Finding a hosting company (how-to guide)

[obfuscated]

The following is a guideline that I have prepared to assist you in finding a hosting company. The idea was to keep it simple and direct, but there are many avenues to investigate when searching for that "perfect" host (although the term 'perfect' is used cautiously). Lookup the answers from the host's site. If detailed information is missing, that may be a sign in itself. You can always call and speak with a TECHICAL support person (salespeople will generally "yes" you to death). I plan to update this list, so check back often. Good luck and take your time looking.
.:.:.
BUSINESS GUIDELINE REFERENCE:
· At the Better Business Bureau (http://www.bbbonline.org/consumer/index.asp)

COMPANY:
· How long have you been in business?
· Are you owned by or affiliated with a parent corporation?
· Are you a member of the Better Business Bureau On-Line Reliability Program? (www.bbbonline.org)
o If so, is there a link on your main site?
oo If so, verify that fact. Click on their BBB logo and ensure the BBB shows their proper identification (name, address, etc).
o NOTE: Don?t rely fully on this. A perfect example is http://www.invite.net. The BBB currently reports a ?satisfactory? record, yet the forums at webhostdir clearly state the opposite (reference http://www.denver.bbb.org/report.htm...990&national=Y and http://forums.webhostdir.com/showthr...0&pagenumber=1). Granted, issues noted within the forum may have been resolved (albeit eventually), but it?s the WAY they were mishandled at the time that should concern you. The BBB will remove a bad rating once the issues, as known to them, have resolved. However, you probably want to avoid companies who have a history of poor customer relations. That?s where the WebHostDir Forums come in handy ? run a search on any web company! (http://forums.webhostdir.com/search.php)

SUPPORT:
· What type of support do we get with our membership (fee vs. charge)?
· Where can we find support phone numbers at your website?
· Are there any limitations to your support offering?
o E.G. ?We limit our technical support to our area of expertise?? (Reference http://www.rackshack.net/aboutus/tos.asp)
o Day / Time support is not available?
· If our website and/or email becomes unavailable due to reasons at your facility (or related), are we entitled to a refund for lost time?
o NOTE: Ask what duration of downtime is considered eligible for refund.

CUSTOMERS:
· How many active customers do you have?
· Please demonstrate a few of your large and/or prestigious accounts to us (what is their web address?).
o You can confirm hosting info at http://www.internic.net/whois.html and http://www.netsol.com/cgi-bin/whois/whois.
· Do you prohibit (or plan to) hosting adult content sites?
o NOTE: If they do host adult content, or ever plan to, you may want to avoid them. Although these hosting companies may utilize fast equipment and connections, they push a great deal of graphic content through the pipeline, which may slow down your traffic. Not to mention the ethical rationale.

CANCELLATION POLICY:
· What is refundable / non-refundable?
· What if we sign up for 1 year in advance?
· If refund available, is it full, prorated or percentage-based?
· Is there a timeline where refund eligibility becomes void?

RATE CHANGES:
· If we sign up for 1 year in advance, is that price locked despite any price changes on your end?
· When was your last price increase (e.g. for hosting)?

SETUP FEES:
· Do you charge tax for any fees (setup, etc.)?
o If so, do prices already include the tax?
o NOTE: Services typically do not incur taxation. This is usually a scheme to get more money out of you.
o E.G. "100% of the setup fee is subject to the 8.25% tax rate" (Reference http://www.rackshack.net/aboutus/tos.asp)

SERVERS:
· How many servers do you have?
· Do you utilize hosting ?pools? (array of linked servers)?
· Will our site ever be moved between servers, at your convenience, due to server demands?
o If so, will we be notified?
o Before or after the move?
o How do you prevent downtime and loss to our databases at the time (our customers may be interacting with the DB)?
· How do you prevent hackers from accessing the system?
o Prevent email relaying?
· Processor type and speed?
o Pentium III?
o How much RAM?

OPERATING SYSTEM & LANGUAGES:
· Linux? Windows? Versions??
· Perl version 5 (+), PHP, CGI, etc.?
· What others?
· Is CGI-script sharing prohibited (can we use a script from an outside server, such as used by http://www.cj.com)?

SSL:
· Do you provide a secured server area that we can utilize (for free)?
o NOTE: You typically need to purchase your own SSL Certificate so a visitor won?t be prompted with a security mismatch.
o Reference http://www.thawte.com/ or http://www.verisign.com
· Do you provide an easy method of setting up our SSL Certificate on the server?

HOW DO YOU CONNECT TO THE INTERNET:
· Who is your backbone provider?
· Redundancy?
o NOTE: "Redundant" means that if any of their Internet connections get interrupted, an alternate Internet connection will take over.

DOMAIN PURCHASES:
· If we were to purchase a domain name through your company, will we be the rightful owner (e.g. Listed in every category per ?who is? records)?
o NOTE: Most of the hosts who offer "free" registration typically have strings attached such as registering themselves at the owner of your domain. You want to avoid that; in case you wish to cancel, they would own your domain! Easy rule to remember: nothing is truly free.

DOMAIN PARKING:
· Do you allow domain parking and, if so, what are the fees?
· Please confirm our understanding of Parking. If "abc.com" is our domain and we park "xyz.com" under abc.com, then surfing to "xyz.com" will automatically bring the visitor to "abc.com"? (This is domain parking; don?t let them tell/sell you otherwise)

SUBDOMAINS:
· Do you provide this and, if so, what are the fees?
· Are there any limitations to this (quantity, use, etc.)?

DOMAIN TRANSFER:
· We will set all ?who is? contacts (admin, technical, etc.) to point to our company and not yours. Is that acceptable?
o NOTE: There is no need whatsoever to have their info in your domain records except as advertisement for them. The only entry that point to the hosting company is the Name Servers (ns.hosting.com and ns2.hosting.com, for example).
· How long to transfer a domain from another provider to you (to be set up and entered into your DNS servers)?
o NOTE: This should only take 24-72 hours at the most, including the time to propagate through the global Internet.

FTP ACCESS:
· Do you allow utilities such as ?WS FTP Pro? and ?Cute FTP? to access our site?
· Do we have unlimited FTP to our site (24hours/365days a year)?

IP ADDRESS:
· Do we get a unique, static IP address?
o NOTE: This is very important because you?ll need it in the event your name-based URL fails. Can also be used for FTP and email server.
· May we (and customers) use the IP address to access our site, or are we restricted to using the name-based address (www.yourdomain.com)?
o If not, what if your registration takes a long time; we would still want people to be able to access our site via IP address?
o If not, what about using FTP to set up our site (via WS FTP pro)?

VIRTUAL DNS:
· Do you provide this (so the DNS records per ?who is? will show our own personal name server)?
· If so, will anyone be able to track our domain, IP or email address back to your company?

ALLOWANCES & OVERUSAGE:
· Despite agreed upon limits, do you react to use of system resources (e.g. CPU utilization, etc.)?
o If so, what are those limitations?
· Will your system automatically notify us if we are approaching the allowed storage and/or transfer amount?
· In the event that we exceed the allowed storage and/or transfer, do you (1) notify us first, (2) bill us without notice or (3) deactivate the site?
· What are your overage amounts and fees (and are they published at your site)?
o Per Disk Space.
o Per Bandwidth (transfer).

EMAIL & SPAM:
· Is it acceptable if we send unsolicited email using your network?
o Perhaps only during certain hours of the night?
o What if we use "opt-in" (in the initial mailing) and "out-out"? (Reference http://www.opt-email.com/)
o Do you support mailing lists?
o If so, what rules apply to mailings (quantity, best time to send, etc.)?
· Is it acceptable if we send unsolicited emails using a different network (e.g. our Hotmail account)?
o What if we own a dedicated server, which has a virtual name server?

BACKUPS:
· Do you backup our data / site?
o If so, what frequency are backups run?
· In either case, do you supply a File Backup Utility to allow backup of files stored in our account?
o If so, can we easily automate this task by setting daily, weekly or monthly auto-backups?
o Can we specify a remote FTP server address or backup to our personal computer?
· In the event of a crash, do you restore our data / site?
· Do you employ RAID technology (Redundant Array of Independent Disks)?

UNINTERRUPTIBLE POWER SUPPLY (UPS SYSTEM):
· Do you use a UPS?
· Do you have diesel generator backup?
· How often do you test this system?

CONTENT:
· Are there any rules in regard to the type of content we?re allowed to host (graphics, Flash, banners, streaming movies/sounds, MP3, etc.)?

TOS:
· Where are your Terms of Service located on the web?
o NOTE: Print ALL information to hardcopy; not just the TOS. Some web companies update their info to suit themselves, especially during a crisis.

Also search for my posting on Technical Dictionary Terms.

[Jaiem]

Three points:

1) Giving examples of hosted sites is a good idea. But a host really shouldn't do it w/o the permission of the site owner. Some site owners don't want their site given as a reference.

2) There's a difference between domain "transfer" and domain "move". A transfer is just repointing the DNS to the new service. A move is actually moving the domain name record to another registrar. In either case, if the customer wants the host to make the changes he/she may need to provide the ID and password for the DNS account. Also, some registrars send a confirmation email to the customer (for security reasons). The customer needs to follow those confirmation directions to ensure smooth transfer.

3) There's nothing wrong in updating a TOS as a business evolves. I agree it's slimely to change a TOS to suit a situation. NTL, unless you have a written contract with the host, IMO it's well with in the host's right to change their TOS at any time as they see fit.

[obfuscated]

1) Giving examples of hosted sites is a good idea. But...

Any honest hosting service is going to have SOME sites that wouldn't mind being publicly disclosed. Heck, it's free advertising at the least. That could even be an option when signing up for hosting. Nevertheless, a prospective customer may want to reach a comfort level by making contact with a current client to serve as a reference. This is commonplace in the software industry; albeit a different venue, people don't want to spend a lot of money unless they know others are still happy with their decision. If hosting services truly have nothing to hide (operative word: truly), then they would GLADLY make provisions for such references.

Additionally, according to NetMechanic.com, "In the past year, 41% of Web servers have had substantial down time." Interestingly enough, NetMechanic.com has a fee-based tool which notifies you (pager, phone, etc) within 15 minutes if your site is down. For more info, go here: http://www.netmechanic.com/monitor.htm

2) There's a difference between domain "transfer" and domain "move"...

While that information is useful, MY point was that some hosting companies state, within their policies, that they will move/transfer/relocate/reposition (insert your favorite verb) any site from one of their servers to another of their servers, depending on server demands. I simply feel readers should be conscious of that fact.

3) There's nothing wrong in updating a TOS as a business evolves.

Typical host's viewpoint. I direct readers to review the now closed thread concerning Invite.net (perform a search by that domain name). Pay particular interest to "BarefootMamma" posts. During a major incident (MANY consecutive days of downtime AND no response whatsoever from the Invite.net), the hosting company DID find time to (1) change their TOS to cover their butts and (2) they also found time to read these forums and harass that customer for her posts when they should have been doing everything in their power to kiss her butt.

As a closing statement to all hosting companies: We're onto you, we're getting smarter and the best of the breed will soon replace you. In the interim, there's ALWAYS the WebHostDir forums.

There's safety in numbers! ~ http://forums.WebHostDir.com

[Jaiem]

Originally posted by obfuscated

Typical host's viewpoint.

If you re-read my above post I agreed it was improper to change a TOS in the middle of a dispute.

OTOH, once a TOS is written must it be in stone forever and ever? That's not only foolish but unrealistic. For whatever reason a business (any business) may decide to change it's operating practices and policies. As a month-to-month or even pre-paid customer in my non-legal opinion that does not constitute a hard&fast contract. Many businesses change their Terms of Servce all the time. At least 3-4 times a year I get notice from the phone company, cable TV company, a credit card company, etc etc changing their policies and/or procedures. It's the reality of business. Depending what the change is the host may grandfather existing accounts. But it's up to the host.

If your host changes it's TOS to something you can't live with, you have the best tool there is - leave for another host.

[obfuscated]

Once a TOS is written must it be in stone forever and ever? That's not only foolish but unrealistic.

Based on experience, I'd say you're 100% right -- it IS foolish to think that most hosting services will employ fair and honest tactics. Thank you for clarifying that.

I understand that companies grow, and with that growth comes knowledge, forcing them to change and/or update policy. That's understandable and acceptable; I don't think anyone would disagree. Just don't screw the people with whom you are contractually obligated; doing so is just plain disrespectful, especially when someone signed up BECAUSE they agree with the TOS at the time.

Moreover, your example of the phone & other service companies is a good point. There should be a Grandfather Clause in effect; when someone signs up with ANY service, they should be locked into the agreement, in its current form, at the time the contract is drawn. Heck, we're not allowed to change the terms of the contract so why should they?

The real problem is that the USA (and world) is FULL of companies who are only concerned with themselves. They play the game quite well, pretending that the customer's interests are #1. However, if that were truly the case, then changing the TOS after a contract is finalized (as one example) is just part of their FYP (%&*$ you policy).

To use the statement "Well, everyone else does it!" just makes matters worse. Just because someone else does something doesn't make it right. Remember that lesson from when we were kids?

[Jaiem]

Ob,

You seem to have a burr under your saddle. My guess is you feel you were wrong by a host somewhere. I can understand your one-bitten-twice-shy stance. NTL, you're waaaay too broad brushing the whole industry. It's mosty unfortunate that a few bad apples taint the overwhelming majority of good hosting businesses.

More over, month-to-month service is as far from a contract as you can get. If you had a contract I'd agree that at least for the length of the contract both parties are bound to the terms in the contract. That's part of the risk of being in a contract. And even then sometimes a contract be be amended. But when you're month-to-month that's "at will" service and I don't think the courts would consider that a contract or bound obligation.

I agree that a change in terms may adversely effect some people but it's not realistic to expect any business to never ever need to change their terms. You will note that most service terms do contain some provision for change at any time. It may not seem fair but that's reality. You can either choose to accept the new terms or go with another service. The power is yours!

Good luck.

ps- One other point: You're assuming that all TOS changes are negative for the customer and therefore the customer should always be under the "original" TOS. That's definately not always true. What if the TOS changes is in favor of the customer? What if the TOS change gives more services to the customer? Or relaxes a previous restriction? I'd bet you would want the new terms then!

[obfuscated]

I almost forgot an IMPORTANT thing to investigate. You should fully understand the term "Virtual Hosting". While it may be used to describe other features, it often means a hosting company does NOT own the hardware. Rather, it's leased from another company and sub-leased to you. Thus, the term "Reseller". Some companies are honest and tell you, while others b.s. you to death. I love examples, so let's get started!

Take www.cwihosting.com. If you speak with them, they'll skillfully dance around your questions, such as "how many servers do you have?" or "can I contact/visit the data center directly?". Everything is "ummm, uhhh, you'll have to write the CEO. We're not allowed to disclose any such information." They will, however, state they own/possess/manage/touch/repair/etc. all the hardware. But that's not the truth ... unless they have a key to the RackSpace.com data center.

So, what can YOU do while seeking out a hosting company? Ask one of their technicians for a few server name-addresses and/or IP addresses to their servers. If they refuse to divulge some, don't do business with them. Once you've got them, ping them. Sound complicated? It's surprisingly not! Refer to "NeoTrace", a utility written by NeoWrox and recently acquired by McAfee, at http://mcafeestore.beyond.com/Produc...107878,00.html I believe you can download and try the utility for 30 days for free. You can also download this from Download.com here: http://download.cnet.com/downloads/0...st-7-1.7139158

Here are some FREE traceroute sites:
www.samspade.org
www.l7.net/toolbox.html

SamSpade even lets you lookup other IP addresses at a particular location! See http://www.samspade.org/t/asn?a=10532 for a list of other (known) IP addresses at RackSpace.com.

NeoTrace is an Internet tracer, used by law enforcement, ISPs, and network professionals, yet easy enough for the home user. Just enter an email, IP or URL address and this utility will list every node (server on the web) that you pass through on your way to the destination address. It even creates a graphical map, plotting each node from your PC to the destination.

Okay, back to the subject. Performing a ping on a CWI Hosting server (thunder2.cwihosting.com) revealed the following nodes:
http://www.samspade.org/t/trace?a=th...cwihosting.com

~ (my IP address)
~ twtelecom.net (Time Warner Telecom)
~ rackspace.fibr.net (Fibrcom, and very slow response times)
~ edge1.sat.rackspace.com (Rackspace.com)
~ thunder2.cwihosting.com (Rackspace.com)

Hmmmm? I passed through Rackspace.com, then the final server shows a network name of the same! Well, you guessed it!! CWI hosting does NOT own the servers; Rackspace.com does! CWI simply leases the hardware from Rackspace, then sells people like you and I a (quote-unquote) hosting plan. Rackspace handles all the hardware, connections, load monitoring, maintenance, etc. of the computers; NOT CWI Hosting (even though they'll tell you they do, RackSpace negates it)!

Now, to be fair, CWI does offer some nice hosting plans ... that is, if they are 100% true per the quality of those plans. Yet, when they lie to potential customers about WHO owns/possesses/touches/manages the servers and connection hardware, how can anyone retain trust in them? I know I can't.

Want to laugh? Never base your decision on the pretty pictures at any website. Some of the pictures on CWI's website are of other company's hardware, data centers and/or website (e.g. they use pics from the RackSpace center)! By the time you read this, CWI may have read this, too, and changed the pictures. In the interim, check out the photo here: http://www.cwihosting.com/whycwi2.htm That SAME photo is on Apollo Hosting's site here: http://www.apollohosting.com/host/ourservers.shtml ! Wow, the technician in the photo really has his work cut out for him; the commute must be a nightmare. Gosh, I am SO TIRED of the lies. Where does the bull$h!t end (if at all)??

Remember: The truth is out there. You just have to dig a little deeper sometimes. Still on the hunt for an honest hosting company... {sigh}

[obfuscated]

Moderator's Comments: You seem to have an axe to grind against this company. Please don't grind it in these forums.

[Jaiem]

Originally posted by obfuscated
I almost forgot an IMPORTANT thing to investigate. You should fully understand the term "Virtual Hosting". While it may be used to describe other features, it often means a hosting company does NOT own the hardware. Rather, it's leased from another company and sub-leased to you. Thus, the term "Reseller". Some companies are honest and tell you, while others b.s. you to death. I love examples, so let's get started!

Ob,

I think you're either mistaken or using this as a club to beat up a certain hosting company.

"Virtual Hosting", a.ka. "Virtual Server" and "Shared Hosting" is typically used to mean you (the customer) share a server with other customers. IOW, you don't have your own server. The server software slices up the one physical server into multiple server environments ("virtual servers") that all share the one physical server. I haven't seen any host that says or implies that "Virtual Hosting" means they're a reseller or otherwise don't own the actual box.

The debate over resellers vs. owners is an old one and has been covered here before. On the whole, the general concensus is that as long as the service is good and the price meets your budget it doesn't matter.

[JTY]

Yeah......

I use to colocate with a company. The IP blocks listed Sprint as the owner, not I, nor my provider. Does that mean I leased from Sprint? Nope. And, my provider? Nope. They owned their own routers, and switches.

On the topic of traceroutes, the trace doesn't pass through servers. It passes through routers, and layer3 switches.

[obfuscated]

Quotes from Jaiem

"Virtual Hosting", a.ka. "Virtual Server" and "Shared Hosting" is typically used to mean you (the customer) share a server with other customers...

That's how I understand it as well. But some hosting companies I have spoken to use their own terminology.

The debate over resellers vs. owners is an old one and has been covered here before. On the whole, the general concensus is that as long as the service is good and the price meets your budget it doesn't matter.

I agree 100%. All that I want is their honesty. If a company is going to provide support/management only, while the hardware is leased elsewhere, so be it. As a matter of fact, I could care less. Just be honest, especially when they're asked point blank. To outright deny it is nothing but a lie, then all trust is lost.

[obfuscated]

I recently attended a conference on web hosting. At one meeting, a person that I met was telling a story about Unix hosting and specifically asked that I share this info with you.

The person is being hosted on a Unix platform at CWI Hosting, who in turn lease servers from "RackSpace.com". Let the reader understand that Unix servers act differently than Windows-based servers. However, my point is not to get into the pros/cons but rather to discuss this person's experience and educate the reader.

CWI performs "Apache Restarts" on their UNIX servers QUITE often. They do this whenever they need to change the configuration of a server -- adding an IP address, etc. When this occurs, one of the first things to go off-line is the HTTP Request handler. That means your visitor's will get an empty browser window when they attempt to go to your URL on that server. No warning, no "hourglass" cursor; just a dead screen. This person's direct experiences proved that CWI does this many times a day, taking the servers down for 60 seconds average each time. This could be quite frustrating if you have an active site.

The hosting company should designate a few set times (e.g. 9am, 3pm, 9pm) to reboot their servers instead of randomly throughout the day.

On a closing note, this person also stated that CWI's "99.9% uptime" policy only applies when you can't access your webpages from the browser for more than 20 contiguous minutes. It does not include when another website, also located on your shared server, runs out of control and uses up all the disk space leaving your site with an "Out Of Disk Space" error from the server (software-wise and FTP). While the specifics of their uptime policy are not disclosed on their policy webpage, these facts were directly quoted from CWI management.

In your search for a UNIX hosting solution, I hope this information will assist you in making a better decision with whom you choose to host your site.

Also, make certain that you get the SPECIFICS on what qualifies as "server downtime" from your prospective hosting company.

[Phoenix]

Originally posted by obfuscated
Also, make certain that you get the SPECIFICS on what qualifies as "server downtime" from your prospective hosting company.

Good one! Many hosting providers have very visible guarantees that evaporate when you read the fine print.

A local rival of ours that had a bad rep for outages and reinvented themselves under a new name, with 99.9% uptime guaranteed! all over their site. But no links to any explanation of the guarantee, except a mention in a support FAQ buried deep in their site. And that stated flatly that there is no way to guarantee uptime. So not only get the specifics, make sure there actually is a guarantee, and it's not something just made up by the marketing department. And that you understand the terms, and if you aren't sure, ask, and if you get the run-around, run.



I did want to comment regarding the TOS changes. As long as the services you provide and the way people use them don't change, and the laws regulating us don't change, you shouldn't need to change your TOS. However, in our industry, there is a continued state of change. The Internet is a child still growing up in fits and starts, not a mature adult.

Our original TOS did not address the problem of spam the same way, at that time spam was something that you did by cross-posting crap to USENET newsgroups, not sending UCE to the inboxes of individuals. Had we not changed our TOS to keep up with the changes in the usage of the Internet, we'd be spam-friendly. Email relaying had to be restricted, or we'd be on the black hole list. When the Digital Copyright Act was passed, that needed to be reflected in our TOS. Had the Communications Decency Act not been struck down, that would have required considerable changes to our TOS.

And grandfathering in old customers under a past TOS is unrealistic. If that was the case, we'd still be required to offer telnet access, anonymous FTP (uploads and downloads), and email relaying to our customers who have been with us since the early days. Leet hax0rs, warez traders, script kiddies, software and media pirates and every spammer on the planet would be freely using our servers to do their dirty work.

And who would suffer? The very customers grandfathered in under old service agreements. They'd be paying out hefty overage fees for extra disk space and traffic usage, and their web sites would be 0wned by whoever came out on top in the latest hacking war.

So, although in a perfect world, the Terms of Service would never change, but alas, ours is not perfect, and change is inevitable. However, that change should not be in order to abuse the customer, or to retroactively cover one's corporate backside left flapping in the wind. It should be done to ensure that both customer and provider responsibilities are in line with current services and current regulations.

[obfuscated]

Here's another important question to ask concerning an Uptime Guarantee: "Will we receive a credit when your servers are 'down for repairs'?"

For example, CWI Hosting does list their repairs (current or future) on their Support Desk (although not a public page!), yet they DON'T list the dates of such repairs. Here's our point: CWI considers "posted repairs" as NOT ELIGIBLE for refund. So, if the server is off-line for 8 hours for repairs, awwww -- too bad for you.

The only reason they would choose to not list the dates of a particular repair is so they can get out of giving a refund by stating "we were doing repairs as posted". This is particularly true EVEN IF the repairs were actually completed by the time you noticed your site was STILL down. That exact excuse was already received on multiple occasions.

Be smart -- ask questions.

[obfuscated]

12-Apr-2002

Once again, CWI Hosting's so-called "Uptime Service Level Agreement" fails to be any any use.

This statement is based on FACTS and placed here to further educate those seeking web hosting in regard to "Uptime" agreements.

As a reminder, their guarantee is:

If your site is down for more then twenty minutes at a time (this allows for normal but very infrequent system reboots, and quick maintenance if and when needed) we will credit you 50% of your monthly bill!

Well, today CWI had servers down for FIVE HOURS due to a "DDOS attack". No site or ftp access the whole while. They posted the following on a NON-public-accessible member's page:

"4/12/2002 11:47 AM : Thunder 7 has been taken down for emergency maintenance. We hope to have service on this machine restored within 20 minutes. Additional developments will be posted"

Needless to say, they were down for 5 long hours. Upon requesting a credit, per their "So why would anyone need an Uptime SLA with CWI?!" policy, they stated it:

cannot be approved due to the fact that the downtime was caused by a factor which was out of our control. As per the uptime policy anything not due to our local network is not applicable in the SLA:

'Outages not involving our servers or internal network do not.'

The downtime was caused by a DDOS attack. There was nothing CWI could do to prevent it.

Somehow, they feel that a DDOS attack (or the like) which they failed to prevent is somehow NOT their fault. Yes, this is an outage directly involving one of their servers and/or internal network.

Will their SLA policy ever be of use? Will we ever see world peace?? We're placing our chips on world peace coming first.