we never will be. BUT...those that understand business, and what we bring to the table understand the value that we bring to their business. It's NOT always JUST about price...and a true business person understands that.

I rarely see any negative comments on this board about us, but when I do, it's ALWAYS about price....but, we continue to grow. Hmmmm...wonder why that is?

3. Network Infrastructure:
All I have to say about this is that we have not had a total network outage in over three years. We had an electrical issue about a year ago with a UPS that didn't perform as promised after a flood in our power room. IMMEDIATELY after that, we went out and spent about $75k redoing our electrical infrastructure to make sure that that could NOT occur again.

BTW, Mr. Dolemite...the connectivity between "pop1" and "pop2" is 16 diverse strands of dark fiber. Had you taken the time to read the rest of our site, and look at the other diagrams, instead of just posting enough information to "uphold your arguement", you could have figured that out for yourself. If you've ever been in any BIG data center, you would also see that using GIG switches hooked to agg switches is a very standard way of doing things.

As far as whether our business model is sustainable, trust me when I tell you that we have been here for over 6 years and plan on being here for a long long time.

Just like the way of credit card processors, it won't be long before there are less and less hosts left standing, and I can assure you that we will be one of them.

If you have any questions about pricing/infrastructure/bandwidth/etc, just give me a call (770-471-9075) or email me at bill AT natnet DOT com, and I'll be happy to answer them.

Now, I'm going back to having a good time with my customers here at the show :thumbsup

Hey National Net guy,

Am I to assume that every one of your sixteen strands of fiber between "pop1" and "pop2" is diversely routed? If so, why don't you toss up a physical plant map on www.national-net.com illustrating your fibre routes? Surely that would buy you some excellent bragging rights.

While there's nothing wrong with connecting your network to transit or peering served out of another facility, there is everything wrong with relying on such bandwidth EXCLUSIVELY. And what's up with the "five" ISP's you connect to, why have you no response for that point?

When designing a network hierarchy, a cardinal rule one should follow is to plan for as many layers (eg, border, edge, etc) legitimately needed to cope with scaling issues and the type of services one offers, and no more. The "aggregation" and "gig" devices, as depicted on the diagram on your web page, buy you nothing. They're just extra devices, which can break, and take down your network. The argument that others are doing it too doesn't scale particularly well either, especially when you realize that the other services providers and hosting companies that implemented similar infrastructures (Globix, Exodus/Cable and Wireless, Verio), are now cash-starved and not doing too well.

Oh, forgot to mention.

Single opt-in is, for all intents and purposes "spam".

bitter competitor? Do you have a better deal? no..? now go open your own thread! :321GFY

I wonder how much xxxdesign-net got in order to perform this massive ass-kicking :1orglaugh

Dolemite, you seem to know quite a bit about network architecture, and you're very quick to point out "problems" with the National-Net's network. Now, seeing as you're so smart, please explain to me why they've only had one instance of downtime in the last 3 years, and the problem was flooding, and not to do with the architecture of their network. Consequently, they've made sure that the problem could not occur again. I mean, if their network is such a piece of shit............

I have NEVER had customer service from ANYONE that even comes CLOSE to National Net. I have yet to have a work ticket that wasn't completed in less than 10 minutes. Most of the time it's completed in 2 or 3.

nice list you posted brad,

im sure all those people joined your sites, or put their email in one of your collection boxes.