who offers cheap (personal) 1U colo?

Wed Mar 17 18:02:59 UTC 2004

> I have been aching for this now for about six years.  In every
> professional setting I've ever been in, a need for this kind of thing
> arises and my advice to my employer/client is always the same: pay the
> $x per month for a colo server for your network/system engineers to use
> as an outpost for emergencies, external analysis, and monitoring.

Exactly!  While route servers are great, sometimes I need the flexablity 
of an outside shell account to do troubleshooting.  I know a few other 
people at work who also keep outside shell accounts somewhere for this 
very purpose.

> It seems like approaching one of the larger colo providers and
> coordinating some sort of "NANOG Discount" might be one quick route.

I'm of two minds on this.  Obviously, if a group of us go to provider X 
and say we want Z amount of rack space, we can probably get a good deal. 
  On the other hand, I'm also interested in a community of like minded 
folks with servers located in diverse environments who would trade 
access with one another.  If we're all in one rack in one datacenter, 
there is more of a chance we'll all go down together.  If we have a 
diverse footprint, that is much less likely to happen.

> The discount could be restricted to those who are appropriately vetted.
> This program would be of value to the colo provider because of the
> potential for discount recipients to direct business their way.

How would this vetting process work? I'm willing to give other nanog 
folks shell accounts on my machine in return for same, but I really 
don't want to hand out accounts to packet kiddies.

> Suffice it to say, I'm interested, both to address current work-day
> issues and for personal use.

I'm also interested.  I do currently have a dedicated FreeBSD server in 
Australia for personal use.  Those of us who are running our own 
personal mail & DNS servers could get together to back each other up.