NationalNet: A straight shooter in adult Web hosting
A breeding ground for innovation, the pioneering spirit of the World Wide Web is often more like the Wide Wild West. In frontier country, the law is often late to catch up. Many sites have managed to run unhindered by legal restrictions. While there are outlaws, there are good guys too. ‘Sweet T’ Tony Morgan, president of NationalNet, is one of the good sharp shooters.
"I see a shake-up coming," says Morgan, "in the adult Internet among people who have treated it as ‘the wild, wild west’ where anything and everything is legal with little or no consequences. This type of webmaster is short lived." Morgan believes this shake-up will be positive, opening up opportunities for those companies like NationalNet, who have conducted business the right way and kept their own houses clean.
NationalNet began in 1997 as National Internet Services. It was founded with a single employee, server, and ISDN line. A small business, it was built on the foundation that growth and success could only be achieved through solid commitment to great customer service.
In 1998, National Internet Services was bought by the Atlanta-based Web development company, WebSolutions of Georgia Inc.. With new financial backing and a new name, NationalNet has become one of the premier hosting companies in the adult Internet business.
Morgan’s experience as an adult webmaster stems back to 1997, when he started his first adult site, GeorgiaGirls, winner of a people’s choice award for four straight years. Since then he’s launched other sites, including the Casting Couch, and the partnership program Club100.
A long way from its humble beginnings, NationalNet now employs a full staff of system administrators, programmers and developers who look after more than 200 servers in two data centers.
While Morgan would rather not discuss bandwidth numbers, he is willing to give a pretty good impression of the traffic NationalNet handles. "Suffice to say that when you offer services to clients like WebQuest, MaxCash, CyberErotica, Shaw Internet and InsiteAdult, then we push more traffic than most people in the business," says Morgan. "At last count we were responsible for more than 500,000,000 unique visitors per day."
NationalNet has four data centers in Atlanta, Georgia, Tyson’s Corner, Virginia, Dallas, Texas, and Toronto, Canada. NationalNet colocates with UUNET, Global Crossing, Cable&Wireless, AboveNet, Netrail, Sprint and AT&T.
"If we were to build our own data center and still keep our redundancy strategy in place then we would have to build multiple centers, and that begins to get us away from what we do best: hosting." But colocating its equipment doesn’t mean that NationalNet has abandoned responsibility for its hardware. The difference is simple, but complete-NationalNet has all its own routers, switches, servers, and system administrators. "Nothing," says Morgan, "and I mean nothing, is sub-contracted, rented, leased, or borrowed."
While its client-per-server ratios vary, NationalNet is well aware of what its servers can handle. Morgan points out that while in the mainstream Web business, a host can put 2,000 clients in a data tub with a single server front end and be fine. "In the adult world, that will never work," he says, "because if just one of those clients gets listed on one of those giant link sites, then their bandwidth is going to jump, and it is our responsibility to be sure that it works."
As many top-notch Web hosts will learn, customer service can be the quickest way to a client’s heart. "We don’t hide behind pagers and phones," says Morgan. Proof can be found on the company’s testimonial, which is plastered with praise.
John Morgan, a client who has been hosting more than 2,000 free image sites with NationalNet for more than a year, is emphatic in describing his satisfaction with the company. "I am 100% satisfied with their service," says Morgan, citing NationalNet’s stability and service as the company’s most outstanding qualities.
Back on the frontier, Webmasters are preparing to see a time when regulation won’t be so difficult—when the west won’t be so wild anymore. Morgan knows, it’s the good guys who are going to stick around. The sun might set on a lot of shaky businesses then. But you can bet that it will rise for the straight shooters—sharp shooters like NationalNet.
