So we got an offer from Rackifi, a company I never heard of, but that is nothing new.  They’re a provider based in Pennsylvania and have some shared hosting offers.

Let me put the basics out there:

• Shared/reseller/managed WordPress hosting in Pennsylvania
• Plesk panel
• Unmetered storage, unmetered bandwidth

Pricing is not crazy: cheap, but could be sustainable, with the usual we-all-know-what-they-mean caveats about unlimited anything.

But there was one thing in the offer request that I initially overlooked and only noticed when I was double-checking things.  In the words of Austin from Rackifi: “I started up Rackifi LLC after I was able to get some amazing deals on equipment, and a 10 Gbit fiber connection! Everything is hosted in our own mini private datacenter.”

Mini private datacenter…?

I can’t imagine any small host actually have a datacenter in the “Tier 4 Facility That Costs Tens If Not Hundreds Of Millions Of Dollars” sense of that word.  Maybe they mean a dedicated space in an office somewhere, or perhaps they are just putting a spin on what’s really a colo cage.

But no.

They have a…unique network setup.

I checked on the test IP (which did indeed respond very quickly, and I got about 35-40MB/sec from a Seattle VPS on the 1GB test file).  The IP block is owned by Comcast and this looks very much like a residential IP.

I also noticed that the reverse DNS is web.gamehostdirect.com.

Which lead me to this video:

Okay, then.

There was also this update from earlier this year, where the Xfinity Gig Pro plan is discussed (Xfinity = Comcast):

All of this is the brainchild of Mad Gigabit, a self-described “online legend”.  He describes himself as an influencer.  His Twitter is a read.  I do like his logos though.  I need to find out where he got those done.  But I digress.

Seems like he’s got some kind of peering setup but the servers are perhaps in his basement…?   If so, it must be like living inside a 747 because servers that have dual E5s with 16x1TB drives are going to be on the loud side.

My conclusion is that he was a gamer, got a deal/bought some gear/etc. and got in the game server business, and now says hey, why not put unused cycles to work with some shared hosting.

Do you like to live dangerously?  I guess I’m posting this one for entertainment value.

Read on if you are brave!  And if you do take the plunge, you must comment!

Update: As explained here, order links have been removed.

Network Information

Rackifi Private Datacenter – Kittanning, Pennsylvania
Test IPv4: 50.219.136.150
Test file: https://web.rackifi.io/100MB.bin
Test file: https://web.rackifi.io/1GB.bin

Server Info

2x Intel Xeon E5-2648L v3
128GB RAM
16x 1TB SAS Drives
Hardware RAID10
10Gbps uplink

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raindog308

Dread Lord of LowEnd Content at LowEndBox

I'm raindog308, techno polymath and long-time LowEndTalk community Administrator. My technical interests include all things Unix, perl, python, golang, shell scripting, vintage operating systems such as MVS, and relational database systems such as Oracle, PostgreSQL, and MySQL.

I also enjoy using LEBs! I have an empire of little guys for VPNs, larger guys for apps, and big guys for databases and storage. When I'm not in front a screen I'm into German Shepherd dogs, quality knives, target shooting, theology, tabletop roleplaying games, and forest hiking.

I enjoy writing technical articles here on LowEndBox to help people get more out of their systems. You can find me on LowEndTalk @raindog308

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