Netdna negative review #19414 by Alex on Mar 2012
Netdna got a negative review on
Netdna
netdna.com is inactive, but is redirected to stackpath.com
11684 Ventura Blvd #825
Los Angeles , CA 91604 US
☎ Phone 323-301-1400
☎ Phone 877-5NETDNA
📧 support@n...netdna.com is inactive, but is redirected to stackpath.com
Alex ( -no email- )
Issue: #LEW-89746-416 secure VOD zone
A company that I worked for hosts hundreds of gigs of video files on MaxCDN, a child of NetDNA (also owns HDDN); for the less technically inclined, they're basically a hosting service that stores the same files on multiple servers around the globe in an effort to serve said files really fast no matter where you are in the world.
We chose them over other services like S3 or Bitgravity because the load times for our large video files were noticeably faster on the US coasts and the price was right. The reason for the speed difference seemed to be that they permanently cached the files to each "edge" location, where other services would only temporarily cache the files depending on access popularity and other variables (e.g. Amazon CloudFront in particular would kick big video files off extremely fast, so you'd end up paying for transfers from the origin, S3, to CF mostly... not too great for us).
So fast forward a year--I rarely work on the site anymore--I'm alerted that the videos aren't working, so I contact NetDNA's support and they tell me they're not sure what's going on, but they'll look into it and get back to me. Annoying, but these things happen. No big deal.
I'm confused. How does a CDN service with multiple locations lose your data? What?
I immediately contact their support about what's going on and get forwarded to their support head. It turns out that back when we first signed up, they were caching the files to all of their "edge" locations like their website claimed, but since it apparently "wasn't really making money" they decided to move video files to a single server in LA without telling anyone.
Are you kidding me?
So a quick recap: A major CDN service boasting edge servers on many different continents decides they're not making enough money permanently caching bigger files on all of their edge locations, so they move it all to one server in LA without telling anyone. They don't bother to update their website of this fact either, because why not lie to a bunch of people into thinking they're getting something they're not?
Except what happens when that single server's harddrive fails, you made no attempt to backup said data, and people who were otherwise using your service trusting that their files are copied to multiple different servers and safe, lose everything? What if they didn't make backups because of your false advertising? What then?
Completetly shocked, we decide the best path forward is to let our subscribers know that we're having hardware failures and that we'll get everything back up as fast as possible. We didn't have time to integrate another service (like S3) immediately so we decided to use them temporarily just to get the service back up to our customers while we started working on other options.
Fortunately we did have the content backed up on local drives and so we started the process of uploading that content back to their servers temporarily only to find that they've put a quota limit of about 10gb on our account for absolutely no reason. Not that it matters, but this is literally hours after we emailed all of our customers telling them the videos would be back up that night or later the next day. As you can imagine (or calculate) it takes quite awhile to upload 2xxgb of files on a 12mb upload and now we're at a dead halt.
Great.
I contact their support and they first ask me to supply the account's FTP information in the chat (password included). Nice backend system. Whatever. At least they have the information and can fix this so I can get everything back up and running, right? Nope, it couldn't possibly be that easy. The person keeps me on chat for 2 hours while he says he isn't sure what's wrong (despite the FTP quota error being very clear) and keeps asking me to check things via FTP, like if I can transfer files, how many files are there, what are the sizes, which begs the question why he needed the information in the beginning to start with. He keeps repeating that he's trying to get a hold of someone to fix the issue, but that no one's responding. What is this, ranger rick's hosting? Why isn't there someone on call?
14 hours later the issue was finally resolved after more bullshitting and delaying by their support department. Finally we got things back up and running. But the damage had already been done.
I don't know if all of this this makes NetDNA/MaxCDN/HDDN scammers, or if it just means they engage in shady business practices including false advertising, but I do know that their incompetence lost a start-up a lot of time and customers. But hey, at least they offered bandwidth credits!
Stay clear of these guys.
A company that I worked for hosts hundreds of gigs of video files on MaxCDN, a child of NetDNA (also owns HDDN); for the less technically inclined, they're basically a hosting service that stores the same files on multiple servers around the globe in an effort to serve said files really fast no matter where you are in the world.
We chose them over other services like S3 or Bitgravity because the load times for our large video files were noticeably faster on the US coasts and the price was right. The reason for the speed difference seemed to be that they permanently cached the files to each "edge" location, where other services would only temporarily cache the files depending on access popularity and other variables (e.g. Amazon CloudFront in particular would kick big video files off extremely fast, so you'd end up paying for transfers from the origin, S3, to CF mostly... not too great for us).
So fast forward a year--I rarely work on the site anymore--I'm alerted that the videos aren't working, so I contact NetDNA's support and they tell me they're not sure what's going on, but they'll look into it and get back to me. Annoying, but these things happen. No big deal.
I'm confused. How does a CDN service with multiple locations lose your data? What?
I immediately contact their support about what's going on and get forwarded to their support head. It turns out that back when we first signed up, they were caching the files to all of their "edge" locations like their website claimed, but since it apparently "wasn't really making money" they decided to move video files to a single server in LA without telling anyone.
Are you kidding me?
So a quick recap: A major CDN service boasting edge servers on many different continents decides they're not making enough money permanently caching bigger files on all of their edge locations, so they move it all to one server in LA without telling anyone. They don't bother to update their website of this fact either, because why not lie to a bunch of people into thinking they're getting something they're not?
Except what happens when that single server's harddrive fails, you made no attempt to backup said data, and people who were otherwise using your service trusting that their files are copied to multiple different servers and safe, lose everything? What if they didn't make backups because of your false advertising? What then?
Completetly shocked, we decide the best path forward is to let our subscribers know that we're having hardware failures and that we'll get everything back up as fast as possible. We didn't have time to integrate another service (like S3) immediately so we decided to use them temporarily just to get the service back up to our customers while we started working on other options.
Fortunately we did have the content backed up on local drives and so we started the process of uploading that content back to their servers temporarily only to find that they've put a quota limit of about 10gb on our account for absolutely no reason. Not that it matters, but this is literally hours after we emailed all of our customers telling them the videos would be back up that night or later the next day. As you can imagine (or calculate) it takes quite awhile to upload 2xxgb of files on a 12mb upload and now we're at a dead halt.
Great.
I contact their support and they first ask me to supply the account's FTP information in the chat (password included). Nice backend system. Whatever. At least they have the information and can fix this so I can get everything back up and running, right? Nope, it couldn't possibly be that easy. The person keeps me on chat for 2 hours while he says he isn't sure what's wrong (despite the FTP quota error being very clear) and keeps asking me to check things via FTP, like if I can transfer files, how many files are there, what are the sizes, which begs the question why he needed the information in the beginning to start with. He keeps repeating that he's trying to get a hold of someone to fix the issue, but that no one's responding. What is this, ranger rick's hosting? Why isn't there someone on call?
14 hours later the issue was finally resolved after more bullshitting and delaying by their support department. Finally we got things back up and running. But the damage had already been done.
I don't know if all of this this makes NetDNA/MaxCDN/HDDN scammers, or if it just means they engage in shady business practices including false advertising, but I do know that their incompetence lost a start-up a lot of time and customers. But hey, at least they offered bandwidth credits!
Stay clear of these guys.
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