This time it started with human error and a domain expiration. After that was all cleared up it progressed to a hardware failure. After that was resolved, a DDoS attack started (we see these a few times a year, usually the proxy network). After that was cleared up, back to hardware, but this time not ours, a router upstream of our proxy network and out of our control seems to be dropping packets and all we can do is wait for the service responsible to fix it.
I understand this steady stream of issues the last week or so is making us look bad. It really pains me, this service is far more than just employment to me. This service is a passion that just happened (well, for values of “just happened” equaling a lot of work) to start paying bills. I originally started it as a free service for one reason only, I believe in privacy.
I did then, and after years of running this and seeing what I have seen, I believe in it even more. I had to start charging because it began to cost so much to run and the security business I started that was supporting it failed. In addition, it was taking so much of my time that I had to be dedicated just to it. And it just grew. But it is still a passion, not a job.
In case there is any confusion, I’m not one of these high paid “CEO/President” types. In fact, I don’t even earn anywhere near what I would earn using my skills working as a sysadmin/developer for someone else (and with it demonstrated in what I built with cotse, I’d think finding employment at a CIO level wouldn’t be difficult). Nearly everything this business earns is turned to growth, support, and new features/enhanced features.
Unfortunately, while we have grown substantially since our beginning, we are not Google nor Yahoo and we certainly don’t have billions to be able to afford so many hotswap devices and hotswap networks that you won’t notice when a machine or router goes bad (and even those big guys still have issues a few times a year).
While they got millions in investment, we boot strapped and did not take a dime of investment (although if the right fit appeared now, I’d consider it to help break out of the niche and make it more mainstream to be private). All we can do is work under the constraints we have and fight the fires as they ignite and extinguish them as rapidly as possible. As we grow, you can be assured we’re investing in the business and redundancy, nobody here is currently getting rich from this, we do it because we strongly believe in privacy.
This string of failures hit the full spectrum, human error, hardware failure, attack, and back to hardware failure, one right after the other. I’m feeling burnt out right now. It’s a never ending battle to keep everything functioning smoothly, and quite frankly, we’ve had far more than our fair share of issues over the years (especially those beyond our control). I’m not complaining because such is the nature of the business and I didn’t enter it blind, but I do think that it is long past time that we caught a break.