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BuyVM - Review: Extraordinary.
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BuyVM - Review: Extraordinary.

MikePTMikePT Moderator, Patron Provider, Veteran
edited December 2017 in Reviews

Hello all,

  • On 15th October, 2017, 5pm, we were coming to Marinha Grande and noticed that the sky was looking really bad, there was a huge fire in our pinewood, considered one of the biggest pinewoods in the whole EU, and we went to see where it was occurring. As soon as we arrived, damn, it did look bad. As I've done some work for our local radio station, I went to the police, and fireman's asking what was happening so I could inform the local FM station, and it was a mess. Everyone awake, and worried at what would happen to their houses, our pinewood, their family that wasn't close to them and animals running from the huge fire. The fire could be seen from everywhere, it was the biggest fire we had in the last 50 years.

  • At approximately 9pm I informed our local FM station that their online streaming service wasn't working properly. The company they purchased the service from, had it setup with a limit of 30 listeners. As you can imagine, with a huge fire, this didn't suffice when the FM transmitter stopped transmitting, because the fire was really close and it was running solely on power generators / diesel. I told them I could help them, but they didn't bother to, they only happen to contact me when they notice that not only their FM frequency was down, as their streaming service as down as well.

  • They called me by midnight, asking for help, they had to continue their transmission, they had people calling them all the time, saying their FM frequency was down, and their online broadcasting was down as well - not only they had a 30 listeners limit, as it was setup horribly: they had it relaying the FM station, directly, instead of connecting it to their mixer, so they would have some redundancy.

  • I went to the FM station, ordered a VPS from @Francisco and told him what was happening. We really needed a lot of bandwidth during the fire as we had people from all over the world connecting to the streaming service that I setup properly, directly from their mixer. @Francisco ensured that this particular node was running properly - he told me he'd stay up for 7 more hours to monitor it, let's keep in mind the following real scenario:

We peaked at 1700 concurrent listeners;

We were relaying from the local FM station, directly from the mixer;

No FM station was working as the transmitters were all shutdown / lost power / power generators didn't have enough fuel;

We had a call every 10 seconds informing the FM station of where the fire was, what houses were burning, and people asking for more information (even people that weren't in Portugal and were worried with their family), as the only way to communicate with our residents was only the streaming that I had setup;


With all this, the streaming service was running for 3 days.

3 days, and we've been online, non stop, the people working in the FM station slept like 3 hours per day, on shifts, to ensure that the transmission wouldn't stop. We had people that were caught by the fire, and the only way to communicate, and let them know what streets were closed, or where the fireman were and all that, was solely the streaming service.

Here's the invoice I paid.

This allowed us to inform over 57k people, lots of people worried with the fire, local residents that would connect to it to get more information, people that connected from USA, Brazil, EU in general, we had 57k listeners total and a peak of 1700 concurrent listeners.

After the fire, we were told that we saved dozens of people by relaying information. Lots of streets were on fire, and people got to know from the streaming service.

$1.92 USD that saved dozens of lives.

@Francisco didn't rest until this was all sorted, and the fire gone. We lost over 85% of our pinehood, but fortunately, no one died, thanks to the work done by our local FM station, and @Francisco node handling the huge traffic that allowed us to spread the news for everyone.

I cannot be thankful enough for all his effort and guarantees. Thank you, @Francisco, you really did make a difference here.

For all others, in case you're looking for a provider that really cares, honestly, give @Francisco a chance, I assure you that you're in good hands.

  • Disclaimer: This post is meant to thank @Francisco for all his effort, and the lives that we saved together, by relying on his services that served us very, very well.

Comments

  • MikePTMikePT Moderator, Patron Provider, Veteran

    @Francisco said:
    Thank you!

    Glad it worked well.

    Francisco

    We had plenty choices, but we knew that we could count on you, and that's what made a difference here, during crucial/critical times.

  • Props to @Francisco here :P
    Miracles do exist, and so do Ponies :D

    Thanked by 1MikePT
  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran

    Cool story. Fran is awesome. I don't know how he scales his awesomeness to meet demand, but he pulls it off.

  • Thats realy kind of Francisco,keep doing good work to help the humanity in evry way one can and afford.God bless!

    Thanked by 1MikePT
  • MikePTMikePT Moderator, Patron Provider, Veteran
    edited December 2017

    @jarland said:
    Cool story. Fran is awesome. I don't know how he scales his awesomeness to meet demand, but he pulls it off.

    Yeah, I didn't speak to him that much after this event, but we did save dozens of lives with the streaming, and when I went to sleep at like 9 am, he was still monitoring the node, to make sure it was handling properly. We consumed quite a lot of bandwidth. Our local FM station gave many interviews for all this, but that sort of interviews never mention the tech background / meaning that they don't usually mention that someone went there to setup the relay, and that the streaming service was capable of informing over 57k people, with a peak of 1700 concurrent listeners. We done our mission here, I think this is what we call being human. Francisco was a really, really nice guy. Props to him.

  • Awesome. Kudos to @Francisco & @MikePT. I am sure there are thousands out there who would thank you for the quick thinking and the efforts you put in. Great job!

    Thanked by 1MikePT
  • What a nice story well done to both of you.

    Thanked by 1MikePT
  • LeeLee Veteran

    Show you care, with a slice.

    Thanked by 3MikePT Nekki netomx
  • Good to hear all of you are ok. Thanks for this post. Another reminder to never ever concider cancelling my slices :)

    Thanked by 1MikePT
  • MikePTMikePT Moderator, Patron Provider, Veteran

    @Saragoldfarb said:
    Good to hear all of you are ok. Thanks for this post. Another reminder to never ever concider cancelling my slices :)

    I rarely order from @Francisco, been a client for a few years though:

    Almost 7 years and I do not regret it :-)

    Thanked by 1yomero
  • MikePTMikePT Moderator, Patron Provider, Veteran

    @Lee said:
    Show you care, with a slice.

    Recommended, +1!

  • Yeah, I've been with him for quite a while as well. Back when it was just Frantech and the $2 for DDoS Protection was like fucking OP cos DDoS at that time only maxed 1Gbps and cost $9999 to protect against.

    Thanked by 1MikePT
  • @Francisco.

    SLICE 1024 support MyBB forum?

    PS: Average of 100 users online simultaneously.

  • Only El Cheapo could find a way to save lives with an outlay of less than $2.

  • FranciscoFrancisco Top Host, Host Rep, Veteran

    @Nekki said:
    Only El Cheapo could find a way to save lives with an outlay of less than $2.

    We need to put him on one of those extreme couponing shows.

    "Somehow he fed a small village of people and also got enough in cash back to pay his rent for 2 months? The fuck?"

    Francisco

  • MikePTMikePT Moderator, Patron Provider, Veteran

    @Nekki said:
    Only El Cheapo could find a way to save lives with an outlay of less than $2.

    Only El Cheapo... I had another relay in my Clouvider node though! :-)

    @Francisco said:

    @Nekki said:
    Only El Cheapo could find a way to save lives with an outlay of less than $2.

    We need to put him on one of those extreme couponing shows.

    "Somehow he fed a small village of people and also got enough in cash back to pay his rent for 2 months? The fuck?"

    Francisco

    Tbh the local FM station kept my external soundcard so I spent money and donated the soundcard too... :P

    Thanked by 1Clouvider
  • This almost made me cry, thanks @MikePT for this and good job @Francisco, as usual!

    Thanked by 2MikePT Francisco
  • @MikePT said:

    @Nekki said:
    Only El Cheapo could find a way to save lives with an outlay of less than $2.

    Only El Cheapo... I had another relay in my Clouvider node though! :-)

    @Francisco said:

    @Nekki said:
    Only El Cheapo could find a way to save lives with an outlay of less than $2.

    We need to put him on one of those extreme couponing shows.

    "Somehow he fed a small village of people and also got enough in cash back to pay his rent for 2 months? The fuck?"

    Francisco

    Tbh the local FM station kept my external soundcard so I spent money and donated the soundcard too... :P

    It has to be one of those USB headphone jack in/out doohickeys that cost about $3.

    Thanked by 2netomx uptime
  • ClouviderClouvider Member, Patron Provider

    Goes without saying that if you cross your bandwidth limit this month any charges will be forfeit. Good job @MikePT!

    Thanked by 2MikePT Ympker
  • MikePTMikePT Moderator, Patron Provider, Veteran

    @Clouvider said:
    Goes without saying that if you cross your bandwidth limit this month any charges will be forfeit. Good job @MikePT!

    No worries, this was a month ago, dunno how much bw we used, but that was a lot, it was aacplus tho, to save bw there! :-)

  • MikePTMikePT Moderator, Patron Provider, Veteran

    @WSS said:

    @MikePT said:

    @Nekki said:
    Only El Cheapo could find a way to save lives with an outlay of less than $2.

    Only El Cheapo... I had another relay in my Clouvider node though! :-)

    @Francisco said:

    @Nekki said:
    Only El Cheapo could find a way to save lives with an outlay of less than $2.

    We need to put him on one of those extreme couponing shows.

    "Somehow he fed a small village of people and also got enough in cash back to pay his rent for 2 months? The fuck?"

    Francisco

    Tbh the local FM station kept my external soundcard so I spent money and donated the soundcard too... :P

    It has to be one of those USB headphone jack in/out doohickeys that cost about $3.

    http://www.sweex.com/en/notebook-pc-accessoires/geluidskaarten/SC016/

    Really reliable, for like 30 USD. Maybe much less, I purchased it like 3 years ago.

  • Shill. Oh wait sorry, good job

  • Kudos to MikePT and Francisco for pulling off this important operation. One approach if more bw was needed might have been to use two (or more) layers of Icecast to fan out the broadcast to servers on multiple networks. Each layer adds a few hundred msec more lag, but since it's one-way communication that should be fine.

    Thanked by 1MikePT
  • deankdeank Member, Troll

    Unpaid shill.

    Soz, was ja joke.

  • @francisco, how much bandwidth did you use! Pics or didn't happen!

  • MikePTMikePT Moderator, Patron Provider, Veteran

    @willie said:
    Kudos to MikePT and Francisco for pulling off this important operation. One approach if more bw was needed might have been to use two (or more) layers of Icecast to fan out the broadcast to servers on multiple networks. Each layer adds a few hundred msec more lag, but since it's one-way communication that should be fine.

    I had another relay @ our node in Clouvider, just in case, wasn't needed thankfully. Things ran really well.

    @AlyssaD said:
    @francisco, how much bandwidth did you use! Pics or didn't happen!

    It was in aacplus @ 32kbps, I've no idea how much bandwidth we used to be honest, but did see it peaking at like 80mbps. Nothing major, but this lasted for 3 days (first and second day using the most bw).

  • i can vouch for @fransisco as well. been with buyvm for 4 years now, and support & service is really great from him directly.

    Thanked by 2MikePT Francisco
  • HannanHannan Member, Host Rep

    Great. Francisco is a great guy and doing a great job!

    Thanked by 2Francisco MikePT
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