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Where, Oh Where has Cihost.com Gone?
This e-mail came to me as well: Hi,
Below is a copy of a post to alt.www.webmaster by Graham Wideman. I confirm his comments in every detail. I personaly have five domains (addresses below) with CiHost which are currently totaly unavailable (http,ftp,mail you name it)..
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Major Hosting service provider (28,000 domains?) CI Host has been attempting to move their servers for the last 10 days, with one problem after another, including webmasters unable to access their sites for update, and old backups being restored over new data.
Now we are up to 24 hours during which all sites, plus the email they support, are completely inaccessible due to CI Host's name servers being off the net. For many, this means they cannot even transfer their sites elsewhere (due to the way Network Solutions requires transfer email to come from the registered webmaster's address).
Adding spice to this picture is the fact that CI Host is a charter member of, and "certified" by the Web Host Guild, which is the main activity of Sumo Inc, now owned by CNet.
For further info on CIHost downtime, see alt.www.webmaster.
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Regards
Alan Cowderoy
I have to wonder what in the world made them think it would be OK to 'upgrade' the primary and the secondary at the same time! That strikes me a never being a good idea.
I *briefly* hosted a commercial site on CIHost, based on the strong recommendations by various rating sites. They were WRONG. I had serious performance problems, configuration issues, problems with domain name transfers, and virtually no response from tech support.
The last straw, though, was when i emailed them about a Y2K bug in a Perl-based online discussion group CGI they provide, and never even got an acknowledgement. Fuck that. I switched to Hurricane Electric (he.net), and they've been terrific.
Oh, i'm sure you'll see plenty of that Y2K bug at Perl-driven sites now, and in some C programs too. The symptom is that this year is now "100", not 2000. To understand why, grab K&R, look up , study how years are represented in struct tm, and consider the implications of not using strftime() to print dates. Perl doesn't have strftime(), which is why the bug is more prevalent there. But lots of naive C programmers don't learn their libraries, and thus reinvent wheels poorly.
And i've now seen this bug on at least one bbs since the Y2K rollover, and it according to a friend it has completely disabled the old telnet-driven Delphi interface.
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120
chars is barely sufficient
Hand me that airplane glue and I'll tell you another story.
I have to chime in as well.
pairNetworks ROCKS.
Hosting providers should look at their migration updates page as a model for how to do it right the FIRST time and keep CUSTOMERS informed.
http://www.mp3.com/fudge/
http://fudge.org
From doing a quick whois on their domain i found this:
NS.CIHOST.COM 216.221.162.81
NS2.CIHOST.COM 216.221.162.111
Could really a large web hosting company do this mistake ?
You should ALWAYS have atleast one secondary nameserver at a different network, preferably at a location far away, even if you are multi homed.
This NOT how you deal with errors that are billed to the credit card.
As soon as you discover a billing error, you contact the merchant. You report the problem to them, and you log the name and the time of everyone you spoke with. 48 hours later, call your credit card company, and find out if they issued a credit to your account. If not, call the merchant again, and repeat your request.
If 48 hours later there's still no credit, you write your credit card company, informing them that the charge is in dispute, attach your supporting information, and they will remove the charges for you, and charge it back to the merchant.
It's probably too late now, 9 months later, but this is what you should do next time.
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I strongly recommend using a separate company to host your DNS. Sure, the company that hosts your website will through in DNS hosting for free, but if they are negligent or incompetent or unfortunate, your the one who will suffer. My web-server is hosted by one ISP but I use Easy DNS to manage my domain. There are many similar services out there too.
The bottom line is that you should have your website hosted by professionals who specialize in managing webservers, but your DNS should be hosted by professionals who specialize in managine DNS servers. The two are very different, and far too many admins take DNS management lightly.
I've got about 8 domains on Dreamhost for the last 9 months. I selected them from an advert I saw here on /.
She's most notable for her roles as Claudia on Party of Five and Penny in the recent film Lost in Space. She'll be appearing in two upcoming films, "Tart" and "Christmas with JD" in 2000.
For more information:
http://www.laceyonline.com/
http://www.laceyvibes.com/
http://www.lacey-chabert.com/
Anyone ever hear of them? They loose points from the get go in my book for spamming me.
Dear Casey Cady:
CommuniTech.Net is sending you this e-mail as a result of your
website, sarahandcasey.com, hosted by C|Host, being down for an
extended period of time. We know how important your website is
to you, and that is why we are sending you this e-mail offer.
Founded in April of 1997, CommuniTech.Net is top 25 rated web
hosting company by C|Net, a member of the Web Host Guild (whg.org),
a member of the Better Business Bureau On-line, and a Network
Solutions Gold Premier Partner. We currently host over 15,000
clients in over 100 countries worldwide.
We invite you to visit our website at http://www.communitech.net.
Or give us a call at 1-800-WEBHOST.
As your website is down right now, we would like to extend a special
offer to you if you choose CommuniTech.Net to provide you with the
reliability you deserve. If you sign-up with CommuniTech.Net by
January 5, 2000, we will not only waive our normal set-up fee
but we will also give you an additional free month of hosting. To
take advantage of this offer, simply visit
http://www.communitech.net/order/ and enter the special promotional
code: CIDOWN. If you sign-up by 9:00 pm Central Time, we will have
your account set-up the same day!
To see information about our pricing and features, you can go
directly to http://www.communitech.net/features/ and remember you will
get an additional free month on whichever service term you choose!
As your website is very important to you, we urge you to take advantage
of this offer so that you can avoid difficulties like this in the future.
Some of our complimentary features included with your account include:
- 350 Megabytes of web space
- Unlimited hits and data transfer
- 100 POP3 e-mail accounts with unlimited aliases and auto responders
- 25 Sub-domains and 25 Extra FTP Accounts
- Microsoft FrontPage 2000 server extensions support
- Perl/CGI, Miva (HTMLScript), Python, and PHP3
- Shell access using SSH (Secure Telnet)
- Unlimited Java Chat rooms (ConferenceRoom Chatrooms)
- Complete logs and statistics via HTTP-Analyze
- Triple redundant DS-3 Network
- Complete power back-up solutions via UPS and Diesel Generators
- mySQL Databases with web-interface
- Toll-free telephone support through 1-800-WEBHOST
- Daily server data back-ups
- 30 Day, unconditional money-back guarantee
- 99.5% Up-Time Guarantee with Price Freeze Guarantee
- The Personal Control Panel 3.0
- Unmatched reseller program
We know that C|Host offers you a 100% Satisfaction stating that they are
"committed to your satisfaction" and that "if for any reason you are not
completely satisfied with your web hosting solutions from CI Host, we will
gladly refund your monthly hosting fees, no questions asked."
We urge you to take them up on this offer and consider CommuniTech.Net for
your reliable web hosting needs. Unlike C|Host, we maintain our own network
and servers in-house. By having our servers on location rather than thousands
of miles away, we can avoid many of the problems that C|Host and others
frequently encounter.
Remember, enter our special promotional code "CIDOWN" to take advantage of
this limited time special offer. To learn more about our organization, consider
taking our company tour at http://www.communitech.net/about/tour/.
We look forward to providing you with the quality hosting services you deserve!
Best Regards,
CommuniTech.Net
--GnrcMan--
Wow...that is refreshing.
I noticed my cihosted domain down at about 2:30 on the 29th. www.cisupport.com's networks status page never even acknowledged a problem. It wasn't until about 9PM that they got a recording on the tech support line explaining some nonsense reason for being down, and projecting restoration in 3 hours. The next day I was pissed enough to wait on hold for a real person. More nonsense. If they had been straight with me, and frequently updated the status, I might have stayed. Not anymore. I'm impressed with Pair.
--GnrcMan--
traceroute to sarahandcasey.com (209.164.77.91), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 passepartout.web.us.uu.net (208.240.88.1) 0.753 ms 0.515 ms 0.430 ms
2 Serial1-1-1.GW2.DCA1.ALTER.NET (137.39.128.205) 2.017 ms 1.818 ms 1.541 ms
3 105.ATM2-0.XR2.DCA1.ALTER.NET (146.188.161.46) 1.366 ms 2.314 ms 1.921 ms
4 194.ATM1-0.TR2.DCA1.ALTER.NET (146.188.161.146) 1.487 ms 1.856 ms 1.716 ms
5 101.ATM6-0.TR2.CHI4.ALTER.NET (146.188.136.109) 29.039 ms 29.964 ms 30.332 ms
6 298.ATM7-0.XR2.CHI6.ALTER.NET (146.188.209.13) 34.001 ms 31.712 ms 29.723 ms
7 190.ATM8-0-0.GW2.CHI6.ALTER.NET (146.188.208.181) 30.852 ms 31.342 ms 23.331 ms
8 UU-ds3.axxs.net (157.130.101.114) 25.145 ms 24.841 ms 25.663 ms
9 CI-DS3-DFW.PROPAGATION.NET (216.71.87.10) 26.707 ms 25.542 ms 26.414 ms
10 CI-DS3-DFW.PROPAGATION.NET (216.71.87.10) 26.579 ms 26.466 ms 25.267 ms
11 * * *
12 * * *
13 * * *
14 * * *
15 * * *
--GnrcMan--
It certainly matters to me and tens of thousands of others stuck with no internet presence because of the incompetence of this company.
--GnrcMan--
Contrast this to the FACT that it's been at least 48 hours, and as the above indicates their problems are a lot bigger than the name servers.
There's not much doubt about where my little footsteps will be headed as soon as I can get my data: FAR AWAY FROM CIHOST!
It's been a fun 36 hours without the web site, mail, etc. I find myself running traceroute over and over (and over...) to see if the name servers are back up, but still nothing. The sites ARE still there, however. If you hit them via IP address they come up just fine. Of course, since CI changed all of the IP addresses about two weeks ago this is kinda difficult (thank you /var/log/messages!).
The biggest bummer is the lack of email. Otherwise, I can take it in stride... for now.
Rumour has it that CI will be giving people a free month of hosting for the inconvenience. Methinks they need to do a bit better than that or risk mass exodus.
This only goes to show that the best web hosting site is on your own computer.
My experience shows that most of these Best Host and Top 10 lists are a sham. I've had trouble with every providor I've ever selected from these lists. What do the reviewers get for listing a site? There is too much crap and not enough good information on these ratings sites. Using stars as a rating system is good for resturants, but I want hard performance data. Until we start demanding better service contracts and agreements, we'll just have to deal with outages and unexpected changes in service.
Did I leave my keys here?
I became a customer of CI Host in July of 1998. Immediately after uploading my pages to their server, I started experiencing problems. My calls and emails to customer service were never answered promptly, so after 3 or 4 months I decided to switch providers.
As soon as CI Host found out I was switching, they deleted all my data, without further explanation. Attempts to recover data that I had not yet moved to my new provider were completely unsuccessful. I found out that their claims about having redundant systems and frequent backups were not true.
Anyway, I thought that was the end of my worst experience with a hosting provider. I closed my account with them, hoping to forget the whole thing. Two months later (February of 1999), CI Host charged my credit card as if I were still a customer. Once again, my many calls and emails were never answered. Finally, after I tried to reach the CEO several times, they admitted their mistake and issued a refund in May of 1999 (they even gave me a copy of the refund slip).
To my utter disbelief, the refund never reached my credit card company. To this date I'm still trying to get my money back. CI Host never answers my calls, and takes about a month and a half to answer any email I send them (my contact there is Edith "I'm not allowed to give you my last name").
After dealing with about 10 different hosting providers over the years, I found CI Host to be the worst ever. If you want to save yourself months of frustration, financial losses, fraudulent charges, etc.
DO NOT HOST WITH CI HOST!!!
Looks like the Y2K bug hit them a few hours early, and they are dishing out a cover story about upgrades while they scramble to their mountain retreats! (giving themselves a head start to get away from angry customers and the collapse of civilization)
Forget about your domain, grab the cantines and shotguns!
I myself have tried to get on numerous host listing lists and be rated.. Unfortunately there reqirements often require 24 hour phone support, which a small web host like myself cannot afford. Also, many of the lists have a 'fee' associated with them... And I certainly don't believe in paying to be listed as a good service. Although I'm very small and have less than 100 domains hosted with me, I know most of my customers by first name, and there is no need for 24 hour tech support since the one or two tech support e-mails I get a week are taken care of promptly. I think the size of the hosting company should not be a determining factor in quality of the company.
This sort of situation demonstrates that at least this one ISP and likley many others are not really E-business ready (as indeed are some businesses witness e-bay). People need to get with mainframe folks who build business continuity plans, change control systems etc. If one is running a business using a hosting service one has to start asking, questions and the rating services need to. 1. if your facility is out of order due to fire etc what is your backup scheme. 2. What are your processes to avoid ensure that any redundancy is maintained. 3. What kind of change control process do you have in place, and are changes reviewed indpendently before being implemented. 4. Do you have a reliablity engineering process in place? Of couse these cost money and one needs in making the decision of who to provide the service what the value of each is. All of these are in the nature of insurance, there is a risk and a premium that one can pay to minimize the risk. The business decision is what risks do you want to insure and what do you want to take. Big sites like the stock traders and folks like ups/fed ex have all this inplace because its essentail to the business. One needs to begin to expect the hosting companies to do the same, all be it that the cost will go up.
About 6 months ago, I did some research into moving my 4 domains over to another server farm, and it looked like cihost was a really good deal. Almost too good to be true.
So, to test, I had one domain transferred, and a new account set up.
Two weeks after having done so, they still didn't have my SQL, Real, or DNS set up properly.
IMHO, they don't seem like a very competent group. Tech support was poor, and billing was worse.
http://www.stern.nyu.edu/~ejs211
For those who missed the article on CNet, here's the link
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1004-200-1510132.html? tag=st.ne.1004.thed.1004-200-1510132
Simpletnet should have my domain moved by today. I just hope cihost's lines are open so I can cancel. I wonder if I will get reinbursed.
They still give no sign to calm down people... No official statement. These people are screwed... Their attitude of the customer is always wrong is going to screw them over big time. I hope they go bankrupt because of their own evil ways.
-Eddie