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Rapidspeeds.com outage.
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Posted by Quota, 11-28-2011, 05:31 AM I do have 3 dedicated server with rapidspeeds.com and all went down.
I tried ping their website which hosted in leaseweb datacenter and also down.
Posted by panda4uhk, 11-28-2011, 05:35 AM
I tried ping their website which hosted in leaseweb datacenter and also down.
I can't reach them by phone either
Posted by _GMF_, 11-28-2011, 05:37 AM Yeah, well that happens. That would be the 00,1 % (about 8 hours yearly) of downtime, if they have such a guaranty.
Posted by panda4uhk, 11-28-2011, 05:38 AM
Posted by _GMF_, 11-28-2011, 05:41 AM Well, then they are in trouble. If they really go over their downtime limit and they really have a guaranty in place, you can demand a refund.
Posted by panda4uhk, 11-28-2011, 05:43 AM
Posted by Quota, 11-28-2011, 05:43 AM
hope they fix this asap.
Posted by _GMF_, 11-28-2011, 05:44 AM What did clubuptime do? Enlighten me. Well, if it is the usual 00.1% than about 9 hours and 49 minutes.Quote:
What's their downtime limit ?
Posted by panda4uhk, 11-28-2011, 05:47 AM
hope they fix this asap.
Posted by Quota, 11-28-2011, 05:55 AM
Posted by panda4uhk, 11-28-2011, 05:58 AM From their Twitter http://twitter.com/#!/RapidSpeeds
We have a problem with our network at the moment (servers online, no data will be lost). We are investigating the issue. Will update ASAP.
Posted by Quota, 11-28-2011, 06:15 AM Thanks for updates
Posted by panda4uhk, 11-28-2011, 08:02 AM RapidSpeeds Rapid Speeds
@
@FenGar @zxlin @BoxOfficeHost - As far as we know so far, it's a lethal dDoS attack and we've had to nullroute all traffic. Will update ASAP
Posted by smerz, 11-28-2011, 10:15 AM I manage 3 servers with them. 2 are still online, only 1 went offline.
I hope they get it sorted
Posted by panda4uhk, 11-28-2011, 10:16 AM
I hope they get it sorted
Posted by smerz, 11-28-2011, 10:22 AM All 3 are in the Netherlands.
Posted by smerz, 11-28-2011, 10:39 AM Correction: all 3 are actually offline.
Posted by panda4uhk, 11-28-2011, 10:40 AM over 5 hours down time already...
Posted by 24x7group, 11-28-2011, 11:34 AM That's quite an outage, does anyone already know exactly what's going on?
I wish Rapidspeeds all the best!
Posted by Quota, 11-28-2011, 11:48 AM
I wish Rapidspeeds all the best!
Posted by ejxt, 11-28-2011, 11:50 AM I also have a server with them... Somehow I just doubt it's a DDoS attack... I mean, even their servers in US are offline? And why null route a whole company, on all locations, because of a DDoS? then that must be a hell of an attack ;P
Posted by mazedk, 11-28-2011, 11:55 AM Well I guess they could ddos both locations as once.. But might be something entirely different
Posted by Quota, 11-28-2011, 11:57 AM It's weird to see the entire company were null routed.
Posted by mazedk, 11-28-2011, 11:59 AM Yeah its odd that both .us and .nl is down, since its two different dc's and providers..
Posted by Quota, 11-28-2011, 12:03 PM US and NL are both powered by OCOM.
Posted by ejxt, 11-28-2011, 12:07 PM I would be very surprised if they had to null route a whole company on two locations due to DDoS attacks. Something like a business issue with their provider is more likely to me. Since they have same provider on both locations, that makes even more sense.
Posted by Quota, 11-28-2011, 12:15 PM Yea, no replies on twitter.
sounds fishy...
Posted by RyanD, 11-28-2011, 12:50 PM You do not null route an entire network, something is not right here.
Posted by mazedk, 11-28-2011, 12:51 PM Wonder if OCOM/insert-provider-name got some many copyright claims that they killed their bgp ?
Posted by Quota, 11-28-2011, 12:51 PM
Posted by ejxt, 11-28-2011, 01:02 PM
I just hope this get sorted out, I really need my data on that server ;P
Posted by p2prockz, 11-28-2011, 01:18 PM Two of my NL Servers are down as well! Hope they fix it soon.
Posted by Quota, 11-28-2011, 02:08 PM It's 9 hours downtime.
Posted by panda4uhk, 11-28-2011, 02:22 PM http://twitter.com/#!/RapidSpeeds
This issue may take 12-18hours before it is fully resolved. No customers will be charged for their package during this downtime. Apologies.
This is ridiculous!!!!
Posted by mazedk, 11-28-2011, 02:23 PM panda beat me to it
Posted by panda4uhk, 11-28-2011, 02:33 PM I wonder it will be 12-18hrs total (it's over 9 hours now),
or we need to wait more 12-18 hrs, so there will be a 24hrs downtime??
Posted by ejxt, 11-28-2011, 02:49 PM Oh my... I am quite sure they mean 12-18 hours from now, this is just sick.
Posted by Quota, 11-28-2011, 03:02 PM time to move on
Posted by TheLie, 11-28-2011, 06:09 PM It does indeed look like they have withdrawn (well the Leaseweb Hostmaster/NOC has) all their IP space announcements on the Leaseweb AS.
This could be a ddos attack but this is unlikely since i did see no blackhole announcement going out (and traffic over any ISP just dies before Leaseweb, i.e. at AMS-IX or their Telia uplink) - fishy.
Usualy Leaseweb sends out Blackhole communities/announce for ranges under massive ddos.
Posted by DeltaAnime, 11-28-2011, 06:23 PM Are you guys/gals sure it isn't a billing dispute?
Francisco
Posted by panda4uhk, 11-28-2011, 06:25 PM
Francisco
It made me panic for whole day
Posted by ejxt, 11-28-2011, 06:41 PM
This could be a ddos attack but this is unlikely since i did see no blackhole announcement going out (and traffic over any ISP just dies before Leaseweb, i.e. at AMS-IX or their Telia uplink) - fishy.
Usualy Leaseweb sends out Blackhole communities/announce for ranges under massive ddos.
Posted by parky1, 11-28-2011, 06:42 PM If you traceroute rapidspeeds.com it does reach the Leaseweb network.
Posted by lifetalk, 11-28-2011, 06:43 PM Probably shut off for pushing more bandwidth then they could afford?
Posted by ejxt, 11-28-2011, 07:00 PM
Posted by LXJTian, 11-28-2011, 07:01 PM oh, my god, it's over 12 hours, move to other webhosting?
Posted by panda4uhk, 11-28-2011, 07:03 PM
Posted by ejxt, 11-28-2011, 07:07 PM
Posted by panda4uhk, 11-28-2011, 07:10 PM
but I have 1.2tb of data, so it's painful for me to move all data to other servers with a 100M port. I never expect all of server down at the same time
Posted by lifetalk, 11-28-2011, 07:12 PM You could ask your host for a 1gbit port upgrade while you transfer out your data? Better that than to sit around for hours.
Posted by ejxt, 11-28-2011, 07:12 PM Oh look what I just found out:
RAPIDSPEEDS SERVERS LIMITED
Company No. 07238117
Status: Dissolved 29/11/2011
Date of Incorporation: 29/04/2010
(Yep, that is the exact company name and number that was in their website footer)
http://wck2.companieshouse.gov.uk/ba...c1/compdetails
Posted by Trix, 11-28-2011, 07:32 PM
RAPIDSPEEDS SERVERS LIMITED
Company No. 07238117
Status: Dissolved 29/11/2011
Date of Incorporation: 29/04/2010
(Yep, that is the exact company name and number that was in their website footer)
http://wck2.companieshouse.gov.uk/ba...c1/compdetails
It actually said that when I checked on the 23rd - I didn't think much of it when I saw it though.
Posted by iLoveHosting-UK, 11-28-2011, 07:34 PM
RAPIDSPEEDS SERVERS LIMITED
Company No. 07238117
Status: Dissolved 29/11/2011
Date of Incorporation: 29/04/2010
(Yep, that is the exact company name and number that was in their website footer)
http://wck2.companieshouse.gov.uk/ba...c1/compdetails
- Ashton
Posted by Steven F, 11-28-2011, 07:45 PM This is why having an off-site backup is important...
Posted by Trix, 11-28-2011, 07:53 PM
Posted by kohkindachi, 11-28-2011, 09:04 PM Game over?
Posted by okpa, 11-28-2011, 09:05 PM all my data gone
Posted by PWRtech, 11-28-2011, 09:57 PM
RAPIDSPEEDS SERVERS LIMITED
Company No. 07238117
Status: Dissolved 29/11/2011
Date of Incorporation: 29/04/2010
(Yep, that is the exact company name and number that was in their website footer)
http://wck2.companieshouse.gov.uk/ba...c1/compdetails
Posted by panda4uhk, 11-28-2011, 10:04 PM
I have built a million dollar company from the ground up, with one client in Nov. 2009 turning over $10 profit to what RapidSpeeds is today.
October 2009 Present (2 years 2 months) NL / US / UK
RapidSpeeds is one of the fastest growing Dedicated & Virtualized Hosting Companies on the internet. We offer services such as Dedicated Servers, VPS, Gaming Servers and Web Hosting to name a few. I have a very hands on role within RapidSpeeds and have several roles within the company, and whilst there are additional full time staff members, I still work 7 days a week to ensure everything runs smoothly.
Posted by Quota, 11-28-2011, 10:19 PM It's 17 hours of downtime.
Posted by panda4uhk, 11-28-2011, 11:47 PM Update:
thehacker123 (seem to be EvoBoxes' owner) responded on another forum:
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum...336&p=65#r1283
We're still here. We had a 5-6Gbps DDoS going on when I went to bed – what happened after that I do not know, as I had to be out almost all day today. If I get anymore info I'll let you know.
The whole company thing is just a coincidence with us moving to a company based in another country for tax reasons. I was also coincidentally banned at WJ for having a dupe account. Bad day :/
Posted by Quota, 11-28-2011, 11:56 PM
thehacker123 (seem to be EvoBoxes' owner) responded on another forum:
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum...336&p=65#r1283
We're still here. We had a 5-6Gbps DDoS going on when I went to bed what happened after that I do not know, as I had to be out almost all day today. If I get anymore info I'll let you know.
The whole company thing is just a coincidence with us moving to a company based in another country for tax reasons. I was also coincidentally banned at WJ for having a dupe account. Bad day :/
each racks comes with 10Gbps.
Posted by panda4uhk, 11-28-2011, 11:58 PM
each racks comes with 10Gbps.
I think they're hiding the true, maybe they forgot to pay the bill
Posted by Quota, 11-29-2011, 12:02 AM
I think they're hiding the true, maybe they forgot to pay the bill
Posted by swolebod, 11-29-2011, 12:04 AM I'm interested to see what will happen. Hopefully this will be explained officially in the morning.
They are probably hiding something because a 5-6Gbps DDoS is not enough to have a company nullroute their ENTIRE list of IP's in both the USA and NL for 18+ hours.
Posted by NuCode, 11-29-2011, 12:18 AM 5-6Gbps is not even enough to bring down single rack according to the specs they've released (10G or 2x10G to each rack). A few nodes sure, but not more. So if only 6Gbps it has to be packet flood or something like that to cause more severe than the bulk BW would cause. Maybe an exploit on the switches, tho very doubtful.
Who knows. Time will tell.
Fortunately i have 0 nodes there, just curious
Posted by kohkindachi, 11-29-2011, 03:01 AM still down
still no updates
Posted by panda4uhk, 11-29-2011, 03:02 AM
still no updates
http://www.wjunction.com/9-dedicated...-nl-us-109.htm
Posted by Xiahost, 11-29-2011, 03:15 AM Now it's been 12 hours since they announced it will be up between 12-18 hours.. Hope something happens soon
Posted by kohkindachi, 11-29-2011, 03:17 AM
Posted by panda4uhk, 11-29-2011, 03:18 AM
Posted by lostindestiny, 11-29-2011, 03:29 AM I think now its time to stop hoping anything positive and move to some other web host, can someone suggest me any vps, with similar configuration and pricing as Rapidspeeds.
Will definitely make it a habit of taking updates everyday.
Posted by Xiahost, 11-29-2011, 03:39 AM Yes it is a very good idea.. We have just bought an offsite backup server 2 days ago.. it arrived yesterday.. but whats the use.. when you wake up to THIS before we had time to transfer anything
Atleast we have the the website, whmcs and VPS panel on offsite server, so that is safe..
Just really really hope i begin to see some pings from my server on my monitor soon.
This is really really bad for Rapidspeeds.. they need to take serious actions to keep their customers now..
But what i don't understand is, during this thread (and other places as well) they have been miscredited already, and people are saying thet the DDOS is is a lie and so on.. why the heck does Rapidspeeds stay so quiet instead of just comming out with the thruth??
They are not helping themselves..
But let's all keep cool, and hope we get some type of thuthful announcement soon..
Posted by Thelen, 11-29-2011, 03:57 AM Pay peanuts get monkeys. All I can say. After the whole vSphere debacle I'd have thought people would be more wary of them, but I guess people have short memories.
Posted by mazedk, 11-29-2011, 04:40 AM
Anyways, Yeah it seems very bad with lack of communication towards the customers. However I hope this is due to them trying to resolve the issue..
And in regards to the ddos.. the right amount of bw to the right point in their network could do some serious damage, but im still puzzled about both .nl and .us going offline
Posted by Xiahost, 11-29-2011, 04:44 AM It really isn't a DDOS attack.. Leaseweb does not have any technical disturbances..
LOOK HERE
Leaseweb has also tried to sell a rapidspeeds server to a rapidspeeds customer directly apparently..
You can read the entire thread HERE
Posted by Thelen, 11-29-2011, 04:46 AM When they first started they were using vSphere and performance was crap (no surprise). They then switched to dedicated dedicated and things were better.
5-6Gbps or even 50-60Gbps wouldn't do bugger all to their network, even if it was pure raw bandwidth. NL and US are offline either because Leaseweb has decided so, or RIPE/APNIC has removed the allocation, or because of actual hardware problems (though, 5 switches going down at the same time?....)
The lack of communication is laughable. It takes minutes to update the customer. Darren is likely sleeping well though, knowing he is safe with the money.
Posted by lifetalk, 11-29-2011, 05:40 AM The latest update in that thread talks about a legal discussion between Leaseweb and RS. Based on the outcome, customers may or may not get their servers back.
Posted by DeltaAnime, 11-29-2011, 06:01 AM Maybe i'm reading too much into it, but the leasweb rep in question used 'former servers' in one of the live chats.
Are they deadpooled?
Francisco
Posted by panda4uhk, 11-29-2011, 06:03 AM
Are they deadpooled?
Francisco
http://www.wjunction.com/9-dedicated...-nl-us-115.htm
Posted by DeltaAnime, 11-29-2011, 06:06 AM
Was what I was referencing
Francisco
Posted by panda4uhk, 11-29-2011, 06:08 AM
they asked us to order a new server from them,
and there may have chance we will able to get the data backup on former servers.
Posted by drhimadri82, 11-29-2011, 07:14 AM I hope leaseweb do give the data back! What a bad day I had few months still left of my subscription, didn't take a proper backup last few days either
Posted by SceneSRV, 11-29-2011, 07:28 AM
Are they deadpooled?
Francisco
Posted by panda4uhk, 11-29-2011, 07:29 AM Latest update from one of the Rapidspeed's staffs
http://www.wjunction.com/1141491-post1197.htm
Well, I'll tell you guys what I know - which is not much.
- We did have a 5-6Gbit DDoS going on just before everything went down, I don't know if this was the cause, but our Cisco router was running at 93-100% CPU Load.
- I haven't heard from Darren in a few hours, so I assume he is dealing with it
- I do not think it is due to abuse, as I would have seen the emails
- I can not post emails from LeaseWeb as the mail server is down along with the whole network. Odds are Darren is dealing with them on the phone.
- Servers are still running I assume, as it seems only the network is down. This means your data is still there. I have no info one when/where/how it will be recoverable.
Posted by AL-Benjamin, 11-29-2011, 10:03 AM This doesn't quite smell right, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed this is really just a DDOS (which is an odd thing to wish for)
Posted by glh5, 11-29-2011, 02:53 PM 1)I do not think it is due to abuse, as I would have seen the emails
2) I can not post emails from LeaseWeb as the mail server is down along with the whole network. Odds are Darren is dealing with them on the phone.
This contradicts eachother. How can he know it is not abuse when the mail server is down?
Posted by panda4uhk, 11-29-2011, 02:53 PM Latest update from Leaseweb official, so this should be the end....
Thank you for your email.
We are trying to help all Rapidspeeds customers, however many topics are
out of hands to solve.
As Rapidspeeds was using their own IP, it will take more time for us to
figure it out which IP belongs to which server. For now, we really can
not guarantee that you can get your data back or not.
When we have clear information technically in our end, we will try to
give you the same server you were using. But, for now; we can only
provide new server.
Please let me know if you have any further questions.
--
Kind regards,
Murat Bayhan
Senior Account Manager, LeaseWeb
www.leaseweb.com
Posted by DeltaAnime, 11-29-2011, 03:34 PM
Thank you for your email.
We are trying to help all Rapidspeeds customers, however many topics are
out of hands to solve.
As Rapidspeeds was using their own IP, it will take more time for us to
figure it out which IP belongs to which server. For now, we really can
not guarantee that you can get your data back or not.
When we have clear information technically in our end, we will try to
give you the same server you were using. But, for now; we can only
provide new server.
Please let me know if you have any further questions.
--
Kind regards,
Murat Bayhan
Senior Account Manager, LeaseWeb
www.leaseweb.com
Francisco
Posted by shortyroc, 11-29-2011, 04:25 PM no matter what the problem they have been down for 2 days, and they have refused to post ANY information other then the BS about a DDOS attack. the owner has not replied to any e-mails or msn messages, the company shows as being dissolved. i have several servers there one is a web site for a local community non-profit organization, the others are for back ups. and i was paid up six months in advance. my answer is to get another server or contact lease-web to see about getting yours back. and to file a complaint with PayPal/credit-card/bank to get a refund. which is what i have done. luckily i had local backups and my main servers were not affected. no matter what their problem was and even if they do come back up i will not be going back to them, and i do not believe they will survive this. they should have kept us informed and updated
Posted by Prajyot, 11-29-2011, 05:12 PM edited....
Posted by AL-Benjamin, 11-29-2011, 05:15 PM that would be a different company
Posted by okpa, 11-29-2011, 05:16 PM
Posted by AL-Benjamin, 11-29-2011, 05:19 PM well my main clue is they have different names
Posted by shortyroc, 11-29-2011, 05:21 PM yes it is a different company
but this was posted by a staff member of rapidspeeds RapidSpeeds_Nathan
Servers should be back online tomorrow. Everyone who has an open order will be getting what they ordered. More info to come.
wait and see but i am still keeping my refund claim in until they do come back up and credit me the down time
and i will not be renewing unless i they can give a good reason as to why we were kept in the dark
Posted by Prajyot, 11-29-2011, 05:22 PM
Posted by BoxSlots, 11-29-2011, 05:25 PM rapidspeed.com.au is owned by "Theplanet.com" which is owned by SoftLayer of whom has been trying to get into the EU market all year round, Did someone come to RapidSpeeds rescue?
Posted by Patrick, 11-29-2011, 05:52 PM You guys are looking into rapidspeed.com.au too much. It's hosted at SoftLayer, the website isn't owned by The Planet or Softlayer... and they aren't even a hosting company!
rapidspeed.com.au = Rapid Speed Academy ... it's a school or a club or something, jeeze!
Posted by panda4uhk, 11-29-2011, 06:24 PM Update
http://twitter.com/#!/RapidSpeeds
@LeaseWeb Will be taking over RapidSpeeds servers and clients. If you have a server with us, it will be switched back on tomorrow morning!
Posted by okpa, 11-29-2011, 06:27 PM @LeaseWeb Will be taking over RapidSpeeds servers and clients. If you have a server with us, it will be switched back on tomorrow morning!
Posted by AL-Benjamin, 11-29-2011, 06:28 PM Well thats good news for you guys
Posted by TheLie, 11-29-2011, 06:42 PM Looks like no ddos as i said, more like bankrupty...
Posted by panda4uhk, 11-29-2011, 06:45 PM
Just like 100tb resells Softlayer, people will still buy from Softlayer if they need higher quality of support, but softlayer also gain profit to sell budget servers from 100tb, win win.
This might be the ending that many people wish to see.
Posted by swolebod, 11-29-2011, 06:46 PM
If you have a server with us, it will be switched back on tomorrow morning!
Posted by TOFSWebHosting, 11-29-2011, 07:01 PM
Posted by Negizmo, 11-29-2011, 08:16 PM I'm assuming that probably doesn't include their VPS customers. (The LeaseWeb takeover)
Posted by TOFSWebHosting, 11-29-2011, 10:01 PM Guess we will just have to wait and see RE: VPS Clients
Posted by kohkindachi, 11-30-2011, 07:53 AM R.I.P.
R.I.P.
R.I.P.
Posted by chennaihomie, 11-30-2011, 08:06 AM Is rapidspeeds Leaseweb's reseller?
Posted by lifetalk, 11-30-2011, 08:08 AM They claimed they colocated their own hardware, but it now turns out that they were just leasing the hardware and buying bandwidth with their own IP space.
Posted by alibabahost, 11-30-2011, 09:06 AM @they are up now.
Posted by LeaseWeb, 11-30-2011, 09:19 AM All,
Thank you for your patience in this matter.
More information about RapidSpeeds situation can be found at LeaseWeb's blog - http://blog.leaseweb.com/2011/11/30/...ces/#more-1598 - We trust that we have sufficiently informed you for now.
Should you have any questions, please use the contact details provided in the blog article.
Kind Regards,
LeaseWeb
Posted by lifetalk, 11-30-2011, 09:21 AM Oops, posted too late. Edited.
Posted by HivelocityGM, 11-30-2011, 09:36 AM
Thank you for your patience in this matter.
More information about RapidSpeeds situation can be found at LeaseWeb's blog - http://blog.leaseweb.com/2011/11/30/...ces/#more-1598 - We trust that we have sufficiently informed you for now.
Should you have any questions, please use the contact details provided in the blog article.
Kind Regards,
LeaseWeb
Posted by jj@24khost, 11-30-2011, 09:50 AM
For the avoidance of doubt: LeaseWeb will, contrary to the information circulated by RapidSpeeds, not take over RapidSpeeds.
Posted by resellermarkets, 11-30-2011, 10:40 AM If i am not wrong, the chargebacks won't work now coz the company stand dissolved so this means money is all vanished.
Posted by JayNL, 11-30-2011, 11:01 AM
Posted by dthbah2006, 11-30-2011, 11:27 AM Leaseweb is a class act in deed.
There were signs that this was coming with RapidSpeeds: http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1081201
I feel for you guys who were robbed by these scammers.
Posted by alibabahost, 11-30-2011, 11:57 AM Cheers to leaseweb
Posted by dkamioka, 11-30-2011, 01:14 PM Oh dear God!!! And what do I do?! I payed one year in advance... If anyone could help me... I'd really really appreciate!
Damn... Isn't that like... Stealing? Dissolving your company and running away with the clients money?
(Actually I payed when I was a client of the evoboxes.net in first place later they were sold to RapidServers)
I am really sad!
Posted by V7Host, 11-30-2011, 01:48 PM
Damn... Isn't that like... Stealing? Dissolving your company and running away with the clients money?
(Actually I payed when I was a client of the evoboxes.net in first place later they were sold to RapidServers)
I am really sad!
If you paid by credit card I would attempt a chargeback asap. Yes I would agree that this is a form of stealing - they must have known for a while before shutting down that things were not going well.
Hopefully you can recover your money.
Posted by dkamioka, 11-30-2011, 01:55 PM @V7Host
Thanks, I just tried to Dispute the bill with Paypal, but I do not think It will be refunded, because it was on Augst 29 2011...
I already was billed within my credit card bill (throught paypal) and I live in Brazil... So its even more complicated...
I payed with AMEX but I don't even know who to ask for my money back... Is it AMEX? Is it Paypal? I think it'd be this guy:
Darren Henry Thomson
63 High Burnside Avenue
Coatbridge
Glasgow
United Kingdom
ML5 1HZ
But, how would I be able to If I do not live in UK? =[
That's sad...
Posted by V7Host, 11-30-2011, 02:00 PM
Thanks, I just tried to Dispute the bill with Paypal, but I do not think It will be refunded, because it was on Augst 29 2011...
I already was billed within my credit card bill (throught paypal) and I live in Brazil... So its even more complicated...
I payed with AMEX but I don't even know who to ask for my money back... Is it AMEX? Is it Paypal? I think it'd be this guy:
Darren Henry Thomson
63 High Burnside Avenue
Coatbridge
Glasgow
United Kingdom
ML5 1HZ
But, how would I be able to If I do not live in UK? =[
That's sad...
Posted by freethought, 11-30-2011, 03:02 PM In the UK you can't voluntarily dissolve a Limited company if it owes money. Get in touch with Companies House and try to get the dissolution cancelled. Then get some professional advice on UK insolvency law so you can get the company declared insolvent and yourself listed as an unsecured creditor.
In the UK a Limited company is recognised as a legal entity in it's own right, so the directors and shareholders are protected from any failings of the business. That said, if they are knowingly trading whilst insolvent (and you can prove it) then you can get a court to transfer the debt over to the directors (Darren Thomson in this case, although Craig Milne was a director at the time of the dissolution - see below) and make them personally liable.
A key weapon in your arsenal here could be that the original dissolution request was made on the 3rd of August and appeared in the London Gazette on the 16th of August, so the dissolution has been planned for some time. Interestingly, the 16th of August is also the day that Craig Milne stood down as a director or Rapidspeeds Servers Ltd.
Posted by swolebod, 11-30-2011, 03:36 PM ****... Of course I paid for my next month's invoice of £156.80 the day before they shut down. I'm calling the bank right now for a chargeback.
Posted by DeltaAnime, 11-30-2011, 04:38 PM
Their twitter is now gone with the wind.
Francisco
Posted by TheLie, 11-30-2011, 05:06 PM
That they used the Leaseweb network with own IPs was known forever anyway (and a plus for them actually).
Posted by lifetalk, 11-30-2011, 05:16 PM Not really. Colocation, in the most basic sense, involves buying out your own hardware and putting it up in the DC. In this case, they were apparently renting out the servers like any of us do with a dedicated provider. Only difference being they had physical access to those servers.
Posted by swolebod, 11-30-2011, 05:18 PM
Posted by lifetalk, 11-30-2011, 05:21 PM It really doesn't matter at this point. Bottomline is he scammed, and he scammed people well. There's people with pre-payments going up to a full year. And RS was quite sizable in terms of clientele. Sad to see things go down this way.
Posted by TheLie, 11-30-2011, 06:10 PM I think some go to far now, RS was surely not setup to scam - Just consider the hundreds (if not thousands) of clients that had services happily the last months (even years) which delivered exactly what was promised....
Posted by MyDediServers, 11-30-2011, 07:19 PM
In the UK a Limited company is recognised as a legal entity in it's own right, so the directors and shareholders are protected from any failings of the business. That said, if they are knowingly trading whilst insolvent (and you can prove it) then you can get a court to transfer the debt over to the directors (Darren Thomson in this case, although Craig Milne was a director at the time of the dissolution - see below) and make them personally liable.
A key weapon in your arsenal here could be that the original dissolution request was made on the 3rd of August and appeared in the London Gazette on the 16th of August, so the dissolution has been planned for some time. Interestingly, the 16th of August is also the day that Craig Milne stood down as a director or Rapidspeeds Servers Ltd.
I just want to explain my end of the story. I (Craig Milne) stepped down because I fell out with my business Partner Darren and did not like the way I was being treated. I did actually leave before that date (16th Auguest), it was actually in July but by the time I got round to getting the letter into companies house (My fault I know) it seems to be the 16th. I truly did not know this would happen to RapidSpeeds, We did owe some money to leaseweb but we had arrangements in place to clear this off. I discussed this with Darren and he said he will try and make it work and we went our separate ways. (I do have Skype logs of this)
I have not contacted nor spoken to Darren since we split in July and therefore could not know this was his intention. I still do not have any contact with him as i never thought I would need to contact him again. I do feel very sorry for the clients that have suffered with this.
I am however surprised that RapidSpeeds did not inform people that this was happening, I did not know they had not been informed. I thought the company was actually doing well as they bought / merged with other companies such as Evoboxes and KnowinServers.
If I can do anything that will help please let me know and I will do my best. I am by all means not running away from this, I put a lot of hard work into RapidSpeeds and I still have some good relationships with a lot of the customers. I will do my upmost to help people out.
Regards
Craig
Posted by Thelen, 11-30-2011, 07:31 PM
If I can do anything that will help please let me know and I will do my best. I am by all means not running away from this, I put a lot of hard work into RapidSpeeds and I still have some good relationships with a lot of the customers. I will do my upmost to help people out.
Regards
Craig
Posted by MyDediServers, 11-30-2011, 07:41 PM Thelen - I have just checked my old rapidspeeds Skype and somehow the logs only go back 3 months. I know this does sound convenient but i assure they were there. Unfortunately I cannot prove this unless I can get in touch with Skype and get some back dated logs but I am not sure if this is possible. I will update you when I have contacted them.
Posted by Thelen, 11-30-2011, 07:46 PM Hmm, my logs go back to June 2010 in most cases.
I don't doubt you in general, perhaps providing more general operational details such as company registration, employees (perhaps not names), things that will be useful for pursuing the vast sums of money owed to people.
Posted by freethought, 11-30-2011, 07:53 PM
I just want to explain my end of the story. I (Craig Milne) stepped down because I fell out with my business Partner Darren and did not like the way I was being treated. I did actually leave before that date (16th Auguest), it was actually in July but by the time I got round to getting the letter into companies house (My fault I know) it seems to be the 16th. I truly did not know this would happen to RapidSpeeds, We did owe some money to leaseweb but we had arrangements in place to clear this off. I discussed this with Darren and he said he will try and make it work and we went our separate ways. (I do have Skype logs of this)
I have not contacted nor spoken to Darren since we split in July and therefore could not know this was his intention. I still do not have any contact with him as i never thought I would need to contact him again. I do feel very sorry for the clients that have suffered with this.
I am however surprised that RapidSpeeds did not inform people that this was happening, I did not know they had not been informed. I thought the company was actually doing well as they bought / merged with other companies such as Evoboxes and KnowinServers.
If I can do anything that will help please let me know and I will do my best. I am by all means not running away from this, I put a lot of hard work into RapidSpeeds and I still have some good relationships with a lot of the customers. I will do my upmost to help people out.
Regards
Craig
Out of interest, were you aware that there was a request made to strike the company off the register at Companies House around the same time as you formally stood down as a director?
Posted by jambo87, 11-30-2011, 08:07 PM Craig
If you want to redeeem yourself, at least in my eyes, for the love of god help me out
My whole business consists of 8TB of data located on the rapidspeeds servers
I only have a 100mbit unmetered to transfer them to and it's taking an age
there is no possible way I can get it done by the 2nd
Im pretty pissed of with leaseweb considering I was using them for 2 years until i switched to rapidspeeds just last month and now this has happened
I will be eagerly awaiting your reply
Thanks
Posted by MyDediServers, 11-30-2011, 08:08 PM
Out of interest, were you aware that there was a request made to strike the company off the register at Companies House around the same time as you formally stood down as a director?
Also let me clear something up that has confused some people. The last address in London was basically an address and a post box where mail got forwarded to Darren (As he set it up and I guess he chose his address for the forwarding). Anyway this had expired and had not been renewed (both of our faults for not checking). This was also about the time we needed to hand our books / returns in. So I contacted an accountant a friend had recommended and registered the company there, along with this I also had the accountant do the books / returns. This was just before we had fallen out and I had resigned.
My new company (MyDediServers) has the same address as RapidSpeeds because obviously I use the same accountant and same address as he lives very close to where I live.
I hope this clears things up with the address situation.
Posted by MyDediServers, 11-30-2011, 08:13 PM
If you want to redeeem yourself, at least in my eyes, for the love of god help me out
My whole business consists of 8TB of data located on the rapidspeeds servers
I only have a 100mbit unmetered to transfer them to and it's taking an age
there is no possible way I can get it done by the 2nd
Im pretty pissed of with leaseweb considering I was using them for 2 years until i switched to rapidspeeds just last month and now this has happened
I will be eagerly awaiting your reply
Thanks
I have already tried to contact a business manager i know at leaseweb to see if I could get something sorted for the customers that actually came to me asking for help.
Unfortunately they said to me what they are saying to everyone, they cannot discuss the business with me and to please get those customers to contact sales@leaseweb.com using the subject RapidSpeeds to Leaseweb or something along the lines of that.
Posted by Thelen, 11-30-2011, 08:20 PM jambo87 I might be able to help re the data. Is it slow cos its 100Mbit or?
How much storage do you need?
Posted by jambo87, 11-30-2011, 08:23 PM
I have already tried to contact a business manager i know at leaseweb to see if I could get something sorted for the customers that actually came to me asking for help.
Unfortunately they said to me what they are saying to everyone, they cannot discuss the business with me and to please get those customers to contact sales@leaseweb.com using the subject RapidSpeeds to Leaseweb or something along the lines of that.
They also said they would 'only talk to current leaseweb customers' Even though I've been paying them 2,000 euros a month for years
It's rediculous. Why couldnt we have just been told about it say a week ago? Was this just so he could grab every single penny possible before the 30th
To be fair though I have been speaking to a guy called Dewey at leaseweb and hes been pretty helpful though I think theres nothing he can really do about it, though he does seem genuinly concerned
I've order 4 100TB servers with leaseweb hoping that they will arrive in time for the deadline and I can just zoom the files on there but thats looking bleaker by the minute
Definatley going to be contesting every signle penny ive given to RS and Leaseweb over the years because my business will go down the pan if they pull the plug on the 2nd, Im not sure what sort of legal action I could take but something will have to be done, I dont particularly want to be down the jobcenter on the 3rd because of the actions of some arsehole
Posted by jambo87, 11-30-2011, 08:25 PM
How much storage do you need?
I cant thank you enough for trying to help me out, cheers pal!
EDIT: Just re read my post i guess sounds confusing
The rapidspeeds server are gbit unmetered, the 100Mbit (Leaseweb) is the one Im currently using to back the data up, but at 11.5MBps it will take about a week
Posted by Steven F, 11-30-2011, 09:12 PM
If you want to redeeem yourself, at least in my eyes, for the love of god help me out
My whole business consists of 8TB of data located on the rapidspeeds servers
I only have a 100mbit unmetered to transfer them to and it's taking an age
there is no possible way I can get it done by the 2nd
Im pretty pissed of with leaseweb considering I was using them for 2 years until i switched to rapidspeeds just last month and now this has happened
I will be eagerly awaiting your reply
Thanks
Posted by jambo87, 11-30-2011, 09:15 PM
Asked about a gbit port upgrade - Theyd have to take the server and put it in another cage which would probably have to be done tomorrow now and who knows how long that would take, Plus more downtime isnt what I need right now
I just ordered a backup server from OVH after being reccomended them by Thelen, they have nearly instant deployment apparently
Fingers crossed
Posted by MyDediServers, 11-30-2011, 09:19 PM OVH are a good cheap solution to be honest and yeah you are right, they do have a very fast deployment time. Also Thanks Thelen for giving a helping hand.
Posted by Thelen, 11-30-2011, 09:30 PM Well that deal may not work, they have a fairly long provisioning time. It will be at least till tomorrow morning before they know if they can even do it.. But if they can, pricing may be $150/TB stored for up to a month, bandwidth free.
Posted by F-DNS, 11-30-2011, 09:48 PM
Traffic is unlimited. If you exceed 3 TB / month, the connection will be limited to 10 Mbps. 1 Gbps connection will be restored once additional TB of traffic have been purchased (after what you have exceeded has been taken away). £0.89 ex. VAT per TB (Minimum purchase 2TB).
Posted by Thelen, 11-30-2011, 10:32 PM Anyone in powerloft might be **** out of luck if they plan to backup to OVH, OVHs US links seem trashed:
http://weathermap.ovh.net/backbone
Posted by jambo87, 11-30-2011, 10:39 PM
http://weathermap.ovh.net/backbone
Posted by Thelen, 12-01-2011, 12:40 AM Actually http://leasewebnoc.com/status.php?i=...medium=twitter could be part of it too.
Posted by Quota, 12-01-2011, 01:08 AM Leaseweb just shutdown my rapidspeeds server.
It seems to be fine past few hours ago.
No KVM availabe. Pingtime out.
Please take pre-caution on it.
Posted by lifetalk, 12-01-2011, 02:57 AM You would have done better buying premium accounts on some reputable filehosts and FTP'ing your files on there. If you still need help with some data, I may be able to help. Get in touch with me via PM and I'll try and hook you up.
Posted by Thelen, 12-01-2011, 04:43 AM filehosts won't have enough storage or ability to easily do it. good idea though.
http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?p=7827930 might be a good option.
Posted by lifetalk, 12-01-2011, 05:18 AM They should be able to hold out temporarily. Spread it over more than 1 filehost.
Posted by Thelen, 12-01-2011, 05:27 AM Someone has already tried it, it is impractical because the data limit per file and the limit to the number of files.
Or perhaps you know of a filehost that supports FXP type thing?
Posted by lifetalk, 12-01-2011, 05:32 AM Filesonic, Wupload, Fileserve. That's 3 off the top of my head, that I know, that allow FTP transfer.
Rapidshare allows remote uploads, with no limit on per file size. You could setup an http server on the RDP (assuming that's the case with jambo87) and do the remote uploads.
My point is, the routes are infinite. You just need to look, spend some money, and get done with.
Posted by Thelen, 12-01-2011, 05:34 AM hmm jambo87 said it wasn't working with wupload :/
Posted by xendatious, 12-01-2011, 09:04 AM ^
Wupload sucks. Abit late now probably, but he could have managed it with filesonic or fileserve, instead of asking people to get him 8TB of storage.
Posted by Dan-CKS, 12-01-2011, 09:10 AM maybe of use
http://blog.leaseweb.com/2011/11/30/...eeds-services/
Posted by F-DNS, 12-01-2011, 09:57 AM
http://weathermap.ovh.net/backbone
Posted by Thelen, 12-01-2011, 05:54 PM yes i was referring to that, it was at 92% for most of the day...
Posted by F-DNS, 12-01-2011, 06:27 PM
Posted by Thelen, 12-01-2011, 06:30 PM Where do you see that?
How do you know what the capacity is?
Anyway, there was still slowness on that link for some IP ranges, so perhaps it isn't as simple.
Posted by F-DNS, 12-01-2011, 06:44 PM
andy@rbx3 [~]# tracert 108.59.15.1
traceroute to 108.59.15.1 (108.59.15.1), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 rbx-35-m2.fr.eu (91.121.198.252) 0.734 ms 0.851 ms 0.895 ms
2 rbx-1-6k.fr.eu (213.251.191.1) 0.443 ms * *
3 rbx-g2-a9.fr.eu (91.121.131.14) 0.661 ms 0.710 ms 0.547 ms
4 th2-5-6k.fr.eu (91.121.131.138) 4.124 ms * *
5 tata.as6453.fr.eu (213.186.32.246) 3.903 ms 3.949 ms 3.950 ms
6 if-12-871.tcore2.aeq-ashburn.as6453.net (216.6.87.73) 86.511 ms 86.464 ms 86.523 ms
7 216.6.87.18 (216.6.87.18) 82.643 ms 82.769 ms 82.780 ms
8 108.59.15.194 (108.59.15.194) 82.709 ms 82.772 ms 82.804 ms
9 nmis.hdcs.leaseweb.net (108.59.15.1) 82.800 ms 82.820 ms 82.821 msRight hand side of http://weathermap.ovh.net/paris (Each line is a 10G). It's not actually showing the recorded traffic right now as they seem to be editing it to include the new Level(3) links from London and Paris.Quote:
Posted by topgun, 12-01-2011, 07:45 PM Anyone requiring backups, Redstation.com has a special offer of £29 for 3months with 4TB storage and a gigabit port.
Posted by Thelen, 12-01-2011, 07:55 PM Yea interesting, although the network is reeealy bad.
Posted by topgun, 12-01-2011, 08:01 PM
Posted by NuCode, 12-01-2011, 09:16 PM So funny: http://i.imgur.com/PfnIs.jpg
Posted by Thelen, 12-01-2011, 09:18 PM And untrue :/
Posted by NuCode, 12-01-2011, 09:51 PM I guess this too is untrue: http://filesharingtalk.com/threads/4...used-by-thelen
(why that graphic exists in first place)
Thelen seems to be actively selling on this thread, so you guys should know that prior to going in business with him.
Posted by Thelen, 12-01-2011, 10:24 PM What am I selling?
Yea that is untrue as well, you caused the outage.
Posted by BlaZeX, 12-01-2011, 11:39 PM Few of the rapidspeed servers are back, right?
More may come back anytime now
Posted by LeaseWeb, 12-02-2011, 07:35 AM All,
Update with regards to RapidSpeeds & LeaseWeb: http://lsw.to/yxu - grace period extended until Monday 2-12-2011, 8.30 hours CET.
Kind Regards,
LeaseWeb
Posted by Thelen, 12-02-2011, 07:42 AM Nicely done guys!
You ought to offer a fee for keeping a particular server online longer...
Posted by lifetalk, 12-02-2011, 07:42 AM Bravo, LW
Posted by kohkindachi, 12-02-2011, 07:46 AM Hi how is 2nd of December a Monday?
Posted by mazedk, 12-02-2011, 07:46 AM Thank you very much LeaseWeb - you guys really came through for us.
I do/did however have a VPS with RS which is still down, is it possible to get that up and running? it went down sometime yesterday
Posted by Thelen, 12-02-2011, 07:54 AM BTW they mean Monday 5-12-2011..
Posted by Chris-WS, 12-02-2011, 08:20 AM
Bye...
Posted by LeaseWeb, 12-02-2011, 08:29 AM All,
We mean Monday 5-12-2011, 8.30 hours CET.
Regards,
LeaseWebQuote:
Update with regards to RapidSpeeds & LeaseWeb: http://lsw.to/yxu - grace period extended until Monday 2-12-2011, 8.30 hours CET.
Kind Regards,
LeaseWeb
Posted by MrGeneral, 12-03-2011, 03:55 AM Wow, now that was a really nice attitude from you LeaseWeb.
Posted by x719x, 12-03-2011, 07:22 PM I have an old OVH Kimsufi C-05G. It has been offline since 11 PM Dec. 1. This weekend has been a horrible nightmare as I was planning a site launch and many other things. I talked to Leaseweb staff and they basically said (in the limited English that they spoke) - 'we don't care about you or your problem, we only care about your money'. They wouldn't cut me a deal. They wouldn't help me out. They wouldn't even do anything to get my OVH box back online. Instead they said 'go to the sales page', but why would I pay 49 GBP when I could get a better server from OVH for 43.20 after VAT?
When you say you 'extended the grace period' how about you turn ALL of the boxes back on and not just the ones that you have direct access to? Or maybe you can tell all of the other people who used Rapidspeeds as a reseller that the fact that their OVH boxes are down is 'not your problem'?
In addition - I DO NOT WANT A LEASEWEB BOX. Their prices are too high, and they have restrictions. RESTRICTIONS? On a dedicated server? I WANT MY OVH BOX BACK. I've tried numerous times to get in touch with OVH staff via email but no one has responded.
Posted by alibabahost, 12-03-2011, 07:28 PM @Rapidspeeds
These thieves run away with our $2000.We have 5 servers from them and we renewed it on 25, 26 and after 28th they are off.
We have contacted a lawyer in Uk and they told they can take my case , we will not leave them to run away with our money so easy. even if have to spend more $2000.We will make sure Mr Darren will be behind Jail ASAP.
Thanks
Posted by TheLie, 12-03-2011, 07:32 PM
When you say you 'extended the grace period' how about you turn ALL of the boxes back on and not just the ones that you have direct access to? Or maybe you can tell all of the other people who used Rapidspeeds as a reseller that the fact that their OVH boxes are down is 'not your problem'?
Leaseweb CANNOT turn OVH stuff back on, they CAN ONLY ACT IN THEIR OWN DATACENTERS.
This was clear all the time.
You just ask too much.
Your OVH hosted stuff is lost, thats the only thing they (and we) can tell you.
Posted by F-DNS, 12-03-2011, 07:40 PM
Talk to customer services (on the phone) at OVH on Monday when they open.
Posted by UnderHost, 12-03-2011, 07:42 PM
These thieves run away with our $2000.We have 5 servers from them and we renewed it on 25, 26 and after 28th they are off.
We have contacted a lawyer in Uk and they told they can take my case , we will not leave them to run away with our money so easy. even if have to spend more $2000.We will make sure Mr Darren will be behind Jail ASAP.
Thanks
Are you paying via credit card?Quote:
Posted by x719x, 12-03-2011, 07:49 PM
Talk to customer services (on the phone) at OVH on Monday when they open.
Posted by techjr, 12-03-2011, 07:51 PM
When you say you 'extended the grace period' how about you turn ALL of the boxes back on and not just the ones that you have direct access to? Or maybe you can tell all of the other people who used Rapidspeeds as a reseller that the fact that their OVH boxes are down is 'not your problem'?
In addition - I DO NOT WANT A LEASEWEB BOX. Their prices are too high, and they have restrictions. RESTRICTIONS? On a dedicated server? I WANT MY OVH BOX BACK. I've tried numerous times to get in touch with OVH staff via email but no one has responded.Quote:
Sales people will tell you anything for a commission or to get to the next person. If it doesn't sound feasible for a direct competitor to bring a box online that they don't actually own. It probably isn't possible...
Posted by x719x, 12-03-2011, 07:59 PM
However, Leaseweb is greedy. Why would they help customers when they can just ramp up the prices?
Posted by F-DNS, 12-03-2011, 07:59 PM
The only possible explanation I can think of is that whoever you were speaking to has been working flat out for the last 3 days and nights helping ex-Rapidspeeds/Leaseweb clients that he didn't get (or couldn't possibly imagine) that you were talking to one company about another company's server - I mean why would he, or why would you even? It's just dumb! (Sorry!)
Posted by alibabahost, 12-03-2011, 08:04 PM @underhost
Yes we payed by credit card but they have withdrawn all amount from their company bank account.
But as our friend is a lawyer in UK so we will take legal action for inconvinence cost to us.
Posted by UnderHost, 12-03-2011, 08:08 PM
Yes we payed by credit card but they have withdrawn all amount from their company bank account.
But as our friend is a lawyer in UK so we will take legal action for inconvinence cost to us.
Posted by Thelen, 12-03-2011, 08:42 PM @x719x, Don't hold much hope though, because unless you can provide a lot of proof it was your server they won't be able to do anything. They'll know people might try take advantage of the situation.
Posted by x719x, 12-03-2011, 08:48 PM
<< snipped >>
Posted by Harzem, 12-03-2011, 09:31 PM Last few pages have been cleaned. Please try to stay within confinements of "civilized discussion".
Posted by resellermarkets, 12-03-2011, 11:13 PM This is why everyone called them : Rapidspeeds : A bag company or someone also said 1 MAN SHOW and we can all now say this he has shown us a bigger way.
Posted by plumsauce, 12-03-2011, 11:24 PM
You do want a OVH box, but they don't answer you.
And somehow this is a Leaseweb problem ... according to you.
You need to examine your logical processes.
Posted by x719x, 12-05-2011, 07:42 AM OVH staff just didn't have anybody in the office on the weekends and the time difference is an issue. I got ahold of them today and they extended my server for 5 days, free of charge - and said they could grant me an even longer grace period if I purchased a new server. Alas, I cannot get the old one 'back' but knowing that I am covered until I have configured the new box is a great feeling. I'm still angry at Rapidspeeds, but OVH has made me feel much better. Sorry about being mean to the people who were wrong.
Posted by tmaniac, 12-05-2011, 10:42 AM
When you say you 'extended the grace period' how about you turn ALL of the boxes back on and not just the ones that you have direct access to? Or maybe you can tell all of the other people who used Rapidspeeds as a reseller that the fact that their OVH boxes are down is 'not your problem'?
In addition - I DO NOT WANT A LEASEWEB BOX. Their prices are too high, and they have restrictions. RESTRICTIONS? On a dedicated server? I WANT MY OVH BOX BACK. I've tried numerous times to get in touch with OVH staff via email but no one has responded.
And what does your OVH server have anything to do with this thread?
Posted by F-DNS, 12-05-2011, 11:07 AM
Posted by x719x, 12-05-2011, 06:53 PM
What about those who were right?
It was sold to him by Rapidspeeds - They weren't a LW reseller exclusively.
Posted by Thelen, 12-13-2011, 09:17 PM So does anyone have any new news? Craig, do you have more of a story?
Posted by lifetalk, 12-14-2011, 02:20 AM What I know is that a couple people disputed their payments on Paypal and won the disputes, with the full amount being refunded to them. At least 4 people have confirmed disputing and winning the disputes. That's some kind of good news.
Posted by Time2303, 12-14-2011, 04:53 AM Better raise a dispute while you can, the money may run out for refunds.
Posted by MyDediServers, 12-14-2011, 06:59 AM The money has run out for refunds. They are apparently in negative balance. Paypal contacted me to see if they could find Darren and if i had any information i could share with them. I shall do so as much as possible.
Posted by Thelen, 12-14-2011, 07:01 AM What amount does paypal stop giving refunds when you are in the negative? I've seen people in thousands of negative?
Posted by MyDediServers, 12-14-2011, 07:04 AM No idea Thelen, probably.
Posted by SkyDediHost, 12-18-2011, 12:06 PM Just info
good news, paypal has made full refund for all my server with rapidspeeds.
Posted by pawpoint, 12-20-2011, 10:27 AM I am really glad to hear you got the refund. I was starting to doubt you would and now my faith is restored in Paypal
Posted by SkyDediHost, 12-20-2011, 12:17 PM hope you will be lucky for this case.
at first I did not expect more, but in the end paypal can take a wise decision, this is probably because so many people who do the dispute to the RS, so the paypal also feel suspicious of this case
Posted by Keith R, 12-20-2011, 12:53 PM @MyDediServers:
Your no longer apart of the company, and started your own business kind of the same as what rapidspeeds was? I always did like talking with you, over Darren back in rapidspeeds earlier days, but I mean, Rapidspeeds always did provide false information about what they did, and how it was ran. :/
Good luck to everyone, so sad to see this happen, but ay what can we do. I'm glad PayPal is working with alot of you.
Keith
Posted by virtuallynathan, 12-24-2011, 01:10 AM Hey guys,
I worked for RS for a while after we merged the old EvoBoxes with RapidSpeeds. I have now restarted EvoBoxes on the Swiftway network in EvoSwitch.
I apologize for what happened here and feel for those who lost money/time/etc when RapidSpeeds went down the tube.
I'm happy to answer questions about RapidSpeeds, etc. I have full mail server dumps (for a few accounts, not darren's personal one) and lots of skype logs as well. I'd rather not post them all, but if anyone still has any outstanding questions I'd be happy to answer.
Have a Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah, and a nice Kwanza - Or just Happy Holidays.
Nathan
Posted by Thelen, 12-24-2011, 01:14 AM Why not post a complete chain of events from your perspective, and any more information you have about Darren.
What was the story with you going to Ireland, etc.
Posted by virtuallynathan, 12-24-2011, 01:52 AM Well, I'll see what I can do:
I'll start with the EvoBoxes/RapidSpeeds Merger:
EvoBoxes was doing extremely well, we had around 49 servers, 350+ customers, etc. I wanted to add something to the mix and asked Darren about some 12 disk servers. After about 4-6 months, he said he would be able to get them, but only if I agreed to take 15 of them. I (somewhat foolishly) agreed and took on these 15 servers. By the time it had come to pay the bill, I had 10/15 filled and was a few hundred pounds short on the bill. At this time, my business partner Haytham who had control of all of the finances, etc was essentially out of the picture and only reachable via SMS and the occasional IM. I decided that instead of scraping up this money, I would approach RapidSpeeds with a proposition to merge, and I would be paid (something) as an employee/consultant. The merge took some time, but was generally fairly successful in my eyes. In the process of merging, Haytham took what he considered his fair share from our PayPal account ($600) - which I did not agree with, but I suppose now, that wasn't really a huge deal to have him out of the picture.
The main reason for the merger was not the money, which would not really have been a problem. Haytham was less and less available, I was getting ready to go to University, and David, our other business partner was getting ready for an Internship (I also held a summer internship at a Philadelphia-based national ISP during the merger). I was growing tired of "running" the business side (SMS-ing Haytham to do things), and feared I would not have much time to run EvoBoxes at University (Turns out I have plenty of free time).
Will I make this mistake again? No.
EvoBoxes is now an LLC, registered in my name along with a business bank account that is also in my name. We will be doing proper financial stuff, taxes, etc (My dad happens to be an Accountant).
The merger took a while, we had to convert from SolusVM to Gavin's custom VPS panel based on vePortal. Otherwise, it went well.
Anyway - the story continues:
A short while after the EvoBoxes merge, Darren came on Skype one day and said we now had KnowinServers. Seeing the reputation and whatnot of KnowinServers, I would not have given my blessings to this merger. Glenn, the owner is not technically minded, and can be very rude (see WJunction for examples). Along with him came 4 support agents from India. They were nice enough, but had a hard time dealing with our systems and stuff. They were called "Alan" and "Scott" in our system, but each of them was run by a 2 man team that worked 12 hour shifts. This was meant to provide better support, but was just a nightmare. After about a week I told them I did not want them to answer any EvoBoxes tickets, but they did not really listen.
When I asked Darren about being paid once, he mentioned money was tight at the moment, but did not seem particularly concerned. He said he would give me an extra bonus in February when the servers were all paid off and we would have much higher profit margins - It was my understanding the servers were initially bought/leased from Dell/HP, but then LeaseWeb offered a better bulk deal, but I do not have any details on this. I think he mentioned money being tight twice while I was there. If it was so tight that the company was going to be shut down, one would think that it would be mentioned more so he could get us to bring sales, etc.
During this period of time, LeaseWeb's support quality for us decreased, and response times increased. LeaseWeb wanted to bill us for OS reloads (2-3 per month is all we asked for), and would only let us upgrade servers, not downgrade. Darren had also put too much trust into the PowerLoft Project. Before I was an employee (or whatever you want to call me), Darren had expressed doubts about LeaseWeb's network there, and whatnot. In the end, I believe he signed a contract for 8 racks and 10Gbit. In the whole time that it was available, only 2 racks were sold. I believe LeaseWeb were unwilling to reduce the contract (they did let us cut down to 5Gbit/s of bandwidth), or help us move the servers back to NL and cancel the contract all together.
Darren was not the greatest of business-people, at least at the start of RapidSpeeds. His contract with LeaseWeb was for 3 years, which is far too long. He had a contract for 14 (?) racks in NL, only 12 of which were filled, and each had 25A of power, but only used about 10A. I think we were overpaying for about 200A of power. They lied about the connection to each rack switch. Each rack had 2x 24 port EX3200's with 3x1Gbit uplinks. The whole network ran on 3x10Gbit @ 1EUR/Mbit. There was some internal network switch on each rack that LeaseWeb had and billed them for over a year for, but never configured.
Towards the end, LeaseWebs bandwidth quality began to decrease as well. We had a talk with their lead Network Architect who explained the design of their Volume Network, and made up some BS excuses about why they couldn't do anything about it (if anyone wants a description of how the LeaseWeb Volume Network is designed, let me know).
In the last few weeks Darren was busy moving to a new house somewhere outside of Glasgow (Coatbridge still I think). He never mentioned anything about the fate of the company, and was barely online during the whole ordeal, and I have not seen him online since.
I moved to Scotland for no other reason than to go to University. I never had the chance to meet Darren in person.
Whoever said that they bet Darren has never been in the datacenter, I have seen pictures of both Darren and Craig in EvoSwitch.
Anyhow,
I was never involved in the finances of RapidSpeeds Servers LTD, and had no idea of its impending doom.
Hope that helps clear some things up, if not, let me know.
Nathan
TL;DR - I explained RapidSpeeds demise from my POV.
Posted by Thelen, 12-24-2011, 02:02 AM Interesting.
The rack connection stuff explains why the performance was so crap at the start and why they upgraded to 10Gbit uplink. Either you weren't told about the total network or they lied to you as well, but I've got it straight from Darren (as a perspective buyer) just 2 months ago that they had over 200Gbit available (about half used) :/
I'm interested in the LW volume network stuff, not sure how much you can say due to NDA though?
Do you have any more information on the close of the business, and Darren running away? There are a lot of people here that want to get their money back...
Good luck with EB, take all these lessons and don't make the same mistakes with SW, you can certainly rebuild EB to even larger now you have a proper company to work with
Posted by virtuallynathan, 12-24-2011, 02:23 AM They didn't have 10Gbit uplinks on any switches except the rack of 20 HP DL180's (that I had 15 of). Those switches had 1x10Gbit each.
I know 100% for a fact that RapidSpeeds was running on only 30Gbit. I had full access to their Cisco Catalyst 6509, it only had 3 10Gbit uplinks configured. 2 of them to one of the LeaseWeb HV routers and 1 to another (#5 and #14 IIRC). We only maxed the network for an hour or 2 about once a week.
"[8/10/11 12:01:10 AM] Darren Henry: each rack has 2 switches
[8/10/11 12:01:16 AM] Darren Henry: each switch has 3 x 1G uplink.
"[8/10/11 12:02:31 AM] Darren Henry: your DL180's is 2 x 10G though
[8/10/11 12:16:30 AM] Darren Henry: you know we hardly use 20G in the NL?"
Port1:
[8/10/11 11:04:57 PM] Darren Henry: 30 second input rate 3329978000 bits/sec, 581495 packets/sec
30 second output rate 6901034000 bits/sec, 688527 packets/sec
[8/10/11 11:04:59 PM] Darren Henry: 5/1
Port2:
[8/10/11 11:05:13 PM] Darren Henry: 30 second input rate 2753971000 bits/sec, 476669 packets/sec
30 second output rate 7375074000 bits/sec, 718796 packets/sec
[8/10/11 11:05:14 PM] Darren Henry: 5/3
Port3:
[8/10/11 11:05:30 PM] Darren Henry: 30 second input rate 2816526000 bits/sec, 489980 packets/sec
30 second output rate 6982447000 bits/sec, 688124 packets/sec
[8/10/11 11:05:32 PM] Darren Henry: 3/3
I never signed anything with LeaseWeb or RapidSpeeds. I'll update this post tomorrow if I can.
If anyone cares: According to LW, Megaupload do 1.5Tbit/s of traffic. 600Gbps in the US, 500Gbps in Asia, and over 400Gbps out of LeaseWeb.
Thanks for the kind words Thelen
Forgot to add this: Prior to merging with RapidSpeeds, EvoBoxes estimated annual Income was >$250,000. Hopefully we can surpass that this time!
Posted by Thelen, 12-24-2011, 02:28 AM How can the traffic have been so low with so many servers, that doesn't really tally with what you even said your servers do :/
Yea I'd believe 1.5Tbps from MU, since there are many usenet providers that do 1Tbps+ on their own. Highwinds does >2 for example.
Posted by virtuallynathan, 12-24-2011, 02:34 AM Well, there were like 450 servers, with maybe 80 that were not used or used for internal low bandwidth stuff. So about 375 servers with 30Gbit = 80Mbit/s per server. With out 60 servers we did close to 6Gbit or something at peak. Its been a while since I've done the math.
The heaviest streaming users were either capped, paid more, or were asked to leave at the end of the month (or their subscription). We had 1 peak user do 750Mbit every night for about 5hrs.
Posted by Thelen, 12-24-2011, 02:54 AM Hmm just find it hard to believe it was so low when there have been so many people posting such high traffic stats from evo. I guess they must be the extreme outlyers!
Posted by mazedk, 12-24-2011, 08:02 AM
Posted by virtuallynathan, 12-24-2011, 12:34 PM OK, here is what I know about the Volume Network:
There are a number of High Volume Routers, HV for short, and are all CIsco 6500 series routers. Each of these (at least 14) routers have a different set of transit uplinks. Some might have Telecom Italia, or Telia, or Hurricane Electric, or Telefonica, etc. Depending on which HV router you are uplinked to, you will have performance that is different from another person connected to another HV router. I'm sure some share the same upstream providers, etc. The will also have some kind of a link into the rest of the LeaseWeb network, but they will be configured so almost all of the traffic goes over the transit link on that specific HV router.
The 100TB network has a better design, where all the 100TB server racks are connected to an HVC router (High Volume Core) which contains a much broader set of uplinks, and has a greater potential to be expanded than the Cisco 6500 series. I am unsure what model exactly is used for the HVC router, but its probably the Juniper MX960.
We saw poor performance going over Telia, and asked if we could move a link to another HV router that had a different carrier. The Network Architect said this was not possible because they would have to split our IP's in BGP or some nonsense (We already had uplinks to 2 different HV routers, so a 3rd would have been the same deal).
Here is an excerpt from an email I wrote them that shows what happens with the HV network:So as you can see one of the HV routers had an uplink to Telia, and the other to Seabone and maybe Cogent, which resulted in quite a few AS hops to reach the final destination.Quote:
cw.com (cable and wireless) -> Telia and Seabone
level3.com -> Telia and Seabone
dtag.de new york -> Cogent
tatacommunications.com -> Telia and Seabone
orange.com (france telecom) -> Telia and Seabone
proof.ovh.net -> cogent
rapidshare.com -> telia and seabone to Level3
megashares.com -> telia and cogent (single homed with cogent)
When we compare this with a traceroute from your cheapest VPS, a 100TB server and the NOC Looking Glass, we see:
cw.com (cable and wireless) -> Level(3) to cable and wireless (in NL)
level3.com -> Level(3)
dtag.de new york -> DTAG
tatacommunications.com -> Tata
orange.com (france telecom) -> Orange
proof.ovh.net > ovh
rapidshare.com -> Level3
megashares.com -> cogent (single homed with cogent)
I'm fairly sure that cost wise, and performance wise it is better to have 1 big router than 14+ smaller ones, and it is fairly clear LeaseWeb has now realized that.
I could also go into how it took LeaseWeb 3-4 months to fix a critical infrastructure security issue I discovered, but thats a story for another day (Suffice it to say I could have shut down 2500-3500 servers).
Posted by LeaseWeb, 01-01-2012, 06:36 PM All,
The demise of Rapidspeeds is unfortunate. However with regards to the below discussion, we would like to point out that LeaseWeb is not in any way responsible for RapidSpeeds demise.Quote:
We value our customers and continuously strive to deliver the assured quality for our services. LeaseWeb never neglects our customer requests, complaints or issues and have always prioritized customer satisfaction.
Rapid Speeds was one of our valued customers and the SLA for the support requests were met.
Default OS install feature is available in our self service center and like any other customer Rapidspeeds had the option to do it themselves from our SSC. For any customized setup they had to contact support and accept support fees.The network infrastructure was custom built upon to RapidSpeeds request.Quote:
All setups and corresponding costs are discussed with our customers before they sign up with us. We and our customers are equally responsible to follow the agreements of signed contract.We do not apply any hidden costs to our customers for our services. Similarly we appreciate customers not disclosing prices and details of a confidential contract.
As a growing customer, LeaseWeb invested a generous amount of resources to support RapidSpeeds as their success translates into more business for us. The unfortunate demise in turn caused a loss for us. Irrespective of this loss, we remained true to our values of high customer satisfaction and temporarily brought up the entire infrastructure to allow the end customers to retrieve their data back. Our main concern was to ensure that the end customers had minimal impact due to the demise of RapidSpeeds.
All details with regards to RapidSpeeds & LeaseWeb is available at: http://lsw.to/yxu
Regards,
LeaseWeb
Posted by Thelen, 01-01-2012, 09:46 PM That network design makes no sense at all. They have direct peering with most of those you listed at the various exchanges. OVH for example, DECIX LINK NLIX AMSIX, yet it is going through cogent? The same with level3, tata, rapidshare, and possibly all the others I haven't checked peering lists. With 100TB do you mean .com or .eu?
Posted by virtuallynathan, 01-01-2012, 09:50 PM RE: Thelen
I assume RapidSpeeds was informed of, or could have asked for the network design at the time of purchase, but yes - the design seems a bit dated to say the least.
I am referring to the LeaseWeb 100TB server series.
RE: LeaseWeb
I was not attempting to place any real blame on LeaseWeb for the downfall of RapidSpeeds. You may have been more helpful than I was ever aware of, as I only had access to what Darren told me and what I saw in emails to support@rapidspeeds.com.
I have no grudges against LeaseWeb for what happened to RapidSpeeds/EvoBoxes (I do hold a small grudge for something else, but thats a different story...), although I was a bit disappointed they weren't able to work a deal with me to get severs from them again, I understand that it may not have been in their best interests. I envy the amazing growth their company has experienced over the past few years. LeaseWeb's services are top-notch (most of the time
I apologize if I have disclosed any information that may have been under NDA - I was never placed under NDA by LeaseWeb or RapidSpeeds, and technically I was never an employee at RapidSpeeds. All of my work was essentially pro-bono.
Posted by Thelen, 01-01-2012, 09:55 PM Oh right, yea their 100TB servers are much better quality than resold. Compare the network to what 100tb.eu net100tb and co have, it is just as **** as RS.
Posted by TheLie, 01-02-2012, 04:12 AM
They have direct peering with most of those you listed at the various exchanges. OVH for example, DECIX LINK NLIX AMSIX, yet it is going through cogent?
Posted by Thelen, 01-02-2012, 04:14 AM What you mean. DECIX port prices are far less than the shittiest Cogent pricing :/
Posted by Raffay, 01-02-2012, 04:36 AM Yeah my VPS was offline as well with them
Posted by heretohelp, 01-29-2012, 09:18 PM Please could anyone who experienced a problem with Rapidspeeds please mail me on this site as help may be of help to you.
Posted by MyDediServers, 02-01-2012, 07:38 PM
Your no longer apart of the company, and started your own business kind of the same as what rapidspeeds was? I always did like talking with you, over Darren back in rapidspeeds earlier days, but I mean, Rapidspeeds always did provide false information about what they did, and how it was ran. :/
Good luck to everyone, so sad to see this happen, but ay what can we do. I'm glad PayPal is working with alot of you.
Keith
Nathan: I wish you the best at evoboxes.
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