And, with one exception, dealing with ISPs and hosting providers could be characterized by a non-stop series of seemingly unnecessary headaches. The one exception is our current co-location provider, Prominic.NET. I'll get back to them in a minute. But first, I'm going to whine some more about our previous providers.

"Working with Prominic.NET was like a great big, deep sigh of relief."

I've used some of the biggest providers in the business, including Verizon and Verio. Verio provided our T-1 connection to Rocky Hill and Verizon provided our T-1 to North Brunswick. Both companies were a horror to deal with.

Whether it was Verizon's complete lack of responsiveness when a circuit was down, or Verio's steadfast insistence our servers were "the problem" when we'd regularly provide them with a traceroute showing failure inside their own NOC, dealing with our ISP meant stress. And it wasn't just the big companies. One article can't even begin to describe just how nasty the schmucks at ServerBeach were to deal with.

Whether it was bad customer service, incomprehensively poor responsiveness, promises and service guarantees not kept or directly disregarded, or just piss-poor technical skills, dealing with network and hosting providers to get our magazines out to you over the Internet was nothing but stress.

Until Prominic.NET.

Finding a hosting provider outside of hurricane territory
Working with Prominic.NET was like a great big, deep sigh of relief. Many of you have probably met the Prominic.NET folks at Lotusphere. They're known in the Lotus community for their Notes and Domino managed hosting solutions. Working with Prominic.NET has been an unfailingly pleasant experience.

Prior to relocating ZATZ down to Florida, we were in New Jersey. Rather than co-locating our servers at another facility, we ran dedicated T-1 Internet connections into our buildings. This gave us hands-on access to our servers, the ability to do easy server maintenance, and at least a small level of control.