[ale] Fwd: Removal of Coloblox Services

[Michael H. Warfield]

On Mon, 2017-09-11 at 12:00 -0400, Scott M. Jones wrote:
> My feeling is wow, what an attitude.  Lumping us all together like
> that.
>  I say time to move on.

Before everyone jumps in their SH*T...  They've been in contact with me
and I have my own pass token and access into their data center.  That
whole area in Marietta is undergoing massive renovations.  The office
park they are housed in is under new management (and likely to result
in a close encounter of the bulldozer kind).

They're giving us a month's notice, which is more than some people have
gotten in the past.  IIRC, one ISP went TITSUP (Total Inability To
Support Usual Performance) years ago and their customers only found out
when they arrived at the datacenter only to find they were locked out
and equipment was confiscated.

I've been with these guys longer than many of you can imagine.  It was
Random Access in 1992, then Comstar in 1996, then Globix in 2000, then
Xilogix in 2005 and finally Colobox in 2014.  I'm in the same boat
except I have an entire rack of equipment to move to a new facility. 
I've been half way expecting this for some time and it took longer than
I expected.  The BULLDOZERS mating over there in Marietta off Cobb
Parkway was a clue over a year ago.

And I'm now in Athens.  No good options.  What ever you want to say
about Coloblox, it pales in comparison to what I have to say about
AT&T, Charter and Comcast.  I would love to pull my whole operation
back into my home but most of the people at the above three (and we're
really out of the Comcast area where we are) don't even know how to
speel BPG, which I need to advertise me /16. 

Mike

> Jim, have you given any customer referrals to them?
> 
> -Scott
> 
> On 9/11/17 11:27 AM, Jim Kinney wrote:
> > Crisis time. Ale has to move its donated service _now_.
> > 
> > Coloblox is sadly pulling the plug on its donated services.
> > 
> > We need a colo space that will donate a machine and bandwidth. My
> > basement lacks redundant power and/connectivity. I can host temp as
> > required. I'm looking through hardware now to see what I can build
> > up.
> > 
> > Many thanks to Xilogix/Coloblox for their many years of support.
> > 
> > -----------------------------------------------------------------
> > -------
> > *From:* Coloblox Network Operations <netops at coloblox.com>
> > *Sent:* September 11, 2017 11:00:00 AM EDT
> > *To:* Coloblox Network Operations <netops at coloblox.com>
> > *Subject:* Removal of Coloblox Services
> > 
> > To all it may concern,
> > 
> > Please make arrangements to migrate your data/equipment out of the
> > Coloblox data center by the first week of October. After years of
> > supporting opensource/community projects (and many years before
> > that by
> > the previous owners) we have made the decision to stop it.
> > 
> > We have never been out to make a profit off our donated services
> > but
> > when we provide resources that are abused and taken advantage of in
> > ways
> > that have zero and even negative benefit to our company it has to
> > stop
> > somewhere.
> > 
> > We have donated server hardware, bandwidth, colocation space, and
> > even
> > roof access for satellites, HAM radios, aircraft trackers, etc, and
> > have
> > been mostly met with illegal torrent downloads, for profit
> > web/VPS hosting, DDOS attacks, random items like bitcoin miners
> > appearing in donated colo space, and even a simple lack of credit
> > given
> > to our company for eating the costs associated with this. We've
> > always
> > been intrigued how people in the opensource community will throw
> > the
> > biggest fit if someone doesn't release modified code back to the
> > community, or their copyright isn't kept perfectly in place with
> > T's
> > crossed and I's dotted, but those same people make little to no
> > effort
> > to acknowledge their colo space, power, and bandwidth is all
> > donated by
> > some company they never bother to mention or just figure that 1Gbit
> > port
> > is there for whatever they want like Game of Thrones torrents which
> > at
> > that point copyright suddenly doesn't matter to them. This would be
> > different if it was isolated to one user, but it's the general
> > overview
> > of most users. Some users download torrents and some don't, but
> > when we
> > see a 10 Amp spike on a power circuit and find bitcoin miners it
> > just
> > shows abuse comes in may forms.
> > 
> > That said, we've had enough. If you have data stored on any
> > servers/VPSs
> > in our facility please migrate/backup anything you'd like to keep
> > as
> > servers will be shutdown on Oct 6. If you have physical equipment
> > in the
> > data center please make arrangements to pick it up by October 6th.
> > 
> > We are sorry it's come to this but for something that has never
> > gained
> > us a customer referral or even some useful acknowledgment of our
> > company, it's obviously not worth the hassle of dealing
> > with various
> > forms of abuse that does nothing but increase.
> 
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-- 
Michael H. Warfield (AI4NB) | (o) +1 706 850-8773 |  mhw at WittsEnd.com
   /\/\|=mhw=|\/\/          | (c) +1 678 463-0932 |  http://www.wittsend.com/mhw/
ARIN whois: ARIN-MHW9       | An optimist believes we live in the best of all
PGP Key: 0xC0EB9675674627FF | possible worlds.  A pessimist is sure of it!
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