Where, Oh Where has Cihost.com Gone?

Nelson Weiderman writes "For about 36 hours (as of 9 a.m EST 12/31), cihost.com and the domain names it serves have been off the air with attempts to access them getting "the server does not have a DNS entry" message. Calls to their customer service (when you can get through) have a recording indicating that they attempted an equipment upgrade and that they tried to restore a backup NameServer, which apparently failed. They are trying to reassure customers that none of their data has been lost. Anybody know what's happening there or what the prospects are for recovery? I chose CI Host because they were rated in the top five web hosting services by three separate rating organizations. " We've been getting a huge amount of submissions about this, especially in light of the Masslinux Disappearing Act. Click below for more details - but from what research I've been able to do, it appears that they've been hit with a terribly timed series of mishaps and problems, and are working on getting back online.

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)..

----------------

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.
--
Regards
Alan Cowderoy

Comments

Secondary on same net.

[zyklone]

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.

Updating domains without email.

[winterstorm]

If you need to update your domain records to switch to another provider, you can do so by sending the appropriate form by email to network solutions and then faxing them an authorization form. To generate the authorization form you need your tracking number though so you need to send the form from an email address you can read (any email address should do).

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.

CIHost is lying. It's much worse.

[gbnewby]

I wish someone could get us more detail. Here's what I know. Note that CIHost claims they service 48,000 domains! Whew!

• Even though I can get through to my virtual server (because I know the IP address), I cannot login, FTP etc.
  
• The data on the server have reverted, and a my whole recently-created virtual domain has DISAPPEARED. This is strong evidence that they recovered from an OLD backup tape, and recent changes may have been permanently lost.
  
• Mail to my addresses doesn't bounce, but it's also not correctly forwarded (out) like it's supposed to be. It's possible that mail is being lost. I'm worried.
  
• Read the press release dated 12/30 posted on hostindex.com. What it says:
  
  • Problems started 2:00 pm EST 12/29
    
  • They're rebuilding their nameserver(s)
    
  
  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.
  
• My problems started several WEEKS ago when they began this ill-fated "upgrade." Lost mail, hours on the phone, inaccessible services, "losing" my account info and suddenly giving a quota 100s of MB less than I have....
  
  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!

Not dead, hiding

[ScooterQ]

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.

Host Ratings

[visor]

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.

My horrifying experience dealing with CI Host

[migs]

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!!!

uh oh!

[NightHwk]

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!

The need to get a mainframe mentality in ISP's

[lmeier]

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.

CIHost? Not suprised.

[djtodd]

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.