Network Problems - router issues persist
Posted (August 27th, 2007 at 12:14 pm PST) by RalphSorry about the network problems. As has been documented on DreamHost status we have been dealing with network issues lately. We are on top of this problem right now and we’re working on getting things back up for you. We are in continued contact with Cisco support and we have outstanding tickets with them regarding these issues. Please check here for updates but we’ll do our best to get things working as soon as possible.
Update 8/29 4:50pm: We are still working with Cisco on this issue but it is not actively causing any problems. When the router does act up we will post new announcements for those cases. So even though this is an ongoing issue, the problems themselves are not ongoing unless you see a post from us regarding a problem. Just wanted to clarify.
357 Responses to “Network Problems - router issues persist”
Yeah.
You can do it!
Customer support is great but downtime I’ve noticed is becoming more and more noticeable.
It’s been ongoing, yes. Seems every time I pop open winSCP to do a secure ftp connection, it gets interupted by a network issue. All within the last 2 weeks.
How depressing… MediaTemple it is for me I guess.
Ah… so that’s what it was… hope it gets resolved soon. Go go go!
Me too
I think its time for a new host too - I signed up for Pingdom about 10 days ago and its eye opening to actually see the amount of downtime my site has that I was completely oblivious to.
I agree, this down time is getting ridiculous! I’m a professional web designer, and when my clients can’t see their design comps because the server is down again, and again, and again, and I can’t access my FTP server, and a host of other issues, then I think I need to find a new hosting company.
I’m a bit concerned myself. This year HAS been really bad for downtime. Dreamhost used to be so reliable. This year, so far, I’ve lost count how many times my site’s gone down, sometimes for a long period of time. Yet, I’m still paying and receive no compensation for that time I’ve lost traffic.
Dreamhost, why are you hurting me, baby?
I am seriously starting to consider moving as well. Any thoughts on a good replacement?
GEEZUS CHRUST this does happen way too often…i know as a business owner i should move elsewhere, but ironically Dreamhost has killed so much of my business, i can’t afford to move. i just really wish they’d stay up as often as promised…SOME downtime os OK, but this happens several times a week! please fix this Dreamhost, please!
Tanc - we moved our hosting to (mt) last week but kept the DH account hoping they’ll recover… alas, no recovery. I’m glad we made the move.
*sadface*
Can we get a time frame?
If this keeps up, I will have to move hosts… Its nothing personal, its just lately your service has been bad.
Anyone have any suggestions?
Does anyone know how flexible DH are on their 97 day money back guarantee?
I’m about two weeks outside of mine (on my most recent renewal) and would very much like out. I gave them the benefit of the doubt last time and am starting to regret that.
i guess i could go though the headache of switching, but then i would either be mad at someone else for downtime or mad that i’m paying up the butt for comparable options and space. besides, now i have an excuse to fuck off and walk over to the park with my dogs.
At least we know you are owrking on it… just started hosting with you guys too..
you can only have two of the following - cheap, feature rich, 99% up time.
May I be reimbursed for the month? My downtime has stopped cash flow.
Is this the reason webmail is not working properly and we can’t contact Support? Perhaps having Support mirrored somewhere mightn’t be a bad idea.
Alright…
If anyone want to change hosting provider, i’m offering a rock solid offline solution - you can get a frazzzzzzzillion znafubyte for next to nothing , and it will never go down, because, it’ll never come up.
Sorry for stealing your business strategy, dreamhost.
Pun intended.. its just near impossible to work when its dead slow one day and 3 feet under the other
GO GO GO! Cisco Take the point!
Please Timothy! If your main source of income is running on a shared hosting plan then you should smarten up!
Yeah, I’m off DreamHost ASAP. This is just ridiculous.
has anybody tried dnsmadeeasy.com as a dns failsafe solution?
or dnspark ??
This is ridiculous. I’m trying to show a client their new site and this shit happens. GREAT! Makes me look both stupid and pathetic. Instead of spending all your profit out boozing, snowboarding, sailing, etc why don’t you spend it on some fucking talent so your shit works. I’m finding a new host.
I feel like a yo-yo…up-down-up-down
Stop taking pictures of your employees goofing off and posting them on your site while your service sucks! Maybe if you people actually worked then your product would be worth something… patiently waiting the ok from my superiors to move hosts.
For those of you looking for an alternative http://mcleanhosting.com/ is going to go live shortly. That’s where I’m moving.
My offer to give birth to Dreamhost babies still stands.
yeah… this may just be the final straw for me too…. I don’t have any business web sites with DH (that would be silly) - but I have a lot of test and development stuff… kinda makes it tough to get any work done.
My site and database are actually back up, but most of the users who were online seem to have gone elsewhere.
I’m looking at slicehost as the next step up
Yeah, the downtime is getting nuts. It reminds me of PHPWebhosting. They were great for a while, but went down all at once and never came back.
Ever heard of fault tolerance? This is honestly getting ridiculous lately. Fortunately its an easy migration for me to another hosting provider.
Argh, not good. I really hate to move all my stuff, but this has been a bad few weeks.
thank god im not in the datacenter from hell (havent been hit by any of these)
You promoting your own hosting? Not even up yet. How do you know they are any good?
oh wow.. dreamhost down? NO WAY!!!
I like it how people post stuff like “oh no, dreamhost is down, lets see how many people claim they’re going to switch providers!”.
In reality, it’s absolute blasphemy how much downtime that dreamhost has had in the past MONTH ALONE.
It’s always the same problem too.. it’s really embarrassing to host a client of mine on dreamhost and have them call you every other day with “THE EMAIL IS DOWN” and have it actually be a real problem and not just some stupid client problem.
Besterp12, I think I actually helped to bring you here after the horror that was phpwebhosting. I’m sorry that Dreamhost is being so unreliable.
See, Dreamhost? You’re making me look bad 
KageNeko
Fuck, I just talked a client into signing up for another 3 years of Dreamhosting. Now he says I’m an idiot. Meanwhile, another client can’t reach me all morning to respond to the proofs I sent all weekend. Finally DH reveals the problem, but I’m already using a new gmail account by this point.
Not the kind of Monday I wanted.
It’s a friends and family thing right now, we’re running several business sites on it. I just use DH for my blog but the downtime has gotten out of hand (and I have about a hundered regular readers), so I’m moving.
The site’s not ready yet, know, but if it’s an emergency drop Jimmy a line and see if he can give you a hand: jimmymclean@gmail.com. If not, that’s cool too 
While I don’t expect 99% uptime from a feature-rich budget hosting provider I’m frustrated by the past months problems.
It would seem that decency and smart business practices would compel Dreamhost to offer a heartfelt and financially enhanced apology.
another outage. what is happening over there???? you are making look bad as i have refereed all my client to you as well as hosted my own site.
when are things going to go back to the way they used to be, the days without any problems????
Heh, your posts also sent me to PHPwebhosting back in the day… Not your fault though.
HAH!
I owe them a month of charges so after I sent a support inquiry, they send me a reminder that I need to pay them.
Gee, funny. My site’s down and they want me to pay for the privilege Guys, how about you earn that money first?
I moving my sites to dedicated hosting else where, at least I would lose ad revenue………….to down time
Sadly, you’re right, though. This IS starting to play out just like the phpwebhosting fiasco. Reliable for a long time then all of a sudden, things broke and broke hard, and there was no compensation for the downtime.
Not too Dreamy, at least the good ones. Pretty much more of a nightmare.
Good luck trying to find a hosting company that is as good and priced even simialr. If they promised 99% uptime that would mean you’d have 3.65 days down over a year and they do better than that. 100% doesn’t exist over the long haul. The outages are annoying but be glad it’s your biggest annoyance in life.
What the heck is going on over there at Dreamhost?? It seems the last few weeks everything has gone to pieces! My service has always been reliable until now. I love you guys but this is completely unacceptable. I don’t want to have to start looking for another provider, get your act together. I think I deserve some financial compensation for this downtime…
Not too Dreamy, at least the good dreams. More like a nightmare.
I’d tell you to click on my name and visit my site…….
I must say, the one plus to the DH network going down is that it is hilarious to read the comments on this blog. I could do this all day long (which is very bad for me and my business!)
God Bless,
-Dan
Ahhh this explains why my e-mail inbox has been showing zero messages. My blog and other websites seem to be fine.
Go hire new talent or get out of this game. At least spend some money on redundancy. Ever hear of multiple tiers?
STOP GOING ON VACATION, PATRYING, DRINKING BEER, LIKE THE IMAGES ON THE FRONT PAGE OF DREAHOST… “Employee-Owned Web Hosting Livin’ it up”
I ready to move all my files else where
FUCK U!
Yes, please fix this problem asap! My business depends on it. Why has there been so much downtime lately?
time for a new host!
Time to move to MediaTemple. I pay too much here (almost 20 a month!) for bad service, when I could get great service at Media Temple, so I’ve heard, for a similar amount of money.
Thanks for nothing.
Wow… I’m getting really tired of having to field calls from clients asking why their site is down. You guys are making us look bad. Just like most everyone else here, we will be FORCED to go with another host pretty soon if you guys don’t find a way to get it together.
Just came back up for me. This is the second time in as many weeks. But I don’t think I’ll go anywhere just yet. Having bounced from host to host, the only thing that was truly reliable was my own dedicated box, which I had through iweb.ca (great service, highly recommended if you need dedicated hosting).
But since finances don’t warrant anything like that, I’ll be staying here for a little while.
And if you’re running a business that receives a great deal of traffic, you shouldn’t be using a shared host. You should be using a dedicated host, because if you’re skimping on something that’s so fundamental to what you do, then I don’t want to be doing business with you, and you’re probably running on a shoestring anyway.
For those of you following this thread: I just talked to Jimmy and he’s going to hustle McLeanHosting.com into working order. Again, drop him a line if you need something right away: jimmymclean@gmail.com.
To answer some of the more common questions: yes, it’s a dedicated server, not shared re-selling. It’s a colo box in a data centre in, I think, LA, on a fat pipe. And yes, we know it’s good because we’ve been running business sites off it for a while (~3 months) now with no downtime. Jimmy started it because he got fed up with situations like this digging into his ad revenue.
If Jimmy’s lost in the hustle of getting the hosting site up feel free to drop me a line with questions too: alex.flanagan@gmail.com.
Maybe I am just lucky, but my site just survived a simultaneous Slashdot+Digg effect (80,000 hits in 2 days) on the base shared hosting plan. If you guys would just wait out the situation, you will find that dreamhost isn’t as bad as people make it out to be.
Seems to be working fine now.
Dreamhost has yet to recognize that their service has been on a decadent road this year. What’s going on? Even the status page is down sometimes. What’s going on Dreamhost? Will you tell us?
“Wait out”? I’ve been a Dreamhost customer for years. I’m frustrated by the recent change in the level of service being provided.
I don’t think I’m unreasonable by expecting some form of compensation.
I’m not saying Dreamhost is the Antichrist or anything, just that I’m disappointed that the excellent service I’ve received for years seems to have made a turn for the worse lately.
Yeah, I gotta say I have gotten good service from DH in the past. The problem is that my site is down now, not then
DH, this is hurting your image Big Time.
This last year has been a sad one, in regards to Up Time, Reliability and Confidence. When a Hosting loses their reputation as being reliable, it takes years to recover – if you can even rebuild it. Ask IX. The Internet is full Forums discussing Hosting companies and you know as well as I do – that once a post goes up, it’s there forever.
It addition to “all hand to battle stations” and getting the Routers working you need to quickly come up with a Customer Relation solution and Fast. Look at these posts and remember 85% of the people don’t complain publicly – they either wait or they resolve.
How about a 97 Minute guarantee policy. “If we go down for more than 97 minutes (combined time in any one month) we will ___________ (fill in the blank)..
When I consider the downtime this last year and the fact that you are about to start tweaking down available concurrent server memory.
I’m more than concerned.
This is the worst day of the year for this to happen. This is the day of the year that I need the website to be operating as it falls on the day after my car show. This is disappointing as my website is on the news tonight at 6pm and 11pm EST.
This is unforeseeable I am sure, but we need to have some confidence instilled back into us why this wont be happening again in 2 more weeks. Our confidence is being drained..
‘Mark’: they are actually ‘down’ much, much more than 3.65 days a year. check out the status page yourself…some new shit every day.
‘tim sucks’: why do people qualify web hosting only by price? cuz $10/month or $50/month, subscribers to a service are obligated to receive that service. plus i hate when people get on here and yell at the small business owners to go find a more expensive plan…if he can afford it, wouldn’t he go to it?
i agree with eveyone complaining about the free-spirited horseplay pictures on dreamhost’s site…i’d rather have some authentic computer nerds who’re dedicated to their jobs, not hippie-sport-playing douchebags who send me personality newsletters instead of dealing with creating a superior product.
Another voice of frustration. We use dramhost for all sorts of things, including file depository for projectpath and now also for activecollab. When things are up and running dreamhost is a great host, but recently reliability has become a total joke. I would have no problem with higher prices, double them if you have to, if I’d get better uptime.
I know this is just another voice in the wilderness, but if this doesnt get any better, and soon, I will look at alternatives.
oh wow dreamhost is back up, thanks for bringing it back, oh wait no it should have never been down in the first place (or what, the 20th place so far this month?)
The best are their blog posts which describe (see http://blog.dreamhost.com/2007/08/21/it-all-falls-down/):
1) How their IOS scripts are poorly written.
2) How their whole infrastructure is a giant house of cards just waiting to come crashing down, and
3) How they could have fixed the problems faster if they just knew what they were doing.
Solid.
I took last summer’s network outages with a grain of salt - it happens. But after the last month of persistent downtime it really is time to switch providers. Sorry, Dreamhost. I love the flexibility you offer and the top-notch customer support, but those things don’t matter if visitors can’t view my site. Hello Slicehost.
DOWNTIME = LOST AD REVENUE, LOST CUSTOMERS
THOUSANDS OF PISSED OF VISTORS and MEMBERS!
I agree… am going to have to move my site too… don’t want to deal with all this downtime, it’s too unpredictable for my customers. Seems like every other week, or more, my site goes offline. Why don’t they have some kind of redundancy so a backup kicks in when something goes wrong?
Having played the host-jumping games numerous times… I’m stayin’. Yes, I would rather not have the downtimes, but DH owns up to it, gets their work done, and then says “We suck, we admit it, we’ll try to not let it happen again.” Compared to other hosts who have lied to me, told me it never really happened, and so on… I’ll take DH’s honesty any day of the week.
if all you folks have so much revenue and membership on the line, why don’t u move to a host with guaranteed uptime? you should be hitting yourself over the head as much as dh.
Before I started using dreamhost I was told NOT to use it because of the ridiculous downtime. I was like nah, it’s cool, they seem solid so far.
Boy was I wrong.
All I wanted to do was send email, receive email, and host minimal php scripts on the site. That seems like too much to handle for these dreamhost “livin it up” guys.
stop apologizing for the problems and fucking fix them.
I’m as annoyed as anyone about the downtime, but I’d never run a serious business on dreamhost. A personal site for family and friends? Yes. A personal blog with some ad revenue, maybe. Backup a lot of personal files and stream my MP3s? Sure
Anything where I’d have to explain my decision to my boss when we’re down multiple times in a month and the sh*t-eating grins of the yahoos that run the place I recommended were plastered all over the official corporate blog? Not a f*ing chance.
If you run a real business, go get a virtual or dedicated server from someone like superbhosting or serverbeach (I particularly like serverbeach). Guaranteed uptimes, SLAs on hardware turnarounds, professional networking setup/peering, etc. Sure, it’ll cost more than $30 or $50/month, but not that much more. And if you run a real business you can afford the $79-200/month for a business-class hosting provider.
Dreamhost is the king of oversellers, and we all benefit from the great diskspace and bandwidth, but they’re not someone on whom you can really rely for business class hosting. It should be obvious.
Hey, my sites are back up!
A good webhost has failover equipment and pre-configured routers.
Hi, I’m a stupid loser and I bitch and complain about losing customers on my cheap ass shared host account. This topic doesn’t get repeated every time DH has some downtime, so I will come and complain about it and wait until their shit is fixed, or other morons come and bitch at me and tell me to move to a dedicated server. Dreamhost, do us a favor and disable comments on this blog.
SL, I hope your sites with pictures of your dog or your grandchildren are safe.
Well, guys,
EVERY cheap hosting has downtime… don’t use the F**K word for such kind of things.
We hope they’ll solve the problem soon, and that they’ll REMBURSE us in a way or another.
That’s the best they can do, you know that.
Does anyone know if this metwork issue is the reason streaming services (Darwin) are not working? I have asked Support to help but not gotten a reply yet (?). Maybe the mail server they use for customer support is also down. Our sites are up, but no streaming. Too bad that’s what most of our visitors are looking for. We lost a gig today because of this. Ouch!
I love all the plugs to other hosting sites in the comments here. Real professional. /sarcasm
Hawk82: Hey, I’m just trying to give people an emergency out. We’re not ready to go public, I admit that. Or would you rather the five people we just helped get up have been screwed?
@Simone - AMEN brother!
@cricket - not all small businesses can afford $200 per month for web hosting. At least not as long as health care and uncle Sam have anything to say about it.
@pieceof#### - first stop the language. second get a new business model.
I am so thankful I decided to rely on Gmail for all my email for the past four years instead of using forwarders or webmail from my domain.
I love my domain name, but let’s face it, gmail.com is easier to type. 
And doesn’t have nearly so much downtime.
Y’know, maybe Dreamhost could start IP-blocking the trolls who do nothing but grief the users posting here.
I’m a DH customer since 2 years for now, and many times I get mad about the network issues at DH, and have been testing many others hosting providers (without leaving DH, at the same time) including some of famous “solid” and “fast support” (like a small orange), and including hosting service of $20 per month.
And believe me, no other host have reported me a better service than DH.
Maybe it’s sad, but it’s the fucking true!
Interesting, my sites are back up, but FTP still down. Anyone else in the same boat?
I’ve been a DH customer for more than 3 years, I’ve recommended them to several other people, and I’m really starting to get frustrated. Not only is my stuff down, but I feel like an idiot for recommending DH.
Same for me.. Been with Dreamhost for near 3 years now, and I have never seen so much problem.
All my sites are “up” and I can connect to FTP as well. All my files look like they are there but all our streaming files are coming back with 404 File Not Found errors. To me, it looks as though the Darwin Streaming Server OR the DNS server resolving those links is down. We use third party DNS for our DH sites, everything except the Darwin server at DH. Looks like DNS trouble to me. This is sometimes the hardest thing to fix. They really should have an off-site (preferably off-continent” backup DNS server. That way, when one goes down the other steps in (duh!). I just don’t think I would be seeing all these complaints if the outage was linmited to just the Darwin server. The must be more to it…..
Perhaps you should consider hiring some competent people.
This place sucks. I’m gonna switch to Dreamhost. Screw this. If anybody wants to get good hosting.. and its cheap.. check out Dreamhost.com. Give them my email address when you sign up so I get comp’d. Thanks!
It’s a good thing that you’re all leaving, for those that stay.
Will it ever end?
I consider myself a patient person, but jesus christ.
Dreamhost reliability has become a joke. Does anyone at the company even care? What proactive measures are being taken? Actions speak louder than words.
I love Dreamhost.
My vagoo hurts.. waaaahhhh
You know, this is why hosts use redudent routers, so when one goes down….the back up router will take over. It’s really not that hard.
Mail is still screwwed up….
I agree about the pingdom comment the other day. I signed up for it to ping at 5 minute intervals…down up down up down up. You’d have no idea unless you were using your site yourself all day. I’ve got a $1200 credit because of a dedicated server that I sold and I’m hosting 5 or 6 sites in my plan. Unfortunately it is looking like this bullshit is worth dealing with the pain-in-the-ass it would be to switch hosts.
Booo for snorehost.
“EVERY cheap hosting has downtime”
I am going to concede that this is true. If there was a better cheap hosting alternative, most people (myself included) would be there instead of posting in these comments. That said I do think that DH overloads its servers and I wish they would ease off a bit or raise their prices for new signups.
At some point, the level of aggravation exceeds the benefits of low cost. I’m past that point. Time to go shopping.
Great, now I’m going to have people complaining to me that their sites aren’t working and…
Guys, get your act together. If you can’t get through to Cisco, let someone who can bitch on the phone.
Now I can no longer say I’ve never had problems with Dreamhost…GREAT. Just great.
How many of you read http://blog.dreamhost.com/?
What looks like happened is one thing after another. How many of you work with Cisco, their IOS, and routers in general? These things happen, and Cisco is not always as helpful as you would like. Yes, they could have written maybe a little less carnivorous script, but you dont know what these things can do until they happen.
Years of good service, and a couple of hiccups in a matter of two weeks. I dont see that as a reason to switch.
I just switched last week from Dreahost (who I had been with for 2 weeks) to Media Temple.
Trust me…switch. You’ll never have these issues.
Eric..
Chill d00d. You came in to Dreamhost when they started having major problems. Yea that sucks for you. Ive been here since 2001. Yea.. there has been a lot of shit going down lately.. but over the past 6 years… I consider it a “meh” on a scale of Who Cares - OMFG
I’ve been here for a year and a half and this is, admittedly, the first time I’ve had any real problems with Dreamhost.
But the fact of the matter isn’t that — it’s the irritation I feel at this not being fixed the last time, or the time before that, or the time before that! I can deal with a few days of problems that are eventually patched up and won’t come back again for another year. But 2 weeks straight of on-and-off network problems are really trying my patience.
No, I won’t “LEAVE DREAMHOST AND NEVER COME BACK!!11″ all dramatically like most retards on this blog seem to love spouting (as if Dreamhost gives two shits about your hollow statement — I bet 90% of you don’t even back it up), but seriously, please fix this, Dreamhost. And this time take the extra time if need be to make sure the problem doesn’t come back. It’s pointless to even try and fix something if you’re not going to do it properly.
I’ve been with DH for 5 years now and I have several sites on different hosts, DH is still the best. They never keep you on the dark when some problem arises. Other hosts aren’t as open when it comes to telling their customers something is wrong with their hosting service. I had a number of issues with other hosts and worst outages than these. I will stick to DH. I have shopped around.
How many have lost all of their web files? I get 404s for many of my domains and I can’t ssh or ftp in to see what is going on.
@Alex: Instead of plugging “your friend’s” webhosting company, if you want to help people, offer them suggestions as to where they could read reviews of a webhost and then make that person can make their OWN educated decision as to who to go with.
I’ll even help you out: http://www.webhostingtalk.com
I just sharted.
Hey guys, if you are looking for a new host, a great review of the top hosts is provided here: http://www.dailyonlineinfo.com.
Oh, shit, dailyonlineinfo.com is being hosted on dreamhost and it’s down tool. Guess i also need to start looking for a new host too.
Hawk82: I love the implication that, for some reason, I’m lying about not owning a hosting company. Classy stuff.
It’s moot now, but my point was just that McLeanHosting.com could get people up fast. DNS entries propagate faster than DH downtime unfortunately. If they’re willing to take the time to evaluate different hosts, yeah, of course I suggest they do research. Thanks for the link.
I think it is about time that DreamHost give up on Cisco. They have been doing a terrible job lately of updating products without testing.
“I think its time for a new host too - I signed up for Pingdom about 10 days ago and its eye opening to actually see the amount of downtime my site has that I was completely oblivious to.”
Hahahahaha, good job. Got the whole thing figured out because of ten whole days of uptime.
“I think it’s time for me to start looking for another hosting company. This year has been really bad and downtime has increase.”
Agreed, it’s getting bad - failures all over the place.
I think it’s time they dumped some money back into their network to upgrade appliances and hardware.
On a side note, there’s nothing wrong with using the proper monitoring tools to get a general idea of up/down time.
Rob must be kid.
DH is REALLY not doing a good job of damage control. The people on here attacking DH customers who are being neglected by DH are REALLY missing the boat. (It’s hard to believe that some of them are not DH employees pretending to be satisfied DH customers. At the very least, a good many of the irrational DH apologists must be beneficiaries of DH incentive plan$. It begs credulity to think they could all be satisfied DH customers in light of all the recent outages…)
There is no way to call DH. If you are a DH customer and you depend on the service that you purchase from them and there is no way to contact them (apart from email which they don’t respond to quickly) - it is frustrating to say the least.
Type in “dreamhost phone” into Google and you get this post of some guy trying to prove a point:
http://sean.gleeson.us/2006/03/16/dreamhost-phone-number
The point is obvious. A LOT of DH customers want to be able to call DH. The top Google search for “dreamhost phone” should be a DH contact page.
I am getting worried that DH may not have what it takes to pull up from this downward spiral.
I don’t need to hear yet again:
1. don’t like DH outages then leave (great marketing campaign and customer support ethos)
2. I have been a DH customer since the beginning of time and I love DH, rah, rah…(I bet your W-2 says DH on it)
3. it’s only $7. what do you expect. (I have 3 companies and a L3 acct for each. That’s closer to $60 than $7. I expect my money’s worth, not your $7 worth).
I feel like I broke it. I have hosted with DH for 3 or so years and have used it primarily for email. Then about a month ago I figured I should start doing something with all this space I have. Now that I am trying to set things up (bandwagon, gallery, wordpress, hosting my own RSS reader) things are down constantly. It is so frustrating.
I’m new to dream host and have heard good things from them. This seems to be a bad set of weeks for them. They’re honest, and they’re working on it.
For now I’m fine with that.
But that could be the fact I’m still in my 90days talking
Maybe it’s time to get another router vendor? Someone should be totally kissing your (dh) butts for these issues. Don’t settle for a free lunch.
Please wait until issues are resolved before turning in those tickets to Mexico.
Can ANYONE explain to me the constant posting of weird images on the front page of the dreamhost website? I am speaking of the images of morbidly obese children or white trash hill-jacks with poor dental hygiene. I am seriously at a loss for words… someone please help. Each time I visit the dreamhost website I am risking my stomach contents and I lose a few more precious years of my life.
@Chuck:
If you are paying $60/mo, get yourself a real managed provider. While I use DH for my personal sites, I am also shelling out the $70/mo for a real server that has only had 5 min of downtime this year, that is ~99.999% uptime. They have a phone number, they reboot servers in under 15min if you accidentally screw something up, etc, etc, etc.
In my humble opinion, anyone who requires more from DH than the L1 plan, needs more than they can get from a Shared Hosting provider and should be looking for something else. I am paying $7/mo and I am getting my money’s worth and I am satisfied. I do find it slightly inconvenient in a situation like this where I was trying to do a bit of development and found it impossible to reach the DH panel, but I worked through it since as an avid developer I have plenty of other resources available to me.
And really, throughout the entire network process the only real problem I have are problems connecting to the DH panel. My sites are a little slow but that is not even that much of an inconvenience since they are still usable.
And no, I’m not a DH employee, nor have I ever received compensation from them. I’m just a guy who thinks that the most vocal part of DH are the complaining subscribers who plague these blog comments. Maybe someday I will bother to read through all the comments, once all the whiners have moved on.
Jhon,
I am sadly coming to agree with you that the L3 plan DH advertises does not have the value DH claims. I am giving Media Temple serious consideration.
What provider do you use for your $70/mo plan?
@Alex & all:
Many didn’t actually notice that there seems to be a bug in IOS and IOS is the operating system of Cisco routers. So it doesn’t help to switch another Cisco router in place. What can you do? Cisco is the leader and the largest IP router provider in the world but doesn’t seem to handle this very well.
The only option would be to change Cisco to some other vendor completely but how can you know how well the other one will perform? Changing main routers to completely another vendor isn’t that easy, running two vendors at the same time is just going to be even more difficult.
This time - this isn’t DH fault - this is Cisco’s problem.
WHISKY TANGO FOXTROT! I still cannot SEND email via DH, what is going on?
is it still down?
Maybe you guys should do less fooling around (as evidence by your home page photos) and focus on keeping your servers and networks working!! I’m moving a bulk of my business - which you guys have had for well over 5 years - to another provider at the end of our service agreement. Count on that!
i am probably going to have to move also this is getting ridiculous.
Seems a lot of people are moving to Media Temple, were i have been planning to go for quite some time now.
Livin’ it up since 1997!
Perhaps The Lord is punishing some of you for having shitty websites! I have many websites hosted with Dreamhost… all of them are W3C valid and all of them praise The Lord in some way, and all of them have been working well through each of these recent crises. I think it’s time for you to get your sites right with The Lord… and the W3C and he might then let them who serve him be served!
Oh yeah, and Media Temple is a temple alright… a temple of The Devil!
ROFL @ VOO, don’t ever change
Dear everyone that wants to leave Dreamhost,
Please do, then shit will be better for me.
Love,
Me
I realize that the maturity level of the previous few posts don’t warrant a response by people who use the internet to make a living. However, I just want to point out that I am TRYING to remain a DH customer. It is a lot of work to migrate to a new hosting provider.
If I tell DH what I expect as a customer, what I’m really doing is giving them an opportunity to retain me as a customer.
DH is one of the best and only hosting solutions for me and those like me that have been with them for a long time. Show me a hosting provider that will give me:
26 domains
12000 email accounts
700GB of storage space (and growing)
8000GB of transfer per month (and growing)
+SSL
+Unique IP
All for $10 / month. Unlikely.
Guys, it’s really, really frustrating.
We all understand, things happen, but not THAT often.
Please, please, don’t make all of us move. It would be a lot of pain both for DH and for us the customers.
Ryan,
I realize that you do not need reliability and that DH’s L1 product doesn’t need to offer it to you to make you a satisfied DH customer. If I had a test site and was paying as little as you, I might agree.
What you may want to consider is that DH offer’s more expensive products, like their L3 plan. Some of us DH customers pay DH as much as Media Temple charges for superior service. Why should we not expect Media Temple-like reliability and Media Temple-like telephone customer support for DH’s similarly priced L3 product?
There’s definitely been some up and down action lately, but in general my last year with DH has been pretty good.
I’ve been with dreamhost for 4 years. this is the last year - these downtimes are comical. Sorry, DH, you were good, but… not anymore.
Routing problems?
telnet v8.dreamhost.com 80
Trying 208.97.171.19…
telnet: connect to address 208.97.171.19: Connection refused
telnet: Unable to connect to remote host
So I guess your routers are denying port 80 traffic?
Oh well.
Fix it soon. Please?
Unfortunately Media Temple has been having all sorts of problems with their grid hosting environment as well. Why is it so hard to find a good web hosting company? Ones that start out reliable soon end up terrible. There’s a significant business opportunity here for whoever can figure out how to offer reliable web hosting for reasonable rates. I know I’d sign up.
What’s up Dreamhost? It’s been 11 hours and 20 minutes, can’t send any mail, website is down….
This is a major inconvenience for everyone, why is IT taking so long to fix?
Now in this situation, I know that compassion towards the crew of Dreamhost should come first as they
have done a great job always. It could be something else entirely all together that DH doesn’t have control over.
But I hope I could send my emails by tomorrow morning. Hope the DH crew is working around the clock to fix this.
T
Chuck Says:
“If I tell DH what I expect as a customer, what I’m really doing is giving them an opportunity to retain me as a customer.”
Chuck, you are wanting Dreamhost to listen to you, yet you are not listening to The Lord. You will continue to have a hard time in life if you cannot see the juxtaposition there.
Also, I too am making my living using the internet, so there! Course, my sites are working fine so maybe that’s why I ain’t so grumpy, but if they WERE down, I’d still be pretty cool because my business takes place over the entire year and is not predicated on a single day… as long as The Lord keeps my sites up for by far most of the time, then a little bit of smiting here and there will not bring about the End Times.
To those who DO choose to leave Dreamhost, you’d best not look back as you run lest ye be turned to a pillar of salt!
I can access my site now, so I suppose the problem is solved?
You guys are unbelieveable! First, for the price you’re paying you’re getting a whole lot of benefits, and second, you should be lucky that DreamHost are sharing inside information with you. We’re family so stop being jerks!
Alex, you realize that you’ve just opened up your buddies to a huge amount of spam by posting their email address on the web (a popular blog no less) in plain text?
Well done.
I want more uptime too, but I’ve been working non stop on web design (literally stopping to eat and sleep and little of both) for the last 10-days with few interruptions.
A year ago it was worse in my memory.
I’m sure if your sites are down, that’s gotta suck. But some of you are such sniveling crybabies.
If you want to pay more money for hosting that - might - be more reliable, then do it. No one is stopping you.
If you want to complain, that’s fine and do it. But whining and issuing little childish threats. For goodness sakes, people.
More down time!
I pity those heavy plan users.
This is unacceptable.
Still on it, from yesterday…
Many many hours (days) my site has been down, that’s money lost.
@Series - or you’re just spamming to get traffic to your blogspot site, since that’s the one you linked in your post. If you’re sites been down for DAYS, then it probably isn’t because of anything that DH did.
If you’re dissatisfied with the service at DH, please go away. But most of those who are whining on this blog will not be happy wherever they host, because they don’t seem to understand the you get what you pay for.
I moved my sites to DH over two years ago. Since then, my TOTAL downtime has been (including the power outage last summer) less than 48 hours. That’s good enough for me.
Please quit it with the DH excuses… They don’t need you to defend their service; also, us customers have every reason to complain!
I’ve been with dreamhost for 3 years now and these past few months have been the worst (in terms of the amt. of downtime). I pay more than the basic $10/mo., and as far as I’m concerned, there is NO excuse for this level of service, regardless of price! Even KIA’s come with a warranty!
Please, DreamHost, do whatever it takes to get back to a decent level of service!!!
***I suggest to anyone else out there who’s pisses about all this - send a support ticket (or three) & complain to DH about the recent drop in the quality of service! What did I pay for, again???
MediaTemple is worse
Is this why they call it CRAZY domain INSANE ?!
Not again, please…!!!! Get your stuff sorted.
NightmareHost
@Larry - I’m not defending anyone - I’m simply pointing out that my experience hasn’t been all that bad. The only level of service they are obligated to supply is what they guarantee. I pay more than $10 a month also - I have an L3 account - but I read the TOS before I gave them any money, and I understood that there was an element of risk because they did not have a uptime guarantee.
What did you pay for? You paid for what the TOS promises and nothing more. Was it good financial decision to do so?
I agree that their service has been spotty, but since there isn’t a guarantee in the TOS, I have nothing to complain about. If I eventually feel that the service on my account is worse than I can handle, I will move my sites to a different host. I am concerned about some of the recent issues that should have been caught before they did major damage (the recent DNS-eating script, for example - how could they let a process that normally runs for under a minute run for 22 hours before canceling it - wasn’t anyone watching?). I’m carefully monitoring the performance on my account, and I keep my own backups so that I can move my sites quickly should the need arise.
Well, none too impressed. My last site was hosted by Dreamhost and we lost hours and hours, probably customers with it. Now I have bought a new domain for 2 years and the fisr 2 days results in downtime.
Hoping this won’t be a continous problem.
ulan bıktım bu sorunlardan artık bir çare bulun !
Wow! I thought that I could come here for pointers on how to setup a temporary and robust SMTP or something of the like, and I’m met with a bunch of comments that aren’t really helpful.
I pay a lot here at dreamhost for my services (i’m not at the entry 7.77 level). I also have been here for a looooooooong time. I’ve enjoyed the services in the past, and loathe what is happening over the last six months. It’s not a question on who’s on shared hosting or personal servers — we’re all feeling the downtime lately!
I know some people are having issues with website going down, and others are having issues with the e-mail servers being down (smtp in my case). It seems like, since the average dreamhost customer is intelligent, we could have some ideas on how to work around this. It’s a shame that we have to, and its bad that we need back-up plans…
But, the bottom line is that we need to figure unique ways around this until it is resolved. It’s unfortunate that most of these posts are senseless whining.
I was hoping it would be more of my SMTP server is still up, or I have a temporary one setup like this, and my users are utilizing it in this way.
So much for help from these posts. It just seems like a bunch of whiners.
-AJ
Guys
Not here to flame, amended the nameservers 4 days ago one of my domains to point at ns1.dreamhost.com, ns2…etc and configured 3 new mail accounts for the domain in the webpanel. Propagation looks to have taken place, I can send & receive mail via webmail.mydomain.co.uk but not via my mail client, which returns a 0×800CCC0E error (can’t connect to server) via port 110. Does this sound connected to the router problems above or am I missing something?
I am still out. Cannot send anything. I am way behind in my work and very ticked off about this.
Great support and service! I still like dreamhost, I know this is annoying but hope it will get resolved ASAP.
All I want is the up time that got me here in the first place - in 2000. What is going on? The answers on the status are not helpful or encouraging. Dreamhost, it’s time to give consideration for all the business your downtime has cost us. I wish there was another place to write about my bill.
In the meantime, is there any ETA on when this WILL be resolved?
Well not everybody is affected by this -I’ve got 10+ sites served to 3 different usernames on different clusters (oldest username also from 2000) and not a problem on any of them. Sometimes a slowness in loading but thats it.
AJ: You can’t really blame them for whining, Dreamhost don’t seem to provide any outlet for their concerns, timescale for fixes, hourly updates: even just saying “no progress, still working on it” goes a *long* way, unlike a single post 18 hours ago with no more info. When you leave people hanging like they continue to do, and have done repeatedly in the past, they’re going to vent. Their customer service in this respect is just plain terrible.
As for an SMTP solution, the best I can offer is to suggest switching to Google Apps for Domains, which is basically Gmail but using your domain e.g. you@example.com (and Calendar, Docs, etc.). See more here:
http://www.google.com/a/
You need to set it up, then change your DNS MX entries to point to Google instead of Dreamhost (and wait for propagation). I’ve been running it primarily for e-mail on one of my sites and it does the job really well; the web interface is fantastic, you can access via your regular mail clients using SPOP and its spam filters are *far* superior to Dreamhost’s, mostly ’cause Dreamhost are still running the old Debian Stable (Sarge)’s version of SpamAssassin, which doesn’t have certain tests such as SURBL/URIBL enabled. (When they eventually upgrade their mailservers to Etch this will massively improve things, though asking them when this is scheduled for results in silence.)
Lets Move to other hosting server, If any body find the best server, Should tell us too , so that all of us will shift there.
Waiting for good servers.
Regards and Bye
Stef: I agree that dreamhost could at least update semi-frequently. BUT!!!
That’s what I’m talking about when I say adding something of value to the discussion. Thanks for coming up with some good ideas for the interim! It might be a great thing to do a howto/wiki thing on that very idea!
I’m beginning to wonder if it would help if I donated the 3 linksys routers I have laying around. They seem to work really well.
Anyone else have ideas other than, “Just move to ?”
-AJ
Need. To. Send. Emails. Now. Or. Im. Dead.
My whole company have been stuck for nearly the past day, unable to send e-mails. It’s relatively annoying, to say the least. Before someone jumps the gun and says companies shouldn’t use DH, not all companies have multi-gazillon dollars to spare, especially when DH “did the trick” for us for a while, and was better than Valueweb, where their dedicated servers are all blacklisted everywhere due to the massive amount of spam that gets sent by newbs administrator computers.
Also, we paid for years of service in advance … basically locking us in here. Evil, all in all.
oh boy.
yesterday sites down
today again?
tomorrow again?
i paid 119$ no 10$
I want services all days ¡¡
dreamhost have separate user 10$ and user 119$
This is really beginning to annoy me. It’s been almost 18 hours that the outgoing mail has been down, and like many others I have things that need to be sent.
I just wish there was some way to contact them that resulted in some kind of an idea how long this would take.
Without actually commenting on the DH problem I would like to know this- For those of you who have no outgoing email due to the problem, why have you not set up an account elsewhere for sending, like gmail for instance, instead of just waiting, and er, complaining?
This is my uptime page: http://www.siteuptime.com/statistics.php?Id=45332&&UserId=55344
My plan is Monster Code 20$ / month. I think this price is OK for service (uptime) that I riceive.
Grrrrrrrrrrrr…….
Everything was fine until 5 minutes ago, SQL Database Connection failed on all sites I host at the moment. Any news?
Anyone that spams another host here is pure scum.
Anyone that deals with a host that is spamvertised is an idiot.
Anyone that posts a host “review” site is a deceptive spammer. ALL of those sites are packed with affiliate links that belong to the person that posts them here. They do not exist to help you find a good host. They exist so they can recommend the host that has the highest payout.
I am as pissed off as the next guy, but PLEASE … they have been really great for me, and for the price … come on. But for the price … I am super happy … extremely happy … I think they have done a superb job.
I have stuff on MediaTemple too and they actually don’t seem as fast, but has been more reliable, in my short experience. But cost nearly as twice as much …
No one is chaining any of you here … unhappy … just leave … go pay some big bucks at RackSpace.
My website always down …., 5 days,
Yes, 5 DAYS, All Down,
What can I said ?
What dose dreamhost doing?
PLease fix it, fix them, please.
I just spent about an hour messing with my wife’s macbook because I didn’t “dream” that dreamhost would be having problems again with servers.
Still no outgoing mail??? And why would incoming work, but not outgoing?
The whole point of web hosting is to be connected to the net. Every few weeks there is a problem with you guys, down-time! get a grip there is no point in giving us freebees if you can’t host them, Quality or service… not Quantity.
You are as bad as Microsoft
@brasscrest , I don’t know you, but I have got my sites down many many hours, and usually really really slow, comparing with other hostings.
Of course I will change to another, I just need time and money, but I will, since I started like a hobby but right now I can’t afford 1 day off 6 on, and lately is like that.
brasscrest, are you from DH?
Otherwise, don’t talk about what you have no idea, I’ve got DH for no important sites a long time, but right now I have sites that can’t afford losing mails or traffic, and I don’t want a 10 times bigger load time than other hosting services.
I have send tickets many times to DH, but the server is still extremely slow and now, this summer with a lot of fatal errors, and this is not what I paid for.
Actually it was better some time ago, maybe now they want more money and the put more users in the same server, is that?
I don’t know, I don’t mind, I just want a good service.
@brasscrest, there is no way to spam with external no follow, and…
As you can see, I am not the only one, maybe you’ve been luckier than us, but… them, what are you doing in this post if you have good service?
My clients complain so much about their website!
>____
I love how some people act like the whole world is ending…My site lives on Punch and has only been affected by minor outages TWICE in memory in 9 months. By minor i mean
I’m sorry that DH is down, and yes I am affected.
Posting your sob stories here does not help.
If 1. Your company is going bankrupt cause your losing income because DH is down, you probaly aren’t making real big money anyways, and if so, stop cheaping out and host elsewhere.
2. If you have no money to go elsewhere, what the heck are you hosting that you need all the space and bandwith that DH offers? There are plenty of hosts that offer excellent reliability but a lot less space/bandwith. Find one.
3. If your clients are bugging you… well switch hosts! If you can’t afford it, tell your customers how much you pay dream host, and than tell them how much a more reliable host would cost and ask them if they want the service or not. Its so easy to offer tiered service it’s not even funny.
Yes I do wish my email was working right now with DH, but I have accounts with other hosts, and the world will not end for what DH is, and that is cheap budget hosting.
I have to agree with MIke H. I’ve tried other budget hosts and found flaws with all of them. I’ve experienced downtime, bad customer service, slow servers, and really stupid restrictions that made me feel like I was working with one arm tied. So far, Dreamhost has proven to be easy, fast and fun. It’s the best solution for me until I can afford something more reliable. And chances are that Dreamhost would get that order too.
I use this service for my personal website, along with a couple of other development projects I’ve got going. Yes, it’s annoying when I can’t login to my shell account and do my work, but at the same time, the value I get for the money far outweighs the inconveniences.
Besides, it’s not like they aren’t doing anything to fix the issues. I work in IT, and let me tell you, the solution isn’t always easy, and sometimes it takes a while to get things back online. So if you can afford it, be patient with them.
I’d like to chime in and say the following:
(1) Yeah, I’m frustrated, annoyed, irritated, that my site’s down. And I understand the frustration of not being able to switch servers because you’re locked into a pre-paid two-year contract. I did the same thing. But even if I wasn’t locked into a pre-paid account, I still wouldn’t switch because switching servers is a huge fabulous pain in the ass. I’ve done it for two clients four times this year alone and not without a lot of hang wringing and annoying bugs and stuff you just can’t predict.
That said, when I signed up for Dreamhost, I knew exactly what I was getting into which is why I wouldn’t recommend Dreamhost for anyone who’s trying to actually make money. I’d stick with the big guys, like Yahoo. They’re not going to go down. And it might seem more expensive, but not when you do the math. It’s called “business” or something. All you gotta do is realize that if you’re hosting something that absolutely positively must be up at all times or you’re going to end up in the poor house, spend the money up front. And if you’ve already paid Dreamhost for two years of service, cut your losses, move your site, and quit complaining about it.
(2) If you can’t send email because you’re using Dreamhost as your SMTP server… uh, what? Why would you do that? There are a bazzilion ways I can think of to send email without using Dreamhost.
(3) Oh no! My website’s down! Fortunately for me it’s still summer around here, it’s beautiful outside, and now I have an excuse to slack off. Oh wait. Except my “other job’s” website is still up and running so I guess I oughtta work on that instead. Drats.
People, you get what you pay for. While your shit is broken, why not go sign up for a SuprBay (http://suprbay.org) account? ROFL SHAMELESS PLUG ALL UP IN THIS MUTHER
I understand downtime in cheap hosting. I understand that DH give us much more than other hosting companies do for that amount. I understand that if you want a really reliable hosting you should pay a lot more and go somewhere else, but I do not understand 20 hours without any update. You should inform your customers even if news are bad news. We want and need to know.
I agree with Geraldo…we need more communication…
DreamHost oversells. You can’t actually use the majority of the space/bandwidth you’ve purchased, only a very, VERY small fraction of it. You can find numerous other hosts that don’t oversell, and others that do oversell, for around the same price. DreamHost also doesn’t have all that many features. I don’t see why people claim they’re getting so much for their money when they are in fact not.
I’ve got 15 domains hosted at DH and they all survived. However, the outgoing email service is pretty slow and sometimes it’s unaccessible. Really hope they fix these problems. Otherwise I’ll have to look for some other hosting company which is always a big pain in the ass… Telling all my clients that they’d have their sites down for 1-2 days and then set the email accounts all over again… Ouch!
After 22 hours, my SMTP has finally come back on several sites on several servers. Not sure if everyone will be fixed now, or if I’m just lucky… It would have been nice if there had been more updates in here from DH though so we knew what the heck was going on….
Anyone ever done business with NearlyFreeSpeech.NET?
WHAT WE REALLY NEED TO KNOW: who the fuck is ralph?
I have only seen a few minutes of downtime around 5AM PST in the past few days. I guess I have been a lucky one who’s site hasn’t been affected by this?
@Steve G : I cannot really use reliably another SMTP hosting because of a nifty SPF tag in my DNS, meaning I would not be able to send e-mails in nearly 24-48 hours … but in retrospective …
@Mike H : True my company is not making a lot of money right now, we decided that we would pay most from our pockets, and it’s working very well, that assuming we can reach people. E-mail is not something as important that 2 hours without it will mean we go bankrupt, but in everyday modern life, e-mails are very important means of communication, and having it disrupted means losing a lot of time, and having to do second plans for everything, and annoying the heck out of the sysadmin, saying he need to do something ASAP. All in all, it’s making us lose money due to less productivity. Also, I don’t know about your company, but we did not start with a 5k$/mth Rackspace system, you start with something that is good enough, and then, when you need it, you upgrade. It would be totally uselessly thrown-in-the-window money to do so. Hence we are starting with DH, then we will go to something better when it will be wise to do so. Besides, DH was reliable before, and we assume problems will eventually be fished out. But for now, it’s a real pain in the whatsit.
true, 2 hours without email won’t mean we go broke….But since i have to wait for a particular email to come in so I can forward it on before I leave for lunch, 2 hours means i’m gonna be mighty peckish…
After much bitching but no action, I have decided. DREAMHOST, if you do not get the act together by end of October (ie., giving you two months to fix the problems) and make yourself a reliable host once again, I am going to another webhost.
Kevin, I’ve got weird downtime (as in text loads but not images on many of my domains), but my most important domain is, so far, unaffected *touch wood*
Perhaps you should check the updates to your network before installing them and assuming everything is ok, would save us all the trouble and keep you from having to pass the blame to Cisco.
I can´t logon to panel.dreamhost.com.
Here´s what´s showing on the top of the page:
$VAR1 = {’_type’ => {’session_id’ => ‘bigint(20)’,'auth_stamp’ => ‘datetime’,'last_username’ => ‘varchar(32)’,'last’ => ‘datetime’,’session_data’ => ‘mediumtext’,'username’ => ‘varchar(32)’,'created’ => ‘datetime’,’session_info’ => ‘mediumtext’,'auth_username’ => ‘varchar(32)’,'last_agent’ => ‘varchar(255)’,'cookie_goop’ => ‘char(64)’,'last_while_auth’ => ‘datetime’,'last_ip’ => ‘char(16)’},’_key’ => ['session_id'],’_auto_increment’ => ’session_id’,'_db’ => ’session’,'_null’ => ['username','last_username','auth_username','auth_stamp','created','last','last_while_auth','cookie_goop','session_data','session_info','last_ip','last_agent'],’_table’ => ’session’,'_fields’ => ['session_id','username','last_username','auth_username','auth_stamp','created','last','last_while_auth','cookie_goop','session_data','session_info','last_ip','last_agent']};got here. $VAR1 = {’_parameters’ => {},’_key’ => ['username'],’_db’ =>
I think it’s time for me to start looking for another hosting company. This year has been really bad and downtime has increase.