PLANT Hosting & Co-Location BV

Plant Hosting & Co-Location BV has been a hosting provider since 1995. Being a hosting provider means we provide our clients with the ability and expertise required in placing their websites and other services on the internet. The websites hosted by PLANT vary from single pages to highly structured sites. Depending on your needs you can choose from our various shared packages, mail services, domain name registrations or alternatively choose from our dedicated and co-located services.

Besides our head office which is situated in Amsterdam, we have offices in London and South Africa.  Therefore we can offer our clients impeccable service and a reliable product.

Network - Amsterdam

The second largest Internet Exchange in Europe is situated in Amsterdam. PLANT Amsterdam has secured its network inside the Amsterdam Science Park which is directly linked to the European Internet backbone.

An Internet Exchange is a connectivity point where various networks and service providers come together and interconnect with each other (peer). Our offices and server room is situated mere meters from the AMS-IX peering point. Our location has tremendous advantages: incredibly short response times of our administrators, network speed, reliability and quality of our redundant fibre Internet link.

Due to our location we have a large quantity of bandwidth available. The advantage of having such a large amount of bandwidth available is evident in that a large amount of visitors can be accommodated simultaneously. With our 1GBit link we are equipped to host the most frequently visited sites with ease.

Our server room is access controlled, secured and air conditioned. We do allow for clients to make use of our server room facility, although we require that client servers must comply with the 19" specifications.


What is a hosting company?

We are a hosting company, a service also referred to as web-hosting. So what does this actually mean? There are thousands of entities worldwide which call themselves hosting companies.  We do not regard an old pc connected to an ADSL line in a residential home, as a hosting company. If this kind of company had to run on Linux, a free operating system, the most costly part of their operation would have been the postage stamp on invoices (unless they were sent electronically). Quite often there is no real company, only dealings via their website as though there were a company. The lack of a contact number is mostly the give away. A postal address could indicate a professional enterprise, but then again how many IT companies have a server somewhere for their own use? One small step and this server can also be used by clients for their websites. A brand name, website and a new hosting company is born. In much the same way some companies seem to make a serious attempt, but more often than not the most integral parts of their business is outsourced!

How do you identify a serious hosting company? Their address. A hosting company in Purmerend operates as a port company in Enschede. Most real hosting companies are located in Amsterdam in the region of the Amsterdam Internet Exchange or in Schiphol or Rotterdam, where large peering points are to be found as well. Hosting companies located elsewhere make use of server rooms from hosting or co-location service providers located in the aforementioned locations. Therefore making them variants of the Virtual ISP model. Proper service providers have their own server room as well as membership to the AMS-IX. Furthermore these companies are mostly members of RIPE as well - otherwise they would not be able to supply their own IP addresses and be dependant on the proper hosting providers again. This is not a feasible way of operating - it brings to mind the collapse of KPN Qwest...

If the average client had as much knowledge about hosting, as say cars, it would eradicate the unwanted elements in hosting very quickly. Unfortunately this will take many years to happen. If you want reliable information about your intended hosting company read up about them on www.nominet.org.uk or www.sidn.nl . A good indication of how long they have been doing business is the registration date of the domain name which they operate under. The Chamber of Commerce would offer more in depth information, should they have the company registered.

PLANT hosting & co-location BV distinguishes itself on the following points :

·  Active in the hosting arena since 1995

·  Member of RIPE

·  Member of the Federation for IT in the Netherlands

·  Our own server room on location in Amsterdam

·  Premium rate 0900 dialer, LAN and SMS services

·  Windows 2003 and Linux hosting

·  Managed co-location service provision

·  Microsoft Certified Partner

·  Hardware exclusively from established providers : DELL, Compaq, IBM, CISCO, F5,
    Netscreen,Macromedia Coldfusion MX hosting etc.

*********************************************************************