Slashdot Mirror

Heh.

Get a Linksys WRT54G for $89, and update the firmware to 3.03.
http://elvis.netmar.com/~will/qos.JPG

Ok, here you go:

http://elvis.netmar.com/~will/geeks.7z

I can't host that forever, I do have a limit on my bandwidth, but I'll leave it there for a week or two. It's going to take about 35 more minutes to finish uploading, but it should be done by 10:30 EST June 20.

~Will

There really isn't much need for 2 NIC's. I'm not sure why a bunch of people think it's a killer feature. For starters, a gigabit NIC is capable of transfering in real world terms about 100MBytes/sec, which is faster than the real world performance of most hard drive read/writes (1 GBit/sec = 125MBytes/sec, minus overhead). I have no idea why these $140 motherboards are coming out with 2 Gigabit nics.

In addition, one NIC can up 254 IP addresses (if I remember correctly). At my last job, we had a SPARC box with 3 NICs in it, but that's because it was left over from before the days of HTTP1.1 and name-based virtual hosting, and it had 700ish IPs upped on it (you should have seen the init scripts).

A lot of people say 2 nics would be good for a firewall/router. I don't see that, either. Why not just up an external and an internal IP on one NIC and set all the other computers to the internal IP address scheme, with a subnet of [not enough ips to get to the internet on their own] and set the gateway to the firewall?

Whatever, it's just one of those wierd things i've noticed and don't really understand. Outside of high-end server environments, I just don't see the need for more than one NIC. And even in high end server environments, failover is an odd excuse for more than one NIC - I'd suspect the motherboard would go bad far more often than *only one* NIC would go bad.

Having said that, at my old job, we did have one machine with 2 nics that we were using both of - one was the internet connection, and the other was connected to a 10-baseT hub where our SNMP-capable UPS's were plugged in. It was basically listning and sniffing/grepping packets to alert us of power failures off-hours. Also, my Windows XP desktop has 2 NICs (daughter card and onboard), but that's only because the daughter card is a realtek 8139, which has native driver support, and I was too lazy to find the motherboard CD to get the driver last time I wiped and reloaded.

~Wx

We stopped using some blacklist when I was working at netmar a couple of years ago. I remember it being a huge pain for customers.

Of course, we had been saving all our spam since like 1997, and when we fed all the spam (30,000 messages?) into a bayesian filter, it caught most spam. Also, we still used ORDB, as they tend to only target specific kinds of problems (obviously, Open Relay Data Base). That caught a lot, also.

Really, it goes back to the eternal tradeoff for any computer system - ease of use traded for security. Always.

Strike a compromise - don't be overzealous, but take reasonable precautions.

~Will

Look at all the bad press coming about GeorgeWBush.com.

The supposed reason for them blocking their site? Hacking attempts that they could not deal with.

A few weeks ago, someone on slashdot ran Nessus on Kerry's and Bush's websites. The summary: Bush's website uses Microsoft IIS and had 44 unpatched vulnerabilities. Kerry's used Apache and had 2 vulnerabilities.

Do you think that the TCO for Bush's website is lower, figuring in all the bad press? I don't think so.

Actually, the best way is to just use Disc 1, get the base installation, and then do the rest via network (assuming you're on broadband - I shudder to think what an installation would be like over dialup).


Where I work, we have a local 100Mbit Debian stable mirror. When ever we install debian on a customer's machine, or one of our own, we obviously set the apt-sources to use the local. It's usually faster than installing off of multiple CD's (all I've ever seen is debian CD1, I wasn't even aware that there were 13 of them). Interesting to think that, for a lot of things, a 48x cdrom is slower than ethernet... but whatever. Plus we get lots of "Hey, what the heck mirror am I using, it's fast!?!?", and it makes us smile.

HTTP is the way to go for local mirrors, by the way, especially when getting multiple packages (like, say, "base system"?). That is, you're using vsftp, because you obviously care about security, and you're also too lazy to set up something that tells vsftp (or is it xinetd) to shut up, no that's not someone DDoSing the connection, those are real transfers. And by you, I mean me.

~Will

Right Here.

We're not giving them anything. We officially have no opinion about the legality of their claim, but if it tells you anything, I host pink fairies, home of the bounty hunt.

Officially, we have no plans to enter into any business partnership with the SCO group.

~Will

I'm going to go ahead and point out my UPS modding thread from yesterday, complete now with additional instructions, a few pictures, and a hand-drawn diagram of how to do an APC SmartUPS.

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=98025&cid=8374 299.

Pictures here:
elvis.netmar.com/~will/ups/

I'm going to write this up more formally, and at least put it in my /. journal, and mabey make a decent little webpage with instructions and pics and stuff. Mabey I'll submit it to /..

Anyway, this is a great geek hardware hacking project. If you have any questions on how to do it, let me know. I always read replies.

~Will

Oh, I always check replies =)

I'm kind of a little hesitant to say this, but Netmar did this for quite a while. Some might see it as ghetto, we saw it as innovative and cost-effective.

The 135 amp-hour batteries didn't last all that long, probably 2 years. But, it might have been because of the nature of the battery and the usage. The UPS's send a little charge all the time to the batteries, and you have to make sure they're filled up enough, but not too much, which takes practice. But, at any rate, marine deep-cycle batteries cost about $60 from somewhere like walmart or costco. A Die-Hard one will probably set you back ~$100.

By comparason, a while back, we switched to rackmount UPS's with custom-wired external batteries, and we use 40 amp-hour sealed gel lead-acid batteries, which seem to never need any help as far as taking care fo them. These are about $60 each, and obviously are far less amperage (read: time for backup), but even 40 amps is far more than the standard 12 in a rack mount UPS or 5-8 amp-hours in a small UPS.

So many people have had a posative reaction to this that I've taken some pictures of this process, using Trip-lite BCPro's, and put them here: elvis.netmar.com/~will/ups/.

I have lots to do at the moment, but I'll get back to this thread in a bit and explain or answer more questions. But, yes, this is very workable.

~Will

Not according to my relatively old, but still useful, ports list. (Credits to Jason/Play from #irchelp on irc2.att.net and darkbot)

~Will

Run a program that generates graphs, and display the graphs on a couple of Sun IPX's (can't use IPC's because no color framebuffer) in the front office. We use IPX's to display this stuff in color, and we use rpc.rstatd on IPC's (since the graphs don't need color) for monitoring load/cpu/packets/hdd for all the computers on the network.

Just run an ethernet cable up front, and put a hub, a few of those machines, and a few 17" sun monitors up, and you'll be good as gold.

It may not be exactly what you want, but you can get (at a glance) a good view of what's going on in your network, without having to ssh to the firewall or walk back to the NOC. We have the monitors up on those little wall-mount TV stands so that we can just glance up at them.

~Will

At Netmar, we have an ongoing debate about whether or not to implement a specific rule in sendmail's config file.

It takes the hostname of the server that the email was received from, and checks to make sure that the hostname has a valid reverse DNS zone configured.

This honestly stops a lot of spam. Exceptions being exchange servers set to world relay, but the amount of spam is drastically cut down.

What sucks is all the little mom and pop ISP's and offices with their own internet who don't know how to configure a reverse zone. It gets a lot of false posatives.

We still haven't found a solution. And we've reached the 50% mark for spam.

~Will

Heh.

Interesting note, at Netmar last year, we were doing spring cleaning, and we unearthed an old sun system, the kind that looks like a dorm fridge. Well, to our surprise, it had a quad proc hypersparc board on it's backplane. We were thrilled to death, so we immediately tried to turn it on. Only problem? Even after multiple years of not being in service, the PROM still had a password on it to make it boot.

What was the solution? After poking around google groups forever, we came across a page that had a tip on how to reset PROM passwords for Sun machines. Your mileage may vary, but what solved it for us was to unplug the prom during bootup, turn computer off, wait 5 minutes, plug PROM back in, and *bam* no password!

Just goes to show... If you unplug things that aren't hotpluggable, the terrorists haven't already become our overlords, or something.

~Will

It had better run freaking fast. Virginia Tech has had an OC-3 for at least 6 years, and I think they're upgrading to hook into network virginia's bigger pipes.

For those out of the loop, network virginia is a partnership between verizon (local loops), sprint (borders and pipes), and Virginia tech (expertise and tech support). A few years ago, they had 2 OC-3's from Northern Va to roanoke, 1 to richmond, and 1 from roanoke to richmond. Their updated network topology map can be found by clicking here. The bottom one is the latest one. At any rate, they've got multiple OC-12's running from Nova to Roanoke, mainly because of VT. Tech may already be hooked into the OC-12's, i'm not sure.

Also, I'm not sure about how much will be lost in clustering, but according to the CT article today, the dual 2.0 Ghz G-5 can pull 14 teraflops by it's self. If we're getting 1100 of them, say, drop ~10% for overhead, that would still put us up at 14000 teraflops, which is ahead of ascii white and behind los alamos.

Also: regarding power requirements and all of that - we have several state of the art facilities on campus for this kind of stuff, including the VT Corporate research center and Torgersen hall (home of the center for advanced computing and where we keep all the fun VR rooms and stuff). There's a power plant on campus. We never lost power when I lived in a dorm, not during snow storms or huge thunderstorms or anything. It supplies power for most of blacksburg, too. Shameless plug, but that's one selling point for the company where I work, netmar, because we get our power from the VT power plant, and it's about 2.5 blocks away, we hardly ever lose power for more than 2 minutes, so we haven't had to put our generators to work in forever. Nowadays, we just test them with the remote start to make sure they're working, and to scare people that are hanging around the generator hut.

Anyway, VT has no problems finding a place for these things to go, and will have no problem providing power for them. Climate control should be no problem, either. For starters, it's easy to cool things in blacksburg, cause it hasn't been above 100 degrees in 100 years here.

Some people in my econ class today were talking about why are we doing it, and what's it going to be used for. Really, I think we're doing it to get grant money and sponsorships/funding, because with the economic situation in VA, we're scrambling to find money. We've had to drop teachers without replacing them and cut back on services all over (no more trash cans in dorm hallways, you have to take your own trash outside, can't afford the maintinance staff). Also, the Vet school will get a lot of use out of it. That's the "virginia-maryland regional college of veteranary medicine". They're looking for ways to cure problems with small bacteria instead of drugs (i'm not clear on the particulars, that's the impression i got). They're going to try and track what happens to something when it's introduced into an animal or something. Anyway, they'll use it, as will VT's engineering school, which, despite being tied for like 73rd on the list of top schools, and inexplicably 55 positions behind UVA, is an excellent program and produces excellent engineers.

~Will

What's wrong with telnet?

Ok, rephrase, other than the plain text transmission, what's wrong with telnet?

Along the same line of thinking, if you want to get rid of telnet, do you want to get rid of FTP? That's essentially what FTP is - unencrypted uname/pass auth. So, what's the difference?

We still support telnet at Netmar, because our users have telnet on their computers. Joe Blow, with his windows 98, can understand "start - run - telnet login.netmar.com". He may not understand "download putty, change to SSH, port 22, type in login.netmar.com, press connect", or be willing to deal with it.
We do, of course, provide documentation on how to do both:
http://guide.netmar.com/connect/command-line.html

But, seriously, telnet doesn't hurt anything. We don't allow it for root, our dedicated server customers must enable telnet for themselves (most of the time we don't even install it, or install it and leave it disabled).

It's the same kind of compromise as the Lindows article today: Security vs. speed. Telnet is fast, ssh is slow. Telnet is insecure, SSH is safer. FTP is fast, sftp is painfully slow.

Stop and think for a minute - All of this unix/linux/*nix/bsd/etc etc stuff that we all know and love is *old*. I mean, the basic premise is ancient, in computer terms. But, it has evolved with the changing times, and quite nicely. Just let it do it's thing, and phase things out when they are no longer useful. Telnet still has a use. IPv4 still has a use. Sendmail still has a use, regardless of what Bernstein may say.

I say, I don't want to give up 30 years of tradition every time something new comes out. Just go with the flow. Let it happen in it's own time.

~Wx

It's a good idea, but as long as there's a href link off the front page of /., your site will get hammered. Lots of people don't bother to read comments, and lots more don't read comments before clicking on link.

A lot of people have gotten into the habit of "click the link, read the comments while it loads".

Also, with mirroring, /. does have a bandwidth bill to pay.

But, boy do I wish this one had been mirrored. We're still getting slammed 6 hours later.

~Will
Systems Administrator
Netmar, inc

Sorry about the being slashdotted. We're working on getting that fixed.

I'm a server administrator at the webhosting company that hosts that page. Today (at 1AM) two of our five T-1's went down (Qwest appearantly had a cable cut - bah, force majure). Of all days for our network capacity to be decreased by 40%...

At any rate, we just turned up MaxClients, MinSpareServers, and MaxSpareServers in the apache config. We're going to start really hounding Qwest. We'll get it back up as soon as possible. It is accessable right now, but slow.

Again, apologies.

~Will
Server Administrator,
Netmar inc

Sorry about the being slashdotted. We're working on getting that fixed.

I'm a server administrator at the webhosting company that hosts that page. Today (at 1AM) two of our five T-1's went down (Qwest appearantly had a cable cut - bah, force majure). Of all days for our network capacity to be decreased by 40%...

At any rate, we just turned up MaxClients, MinSpareServers, and MaxSpareServers in the apache config. We're going to start really hounding Qwest. We'll get it back up as soon as possible. It is accessable right now, but slow.

Again, apologies.

~Will
Server Administrator,
Netmar inc

Netmar has a similar deal for $10 a month for 100 megs on shared Linux webhosting. Real shell, PHP, all that stuff. Responsive customer service, for example, their mail server was misconfigured to bounce null return paths, so I couldn't subscribe to sourceforge lists, they fixed it within a day of me pointing it out.

They might be what you are looking for. I use them personally for webhosting the links in my sig and URL, and for hosting my main email account. They do co-loc too, they have generator/UPS, all the standard stuff.

Netmar has good pricing...$10/Month - 100MB - Unlimited bandwidth

#!/bin/sh
fsck -y /dev/hda??

Regards,
Cengiz Akinli
Netmar, Inc. - Expert webhosting since 1994
http://netmar.com/

Mirror site up.

www.netmar.com/~will/lego

Disclaimers:
1.) Not my work, I don't claim any of it.
2.) I didn't get the .DAT files.
3.) I know it's not slashdotted yet, just preparing/ karma whoring.
4.) If it does get slashdotted, and everyone starts testing my load balancing, why not sign up for hosting at the same time? We're running a no setup fee promotion at the moment.

~Will

P.S. became friends with the :%s/JPG/jpg command - when I saved the images, the file extentions converted themselves to lowercase. God bless vi.

At least one person disagrees, there may be more I don't know of specifically. This one fella shopped us and rackshack and went there... at first. Two weeks later, he was back. Someone asked him why, and the answer did not describe pleasantries. In short, the impression I got was that rackshack's approach to customer service was something along the lines of, "There you go. Good luck!" He has not expressed any regret with his decision to switch to us (in fact he and his staff have made more than one compliment to us in email).

Regards,
Cengiz Akinli
Netmar, Inc.
slashdot@akinli.org

We use a fuel stabilizer and exercise the generator periodically. The stabilized fuel is good for 24 months, and the exercising expends it in well under that time.

How do you respond to accounts that have links to content not approved by Netmar?

In short- case by case, with a lot more leniency toward something that could be honestly debated than one that is basically a frontpage for obvious porn or other content we don't carry. In case you hadn't guessed, I don't want to pin down details because I want to reserve that discretion. At the same time, I try to be as up front as I can about my exercise of that discretion: We've outlined they types of materials we don't want. Anything like that (either explicitly or implicitly) is not wanted.

what happens to that free domain if the account is terminated It remains the property of the owner and they can do what they want with it. Access to the domain records is not tied in with access to the webhosting account.

Basically, the way that works is that every time someone agrees to pre-pay for a year's service, we agree to absorb one year's domain registration fee. If you were to cancel during that year (essentially voiding the whole arrangement), then we'd just deduct the domain reg fee from the refund, and then refund the unused webhosting fees, meaning you'd have paid for exactly what you'd gotten (and you keep the domain).

Regards,
Cengiz Akinli
Netmar, Inc.
slashdot@akinli.org

Regards,
Cengiz Akinli
Netmar, Inc.
slashdot@akinli.org

Why don't I just do this? I'll put up a TOS that says, 'This is roughly what we don't want on our network. We decide the specifics.' And tell people, if you trust us (and our complaint free BBB membership) enough to be fair in deciding those specifics, then sign up with us. If not don't. Then, it'll all be out in the open, and everyone can make their own informed choice. How's all that sound?

Oh wait, that's exactly what we've already done.

It all really comes down to this. All that is out there. People signup and ignore the part about "You agree to these terms" and check the little box without reading them. Then later they find out what it says and they feel they've been misled. HOW? We INSIST everyone read this little document outlining what is and is not OK and HOW IT GETS DECIDED. They don't, and then complain.

Regards,
Cengiz Akinli
Netmar, Inc.
slashdot@akinli.org

Technically speaking, unlimited bandwidth is impossible anywhere. So if you want to be strict about it, I guess that phrase would have to be stricken completely, because bandwidth is always subject to a technical limitation, if not a financially imposed limit.

In any network, unless there's round-robin route selection (which introduces a whole new problem with latency and fragmentation), any connection is limited to the available bandwidth on the individual link through which that connection is routed. The sum of those limits are the bandwidth limit for that server and that sum is ALWAYS a finite number.

But like MOST marketing catchphrases, the term "unlimited bandwidth" means something specific, and the above is not it. It's meaning as is commonly used is NOT technically accurate, but then, neither are those for "virtual domains," "redundant power systems" (when it refers to a SINGLE backup device or level), etc, etc.

No, we are not trying to say that bandwidth is actually UNLIMITED. Without exception, that is impossible. But when someone asks you, "Is bandwidth unlimited?" the answer to what, 99% of the time, they're really asking is yes, simply because they don't discriminate between the strict technical difference between unmetered and unlimited bandwidth.

There's no intent to mislead anyone. But I suppose the above explanation would be a good item to include on a FAQ.

Regards,
Cengiz Akinli
Netmar, Inc.
slashdot@akinli.org

So please show me where you got this impression and I'll correct it right away.

Regards,
Cengiz Akinli
Netmar, Inc.
slashdot@akinli.org

1. He'll very likely use the knowledge elsewhere later on.
2. The customer is still a person and worth our best effort. Why should he be up the creek because we don't know the particular software package he's using?

Regards,
Cengiz Akinli
Netmar, Inc.
slashdot@akinli.org

Also, you take your bandwidth surveys AFTER most of the bandwidth for illicit sites (basically warez) is taken out, because that is not part of the bandwidth you agree to carry. But you leave a part of it in because you have to acknowledge that it will take a finite amount of time for you to locate and shutdown such sites.

So what's the problem? Maybe I'm just missing your point in all your sarcasm or something.

Regards,
Cengiz Akinli
Netmar, Inc.
slashdot@akinli.org

It is? I would LOVE for you to point out the statute outlining this little morsel of wisdom. As you know, the codes are all online...

and I'm pretty sure it violates federal law as well.

Ditto for that!

I for one will be letting some people know that there is a ripe target available for a religious discrimination lawsuit. I hope your legal team is ready.

I am not kidding ONE BIT here when I say that I will pay you money for a tape of your conversation with an attorney on this matter. Really. No joke. PLEEEEEEZ email me. (And yes, at this point, I am, in fact, mocking you... but I'm still not joking about the cash offer.)

You're ignorant, which is not in and of itself a bad thing (we're all ignorant about the things we know nothing about and I don't call you ignorant condescendingly). But loud, obnoxious, repetitive ignorance gets old fast.

It would have taken far less time for you to research this matter before saying the same wrong, ignorant thing 8 times so far today. (And you'd avoid looking foolish, to boot!)

Regards,
Cengiz Akinli
Netmar, Inc.
slashdot@akinli.org

...or if the page is a about a problem with the mail system, which relays the SMS pages...

...or if the page were about the paging server, which sends the numeric pages... ???

The key idea here is redundancy. Have you ever heard that word before... ?

Regards,
Cengiz Akinli
Netmar, Inc.
slashdot@akinli.org

But prohibiting it is my choice, isn't it? I asked a previous poster, should the NAACP be FORCED into accepting Klansmen into their membership, or NOW likewise for rapists?

If I were a church or religious group that undertook hosting for local churches, and decided I would also allow local commercial organizations but imposed this same limitation, I can hardly envision this kind of comment. Why does the fact that Netmar is a commercial entity change anything? Does it suddenly mean that it must do business with everyone who wants to?

Regards,
Cengiz Akinli
Netmar, Inc.
slashdot@akinli.org

*YOU* must be kidding! NO!!!! It is NOT!!!

As long as I'm not the government, or owned thereby, I and my company, as private entities, can choose to do business with whomever we please and on whatever basis we please.

Though I am temped to set up a mirror to http://infidels.org with them. It would not violate the TOS but I'm sure it would irritate the idiot christian.

And I may simply decline to do business with you, as is my right. What's so hard to swallow about that? I'm not the government, so I have right to that choice.

Regards,
Cengiz Akinli
Netmar, Inc.
slashdot@akinli.org

No, I'm a 29 year-old student. I started Netmar in my bedroom, financed by me and my family. I and my retired parents (both previously state-employed physicians, if you care) own 100% of Netmar's stock. Both of my brothers, my father, and my wife have all worked for the company at some point. Currently, all of Netmar's revenue goes into the company's bills, the salaries of our staff of college students, and paying my mortgage. That's about it. As titillating as it must be to you to presume a grand conspiracy between Netmar and the Illuminati, orchestrated to rob the world of its wealth while maximizing subterfuge and cunning underhandedness, I'm afraid I must disappoint.

using the blanket term 'satan' gives them a pretty wide definition to play with when they want to chuck anyone sympathetic to 'the adversary' off the service

That is largely accurate. Now I have a question for you. Do you think everything should be open to everyone? Should the NAACP open up it's membership to, say, KKK members? (Or more to the point, should they be FORCED to do so?)

Does any private group have a right to be as small and exclusive as it wants? I'm sure I miss plenty of business because of the restrictions I impose. But isn't that my choice? This is not a socialist nation. The people do not have a choice of what to do with MY resources. That's reserved for me. Right? If I want to make Netmar a webhosting club that caters exclusive to people whose first names start with an R and were born on a Tuesday, don't I have that right? Our terms and conditions aren't exactly hidden. We make no secrets about what we do and do not accept. So what's the problem? Do I not have the right to free speech as well?

Regards,
Cengiz Akinli
Netmar, Inc.
slashdot@akinli.org

I'm curious to know what that's based on.

I can see a clear path as to how a "I-don't-want-to-know-what-you're-hosting-because- as-long-as-I-don't-know-I-can't-be-prosecuted" mentality can lead to an orange jumpsuit.

Granted, I can see how what you're intending SHOULDN'T lead to prosecution: an ISP should have a chance to correct something that's wrong.

But to merely make the statement that ignorance is a blanket defense ignores the whole concept of criminal negligence.

Regards,
Cengiz Akinli Netmar, Inc. slashdot@akinli.org

Thousands of webmasters disagree.

Your contention centers around a clinging to legalism versus my dependence on simple practicality.

What you have to keep in mind is that there are another 6 billion people on this earth OTHER than you. Few, if any, think exactly as you do.

Legalism is merely an outward sign of a relationship built on MIStrust. If you're not going to place SOME trust in the host you signup with, then who CAN you sign up with?

In the end, if want a website, or any other service under the sun for that matter, you are going to have to place SOME trust in someone.

The broad language to which you refer exists to protect my interests from those who would exploit us. Look at it from my perspective. I am a Christian and simply do not want my resources used to distribute obscenity. That is my right both morally and legally.

Now, we had this fella a couple years back who decided he was going to host a site selling adult content in printed form, and would just skirt around our restrictions by blurring out the sensitive areas of the photos he posted.

If it's not obviously illegal, you aren't an accessory, and I'll take the full blame if it turns out to be illegal.

Not true. Ignorance of the law or the legality of particular actions is ROUTINELY shot down as a defense in court. However, you cannot indemnify another party for criminal liability. Civil indemnification is a given and standard in nearly any webhosting contract, ours included (and even that is not a function of the law, but rather a contractual obligation to repay damages). But you cannot in ANY way assume criminal liability on someone else's behalf under federal law or any state law I know of. You can TRY to convince a DA or US attorney that you are to blame for an outcome and only you should be prosecuted, but there is no legal device under which you can actually take someone else's criminal liability for a charge upon yourself.

Regards,
Cengiz Akinli Netmar, Inc. slashdot@akinli.org

Let's get one thing straight: a *PRIVATE* entity (e.g. and individual or private corporation, like Netmar or any other company not owned in any part by the government) can restrict the material it publishes on ANY basis it wants. Remember, that PRIVATE ENTITY has free speech, too. That means that someone else can't come along and force them to publish their free speech.

That being said I, being a Christian and president of Netmar, choose to exercise my right to free speech. I will publish most things that are legal. The law's a generally a good boundary to me as to what is acceptable. The exceptions are 1) satanism and 2) pornography.

It should also be noted that, as the law protects my right to impose these restrictions, they will never become subject to public debate. While the laws of a republic come from democractic engagement of the people, the morality on which we claim to base those laws is NOT subject to democracy. It is, in my belief, absolute and handed down from God. Now, I'm not saying all this to suck people into some religious firefight, but merely to point out that our rules will stand as long as we do.

Netmar will never host satanic materials, pornography, or anything illegal, even if it means dissolution of the company. The greatness of our country's civil rights laws are in the fact that it will never come to that, save perhaps for some coordinated consumer response.

Regards,
Cengiz Akinli
President,
Netmar, Inc. slashdot@akinli.org

http://www.netmar.com/services/lhost.shtml clearly states at the bottom of the page that domain registration is only free if you prepay for a year of service. It also lists the monthly service costs.

They probably assumed that their customers were capable of multiplying by 12.

Our boss is a pretty devout christian, and as the owner of the company it's at his discretion. However, to my knowledge, the only reasons we've ever taken anyone's site down are pirated software and because it was a fradulent order.

Basically, this is a legal issue, not a moral one. Whatever's illegal in Durham NC (where the company is incorporated) is forbidden by the TOS, plus porn. We can't afford to go to bat for someone who hosts a website with questionable content. Questionable is intentionally left vague because we basically have to leave it vague in order to anticipate the unknown. If we explicitly set out the limitations (You can have pro-Nazi sites, but not Anti-African-American sites) etc, first it would make the TOS rediculously long, and second, someone would find a way to break the spirit of the rule while staying within the letter of the rule. And as previously mentioned, we can't afford to go to bat legally for someone who hosts questionable content and comes under question from law enforcement agencies.

Seriously, though, if you have questions about content limitations or policies and issues with the TOS, feel free to email us:
staff@netmar.com


Regards,
Will
Netmar Staff

Our boss is a pretty devout christian, and as the owner of the company it's at his discretion. However, to my knowledge, the only reasons we've ever taken anyone's site down is pirated software and because it was a fradulent order.

Basically, this is a legal issue, not a moral one. Whatever's illegal in Durham NC (where the company is incorporated) is forbidden by the TOS, plus porn. We can't afford to go to bat for someone who hosts a website with questionable content. Questionable is intentionally left vague because we basically have to leave it vague in order to anticipate the unknown. If we explicitly set out the limitations (You can have pro-Nazi sites, but not Anti-African-American sites) etc, first it would make the TOS rediculously long, and second, someone would find a way to break the spirit of the rule while staying within the letter of the rule. And as previously mentioned, we can't afford to go to bat legally for someone who hosts questionable content and comes under question from law enforcement agencies.

Seriously, though, if you have questions about content limitations or policies and issues with the TOS, feel free to email us:
staff@netmar.com


Regards,
Will
Netmar Staff

Our Linux server is

That's the operative part. Our linux server. Which technically should be "Our linux shared hosting server". Our router runs linux, as does our primary name server, and several of our customer machines. Most of the staff workstations run linux too. But the majority of the machines are Sparc's and run solaris 7. To elaborate on what Ethan said in the other reply to this, our other shared hosting servers are a Sparcstation 10 and a quad processor Ultra Sparc II 3X300 Mhz (woohoo, is it fast - we cross compile stuff there that otherwise takes hours in minutes).

We do have about 50 machines, mostly beause of redundancy - 2 login servers, 2 mail servers, 2 NIS servers, 2 monitoring servers, 2 name servers, 3 meters that do nothing but display realtime graphs, and various other standard servers (backup system, model system for easy drive imaging, etc). Plus customer dedicated servers, which range from Sparc IPC's up to Dual P3 1.13 Ghz machines with 1 GB of ram and ~450 gigs of hard disk space.

Feel free to give us a call 8-5 EST monday - friday, 540 951 9404 or 1 800 691 7191, or email us at staff@netmar.com. We'll be happy to address any questions or concerns you have.

We understand that there's a lot of competition out there in the web hosting world. We're competing against the big guys, it's true. But we do our best to be friends with our customers, and to accomidate them. We care, honestly. We want your business, and we understand that it takes a pretty big commitment to our customers to keep them in this marketplace.

Regards,
~will

Read the FAQ.

I'm a systems administrator at Netmar (I'm Will, for those of you who use us).

Specifically read the part about "What does bandwidth cost? / Is bandwidth really unlimited? / How can you offer unlimited bandwidth? "

I made the website (..you shoulda seen the old one). I put that in the FAQ SPECIFICALLY because of people who ask questions like this.

Lately we've had a guy using a lot of bandwidth, and our Sprint link has been up and down more times than I can count (i've received 135 pages today, from 3 monitoring systems, as of 9PM est). So we've ordered more bandwidth. We try to stay ahead of what people are using.

It's a fact, however, that BY FAR the most common cause of spikes in our bandwidth is illegal software. We don't tolerate it, because it hurts our business and because we can't afford to get sued by the MPAA RIAA Microsoft, etc.

I'm one of the guys that makes the decision about who stays and who goes based on TOS violations. It doesn't happen often. You have to be clearly bad. The whole satanic thing is cause the guy that owns the company is a strong christian dude (call and listen to our hold music 540 951 9404). But we don't censor people. At all. www.fredrock.org (my site) is there, and there's "swear words" on the front page.

Anyway, if you, or anyone, has questions, just email staff@netmar.com - we'll be checking it all weekend (we always do).

The difference between us and rackshack (ask www.web-xperts.com dude what he thought about them) is that they don't care. He said he asked a question about some problem he was having or other and they were like "that sux, good luck".
He asked us a question about qmail (plesk uses it) and my co-associate was like "never used it, lemme read about it" and spent the day learning how to use it, so he could help the guy.

We may not know everything, but we know a lot, and if you have something you need us to know, let us know =). We do personal service. We're friends with our customers. We work for you.

~Will

...no bandwidth limits (within reason)

You've hit on one of my pet peeves: I hate it when rules are specified like this. Saying the limits are "within reason" is too vague to be enforced fairly and consistently. I'm not picking on you personally, I'm picking on rules that could be specified clearly but aren't (for example, "traffic is unmetered" or "You pay according to the size of your website, not how many people visit it".

Either there are no bandwidth limits (which is highly unlikely and what some providers tell you just before they go under because someone took them up on their offer) or there are limits (which, if unstated, means the admins create the rules on-the-fly so you're not getting the same deal as some other customer who's signed up for the same package). If I were basing a business on hosting, I'd need to budget, so I'd want to have a firm figure how much I'll have to spend for hosting. Not everything in business can be budgeted, but bandwidth use is not one of those things.

No matter who the questioner ends up going with, I suggest getting commitments in writing and knowing what the limits of the service are as much as can be specified (this certainly includes bandwidth use). Like so many other people say: bandwidth isn't free to you or your provider. Keep that in mind if someone tries to tell you they'll sell you something that sounds like unlimited bandwidth.

...no bandwidth limits (within reason)

You've hit on one of my pet peeves: I hate it when rules are specified like this. Saying the limits are "within reason" is too vague to be enforced fairly and consistently. I'm not picking on you personally, I'm picking on rules that could be specified clearly but aren't (for example, "traffic is unmetered" or "You pay according to the size of your website, not how many people visit it".

Either there are no bandwidth limits (which is highly unlikely and what some providers tell you just before they go under because someone took them up on their offer) or there are limits (which, if unstated, means the admins create the rules on-the-fly so you're not getting the same deal as some other customer who's signed up for the same package). If I were basing a business on hosting, I'd need to budget, so I'd want to have a firm figure how much I'll have to spend for hosting. Not everything in business can be budgeted, but bandwidth use is not one of those things.

No matter who the questioner ends up going with, I suggest getting commitments in writing and knowing what the limits of the service are as much as can be specified (this certainly includes bandwidth use). Like so many other people say: bandwidth isn't free to you or your provider. Keep that in mind if someone tries to tell you they'll sell you something that sounds like unlimited bandwidth.

Try Netmar

It's $10 a month for 100 megs, no bandwidth limits (within reason). No porn allowed, but other than that, they aren't trying to censor you.

Other than that, I'd recommend co-loc or a T1. The only real way to get totally free from any restrictions is to get a real T1 from a first tier provider.

No, I don't work for Netmar

Mirror site up here.

That url is
http://www.netmar.com/~will/TiquitBrochure.pdf

Notes on mirror: ONE. Brochure is property of Tiquit designs, or whoever that company is. It's not mine.

TWO: If you're gonna hammer my server, sign up for webhosting with my company - www.netmar.com. Linux web hosting for $8/month, w/ 100 MB of space, unlimited bandwidth, unlimited email aliases, PHP, Perl, C Cgi's, MySQL, etc.

~z

Mirror site up here.

That url is
http://www.netmar.com/~will/TiquitBrochure.pdf

Notes on mirror: ONE. Brochure is property of Tiquit designs, or whoever that company is. It's not mine.

TWO: If you're gonna hammer my server, sign up for webhosting with my company - www.netmar.com. Linux web hosting for $8/month, w/ 100 MB of space, unlimited bandwidth, unlimited email aliases, PHP, Perl, C Cgi's, MySQL, etc.

~z

nope =)

Actually, the nick (obviously from hackers) was from back when i knew jack schitt about computers, and i picked it to use on IRC when hanging out. I know it's lame, but i'm too lazy to change it. Anyway,

The company is Netmar Web Hosting. The web page is nasty, but the service is good. We're working on a new layout - beta.netmar.com - but.... ya know.... anyway,

Linux web hosting $10/mo, unlimited bandwidth, 100 MB space, unlimited email aliases, PHP, MySQL, Perl, etc.

~Z

I don't think we support IMAP. We do have a VERY aggressive spam filter that checks subjects, associations of words in subjects, and senders (actually we have 2 mail servers, one filtered and the other with no filter and no size limit).

Now that this article has died down, i'll link to the page. It's netmar web hosting. This seriously isn't a bandwidth issue - we have 2 T-1's from teir one providers. It's just... go to the page, and you'll see. We're working on new site design - beta.netmar.com - but anyway...

Linux hosting for $10/mo, 100 MB, unlimited traffic/bandwidth, unlimited email aliases, PHP3, MySQL, Perl, etc etc. The linux box is a P-4 1.5 Ghz. If you want solaris hosting, or dedicated hosting we do that too. The solaris hosting is more expensive for space, but it's on a mad fast server (300 Mhz Ultra 2 sparc X 4).

Anyway, later, dood!

~Z