Frequently Asked Questions

Here are the answers to most of the questions that people ask about our service. If you have a question that is not covered by this page please let us know and we will provide you with a personalised answer.

What is your spam or bulk e-mail policy?
Pinet's has strict policies that prohibit all bulk e-mail/usenet posting and unsolicited advertising email. Any client found to be engaged in this activity will have their site removed from this network. PLEASE! Don't waste your money on bulk e-mail scams, save your site and your money. Don't Send Spam! There are no refunds for clients deliberately misusing our services.

Use Bandwidth?
Pinet charges clients a surcharge who use more than 2GB of transfer a month (on that particular month). You will never be forced to pay extra hidden charges however. This is charged at a rate of N3,500 per GB sold in 1 GB blocks.

Subdomains
Pinet charges clients a once-off N3,500 fee to setup subdomains. They must point to a directory on the clients site. A subdomain is for example http://members.yourdomain.com.ng/

Email setup
Pinet gives you access to a web-based control panel with which you setup your mail accounts, autoresponders, email forwarding etc. You may setup as many accounts as you need.

Web-based Email
Pinet also gives you access to a web-based email system, where you can check email and send email. Be aware however we do not support giving away free email from your website. This would put huge loads on our email servers. If you need this kind of service, kindly contact us for detail on how this can be done.

Second domains or domain pointers
Pinet charges clients a once-off N3,500 fee to setup a second domain that points to the exact same site as the first. If they want a separate site for the domain they must sign up for a second account. You will always be given the same representative for your second, third, fourth and so on, sites.

Referrals
Pinet currently does not give discounts on multiple sites as they already offer one of the best value, if not the best value hosting package available. If you are a design house or something similar and have a number of sites to host for your clients, we recommend that you charge them to manage their domains, therefore they needn't know that we exist, or the prices we charge.

Do you allow SSI?
Yes, Pinet keeps every possible service open to it's clients. We believe that you need the flexibility and freedom to create. Far be it from us to stand in your way. To use SSI your page must have the .shtml extension.

Do you support ASP?
Yes our NT/Win2000 hosting plans fully support Active Server Pages, and ODBC database connections for Access, DBase and Foxpro databases.

Do you support JSP?
Yes our NT/Win2000 hosting plans support Java Server Pages, once you have an account login to the control panel and click on 'Setup JSP Support', this will configure your domain for use with JSP pages.

Do you support PHP?
Yes our NT/Win2000 and our UNIX hosting plans support PHP. PHP4 is installed on all servers.

What if I go over my disk space?
Pinet will bill you for the extra disk space at the end of the month. We do give 10mb grace (e.g. if you use 10mb over your allowed space you will not be charged).

Support international domain names ?
Yes, you can host any domain name that you would like with Pinet.

How long does it take to setup my new account?
Orders received will be setup within 24 hours.

How long does it take to get a domain working?
On average a new domain should be working in about than 24hours, a domain that is moving to Pinet takes about 72 hours on average. In any case if your domain is not working 72 hours after you have requested your domain to be transferred from your domain registrar, you should contact your Pinet representative for an update.

What hardware do you use?
The hardware specifications change depending on the load and number of sites on a particular server. Our latest Win2000 machine is a SCSI Raid machine, 2GB RAM, Dual 1GB PIII's.

What connection do you have?
Pinet utilizes connections to multiple backbones to ensure that data reaches the end-user in the fastest, most efficient manner possible. We house our servers in major data centres in San Antonio Texas, Boulder Colorado and New Baltimore MI.

The data centres run the Border Gate Protocol (BGP4) for best case routing. The entirely switched, Cisco powered network employs Cisco 12000 GSR and 7500 class routers running HSRP (N+1 hot failover) to ensure that data can be routed even in the event of a router failover. The BGP4 protocol is a standard that allows for the evaluation of each packet of information sent out from the Network. Each packet of information is evaluated and sent over the fastest route possible. Because of our redundant network architecture, packets may be sent via alternative routes even if they are being delivered to the same end user. This also allows for packets to be redirected via another route if network congestion on the public internet becomes overwhelming.

Our providers are paid to make sure that packets of information are delivered to the end user's eyeballs. This offers significant advantages over simply peering with the major backbones. Peering agreements rarely include Service Level Agreements (SLAs) so no one is accountable for lost packets at congested exchange points. Because there are actually SLAs with all our providers, we are able to guarantee that all packets will leave our network at full speed.

The Network currently operates at less than 50% capacity during peak hours. This allows for us to accomodate even the largest spikes in traffic that are often associated with the most popular websites. We are always adding network connectivity and new routes in an effort to make sure content is delivered to you users as efficiently as possible. A low bandwidth utilization also allows for the highest amount of uptime. We have multiple DC3-OC12 connections to backbones.

Can I host an adult site?
Pinet as a public Internet provider does not censor legal web content in any way. However we do charge sites that transfer more than 2GB per month and adult sites quite often fall into this category..