[thelist] Too good to be true?

Nicholas Dunham ndunham1 at pacbell.net
Fri Jun 8 14:14:48 CDT 2001


An update on my inquiry into ACS DataNet and Escalade Networks:

I emailed a list of questions to the sales departments of both companies. I
sent exactly the same list to both, with questions about their uplinks,
their pricing plans, the default configuration on the servers, available
options, etc. I also asked both about the similarities between their
offerings, pointing out that the similarities are too great to be
coincidence, and asking whether they're owned by the same parent company.
The results:

All messages to sales at acsdatanet.com bounced. So did messages to
support at acsdatanet and info at acsdatanet. Not a good sign.

A message sent two days ago to sales at escaladenet.com has gone unanswered
thus far. I sent another this morning, with carbon copies to
support at escaladenet.com and mail at escaladenet.com. No response thus far. Not
a good sign.

I thought about calling them, as well, but decided it wouldn't be necessary.
A web host that can't be bothered to answer emailed sales inquiries in a
timely manner (or in the case of ACS DataNet, even configure the email
servers correctly) won't be getting any business from me. Now, I used to be
an internet tech myself. I don't need someone to hold my hand. But I'd like
to know there's someone in the office, at least.

So I'm still looking for a dedicated host -- not necessarily as cheap as the
above-mentioned offerings (though that would be nice), but as cheap as I can
get. Colocation would be fine, too, if it's anywhere even vaguely near
Sacramento (even San Francisco would work). Anyone got any leads? I've been
using my own FreeBSD box on a DSL line, but Pacific Bell can't seem to make
my DSL stay up consistently -- it goes out about twice a day, on average,
and although all it takes to bring it back is to reset the DSL modem, I'm
not always there to do so in a timely manner. The 128k upload speed is also
a limitation I could live without.

Thank you all for the suggestions I received, and for all the tips I've
gleaned from this list over the past few months.

-- Nicholas






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