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Equinix is acquiring Packet

packet.com

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Re: Equinix is acquiring Packet

#11

Post by donalhunt »

shaklee3 wrote: post #8
donalhunt wrote: post #2

Packet's blog post: https://www.packet.com/blog/ping-power-processors/ This is probably a good play for Equinix as it provides a lower barrier to entry to a segment of the market that they typically haven't engaged (Packet being largely profitable probably helps). In addition, I believe Packet already had presence in a number of Equinix datacenters so "landlord buys tenant" comes to mind...

How do you know they're profitable?

Assumption based on 1) their pricing model and 2) them being acquired by Equinix (who I consider quite conservative).

Re: Equinix is acquiring Packet

#12

Post by ianhawes »

hetspookjee wrote: post #7
q3k wrote: post #5

Likely bad news and writing on the wall for the open-but-competitive culture at Packet. Equinix has been historically turning every single acquisition into a closed-off enterprise-only product/service, especially in the IXP space.

I didn't know how fast to turn around when I tried to register an account and they insisted I needed to provide a copy of my passport or drivers license. I don't know why I need to provide such information for a hosting provider as I've never had to do so before at any of their competitors. or perhaps you mean something else with open?

They obviously wanted to verify who you were which is why they requested a government issued photo ID.

Good on them for being proactive about it instead of waiting until you had created a server. Could you imagine a production server being frozen while they wait for you to verify your identity?

Fraud is incredibly prevalent in the hosting space. Spammers, CC fraud, hackers, etc.. all stand to benefit from servers not obtained in their own name.

Re: Equinix is acquiring Packet

#13

Post by RationPhantoms »

Eikon wrote: post #6
drej wrote: post #3

A fun story! Packet support contacted me one day last fall to ask about my business. I said I had none, I used Packet years before then for personal projects and only for a few days. Then they asked what my plans were for the 13 VMs I had running. I knew of no such VMs. I guess my account got pwned. They asked how I'd pay for these - $900 worth I think - since I didn't have a valid card in their system (the previous…

Packet is not doing virtualization.

No it's bare metal but can you not run your own virtualization software on the devices themselves?

Re: Equinix is acquiring Packet

#14

Post by ep103 »

drej wrote: post #3

A fun story! Packet support contacted me one day last fall to ask about my business. I said I had none, I used Packet years before then for personal projects and only for a few days. Then they asked what my plans were for the 13 VMs I had running. I knew of no such VMs. I guess my account got pwned. They asked how I'd pay for these - $900 worth I think - since I didn't have a valid card in their system (the previous…

My company moved to packet about two years ago, for about half of our cloud-based server needs. We loved the pricing and figured it was worth a shot.

Over the last 2 years, we've had ~4 major outages on their platform. The last of these was so severe we're moving everything back off and over to aws.

Re: Equinix is acquiring Packet

#15

Post by chucky_z »

hetspookjee wrote: post #7
q3k wrote: post #5

Likely bad news and writing on the wall for the open-but-competitive culture at Packet. Equinix has been historically turning every single acquisition into a closed-off enterprise-only product/service, especially in the IXP space.

I didn't know how fast to turn around when I tried to register an account and they insisted I needed to provide a copy of my passport or drivers license. I don't know why I need to provide such information for a hosting provider as I've never had to do so before at any of their competitors. or perhaps you mean something else with open?

When I worked for a web host the drivers license/passport was normal. It sounds weird but stops some fraction of scammers.

Re: Equinix is acquiring Packet

#16

Post by swyx »

Eikon wrote: post #4

Packet’s offering are so good and so much above competition that it’s not even funny. I mean, why almost no one else is offering BGP ECMP, byoip, anycast routing, a sane setup system among others. It boggles my mind. It’s a hard sell going back to geoip and shitty layer2 switching that you get everywhere else after using their services.

hi I'm a mere frontend developer who doesnt do much at the network layer - do you mind ELIFEDing to me what exactly Packet got right? What's the big deal about automated bare metal? is it somehow a lot faster? cheaper? than virtualization? Is Packet 100% for edge computing or is Equinix kinda repurposing it in this acquisition for its edge computing strategy?

I feel like something that is so obvious to you is not obvious to me and it'd probably help other readers here to follow along. Thanks in advance

Re: Equinix is acquiring Packet

#17

Post by drej »

Eikon wrote: post #6
drej wrote: post #3

A fun story! Packet support contacted me one day last fall to ask about my business. I said I had none, I used Packet years before then for personal projects and only for a few days. Then they asked what my plans were for the 13 VMs I had running. I knew of no such VMs. I guess my account got pwned. They asked how I'd pay for these - $900 worth I think - since I didn't have a valid card in their system (the previous…

Packet is not doing virtualization.

Yeah, sorry, I mean VM as a bit of compute, regardless of its provisioning.

Re: Equinix is acquiring Packet

#18

Post by pm90 »

I was hoping for Packet to be the next big bare metal provider so this is kinda sad at first glance. I’ve heard great things about them but haven’t used them; I was considering them for a side project of spinning up my own k8s cluster just because.

GCP and AWS probably fit the needs of most established businesses. I know quite a few startups that use bare metals though since they cost a lot less. Plus, you have complete visibility and control over your entire stack.

I hope others spring up to address the market of users needing extremely highly customized systems at the lowest costs.

Re: Equinix is acquiring Packet

#19

Post by cimnine »

Eikon wrote: post #4

Packet’s offering are so good and so much above competition that it’s not even funny. I mean, why almost no one else is offering BGP ECMP, byoip, anycast routing, a sane setup system among others. It boggles my mind. It’s a hard sell going back to geoip and shitty layer2 switching that you get everywhere else after using their services.

Vultr has byoip via BGP: https://www.vultr.com/features/bgp/ You can also implement anycast with it.

Feel free to use my affiliate link worth 50$ to you: https://www.vultr.com/?ref=7965104-4F

Re: Equinix is acquiring Packet

#20

Post by ksec »

So Equinx is stepping into Cloud Hosting?

What makes Packet any difference to, Linode, DO, Upcloud, Vultr, Hivelocity, and many others? Where the first few are bringing Bare Metal to its offering along with Database aaS.

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