hosting issues
This site’s been around a few years, mostly as my personal playground and as a way to update my friends and family with what’s going on in my life via my blog. I bought my domain name (stilldavid.com) from godaddy, who’ve been easy enough to use, and selected network eleven as my hosting provider simply because they were cheap and offered lots of storage. I’ve never had issues with them until recently.
I’ve had a few support requests over my years at networkeleven, all of which were closed within 24 hours by their support staff. Last week I as having trouble creating a new subdomain on my account, a problem that I could not fix myself. I shot an email to their support address and awaited a response. And waited. After a couple days, I manually created a support request in their online database. And still waited.
A week and a half later, I still hadn’t heard back which made me nervous, because it was a bit of a pressing matter on my end. But this is where it gets interesting.
Doing some generic research, I came across another hosting provider called Network Redux. A similar enough name to Network Eleven to raise an orange flag, but I didn’t think twice until I saw this page on their website:
I’d seen that before… on Network Eleven’s site! Here’s a screenshot of Network Eleven’s site:
The similarities were striking. I ran a traceroute on each address:
traceroute to networkeleven.com (66.162.134.135), 64 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 132.241.253.129 (132.241.253.129) 2.022 ms 1.960 ms 1.781 ms
2 chi-misto-gig2.net.csuchico.edu (132.241.95.3) 2.433 ms 1.940 ms 1.957 ms
3 dc-cor-dc2--csuchico-egm.cenic.net (137.164.41.25) 3.793 ms 4.104 ms 3.669 ms
4 dc-sac-dc2--cor-dc2ge.cenic.net (137.164.22.154) 6.113 ms 6.506 ms 5.672 ms
5 dc-sac-dc1--dc2-p2p-1.cenic.net (137.164.40.100) 6.479 ms 6.503 ms 7.489 ms
6 dc-oak-dc1--csac-dc1-ge.cenic.net (137.164.22.110) 8.156 ms 7.884 ms 7.707 ms
7 dc-sfo-px1--oak-dc1-ge.cenic.net (137.164.22.203) 9.270 ms 8.174 ms 8.492 ms
8 peer-02.palo.twtelecom.net (198.32.175.111) 8.977 ms 9.120 ms 9.414 ms
9 core-01-so-1-0-0-0.okld.twtelecom.net (64.129.248.18) 10.200 ms 10.639 ms 10.120 ms
10 core-02-so-0-0-0-0.ptld.twtelecom.net (66.192.250.1) 37.084 ms 50.111 ms 24.478 ms
11 64-129-224-146.static.twtelecom.net (64.129.224.146) 26.002 ms 24.573 ms 24.565 ms
12 networkeleven.com (66.162.134.135) 24.250 ms 23.863 ms 24.381 ms
And:
traceroute to networkredux.com (64.128.80.35), 64 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 132.241.253.129 (132.241.253.129) 3.580 ms 1.932 ms 1.560 ms
2 chi-misto-gig2.net.csuchico.edu (132.241.95.3) 2.396 ms 2.305 ms 1.650 ms
3 dc-cor-dc2--csuchico-egm.cenic.net (137.164.41.25) 3.516 ms 3.514 ms 3.474 ms
4 dc-sac-dc2--cor-dc2ge.cenic.net (137.164.22.154) 5.685 ms 5.625 ms 5.830 ms
5 dc-sac-dc1--dc2-p2p-1.cenic.net (137.164.40.100) 115.363 ms 202.512 ms 204.504 ms
6 dc-oak-dc1--csac-dc1-ge.cenic.net (137.164.22.110) 7.620 ms 7.750 ms 7.846 ms
7 sfo-px1--oak-dc1-ge.cenic.net (198.32.251.227) 8.146 ms 8.676 ms 8.228 ms
8 peer-02.palo.twtelecom.net (198.32.175.111) 9.482 ms 9.180 ms 24.519 ms
9 core-01-so-1-0-0-0.okld.twtelecom.net (64.129.248.18) 10.212 ms 12.336 ms 10.955 ms
10 core-02-so-0-0-0-0.ptld.twtelecom.net (66.192.250.1) 24.324 ms 23.694 ms 24.639 ms
11 64-129-224-178.static.twtelecom.net (64.129.224.178) 24.271 ms 29.666 ms 26.148 ms
12 redux.networkredux.com (64.128.80.35) 25.663 ms 26.147 ms 26.205 ms
It looks like they’re in the same datacenter (on Time Warner Telcom’s network) in Portland, OR, and maybe even on the same rack. Something fishy indeed. The only difference I saw was that Network Redux had a phone number listed on their website.
I called and talked to the owner of the company who said that he used to be a 50% owner of Network Eleven but branched out his own company in 2004 (he didn’t say why). I told him about my issues with Network Eleven, and he said that he’s had a lot of customers switch over for the same reasons. He went further to say that if I had any legal trouble to be sure to let him know because the Attorney General in Oregon is building a case against Network Eleven.
Whoah. Time to change hosts!
So I spent a good part of yesterday evening moving all my stuff over to my MediaTemple account. I cleaned out a lot of stale files and deleted 21,929 SPAM comments from my database (about 17 megs of SQL data) in the move as well.
So I guess I learned my lesson through all this, whatever that may be. Now lets see if there’s anyone at Network Eleven to cancel my account…
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