Yes later today (Wednesday) is fine. :thumbsup I split my time between LA and DC and I will be out of the DC region for the next few weeks starting this weekend. I wouldn't mind meeting up in your office and then seeing your space in Equinix and S&D (don't feel like seeing your 1275K if that is OK with you). :)

He also needs to learn meetings in this business are held in strip clubs, not 10x10 conference rooms with white boards.

But hey, thats a typical rookie mistake.

Haha. that seals the deal he's from mainstream :P

OK, great I'm scheduled to be there in a few hours. You better be willing to negotiate! I'm hoping for some discounts on your current promotion (get closer to your last promotion). See you soon adultbandwidth! :)

Wow I'm sure he is excited to earn your business ans all you want is for him to lose money but as long as your happy...LOL Just think if he can gat a ton of proplr on that deal he can file for bankruptcy even sooner.:2 cents:

I'm glad to meet new people in the area and show them around our facilities. I'm looking forward to meeting you soon. As far as pricing, this promotion is already heavily discounted. Regardless, we'll talk more about pricing later.

Don't worry, I'll be sure that he understands our support policies. :)

strip club anyone?

Heh, well, you *did* want to see our office after all...

Russ,

It was great meeting you the other day. It was also very interesting to see your data facilities and how great it was to see the size of your company and your redundancy at your hosting facilities.
Also THANKS for giving me that 10% discount! :thumbsup
It also felt great to see that Inforelay has the TopLayer IDS / IPS 5500/1000 devices to fight DDOS attacks. I'm not getting that protection right now but it is nice to know that it is possible. :winkwink:

Just so everyone knows Russ gave me a 10% off on the offer me mentioned in this posting since I paid a year upfront. Great for me since I'm putting it all on this year's expenses. :)

And... just to correct the other guys (obivously competitors) on this thread that said he was a one man shop....
When I walked into the office there was an office administrator at the front desk and I counted at a minimum 8 other employees other than Russ (couldn't really tell since they are actually busy and dealing with stuff and some were walking around).

At the Ashburn facility they had a cage of 5 racks (maybe 4) which is all mainly their routers, switches, and some systems. These were non-locking cabs so obviously only Inforelay staff had access to this.
They also had many many (well over 20 racks) in the Equinix "shared" cages. These are cages that are locking cabs that employees can obviously get 24/7 access to.
Equnix ashburn is a hell of a facility by the way! Free hot chocolate!:thumbsup :winkwink:

Their S&D Reston facility was also impressive and Inforelay is BY FAR the largest "reseller" in that place. :thumbsup There was a couple of companies that had more space but they were primarily government clients or large corporations. Of resellers Inforelay is the largest by far in S&D. They had over 10 locking cabs and then another 14 that were non-locking in cages.

Another interesting thing that I found out (when I was talking to other guys in the lobby when Russ had to take a phone) is that Inforelay is the ONLY reseller in S&D Reston that actually has redundant connections (I think one to Equinix Ashburn and then to a direct data provider in that facility). All of the other resellers in that place are working off a single connection to Ashburn Equinix. In fact they all share the "same" fiber strand to Equinix Ashburn. :Oh crap So there is Inforelay / Russ and then everyone else. So I would consider all of the rest of them "poo-poo". :2 cents:

I'm sorry to say But my company is in this building as well and we total 15 racks of space, we Also have redundant connections from various other people in this building as well, we don't own the fiber but we are redundant with other providers who have their own fiber into this building.

Not sure who you talked to but pretty sure PTP has a redundant pair as well going back to ashburn Equinix.

And i'm pretty sure inforelay does not own 100% of that fiber they split it with a company calle davi who also controls fiber to other datacenters in the region.

Spudstr, that is very interesting and I apologize if I am wrong. :(
Regarding number of racks it does not matter really. But in "size" Inforelay still seems a lot larger than you since they had more than 15 (but that does not really matter). How many employees do you have? Would you mind a visit to your office as well? I am looking for someone that has a good precense in this area all of the time.

Regarding the fiber connects.....
I was told the other company (PTP if that is what their name is) does NOT have a redundant loop and I actually saw their cage (I believe it is in the first bay as you walk in). Now I did see only two fiber drops there.... So what connection do you have to this provider (PTP)? Do you have one of those FE connections or do you have one of those fibers? I'm not sure if I would be interested in a provider with only one FE connection.
So either they are single connected to Ashburn with one fiber drop and you have the other.
Or they do have redundant fiber connects to Asburn and you only have a FE connection.
Please explain what you have. Don't BS me Spudstr, I will have a access card and I will be back there in a couple weeks. I don't mind verifying everything that you have there and reporting back to GFY.

Maybe when I'll be back in the next couple of weeks I can tour your office and you can show me what you have in S&D Reston. Where is your office located? Inforelay's felt closer to Ashburn Equinix but they said their techs are either in the facilities or can get to the facilities pretty quickly.

Russ took me out to Champs, so if you want to upstage that please feel free! :1orglaugh

Regarding the fiber to Inforelay. Russ was very up-front with Inforelay's connections. He said they are splitting the "dark fiber" with a sole bandwidth provider (did not mention the name though). But this bandwidth provider is "not" a shared or colocation company reseller. Is this wrong?

So my original post is still correct. All of the other resellers are still going through this other provider (PTP as you say) and Russ (and this other company) have another fiber run to Ashburn. So for clients like us there is Inforelay and all of the rest. :pimp

PLEASE correct me with anything that I am stating wrong and I look forward to a meeting in the next couple of weeks.
I did just sign up for some stuff with Inforelay but I can always use other providers that have excellent support and great services.:thumbsup

oh shit.... presense is how you spell it!

PTP has dual pairs of fiber, one is not lit the other is, We have a 10GE connection to PTP, not an FE, and we have a single gigE going to cogent and within 2008 will be upgrading to a 10GE with them as well, so currently 11Gbps total and thats our network. Weather PTP has yet to run their second pair from the MMC from abovenet that is their decision.

If we were still in Ashburn at equinix we would be direct instead of going through PTP, I have know the owner of PTP for a few years and I knew him when we were both at MCI/UUnet since Brian was head of the router security team for UUnet I trust him and his network and have no problems buying transit from his company he engineers his traffic well with his 5 tier 1 providers and we get great speeds to our customers at all points of the world. We provide managed services and this is what we do and we let Brian and his team manage their network since thats what they do best and it is their business and mine is do manage the clusters we have.

As far as my company and my staff we have no central office and I have part time employees that work for me. You would be surprised at companies that have no central office, would you believe me if I told you that Nlayer's network does 100Gbps of transit across their network and they have no central office? Me and my team work great since we all live in the area.

As far as splitting the fiber with another company they split the fiber with Avi who holds rights to provide/sell transport to other people from ashburn. they do this to s&d vienna/tysons/tyco road as well and I think they might even do it to 365main in chantilly. None the less its a single 10GE wave just like what PTP does, only difference is PTP can utilize the entire 10GE to themselfs. Reston isn't very large and is pretty much out of space, more like out of power and cooling for larger circuits.

Unless Inforelay bought that top layer device from Steve/Tiggee that device is not inforelays but might have use to it if its the one in Reston and that model only supports 500Mbps. How do I know this? a good friend of mine who is also a customer of PTP's sold this device to Steve/tiggee.

Feel free to contact me on ICQ and i'd be happy to show you our setup in Reston. As far as upstaging Russ for food Champs is the popular watering hole around here I meet with a few customers there since its literary a block a way. Though if you like chineese/thai Bigbowl across the street on the parkway is much better than champs.

I'm always up for meeting with people local to the area. Regardless you can contact me at zak at yellowfiber dot net or via ICQ.

Spudstr,

The TopLayer 5500/1000 does do a gigabit. This is what I saw, do not say that I did not see it. :321GFY
That is a $80k device... you can call them yourself.

The Toplayer 5500/500 does 500 Mbps.... There is also a 5500/100 that does 100 Mbps.

So how many full time employees do you have? Is it enough to provide 24/7 coverage? I went to your website and it looks like you are based in West Virginia, is that where you are located?

Spudstr,

You first said that PTP had this redundant loop and now you are saying that they do not.
Now you are stating that you have a 10 GE connection through PTP to ashburn, but unless PTP is using NONE of that fiber that is impossible. Are you saying that you are PTP's only customer? Why wouldn't you just get your own dark fiber? :(

Well i'm telling you the unit Tom sold Tiggee was the 500Mbps model.

And no no longer in WV, now in Reston VA, in the town center to be exact. As far as 24/7 coverage we monitor the network and have emergency contact for customers incase or problems. we also monitor every server 24/7 and pages are sent out to a number of problem. We do not state we provide 24/7 tech support anywhere on our site.

If you want an exact break down sure, I personally live in the town center 4 minutes across the reston park way, Alex lives in fairfax station ~15 mins away, greg lives down in ashburn ~10 minutes away down the toll road and Jimmy lives out in manassas.

Anything else you would like to know about me and my company? We host some reputable people on this forum and have had zero problems with their support or services.

Yup, we have a 10GE connection to PTP's switch there in reston, they do have a 10GE line back to ashburn, we occupy about 900-1100Mbps of his 10GE circuit and his other customers do however much they do.

I would venture to invest in my own dark fiber to ashburn however Abovenet/MFN no longer sells dark fiber + the space/power/cooling moratorium placed in switch & data reston has everying at a stall (15-20 racks more left in this building) so why spend the 10k/month + the 20k install for fiber and not be able to expand? If i wanted 3 paths back/out of the building I could do it but its not needed. Northern virginia is stuck on power and is a rather large problem.

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

he fuckin brought you in the interrogation room? hahaha

but hell if pr0 and jim says hes legit im pretty sure he is. :2 cents: :thumbsup

see location

i approve

It's obviously not the same model then. :(
But since you wanted to correct me here what sort of DDOS protection do you have available? I know I'm not paying Inforelay for it, but it's nice to know that it is an option.:winkwink:



Yes, I think we can meet up for dinner in the next few weeks. But I really like to have 24/7 support, what are you support hours?
I'm always willing to look at other vendors and I am usually surprised.:thumbsup

Inforelay was a big surprise! I personally like knowing that there is a staff and office since it seems more permanent. If you are offering managed services I would think you would need that. I don't know much (or really anything) about NLayer but from looking at their site they are just a bandwidth provider. As long as you have some good guys you can manage routers from anywhere. With managed hosting I would think a full time staff at a central location would be easier to manage (unless everyone is paid hourly of course).

My only other question is why you are promoting your own company so much on this thread instead of just starting your own thread.:(

Just old fashion network engineering for mitigating attacks.

Support normal business hours or if you see me online I'm always willing to do things. I am the owner this is my baby as i'm sure any small business owner would agree with so if i'm online and active i'm always willing to help out. However 90% of our dedicated/VPS customers are unmanaged if they need a reboot they can do it through their control panel. All our managed/higher end customers know and understand how our support works and have zero problems with it

Why am I still active in this thread? See post #35 it has still yet to be answered. I don't appreciate it when someone tells me that Oh.. yeah we were on tour adn we asked them where their second router was and they showed them my 6509 and claimed it to be theres. And yet no one has responded to it. And it wasn't a customer who told me that, it was the S&D manager who told me that when he was with inforelay giving a tour the customer asked inforelay where it was and they pointed to ours when they got to the back.

I don't like it when people lie/change words around on public forums, I've always been upfront with customers but when I see someone post/say something that isn't true I'll call them out on it, I do not like being lied to and you probably do not either.

Were not a large company but were not exactly a small company we hold our own and do what we do well, If you are not happy with that then you don't have to host with us, 99% of our business is referral generated. I choose not to have the overhead of an office, since most of the time would be spent at a datacenter anyway there isn't a need for a central location except for eye candy.

did i mention, see location?

Spudstr, I'm sorry to ask more questions.....
But if you are using 900 to 1100 on PTP. And they are single connected to Ashburn. And you only have 1 Gbps to Cogent (which is fine for a backup). What happens if PTP goes down? Are you totally down?
I know you say you are going to upgrade to 10 GE with Cogent next year.... But right now it looks like you are single homed since your other provider can not handle your bandwidth....
Am I missing something here?:(

It looks like you are running on a single strand of fiber until your second 10 GE gets lit.....

I have to run to LA now.... Everyone have a great Xmas!

Yup were at a tipping point where we'd be slightly oversubscribing the cogent line incase this was to ever happen. if PTP goes down we are not totaly down we still have cogent if we don't upgrade to 10ge with cogent we have an upgrade with cogent in a month for a second gige which we would run, then we'd have zero congestion problems. were not single homed so you can stop trying to proove that. We don't have a lot of cogent usage at the moment so the single cogent line would handle most of our traffic until next month.

If you are unaware of "cogents" rules and policy it follows like this
200+Mbps gets you a gigE
anything less you get a FE
2Gbps+ you get a 10GE... nothing less
So splitting cogent traffic on two interfaces until a 2ge commit is reached for a 10GE circuit. Lots of providers will let you do a 10GE on 1ge+ commits.

Happy holidays.

I wouldnt host me girlfriends pajama party at dis place why takes a chance go wit da best in da biz

da webair crew
da natnet crew
or da split guys

Most of dem match it anyhow BOOYAKASHA!!!

YOOOO to me peeps haves a merry merry happiness on the holidays !

peace out!:smilie_we:smilie_we:smilie_we

Zak,

I did not respond publicly because I don't like to say anything about our competitors. Your potential customers can make our own decisions, and ours can do the same. I responded to your e-mail privately, to which you responded, basically ignoring what I said about your comment, and simply saying:

Rob (the site manager of S&D) has never even been standing near me while I've offered tours to clients, so I don't see how he could have said such a thing. Rob and I know each other well, and I'm sure he wouldn't make anything up. I'll be sure to ask him about this the next time I see him.

We have a lot of space at that facility and I've never claimed that your space (or your 6509) is ours. If you have 2x6509's, how could I explain that anyway? I tell all customers that we have two routers at a location -- would it really make sense that I'd show them your cage where there are two additional routers (in addition to the stuff I've already shown them in our cage)?

The fact is, we have two routers, though one is a much smaller router since Reston's a fairly low traffic site for us. Most of our high-traffic customers on the East Coast are in Ashburn. Our two SUP720-3BXLs in Ashburn are more than capable of routing for Reston if needed, and the secondary router could easily handle several gigabits (using default routes through Ashburn and our dark fiber if needed).

Honestly I'm really just confused by your behavior. You're accusing me of making things up, and then you're e-mailing me and asking to buy a few hundred megabits of our bandwidth in S&D (you've been e-mailing me on Thursday and Friday about this). I wouldn't think that you'd want to buy bandwidth from us if you actually think so poorly of me and of us as a company. I've been nothing but forthright with you and our potential customers.

I respect our competitors, I've been nothing but nice to you, and I've even helped you to mount your equipment when you didn't have other help. I'm not going to get involved in any sort of arguing match here with you, nor do I wish to listen to any more comments or claims of what the "S&D site manager" supposedly told you. That's it.

Finally, I apologize if your customers have to come to you asking for you to match our pricing. For the record, that was a very limited-time promotional offer, and the number of servers which we offered at the special pricing was limited as well. I would advise your customers to stay with you if they've been with you for a while and they are happy with your service -- I'm sure you do a very good job.

To jonm76, I encourage you to meet with Zak and go out to lunch with him some time. I'm sure he runs a quality shop and it never hurts to distribute your business amongst multiple companies.