Kristen, I'd like to chime in on the chorus of very appreciative Buffistae. Thank you for taking this time and effort on the board's behalf.

The measured bandwidth billing model is described here. The 1Mbps numbers are for billing purposes.

Yeah, I already read that. I still don't get it. They say very clearly that, "The measured bandwidth model provides you with a base allocation of bandwidth, just as if you were bringing a T1, or DSL line into your home of office." Does that mean that each user gets that bandwidth or are we splitting our pipe between all the users online?

Oh and thanks to Kat, Jesse, brenda, Perkins, msbelle [did I tell you I bought pink shoes?], Wolfram and juliana. I appreciate the nice words.

ETA one I missed:

I'm really not terribly happy with the tight and seemingly arbitrary deadline on Steven's offer

I'm sorry that the deadline bothers you. It was how we got the deal we did. I think Steven didn't want a repeat of last time.

Here's what iStrata has for connectivity:

Our hosting servers are located in a state of the art data center in San Jose, CA (Silicon Valley). Because of our location we are able to provide you with short hop, big pipe connections to all major backbone providers and large ISPs. The chances are very good that your data is going to be very close to the people you want to reach. We have gigabits of bandwidth available, 100 Mbps burstable bandwidth available to every server, advanced best path routing, UPS and diesel generator back up power, and 24 hour monitoring. With this infrastructure we're able to provide you with some of the best connectivity in the industry.

That's the pipe all the customers of iStrata are sharing.

The 1Mbps numbers are for billing. If your average use is 1Mbps or less, there's no additional charge. If you use more, you pay more. I think Tom did the math and we're well under 1Mbps.

Oh. Okay, cool. They really need to work on that phrasing thing.

We have sufficient broad expertise among the Stompies that I'm happy to go with them.

Quick and probably pedantic point here, but it's bugging me so oh well:

Stompies does not equal people with technical knowledge. A lot of people who have contributed that to this conversation, including Kristen, Tom Scola and Rob, are not Stompies. This decision should be made with input from all of the people who understand MySQL and Internet servers, not just the ones who happen to also have moderation/Stompy roles.

I'm not sure why this is bugging me -- I guess I just feel like the non-Stompy techies are being slighted somehow.

16.2 GB a month averages to 51.78 Kbps.

1Mbps running flat-out for a month would be 316 GB.

Which makes me suspicious, Rob. No provider would provision that amount for one user.

I'm in agreement with everyone who's said the following:

1) Let the technical Stompy people make the ultimate decision.

2) I'm uneasy about committing to spending $2400.

3) Kristen rocks, and I hope that we haven't given her an ulcer.

Okay. This one's not up to the Stompies, it's up to the Geekies.