$50/month at 40U rentable is $2000/rack/month if it's full.
> after paying for 60A of power and 50Mbits/sec of transit
> and whatever the rack rents for, the provider's gross margin
> will be between 25% and 50%, out of which they have to pay
> salaries. as a standalone business this makes no sense, but
> at scale or as part of another business, $50/month @1U is
> just about right.
I've only seen a few comments on the business aspect of this, so I'd like to throw my two cents in.
Given: at least certain Linux distributions are free to copy
Given: the various BSD distributions are all free to copy
Given: vmware workstation is a relatively low-cost product
Given: Linux and BSD run in virtual machines on Vmware on Linux
Question: Why can't a provider sell virtual PC colocation, instead of physical PC colocation?
So instead of 40 physical machines per rack, why can't it be 80 or 160 or even more virtual machines, running on 40 physical Linux boxes? I think the economics could shift significantly under those circumstances.
For personal colo the virtual CPU would probably be idle at least 99% of the time. My home servers usually are. Which means that when hosting 4 typical virtual machines a real CPU would still be mostly idling. Also a small IDE drive now is about 120 GB. Divide that by 4 and each colo still has 30 GB of disk space, more than enough for most needs.
The hardware cost per "machine" certainly goes down, and other than the vmware licenses the OS software is "free", either BSD licensed free or GPL licensed "free". Either is good enough for this purpose.
Is some hosting company already doing this?
If someone can point me to Virtual Solaris Machine, then I'd willingly offer
that as a service (the colo I help run as a "hobby" is Sun only).
The reason people are doing it on Linux is that it's available. (And, in the
case of LVM, free)
Simon
Here to: http://www.interland.com/shared/, and for less than $50 per
month. I have had nothing but excellent experience with them.
-Jim P.
: If someone can point me to Virtual Solaris Machine, then I'd willingly offer
: that as a service (the colo I help run as a "hobby" is Sun only).
:
: The reason people are doing it on Linux is that it's available. (And, in the
: case of LVM, free)
mmm, NetBSD. Runs on all of x86, amd64, and sparc64 hardware, and runs
Linux and Solaris binaries (for the appropriate processor type). RAIDframe
is free and included in the base system too. 
Paul Vixie wrote:
it would be marketing suicide to offer a different dsl-dhcp ip address
to people willing to pay enough to budget for an abuse desk.
You're wrong here. It can be done, and it can be done profitably.
Looks like you didn't read what you quoted. I know it can be done profitably
but I also know that offering two price-levels of DSL, one with an abuse desk
capable of calling you and telling you your XP box has been rooted and talking
you through Windows Update; the other with a tailgate warranty -- this would
be "marketing suicide" since the irresponsibility of the latter would become
intolerable if it were thusly highlighted.
No, you're presenting a false dichotomy. A provider can provide a
first-rate abuse desk, and still be price competitive. It can be done.
It requires a fair amount of clue level in the ISP, but it most
definitely can be done.
Question: Why can't a provider sell virtual PC colocation, instead of
physical PC colocation?
Several do. We nearly bought a failing one that was doing alot of this
with a commercial Linux virtualization product.
So instead of 40 physical machines per rack, why can't it be 80 or 160
or even more virtual machines, running on 40 physical Linux boxes? I
think the economics could shift significantly under those circumstances.
During the short time we managed their network and systems, I had to poke
around on a couple of the virtual machines to fix customer issues. I
don't remember how many virtual machines they ran per physical machine,
but IIRC, they were all P4's with several GB of RAM. Each customer got
root and their own IPs on what appeared to them to be a dedicated server.
IIRC, Paul was suggesting part of the value in the $50/month colo deal was
that customers were motivated to be good else you keep their server or
ebay it. You lose that with the virtual private server model...but does
anyone actually have in their contract/AUP that AUP violators will forfeit
their hardware? We've kicked some spammer colo customers where I'd love
to have had such a clause. I only know of one case where we did
that...and it was for non-payment. The customer's hardware was worth less
than their balance, so they chose to simply write us off. Being located
in another country, it wasn't worth the effort to try extracting $ from
them.
Some do. However, without a server that can be impounded and then sold
on E-Bay, there's no reason to think that the provider will have less
abuse volume from such customers than they would have from SMTP AUTH
customers or DSL customers or what-have-you. "Show me the sheet-metal."
I've seen vmware, freebsd jails, linux lvm's. Unless the provider asks
for a USD$1000 deposit against bad behaviour, refundable with interest
after the first year... I don't expect the address space to have a good
enough reputation that *I* would want to be in that neighborhood.
The residual value of sheet-metal continues to drop 
Its not
unusual for the cost of disposing of the equipment to be more than the
unpaid bills. People who buy cheap, personal colo seem to be equally
cheap when it comes to equipment they put in the colo. That assumes
the equipment doesn't have other UCC liens on it already. Dell Leasing
or Sun Leasing don't care if you use their equipment for abuse. They
still expect their money or the equipment back.
Many colo providers could tell you stories about problem customers that
vanish without a trace. The "collateral value" of the equipment isn't
much.
One power user acting alone can sign up for a $50/month 1U personal colo.
But first, a well backed company builds the colo, buys the upstream
bandwidth, obtain independent ARIN addresses and highly paid support
folks to support a single power user paying $50/month.
Yep, a race to the bottom exists in the colo space too.
Only a well backed company can solve the "no decent DSL in Sacramento"
problem. (And such a company would most likely be sucked into the "race
to the bottom" by price-competition, so it's a risk at best unless you're
first in a market that's unattractive to larger players.)
I assume you are aware that DSL transport is available without Internet
access. Ghetto colo providers could terminate DSL transport on their
network. Then you would have an IP address of the Ghetto colo provider.
You can also terminate DSL transport on your company network. Heck you
don't even need to send IP across DSL, you can use it for IPX, Appletak,
DECNET, or many other packet protocols.
It doesn't sound like colo or a replacement for your cable modem or DSL
line would actually meet all your requirements. What you seem to be
asking for is how can an individual obtain independent IP address space
which various block lists won't block for $50/month. And once you find
such a thing, how to prevent "bad people" from taking advantage for your
discovery.
... What you seem to be asking for is how can an individual obtain
independent IP address space which various block lists won't block for
$50/month.
s/which various block lists won't block
/whose reputation can be reasonably defended
/
... And once you find such a thing, how to prevent "bad people" from
taking advantage for your discovery.
see above.
jeffm@iglou.com (Jeff McAdams) writes:
No, you're presenting a false dichotomy. A provider can provide a
first-rate abuse desk, and still be price competitive. It can be done.
It requires a fair amount of clue level in the ISP, but it most
definitely can be done.
at scale, with things as they now are, i simply don't believe this. with
a 10000:1 ratio (daily customers to onduty clues), it is never going to be
possible to contact every customer out of band (by phone, that is) when they
need to be told how to de-virus their win/xp box. not for $30/month. you
can fiddle with the ratio -- 800:1 may work -- and you might be able to hire
clues very cheaply for a while -- but not at scale.
i'd love to be proved wrong on this point.
Paul Vixie wrote:
at scale, with things as they now are, i simply don't believe this. with
a 10000:1 ratio (daily customers to onduty clues), it is never going to be
possible to contact every customer out of band (by phone, that is) when they
need to be told how to de-virus their win/xp box. not for $30/month. you
can fiddle with the ratio -- 800:1 may work -- and you might be able to hire
clues very cheaply for a while -- but not at scale.
i'd love to be proved wrong on this point.
I see this as a two different processes. There are definetly some individuals who have no help whatsoever with their computers and need the abuse/helpdesk to walk them through the disinfecting process. However in my experience these are only a small fraction of the population with infected machines. It really solves 90%+ of the problem by just getting the message to the individual that they have a problem and they�ll find somebody to fix it for them.
Pete
I see this as a two different processes. There are definetly some
individuals who have no help whatsoever with their computers and need
the abuse/helpdesk to walk them through the disinfecting process.
Gartner estimates the total cost of ownership of a PC at $450/month. If
someone is paying $50/month, I wonder where the other $400 goes?
Is it marketing suicide in other industries have premium customer
programs. Pay more or have a better credit rating, and you get a
platinum credit card. Fly more or pay more and you get to sit in first
class and board the plan first. Why not have special IP addresses
reserved for the Internet "elite?"
ISPs are desperately looking for new revenue streams. Would you pay an
extra $50/month for "platinum-level" Internet address? ARIN could charge
extra to certify those ISPs receiving platinum Internet addresses. Mass
mailers already pay companies like Habeas and IronPort for "bonded"
e-mail.
Suppose we create Internet++ using 126/8 as the starting IP address block.
Only ISPs agreeing to the good code of conduct could use 126/8 addresses
assigned independently of any other IP addresses in use. ISPs might
reserve 126/8 addresses to only a few of their most secure servers, and
a few very trusted customers. If it was successfull, IANA could extend
the range to 125/8, 124/8 and so on
However in my experience these are only a small fraction of the
population with infected machines. It really solves 90%+ of the problem
by just getting the message to the individual that they have a problem
and they�ll find somebody to fix it for them.
Doubtful. If you look at large samples, e.g. 10,000 infected computers,
the repair rate is essentially identical between a group told their
computers are infected and a group which wasn't told. Perhaps more
scary, the rate of repair after being notified doesn't change whether the
group are self-described "computer experts" or "general users."
I expect every NANOG conference from now on will be filled with
announcements asking people to please fix their computers because
worms are killing the network. NANOG has less than 500 attendees,
yet has about the same number as infected computers as any other
ad-hoc network population.
## On 2004-03-14 11:58 -0000 Simon Lockhart typed:
If someone can point me to Virtual Solaris Machine, then I'd willingly offer
that as a service (the colo I help run as a "hobby" is Sun only).
AFAIK that will be in Solaris 10 -
See "N1 Grid Containers" on <http://wwws.sun.com/software/solaris/10/>
You can get a non-supported preview for free
(or pay 99$ for one year support)
Well, it's Zones. I downloaded the latest Solaris Express release last night
and got a simple Zones implementation running on a spare box. It certainly
looks very interesting.
Simon