arei.nnov.ru was the website of Arei, a Nizhny Novgorod firm engaged in installing satellite and cable television networks and advertising in hotels of Nizhny Novgorod[1]. To search engines the page presented itself as the line "firm AREY. Installation of cable and satellite TV systems, advertising in hotels of Nizhny Novgorod" — with a typo in the word "satellite" (spelled "sputnikovgo" instead of "sputnikovogo" in the original Russian)[1]. As the home page stated, the firm had been operating "since 1992" and was "the successor of the company 'Russkoye Video NN'"[1]. The first snapshot of the site in the web archive was taken on April 1, 2001[1], the last snapshot with content — on February 15, 2003[2], and by February 9, 2005 the address was already answering with a hosting placeholder page[3].

One page and a four-item menu

Arei's site was arranged with extreme modesty: the heading "firm AREY | about the firm," a section "About the firm" of about fifteen lines, and a horizontal menu at the bottom — "[ About the firm | Our services | Invitation to cooperate | How to find us ]"[1]. Under the menu was the author's signature: "webmaster: Alexander Oshchepkov © 2000"[1]. The page's keywords listed "advertising, Nizhny, Novgorod, Nizhegorodsky, hotel, hotels, TV, satellite, cable, installation"[1].

Over two years the site did not change by a single line: the text of the February 15, 2003 snapshot repeats the April 1, 2001 snapshot word for word, copyright year 2000 included[1][2]. Of the four menu items, only the home page survives in the available archival material: neither a price list of services nor the address and phone number from the "How to find us" section were preserved in the snapshots.

Hotels, antennas, and seventeen channels

The home page named the firm's main occupation as "installation of television satellite and cable networks, as well as repair of television equipment and technical maintenance of all installed components"[1]. The clientele was named by name: "our main clients today are the largest hotels of Nizhny Novgorod: Oka, Tsentralnaya, Nizhegorodskaya, Zarechnaya"[1].

The description of the equipment is the most substantive part of the site. At the hotel sites, as the home page reported, there were satellite dishes from 1.5 to 3 meters in diameter, trunk amplifiers "for several hundred subscribers," and multichannel satellite stations; together these provided reception and broadcast of seventeen television channels, including satellite ones, at the serviced hotels[1]. The quality of the work, according to the page, was guaranteed by "a certificate of conformity and a license"[1].

In a separate paragraph the site recalled work outside the city: in 1992 the firm installed a television system in the settlement of Ilyinogorsk in Nizhny Novgorod Oblast "for several thousand subscribers," after which the settlement's residents "got the opportunity to watch several television programs in excellent quality"[1]. Regarding the advertising mentioned in the page's service description and in the directory listing, the "About the firm" text itself said nothing: only installation, repair, and network maintenance were listed[1].

A place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet

In the Nizhny Novgorod Internet of the early 2000s, Arei was a typical business-card site of a small technical firm: one screen of text, no updates, a domain in the nnov.ru zone. In the directory of the nn.ru catalog the firm was listed with the description "advertising in hotels of Nizhny Novgorod," and in the summary of the Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating of Counter.nn.ru the address corresponds to a score of 13 — the bottom of the Nizhny Novgorod sites' traffic table. Among the sites noted in the voting for the 2004 Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day, arei.nnov.ru does not appear[4].

How it closed

The site was neither redone nor moved: by February 9, 2005 the address was serving the standard hosting control panel service page with the heading "Default PLESK Page" and an explanation that hosting for the domain was not configured, or that no such domain was registered in the panel[3]. In total the web archive index lists eighteen records for the address, but snapshots with actual content are a handful among them — all of them show the same unchanging "About the firm" page.

The years of the project's life are taken in our study as 1992–2005: 1992 is taken from the firm's own text about the start of its work[1], 2005 — the last archival trace of the address, by then already empty[3]. What became of the firm Arei itself after its site disappeared, the archival material does not report.

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Home page, 2001 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — Home page, 2003 (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — Hosting placeholder in place of the site, 2005 (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — Results of the Day of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet vote, 2004 (archive)