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Getting in on the NAT VPS Action!

Got a test node up running NAT VPS, live for customers right now. The idea is not to make any profit, but to get as much utilization out of our hardware and resources as possible, while also serving as a bit of a test bed for certain things.
Though the objective is not to make profit, we also don't want costs to spiral out of control, and so ongoing, it would be preferable to keep manual (staff) input to a minimum. And by that, I am mainly referring to support. Not particularly interested in offering real support for this range of services. At least not in the typical ticket/email sense.
I'm thinking more along the lines of a community support, over a forum. Been recommended to use LES, but that does not seem to be place where any provider can just sign up (like here).
I don't think LET is the place either, but a LET / LES like place would be ideal. Any such place exists? Or perhaps I need build one?
Comments
i'd love to help you with it in any way
though do contact anthonysmith about LES
free vps?
Debian, thx
Sounds great. Awsome.
Free VPS are sold out. Sorry.
Summoning @AnthonySmith !!!
I guess one deal with such agreements in private?
You should skype Anthony, Mikho and Me. Also registring as a member is already a good start
LES is good people. Nothing wrong with joining there. The problem imo is that the LES forum does not really feel much like a community. Most people just use it as way to get support and disappear once their problem has been dealt with. Not their fault. @davidgestiondbi, @anthonysmith and @mikho are probably the most active and friendly posters so it's hard to blame them for all the one post wonders that show up.
On the other hand the forum seems rather stagnant. There is quite a bit of information but it's all cluttered through a ton of stickies or burried inside random threads. The idea to start a community wiki has been shutdown because of an upcoming forum update. That was don't know how many months ago and don't think to much will change over there any time soon.
TL;DR: If you are just looking for a prebuild place to refer people to it doesn't get better than LES. If you are looking for something more organized that is likely to be used by more than 2-3 people that just happen to have some issue at the moment and you have the motivation to invest some time/thought into it build your own. It's not like the LES forum has any kind of sizable traffic.
What does LES stand for? Any url?
Duplicate
LES is LowEndSpirit.
http://www.lowendspirit.com/
Most folks using LES either know what they're doing, or NFC. Sometimes, folks stop by to chat, but it's also not really a requirement- and the abundance ESTL (English as a Second Translated Language) can be a bit difficult to try to help- especially when every other new thread is someone crying about not understanding why MX/DNS/etc is working.
@randvegeta - I'd suggest you keep rolling with NAT for longer than a couple weeks before asking to join LES. They're doing this service at a nil-to-negative profit, and there have been two or three hubs that have dropped out (direct and indirect) over the last year.
The effort taken to become an integral partner will likely take awhile, too. @AnthonySmith has some pretty staunch requirements (take care of actual problems, etc), and unless you've got IPv6 and HAProxy ready to go, or are willing to get it setup, you won't be offering the same services as other members (otherwise I'd also suggest @Cam joining in on the game).
I don't disagree but organization is key here. If there was a sane way to refer people to existing comprehensible information that would cut down on the forum being so damn cluttered. I have been going there sometimes in the past and took my time to help but i more or less stopped since it pretty much is just dumping information into a huge pile of whatever and then repeating it for the next guy. I actually like helping people but that is just stupid.
Agreed. Some real world experience might not hurt before taking this step.
@Cam doubles existing locations. I guess that makes kind of a difference.
In any case it's up to @randvegeta and the LES guys to discuss this. Like i said LES forum is a fine place to refer people to. I just wouldn't call it effective.
Welcome to the wide world of technical support!
There's a bigger underlying issue with this setup, but I'm not going to come out and say it. We all know what it is.
Considering that most people don't even read the checkbox saying "Go to the forum for tech support" and still try to open tickets- those who make it to the forum are the intelligent ones. Good luck, RV.
Sure thing. Still it wouldn't have to be this bad.
Well guess i am not all then but tbh i don't care that much either.
That is sadly true but this has been discussed to death. Just disable tickets and be done with it. Not burning out those who make it might be another objective.
That is probably because we are the providers that currently is a part of LES. The enlighted ones might say that @oliau also is a provider in the LES community, that is true. However, he has made it clear that he will stop offering NAT from his brand/company as the amount of support is overwhelming and not a part of his main business.
There are talks on how we (LES) can continue to offer the location(s) that @oliau has.
The LES forum is mainly for support questions, that is probably the reason why it is so ”inactive” and why most people post only once or twice. It is not the same type of community as LET is.
@AnthonySmith has done this. I haven’t, not sure about @davidgestiondbi.
Most replies on the tickets I get are usually responded with a link to the forum as the question has been answered in 99% of the cases.
We sent people to forum too, unless it’s an billing related issue unsolvable via the forum.
Sure. I am not saying it should be. The problem with this is just that without traffic who is going to answer the requests? If you wanted to do it yourself it probably would be easier to just do it in an ticket.
By using the forum we are actually more people who can answer most questions.
If you open a ticket with one provider, you have to wait for that provider to answer the ticket. If you post the question you have a better chance of getting a reply faster.
Ok, thats a point. I thought the idea behind the forum was to offload support to the community but if the intention is mostly just splitting the burden between different providers it's fine i guess.
Usually it's "WHAT ARE MY PORTS? WHY DOESN'T APACHE WORK? WHAT CAN I DO WITH AN OLD DEBIAN!?"
IMHO, the real distinctive of LES is not the NAT-IPv4 / primary-IPv6 aspect, but the expectation of forum-only support, knowing that the providers are not making any meaningful profit from LES.
You can have NAT with high RAM and full support (and charge accordingly), and you can have dedicated IPv4 but without support (e.g., Virmach's no-support option).
It seems like the market is segmenting into fully-managed, unmanaged, and "community supported", and since zero-support service is still kind of the wild West, managing customer expectations is challenging (especially with some language barriers for certain unnamed clientele).
I'm sure Ant has some words to say about offering community-supported services; I'd also be curious to hear whether @Virmach sees their no-support option as a success from a provider perspective.
Yep, pretty much and an endless array of other basic topics. All of which could be easily answered by refering people to some community written documentation.
It's almost as though you've never actually visited the forum. I think LES has moved away from "Look here" because absolutely every fucking resource mentioned X years prior no longer exists, or only does via an archive, and is no longer necessarily viable/usable- much like everyone referring to the stupid Debian 5 WordPress install here.
It's just easier to do it for them sometimes- because it means less time wasted on someone unwilling to listen, and less willing to learn. That's what tends to drag the hosts to the point of wondering if it's worthwhile on at least a weekly basis.
That's why I suggest RV run this service for awhile before going gung-ho into it. It's not a cash cow, and it's certainly soul-sucking, even from the sidelines.
Not to be mean, but this is a perfect example of "Possibly doesn't quite get it."
Don’t forget the occasional forum visitor. There are some posts that actually gets resolved before a provider get to post in that thread.
It would be nice to have more activity but there are so many other forums that already has a working community.
The main focus is to offer a services that doesn’t require support
It was tried (wiki) but poorly maintained (by yours truly) and after a while the search function on the forum was better. Unlike the search in vanilla.
.
I have a domain and the old wiki source still available so if you have any suggestions on needed documentation, feel free to send me some ideas and/or any ”work in progress” material.
If all LES hosts were willing to agree on a port range, that'd be nice. (lastoctet.0-20), etc. Or someone to maintain a lookup table, allowing for intelligent parsing depending on shared (common) private networks, etc..
I'd be happy to throw something simple together- hell, it could be done rather easily with like a 3k script, but I have lost a bit of faith in all but Ant and David, since others are willingly leaving due to the issues caused by NAT clients, and others being kicked out before they stiffed everyone involved.
Aren’t we all doing this already?
It's almost like you are being aggressive for the sake of being aggressive. I nowhere suggested refering to outside resources and you can rest assured i have visited to forum. Maybe even more than you did.
More strawmen?
Yep, that could be me now and then when i feel like it.
Yeah it probably is. The problem with forums is that it's hard to organize content or update it to avoid having it go stale.
I know. I was around when this was discussed and decided against in favor of the still non existant forum update. We'll see. As i said i hardly visit anymore but if i do i might hit you up about writing a more general piece instead of a one time answer to some guy with a problem.
Those who exist after 2017? Possibly. I haven't checked those who remain. I thought David might have had a different ssh port
, but I'm just spitballing because I haven't actually checked. Yep. He does.Again, this wouldn't be an issue if the clientele were capable of reading and comprehending both the checkout page, and their welcome message. It might seem a bit mean, but this is a service for people who know what they're doing. Those that don't really drag down the general host morale with superficial problems- and waste time (and are more than happy to issue chargebacks) on a non-profit service.
Long story short:
It's almost as though you're being arrogant for the sake of being arrogant. If you visited it more often, I'd expect you to be more helpful than I've attempted to be, and not complain that there is no GLOBAL RESOURCE for helping people, like the forum itself.
Not even close, and neither was the first, but I think I'm done chatting with you if you're going to get all defensive about it after stating in no such way how your suggestions would change anything.