I'm a networking professional and I understand as well as anyone that the Internet is spotty at best sometimes. There are circuit issues, POP issues in your provider (routers), peering issues, etc... This is an annoyance for some businesses. But Cigarbid IS AN INTERNET BUSINESS!!! Their performance (network availability) is in my professional opinion, sub-par. They should really either fire their ISP, or multi-home with more than one provider. Then when "joe's internet service" goes down harder and faster than Monica, they would still be up with their multi-homed provider... Just my opinion... It ain't cheap, but neither is downtime...

I agree that it's been a nightmare trying to connect to CB for almost a week now ... but the problems don't seem as bad over at CI.

... I thought it was MY computer (it's been giving me problems lately)! Good to hear it's just not on my end ...

Heck ... it took me almost 5 minutes just to post this, and I had to 'copy 'n paste' just to make sure I didn't lose it!

Wow, so you do work Robby. I thought from the amount of posting you do you were a ***** for a living 🙂

quick call 911, Rob just got BURNED!

You writing a book arbn2/505? Cause if you are, I know how to make it a love story...

I'm curious arbn2/505, what is it exactly you do, when you're not sucking my "tax dollars?"

I thought it was on my end. I guess NOT!

So to apease us, a FREE BOX OF OUR CHOICE!

OFFENSIVE POST, OFFENSIVE POST

Robby said SUCK...

YANK YANK YANK!

I'm over in California and when I can't sleep, I try to check out the auctions at night, but I get the worst connections at that time.

choner

Yup, you can yell at me. We've had a huge reorganization / disorganization of our ISP. We found out on Friday April 11 that we had to find other accommodations for CigarBid, which was hosted in Texas at that time. We worked day and night from Saturday night until Tuesday getting CigarBid into new facilities. The changeover took place on Tuesday morning the 15th - new servers, new ISP, new firewall, new switches, new everything. Things were pretty stable until yesterday morning - then all hell broke loose - we had a major hardware failure in addition to occasional brownouts by our ISP. I'm actually kind-of amazed that we were down only sporadically the past 48 hours.

A few of us haven't slept at all and things are much better now, more stable and many of the major problems have been resolved. Things might be a little rocky the next week or so, we're not completely out of the woods yet, but we're close. And when we are, you won't hear from me for a few days - I'm going to sleep.

I, we, all of us at CigarBid, apologize for the terrible inconveniences of the past 2 weeks. As always, we appreciate your patience and continued patronage.

- Gonz

Heh, I'm trying. It's been a tough week. It's typically the least stable time of the Internet (12-6 local time) the reason being, this is when people elect to do maintenance. This is another reason while multi-homing, or connecting to two separate ISPs is so important for mission critical apps. Having an agreement that they won't both do mtce simultaneously unless it's emergency mtce.

As hardware and network software evolve, stability should increase. Customers are demanding it and the Internet is getting more and more concerned about SLAs and uptime. But, it’s a trade off. Everybody wants “5 9’s” of availability, but the difference between the 4th and 5th 9 is many millions of dollars when viewed on a network wide basis for a provider.

The best thing a company can do is multi-home.

Thanks gonz, I didn't see your msg when I started that last post. I'm glad to hear you guys are doing everything you can. Thanks for the hard work. We all appreciate it very much.

to the person impersonating Robby who made the post above ....

Where is Robby and what have you done with him??

Not drunk yet. Give me another couple hours.

We've seem to have gotten off the subject. I find it a money saving experience when CBID's ISP sucks...lol.

... especially if you had a low bid going ... and it closed while it was down!

Thats right Slim! sometimes its works out to be a good thing!

Mag

Ebay went throught the same growing pains about three years ago. The bad news, it is difficult, if not impossible, to connect around 10:00p.m (CST). The good news, it is a sign that Cbid is a successful venture and we will be able to buy cigars for years to come.

Gonz, et al...

We appreciate the efforts and time put into this site by you all.

The CigarBid.com crew is the best out there, bar none!

You guys kick ass!

Thanks for such a great forum to let loose in.

Anybody else feel like singing, "We are family" with me?

If they are as good as you say then howz come I still can't see the car?!?!?!?!?!

XOXOXO