Moving

[Opcom]

It's come to the point where AT&T's poor service, mainly latencies when finding sites and then downloading, have prompted me to wonder why I am paying them so much. It's as if there is a blockage that slows my downloads down. For now I'll keep them, but I have started to move bunkerofdoom.com to a new hosting service, 007names.com Why them?

1. someone answers the phone when you call.
2. someone answers the e-mail the next day.
3. the person on the phone said they want me to be happy, so try their service for a while at a cheap price till see see how much traffic there really is.
4. because I always used VMS, which does not care about upper or lower case, and they use Linux, which does care, the engineer put some kind of filter in place on my virtual server that finds the file regardless of the case, when the case is wrong, this saves me from renaming thousands of files and editing to no end due to 10 years of that. No extra charge, done the next day.
5. They understand what a 'large hobbyist website' is and do not insist on charging as much if I was running binaries and businesses.
6. the instructions how & where to ftp and the 'hidden' urls for testing, etc, were all e-mailed to me promptly.
7. when I did not understand something, the e-mail was answered the next day, and they had done one site as an example for me.

I could not believe it. How simple. I searched through many providers. Many had numerous complaints. None answered the phone when I called them. This one did. They have handled my DNS inexpensively for several years, I think they will be around a while.

This will mean that all the AM related content on that site should download faster and eventually I can get rid of the overpriced DSL. It is going to take a long long time to FTP the site there. I tested downloading an 80MB file from the new host at work where they have a huge datacenter and OC-3's, or something optical and very fast anyway. It was a matter of seconds. Just wanted to share some happiness.

[Steve - WB3HUZ]

Considering you have lots of good content that are found in large files, this move should be a very good thing!

[w3jn]

I want to thank you, Patrick, for hosting all that good stuff!

[K5WLF]

I'm glad you found a host you like, Patrick. Your site is truly a treasure trove of great information. It sure makes a difference when you're happy with, and feel confident in, your hosting company. I've been with icdsoft.com for the last five years and am delighted with their service. I found them when two other hosting companies couldn't cope with the demands of the online magazine that I ran for a year and a half.

Thanks for sharing the name of your new host.

ldb
K5WLF

[w1vtp]

Good luck with the new location, Patrick.  You have provided a really great resource for all of us


Al

[W2PFY]

how soon are you moving. I was trying to get in just now and I get a message that it's busy etc?  

Love your stuff on there

[Opcom]

Thanks for the good comments! It is very gratifying that people use the site and enjoy it.

I am moving piece by piece now. The reason bunkerofdoom is busy or down sometimes is because I have to transfer the files to the new server, and the outgoing DSL here is limited in bandwidth to 64Kbytes per second. Therefore I stop the server at bunkerofdoom while using the FTP so that all the local capacity is available for the transfer. Otherwise, the constant traffic on bunkerofdoom uses a lot of the available bandwidth here, and slows down the transfers greatly. At the end of each transfer session, I put bunkerofdoom back up. I've been trying to set up large transfers (like a huge PDF file, or a typical tube manual - directory of 200+ files and 100-300MB total size) for overnight. Many of the objects are very large because the scanning was at 300dpi. That is not 100% necessary but they look better and the original rotting old document, which may no longer exist, is better preserved. It may take a month or more.

Patrick

[W3SLK]

Wow! Talk about a labor of love!