May 22, 2002

1:11 PM

Has anybody here done business with AIT? After several of their customers switched to our web hosting company with bizarre stories, I did a little research. These folks are a little over the top, including gun cabinets, razor wire and uniforms. They even claim to have security teams that physically hunt down spammers and such. All of this would be great if they took care of their customers. Or should I say cared for their customers.
posted by rotifer (13 comments total)

Um, why did you make the first link to MetaFilter when you had two other perfectly good ones elsewhere in your post?
posted by me3dia at 1:21 PM on May 22, 2002

I find it odd when people pay more attention to inane posting details than Metafilter content.
posted by rotifer at 1:44 PM on May 22, 2002

My apologies; Matt apparently fixed it. Still, why invite criticism from us nit-pickers in the first place?


Regarding your content, I've never worked with AIT, but their attitudes sound more like a combination of ex-military whackiness and publicity stunt, especially in light of customer dissatisfaction.
posted by me3dia at 1:58 PM on May 22, 2002

Speaking of good web hosts....does anyone know a cheap web hosting service that will give me everything including unlimited bandwidth and unlimited space? Simplenet used to be cheap and perfect for what I needed, but Yahoo bought them out and is raping me now on hosting charges.
posted by banished at 1:59 PM on May 22, 2002

Don't worry me3, I won't advertise in here. Check out webhostingtalk banished, you can post what you need. You will have a hard time finding unlimited bandwidth, read the terms of service before you sign.
posted by rotifer at 2:05 PM on May 22, 2002

(I really could care less whether you mention your own firm. Lighten up.)

Banished, here's a googlesearch of past MeFi discussions containing web host recommendations. Good luck.
posted by me3dia at 2:18 PM on May 22, 2002

My old ISP actually has a secure area to keep people away from their servers. They have a Federal Reserve connection for a couple of bank and online transaction systems. I only know this because of a local LUG meeting, where the owner showed us his nice shotguns that he keeps at his site when someone rings the doorbell.
posted by mkelley at 2:24 PM on May 22, 2002

Buried in that WHT post is a link to the BBB report. It might be a good idea to check things like that before switching hosts.
posted by swell at 3:44 PM on May 22, 2002

These guys seem a little over the top, but maybe he's going for that "colorful founder" branding meme. I do believe there's a market for this level of physical security. A former employer of mine had an unused box in a locked server cabinet that was stripped of its RAM and hard drive, possibly months before the theft was discovered. The host (sorry, I don't know the identity) paid for the stolen equipment, but lost the account post-haste.

Or maybe host-paste.
posted by dhartung at 4:04 PM on May 22, 2002

"cheap web hosting service that will give me everything including unlimited bandwidth and unlimited space"

It does not exist. Web hosting providers may use the word unlimited in their ads, but they are always limited. Always.
posted by websavvy at 6:20 PM on May 22, 2002

I used AIT for a time. The service was great, excellent customer support.
posted by schlaager at 6:33 PM on May 22, 2002

This reminds me of The Bunker here in the UK, except it's a lot scarier with guns.
posted by Gamecat at 6:44 PM on May 22, 2002

A: So what do you do for a living?
B: I, er, work in IT.
A: Really? What area?
B: Uh, heavy weapons.
posted by guy_parsons at 4:47 AM on May 23, 2002