The better question to consider is what kind of hosting company wouldn't allow you to mail to your members? If a hosting company didn't allow that you couldn't run a Join For Free type program or even mail your own membership lists. That would be plain stupid.

yes, but we are not just talking about mailing to members :)

That's a good point.
Also the number of complaints someone receives isn't necessarily an accurate representation of whether or not their lists are really "opt-in"

Lensman said he gets spam complaints when he mails his webmasters to let them know about a new program or promotion. That's fucking ridiculous.

Even if Brad was a blatant spammer, its not Nat Net's job to police him. They don't (and shouldn't) examine thier client's email lists and tell some they can mail and tell others that they can't.

And as far as the theory about Nat Net's other clients being at risk....when have you ever heard someone say "My site at Nat Net is down"??

My beef isnt with Nat Net, its with Brad Shaw.

Im just surprised they host him, when he does his "mailing activities". NatNet was always a top notch company in my eyes, im just surprised to hear they will take on mailing customers like BradShaw.

If brad posts how many complaints he gets a day, and the truthful number, we'll let you decide if its spam or not.

Yes, Lens will get complaints, but how many, 5, 10, 100, 1000, 10000?

Brad put in his sig a few weeks ago on GFY about how he wanted to buy email lists, this doesn't sound like his own members to me...

Brad, dont post shit about me, we're talking about you and your mailing activities, i get spam in my inbox, i dont know why,

tell us, how many complaints you get? :)

Lenny,

here is the problem and why hosts take on a ZERO TOLERANCE policy.
you have sites out there that go after spammers and people who support them (this means the host). When a spammer is caught, they blacklist the IP space..
This means surfers who use ISPs who have these lists of blacklisted IP space cant access your site.
Nat-Net has come out on a public board and stated they do have mailing clients, BUT they put them on their own IP blocks, so if these sites find out, only the spammers get affected.
BUT the problem is, when they find out Nat-Net is doing this, they won't let it fly, trust me on this, these people are after spam and people who support spam.
Why don't you think many other large hosting companies say no to spam, it is for this reason, you are at risk.
Tell me, you don't think other big companies can do what Nat-Net is doing. Some do it, and some don't. I was always under the impression that Nat-Net was zero-tolerance on spam, since ive heard so much good things about them - the best hosts out there ARE zero-tolerance, cause they know the money now isnt worth the headache later.

Is there a setup fee or contract? - monthly contracts, no setup fee

is it congent? - we do not have connectivity to cogent in any way shape or form

do you offer Real-time web statistics ? - 100% mrtg, wusage, & we have our own control panel stats, new control panel to be released shortly http://newcp.webair.com

do you offer web base email accounts? - yes pop3 and web based e-mail - http://webmail.webair.com & http://mymail.webair.com

Webair runs a tight ship. I had an account there and it was taken care of quite nicely.

Thanks wolf!

anyone at the show that wants to meet up, give me a buzz 516.650.1501

and is it capped or uncapped? and how much for overage?

nice way to change what we are talking about..

Both you and me know the mailing in question ain't concerning membership lists...

:2 cents:

We run and own a 25,000 square foot data center in downtown Los Angeles.

p4 2.4 1gig ram 80 gig hd.

10mps uncapped

cogent $300 overage $40 a meg
global crossing $475 overage $60 a meg
multi-honed global crossing, level3, verio, and aleron $600 overage $70 a meg

billed on a 95%

24/7 noc services unlimited reboots.

[email protected]
213 228 0060

I would move my business to you in a split second if you offered realistic pricing. Sure 10 megabit for $485 is amazing. But as my business grows I may need another 10 megabit and when I come to ask you for that later on down the track you are going to tell me to pay $1500 for any extra 10 megabit servers.

Don't say you won't cause thats what your people have told me.

Christ last week I tried to get a quote on a basic server with 2 megabits for $400 and you said you couldn't do it, you said you couldn't do 5 megabits for $650. You wanted to charge me through the ass for it. I can't grow on a host that rapes when with pricing like that i'm amazed big programs are with you but I guess they secured a "special deal" with you when they moved to you.

Love to do business with national-net there speed & support is kickass, take this deal if you want 10 megabits of premium quality bandwidth but don't expect to pay anything less than $1500 when you want to grow with your service

Pretty crappy to see other people come into this thread and solicit business.

As for my complaints, I get 576 per day, by 6am. But thats not on National Net.

read the first post again.... :thumbsup

Exactly. This is why I don't understand why people would come on this thread and dog Nat Net when they don't know the whole situation. I've heard nothing but good things about them and what Lenny said about their email policy is what any good host would... but there's only a handful of truly good hosts.

driven ring me up? lots of big adult customers are on our network 213 228 0060 or email [email protected]

either or, its up to you, shoot me an e-mail to discuss burstable rates and options...again, i'll be in and out all weekend so please be patoent if i do not respond immediately

We at VibeHosting.com can do 10mbps uncapped (100mbit burstable) on 95 percentile for $395/mo, no setup fee, and ~$50 per mbit overage. This is on a P4 2.4GHz server.

Spam? Hmmm!

I can definitely vouch for that. I've used nat-net for almost four years and I don't think it's ever taken them more than 20 minutes to reply to one of my work orders, and I've opened LOTS of work orders.

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.