History

AWKE (formerly known as atackscomputers which started just before the millennium in early Dec 1999) previously located at a small independent ISP in Peterborough UK who Simon had worked with the MD for many months so when he decided to run a server seemed the natural choice (this was originally run to provide a vastly better email service that was then available free as well as gain system admin experience).

This is when our good relationship with UKHOSTS was started as we had problems with the DNS system we setup only to find out that you cannot have DNS root servers for a domain being listed as an IP it makes things very broken!

Very shortly after setting up he asked if any of his friends wanted services and found a couple wanted hosting/websites so this was setup. Originally using 2 old PCs of Simons that he wasn’t using (P75 & P133 with 80MB RAM & 5GB HDD between them, both in quite small AT Cases). 

Around a year later space at the ISP was limited and the older machine was removed and the better machine was upgraded to a P166 and given the entire RAM). This was then upgraded again in mid 2002 to a dual 400 Celeron with 256MB RAM & 4GB HDD in a larger ATX case.  Around 9 months later this was upgraded with an additional 128MB RAM & another 4GB HDD. This was the last machine of atackscomputers. 

When awke was started it was decided from the outset that we wanted to go to rack mounted. We also decided that we would like an internet connection in London preferably, but especially one that if something went wrong could be remotely power cycled as the Peterborough ISP did not give us the option we could only get a reboot during office hours. The ISP had been having at that point quite regular problems with its connection provided by the upstream suppliers. Unfortunately the MD was mostly not around anymore as he was busy being a contractor out of the country, so for all these reasons it was decided we needed a new ISP. Now AWKE systems are located in Telehouse, Docklands, UK. 

We considered swapping the old server contents into a new rack mount box but since the rack mount case was between 33% and 50% of the cost of a custom built server that was perfectly adequately powerful, only running in single % figures of full load, it was decided that we might as well buy and make a new 1U server that would allow further expansion in the future.

AWKE is run in conjunction with the owners full time jobs, we will always endeavor though to answer questions, problems or enquiries as quickly as possible.