Ramnode: Los Angeles Launch and VAT

As promised a few months ago on Twitter, we are pleased to announce the launch of our newest location - Los Angeles! RamNode servers are now up and running in one of Equinix's facilities in downtown LA. We have added a new looking glass and updated our FAQ articles to reflect this new option. Our LA network blend is comprised of NTT and PCCW, as well as Staminus for our optional DDoS-filtered IPs. As usual, we are offering the same plans on the same great hardware that we use in our other four locations.

We will be tweaking the routing over the coming weeks as we receive feedback from clients. Feel free to open a support ticket if you notice any strange or suboptimal routing between you and LA. Please provide an MTR for both directions if you do that.

We know many clients, particularly from Asia, may want to migrate from Seattle to LA; however, we have to limit immediate migrations until we have a better idea of how quickly stock will go. We will treat each request on a case by case basis for the next week or two, after which point we will be able to move anyone who wants to change locations.

European Union Value Added Tax (VAT)

The following only applies to clients with physical addresses located in the European Union. Clients with addresses in any other part of the world may ignore this part and check out Other News below.

Since we are a non-EU supplier of electronic services to customers in the European Union, RamNode is required to charge VAT to customers located in the EU. We will be adding VAT to invoices for EU clients starting on February 19 (for invoices due March 1). We send out invoices 10 days in advance of a due date, so February 19 will be the first batch of invoices for March. If you have a valid VAT ID, you will be able to submit it to us starting February 18.

For more information on how RamNode is handling VAT and how to submit your VAT ID, please see this FAQ article: https://clientarea.ramnode.com/knowledgebase.php?action=displayarticle&id=110

You can read more about the new tax rules here:
http://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/taxation/vat/how_vat_works/telecom/index_en.htm

PLEASE NOTE!!! If you have a PayPal subscription set to pay us automatically each cycle, and if you do not have a VAT ID, you will need to update your subscription at PayPal to cover the new amount. You can do that when you receive your next invoice after February 18. You can always pay invoices manually (no subscription) if you'd prefer. This does not impact clients using Stripe to pay us by credit card. The new amount will automatically be charged if you have your card stored with us through Stripe.

Other News

As of October, our Staminus DDoS filtering (available everywhere but Seattle) now covers attacks up to 20Gbps or 10 million PPS per location! Anyone who has a Staminus DDoS-filtered IP with us now has this new level of protection at no additional cost.

Along with other improvements to our services, work on the new in-house control panel continues in the background. We will reveal more via Twitter in the coming months.

Lastly, in an effort to give back to the open source community, we have recently created a GitHub account: https://github.com/ramnode
As always, we greatly appreciate your continued business and support! Feel free to open a support ticket in the Client Area if you need anything.
Regards,

RamNode.com
Skype: RamNode
Twitter: @RamNode
Network Status: @NodeStatus
IRC: #ramnode