A few questions before the plunge

[BigPete]

I handle all the administrative stuff for an adult gaming community and we're shopping for a server. We have had our current host for over a year now and the service has been pretty good with no major complaints until recently.

Now the issue is not with our host. The server is fine but their provider (Cogentco, bleh) has been in the toilet for the last couple of weeks. I emailed tech support with all the proper information and received an email along the lines of "We know there is a problem, we are tracking it and dont expect a fix until mid to late October". I'm sorry, I've been with you for over a year, have 2 servers with you and thats the best answer I can get, I dont think so.

My issue is that I cant find a host who will refund your money (or even offer to extend your service) if an issue like this comes up. We pay in 3 month increments and now a good portion of that is basically wasted. I've read your TOS and I dont see anything that prevents you guys from taking advantage of a situation like this.

Now I understand that issues come up that are out of your control and I can easily deal with a couple of days to a week of this but not much longer than that.

Sorry if that sounded like a rant.

Questions:
1) Do you have any guarantees for things like this? I'm sorry, but if I paid you for 3 months of service and the server is basically not playable because of YOUR provider, I should be compensated. Its not my fault and its not my providers fault.

2) Your TOS/SLA link brings me to just a TOS page. Do you have a viewable SLA?

3) How long does it take after payment is received to get the server rolling? Instant setup?

4) Can we use our webspace for custom maps? We have a seperate host for our site.

5) Screenshots or previews of the control panel?

Anyway, most of my members are pretty excited. Everyone seems to have lower latency to your server despite being a bit farther away. Internap for the win!

[BigPete]

Bah, couldnt remember this question until now:

Do you guarantee inclusion into the master list?

[bOoya]

1.) If something that drastic comes up, we will work with you on all the details of terminating the service, but it never has, and hopefully never will. InterNAP is usually quite fast with their maintenance and repairs.

2.) The SLA is sort of incorporated in to the TOS. You will receive the best support and service that we can possibly offer, but in this business, uptime can fluctuate because most downtime is a result of a some client installed software.

3.) Setup time is about 5 minutes once the paypal subscription has been activated and the confirmation email is recieved.

4.) That's exactly what the webspace is for . We even have a feature in the control panel that will sync all of your custom gameserver content with the webserver, and enable the sv_downloadurl (assuming this is an HL1/2 based server).

5.) We have some out-dated control panel screenshots available for viewing here: http://rentals.nuclearfallout.net/cpss and I have a slightly more updated demo-ish control panel available, but you would need to contact me on IRC for the username/pw. irc://irc.nuclearfallout.net/nfo-support

6.) All servers are included in the STEAM master list unless they have the -nomaster parameter specified in the command line. This particular setting is adjustable through the control panel, so that certain high profile match servers do not appear on the list. The way STEAM sorts that list is still a bit of a mystery however.

[Edge100x]

1) Do you have any guarantees for things like this? I'm sorry, but if I paid you for 3 months of service and the server is basically not playable because of YOUR provider, I should be compensated. Its not my fault and its not my providers fault.

We haven't ever had that sort of problem with our provider so we have not implemented a guarantee. This is because InterNAP has an extremely strong SLA, that covers all of our service with them: http://www.internap.com/products/sla.htm. InterNAP also performs routing tweaks for us whenever there are problems with outbound traffic and the customer notifies us.

2) Your TOS/SLA link brings me to just a TOS page. Do you have a viewable SLA?

We don't have a formal SLA, but if we did, it would go something along the lines of guaranteeing 99.99% uptime on our end. We don't have problems with the bandwidth, so pretty much the only things that have affected us for any length of time in the past have been hardware failures and power outages. In the case of hardware failure, we usually have to recreate the server on a new machine, and we do that quickly (we have a lot of hardware).

3) How long does it take after payment is received to get the server rolling? Instant setup?

It's as close to instant as we can make it. It typically takes 1-5 minutes, depending on the server type.

4) Can we use our webspace for custom maps? We have a seperate host for our site.

Yes, we encourage that.

5) Screenshots or previews of the control panel?

You'd just need to see it during your free trial

Anyway, most of my members are pretty excited. Everyone seems to have lower latency to your server despite being a bit farther away. Internap for the win!

Cogent is classically bad for game servers, since the company is less concerned about latencies than it is about price and bandwidth quantity. InterNAP is pretty much the opposite -- the highest possible performance when money is no object.

[Edge100x]

I started my reply earlier than bOoya, but I got interrupted by a phone call

.. I also started before you posted that extra question, but bOoya answered it so we're OK.

[BigPete]

Thank you both for the snappy, complete answers and comments.

I'm not looking for 100% uptime, perfection or anything like that. But at the very least if you or your provider has an issue which effects your clients for an extended period of time, some kind of compensation would be nice. Most people like to revert to their TOS and tell you sorry which I think is total trash and bad business.

Everything looks good and I'll be signing up here sometime soon, hopefully.

[BigPete]

Darn edit button!

These are 66 tick servers, correct? 100+ is a surcharge?

[bOoya]

If you order an accelerated server, you will have the option of raising the tickrate to set a pre-defined values. They are: 33, 50, 66, 85 and 100.
non-accelerated servers run at the default of 33.

[Edge100x]

If we were to have an extended outage, our policy is to give two days of credit for each day of downtime.