Author: Seth

Recent GDPR Stuff

Post author By Seth
Post date June 2, 2018

Since everyone has been posting GPDR updates, we should probably say something about it too.

In a nutshell, Roller Network has never collected or used customer’s personal information. We do not require any personal information to set up an account beyond an email address, and we have never monetized any information. We’ve never had any advertising hooks in our systems whatsoever. We do not have any third party affiliates and we do not engage in data sharing. Information required in the account control center to use a specific service is limited to the scope of that service, and anyone can readily add or delete information as they see fit using it. Realistically, we’re a small company and don’t care about “big data” analytics.

On our colocation side of things, because we don’t offer “cloud” hosting services, our systems do not contain customer data. That’s one major benefit of colocation over cloud: your data and your hardware is yours, it’s not subject to the whim of a larger companies’ policies which – and be honest – can’t to be in your favor because they need to track and monetize your usage very closely.

We also don’t have a default contact preference when signing up for an account: an account can’t be created without choosing one of the three contact options. This means we can be 100% sure that everyone’s contact preference was made intentionally. There’s no check or uncheck the box with confusing wording kind of trickery here that other companies engage in so they can share your data with third parties.

Ironically, we do occasionally get complaints about having to pay for services or why our free accounts are slowly going away. This is why: because we don’t have anything except customers paying for services. For anyone who does want their personal data shared and monetized to get “free” services, Roller Network is not the place for that, and we’re not planning on changing that.

What we have done is enabled some cookie warnings since it’s harmless, and annoying at worst. We’re also no longer using Google Analytics on our main website and removed the Facebook integration from the Newspipe. We will continue to use Twitter.

TahoeIX

Hurricane Electric POP (2018 Update)

Post author By Seth
Post date March 22, 2018

We’ve been talking about the Hurricane Electric POP for a long time now… too long really, but often some of the most difficult things to achieve are the most rewarding.

In summary, a lot of time was spent trying to make Zayo work because at the time, only Zayo could provide an east facing wavelength (cost effectively anyway) to give the HE POP east-west diversity. While the status quo locally has been to backhaul things out of California, doing so increases exposure to the risk of California earthquakes impacting connectivity in an undesirable way. For disaster planning an east facing path is extremely desirable.

The good news is that during all of the time spent working on Zayo, a second option, Verizon, actually improved and is now able to offer an east facing path option to Denver instead of the originally planned Salt Lake City. This is what’s in process now: Zayo is out and Verizon is in. Salt Lake City is out and Denver is in. It’s still going to take a bit more time for Verizon to do the thing they do for long haul, but statistically speaking the number of successful Verizon orders at our facility is significantly higher than successful Zayo orders, so we have a higher confidence level that this is the light at the end of the tunnel.

Hurricane Electric will bring 1Gbps and 10Gbps access ports and PTP transport to their other POPs at prices never seen before in Reno, plus peering at TahoeIX with their famously open peering policy that has made Hurricane Electric one of the top peered networks in the world. Roller Network will be the first neutral colocation facility in Reno a to have a carrier POP* – a real one with peering – not “backhauled bandwidth” or transport to a “city with a router” (for example, all AT&T here goes through a router in Sacramento). We here at Roller Network are excited to be the catalyst for this step away from the status quo.

*Yes, we know there are other bigger fish nearby, but Rollernet is actually in Reno, NV in Washoe County. The others are not, so when we say “Reno” we truly mean within Reno city limits, not somewhere nearby that will never be in Reno. We’re technically correct, the best kind of correct.

Announcements

Fraud Alert: Telerus Claims to be an Agent

Post author By Seth
Post date July 20, 2017

Today we were notified by a customer that they were contacted by a company called Telerus who claimed to be an agent for Roller Network. We have not engaged Telerus for any services, nor does Telerus have any agent or resale agreements with Roller Network.

Telerus is NOT an agent for Roller Network, nor affiliated with Roller Network in any manner. Any claims otherwise are fraudulent.

If you are approached by Telerus claiming to represent Roller Network, we recommend declining to proceed; otherwise you risk falling victim to a scam or other fraud.