Why Uptime Guarantees are Ridiculous
Last week ServInt released an updated SLA that covers all of our products, from VPS to dedicated to cloud. And like everyone else, we laid out the “uptime guarantee” for network, servers, support, etc. This guarantee, though, is simply a threshold, if your service dips below which, you may request hosting credits.
What’s ridiculous is the way some hosts – and some industry “experts” – glibly refer to uptime guarantees as if they were some sort of literal guarantee of future performance: “Wow, they’re offering five nines in their SLA,” “Did you hear about the host that guarantees 100% uptime?”
Uptime guarantees don’t promise what percentage of the time your server will remain online without network disruption, and they are not evidence of future network performance.
An uptime guarantee is – no matter which host you look at – simply a promise of what refund the host offers customers if there is a network outage.
And every network—even the most robust, redundant networks—at some point will experience an outage. Our last network outage was in 2004.
The question is not: Will my host have an outage in the future? They are: How likely is it that my host will be the next to experience an outage? and, How quickly and efficiently will they respond and fix any problem that occurs? Read more
ServInt is Fighting For Your Constitutional Rights
This week, ServInt was one of a dozen hosts to send a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee to support updating the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, along with the i2Coalition which coordinated the hosting industry’s participation.
The government needs a warrant based on probable cause to search our mail or the documents in our homes. It’s one of our most fundamental rights, guaranteed in the 4th Amendment of the Bill of Rights. But because of this outdated law — the ECPA — which passed in 1986 before the commercial Internet even existed, law enforcement only need a subpoena (issued without a judge’s approval) to read emails that have been opened or are more than 180 days old. Under the ECPA, communications stored on a server over 180 days are said to be abandoned. This rationale has allowed the government to demand access to older electronic communications without a warrant issued by a judge.
That’s right… the government says it doesn’t need a warrant to search through your old email.
This year, Congress is finally considering updating ECPA. ServInt plans to directly engage in this much overdue process, offering its perspective and expertise in dealing with 18 years of serving customers online and dealing responsibly with law enforcement information requests.
We know that aiding law enforcement in responsible ways doesn’t need to come at the expense of our fundamental Constitutional rights. ServInt will be carrying that message, along with other i2Coalition members, up to Capitol Hill this year.
Stay tuned to the ServInt Source where we’ll keep you updated on the status of this and other important Internet legislation.
Image by g4114is.The Two Kinds of Safe Harbor
At ServInt we are dedicated to the privacy of our customers and to the creation of sensible legislation that supports our customers but still empowers law enforcement in ways that make sense in the 21st century. It’s one of the reasons we work so hard with i2Coalition to make sure that we influence public policy in a way that’s pro-Internet innovation. It’s one of the reasons we are focused on the reform of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA).
When we talk to our customers about their privacy, or when they reference our privacy policy, we tend to mention the phrase Safe Harbor. Only there are two important things in web hosting called Safe Harbor, so there sometimes ends up being some confusion about what is being discussed. We thought we’d clarify it for you. Read more
Education as Advocacy
Anyone following the CISPA debate closely will know that in spite of the hoopla, as early as last year, Obama promised to veto the legislation should it pass Congress.
So why then would I, as part of the i2 Coalition, head up to Capitol Hill for a day of meetings with Congress as part of Internet Advocacy Day?
The answer is still CISPA, or more specifically, the culture in Congress that created CISPA.
Is CISPA The Next SOPA/PIPA?
The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act is coming. If you haven’t heard as much about CISPA as you did about SOPA and PIPA, you will soon. CISPA needs to change, and we need your help to change it.
CISPA is a ‘cybersecurity’ bill that exists in the U.S. House of Representatives, and it’s only a matter of time before a counterpart appears in the Senate. Last week we explained a bit about the bill and what it does here on the ServInt Source. Prior versions of CISPA were as odious as PIPA and SOPA. The Internet community needs to be vigilant that the next version isn’t as well. CISPA is not the same bill as SOPA and PIPA, but it has the potential to be just as big an affront to your civil liberties.
CISPA confuses access to information with knowledge of that information. Read more
Internet Advocacy Day on Capitol Hill
Wednesday, February 27th I am heading to Washington D.C. to help teach Congress how the Internet works!
The organization I helped build last year, the i2Coalition, is holding an event and meeting with Congresspeople on the Hill. Members of AiNET, Arvixe, Black Lotus, Cheval Capital, Firehost, FortressITX, Gandi.net, Green Olive Tree, Handy Networks, Hedgehog Hosting, Jumpline, LeaseWeb USA, MediaTemple, OpenXChange, ScienceLogic, ServInt, Studio 1337, and WiredTree are all attending and participating. Details of the event are here.
On Tuesday night at 8PM at Ping Pong Dim Sum we will be holding a kick-off party, and I’d like to invite you – our ServInt Source readers! I named the event “Celebrate the Innovation Economy” and it is hosted in conjunction with a group that advocates for startups called Engine Advocacy, and is sponsored by CEA. Here are details.
Click on the links above if you’d like to attend either event.
Hope to see you there!
-Christian
Christian Dawson is the COO of ServInt.ServInt at 18
Saturday, ServInt turned 18 years old. That’s a lifetime in this industry – basically the entire life of the commercial Internet. I am writing to specifically congratulate Reed Caldwell on the accomplishment of building an organization from scratch that now, if it were a person, would be considered an adult.
I wanted to write this article because I’ve been here since the very beginning, watching ServInt grow from an idea Reed had while in his college dorm room at the University of Richmond. I was also attending UR where I was one of his closest friends, and even then a close adviser and sounding board for his ideas, which at times sounded crazy to me. But sometimes crazy ideas work, and are what drive us forward!
Reed was passionate about the way the Internet was exploding back in 1995, and about giving people the tools to build their ideas on this new, exciting platform. He was so passionate that he decided he was going to lay it all on the line to start his idea for a company. Read more
CES Driving Innovation and Internet Freedom
Editor’s Note: This article was originally posted by Christian Dawson on the blog of the Internet Infrastructure Coalition.Every year CES hits Las Vegas and every year it is huge and showcases an awesome display of innovation. This year’s 2013 International CES was no exception, but despite that, like clockwork, before the show even starts, every year a certain group of skeptical bloggers proclaim CES dead. They are wrong. You can see that on the floor with technology that blows me away every year (the MakerBot is incredible!).
You can see that nowhere more than in the Innovation Policy Summit. I was delighted to participate on the “Washington and the Startup Economy: First Do No Harm” panel with Senator Jerry Moran (R-KS) moderated by Larry Downes, which is embedded below. Read more
All About Hosting Discounts
The following is an excerpt from a just-published white paper: All You Need To Know About Hosting Discounts and Promo Codes.
“There’s no such thing as a free lunch.”
The wag who coined that phrase was obviously trying to illustrate the truism that you can’t get something for nothing. In the world of web hosting, as elsewhere, this is certainly true. But in the world of hosting, you can frequently get a little more than the next guy — for no additional cost — if you know where to look.
Many hosting companies offer special deals and promotional packages to entice new customers to buy, and existing customers to buy more, of their products. Broadly speaking, these programs can be broken down into three categories:
- “Promo coupons” or codes
- Affiliate marketing programs
- Multi-server discounts
To help you find the best deal, we’ll examine each of these discount programs in detail, explaining how they typically work, what their respective good and bad points are and most importantly, how you can take advantage of them to maximize the value of your hosting service provider relationship. Read more
The Best Questions to Ask a Web Host
Many readers of the ServInt Source are current and long-time customers. But for those of you who may have just found us — or have been reading for a while, but are not ServInt customers — this one’s for you.
We recently sat down with our sales team and were talking about some of the questions prospective customers ask before they purchase a server. As you might guess, some questions are better than others if you want to really learn something about a web host.
The first question that came up was from our Director of Sales, Devon Rutherford. Without hesitation, he said that the best question a customer can ask is, “Which package is best for me?” But that came with some qualifications: Read more
