who offers cheap (personal) 1U colo?

Tue Mar 16 03:56:01 UTC 2004

> > Rick Adams and Mike O'Dell had an idea in 1987.
> > How is this any different?

actually rick had the idea by himself in 1987.  mike came a bit later.

> Their idea, if I got it right, was 'ip everywhere'.

in that most other companies still thought ISO/OSI was going to be the
commercial protocol of choice, the idea (which was "alternet", not the
original 1987 "uunet"), yes, rick's idea was "i'll bet you're all wrong
and that IP will be the way commercial data networking actually builds
out."

> Perhaps providing smaller scale 'good' colo with strong abuse/support is
> possible, just don't get greedy and get gigantic.

the greed problems don't come in with customer base size but rather
management team experience.  once you get folks running the business
who don't know the industry or the culture or the customers, they start
to think in terms of margin pressure.  a modern-uunet-sized abuse desk
should cost about $2M a year, but would add nothing to revenue, so they
don't have it.

there's no reason you couldn't fill out a 20Ksqft colo room with personal
1U boxes, as long as you were willing to spend the same or more money per
customer (on "customer care" issues) as you did when it was a half rack.
that means your margin will not grow at the same speed as your revenues,
and may actually shrink as a function of revenue growth.  that in turn
means that the founders will have to run it forever, you will not be able
to rent a CEO who graduated business school and simultaneously defend the
reputation of the colo and its IP address space.  (go figure.)

> Paul, does your list include those providers that provide the hardware
> upfront also? or is part of your deal that the equipment comes from the
> customer so they are more willing to behave?

under duress, i'm listing all three kinds (virtual, included, and BYO1U).
note that the virtuals have got me quite concerned since there's NO evidence
that a deposit is taken.  spammers are going to have a field day with them,
and i expect to have to drop them from the list, but first, we'll try it and
hope for the best.
-- 
Paul Vixie