Urb LeJeune writes:
> [...] I beleive there is vast potential for new sites, if they bould
> be brought in at about $250.
> [...] The real problem is hosting. To make the package work, hosting
> has to be done for about $100/year.
> [...] why not co-op. Co-op purchasing is very common in many trade
> groups. Wny not the WC list members since that's what we do?
> Haven't researched many of the details but I do know servers are
> available for $400/500 per month. Disk space is 2/4 gigs. That's a lot of
> 5 meg accounts.
Sounds like a good idea; such a good idea, in fact, that I got
together with some friends about 15 months ago, and about 12 months
ago the Bandwidth Collective was born. (We were going to call it the
Bandwidth Co-Op, but we couldn't get our business model to match the
State of Pennsylvania legal definition of a co-op).
This is not a sales come-on; your idea closely matches what we're
trying to do, but if you're not interested I'll be happy to advise you
on good deals for co-location hosting with other folks. Frankly,
we've been around for a year now, and most of us involved in this make
our money doing consulting and contracting, and support the Collective
out of pocket. (I've included some background info below).
If you want to ship us a machine to hook up to our T1 line, the
rate is $150/month, where you maintain complete control over the
machine. Call us up, we'll hard boot it for you, or you can arrange
for a remote reboot device so you can even do your own power cycling.
If you want us to manage it for you, well, that's more expensive
and depends on what you want on the server. Our rates web page,
http://www.rt1.net/pricesheet.html, lists rates for either extreme.
If you fall somewhere in between, we can arrange something (or you
could hook up with one of the more technical web-consultants members
and work together).
This is a community-based T1 line; This is, in fact, pretty much
the same deal you get elsewhere, we're just more careful to make it
clear up front. If you want unbridled access to bandwidth, we can
sell it to you on a commodity model - apay-per-byte-basis, but that
tends to not get you as much bang for your buck.
With a community model you generally get much more for your
money; our T1 line is not overloaded and we have an excellent Network
Serice Provider whose backbone is guaranteed not to exceed a 3-to-1
ratio (typical industry ratios range up to 8-to-1). However, the
tradeoff is that you have to respect the community and not swamp the
T1.
Again, this is the same thing you get with most "unlimited
bandwidth" deals, but they don't tell you that, they just let the
various servers fight it out (and the customers wonder why they keep
losing packets).
Some background:
The original idea was to create a resource, a sort of base of
operations, for Internet developers. The seven people involved in
starting this are all seriously involved in the Internet industry,
but wanted more autonomy, more control over our access and a way
to get bigger and better toys to play with :-).
Most people get their serious internet resources through their
employer, or a university, or by dealing with an ISP whose bread &
butter is dial-up customers. Those ISPs tend to be a bit less than
cattentive to smaller consultants. They have trouble with managing the
balance between wanting to keep control of their systems and not being
able to provide competent technical support.
Nothing is quite as frustrating knowing what's wrong, and knowing
how to fix it, and not being able to fix it because you don't have
access to the right part of the system - and the guy who does have
access doesn't have a clue what you're talking about. That's why
we started the Collective.
We have also seriously been considering a walk-in computer lab,
to provide services like CD-ROM burning, scanners, video processing,
etc, i.e. high tech toys that aren't *that* expensive but are usually
too expensive for your average net geek to own one of each.
Steven J. Owens
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.rt1.net/puff
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