seti.nnov.ru was the website of "Seti" ("Networks"), a Nizhny Novgorod computer company, a systems integrator. In the nn.ru catalogue its line of business was described as: "Creation of local and corporate computer networks. Corporate support"[4]. The company's office was located in Nizhny Novgorod, at 2 Ivana Romanova Street, office 402, postal code 603002; the home page listed the phone numbers 46-40-73 and 46-39-12 and the email address seti@sandy.ru[1]. The earliest snapshot of the site in the Web Archive is dated 8 February 1999[2]. In the nn.ru catalogue the company was listed as AOZT "Seti" (a closed joint-stock company) in the autumn of 2000[3] and again in April 2002[5], while in a June 2002 snapshot it already appears as ZAO "Seti" (a closed joint-stock company)[4]; it likewise called itself "ZAO Seti" in its own news items in 2007[1]. As the company's website this address was active at least until July 2007[1].

Computer systems and networks

A snapshot from 7 July 2007 shows a page built as a hardware vendor's showcase. The heading named the owner directly: "Seti Company: systems integrator. Nizhny Novgorod"; next to it were the tagline "Computer systems and networks", the postal address and phone numbers. A separate block held a "Add to favourites" link, a set of useful links, and "Big sale!". Its headings listed what was sold besides the core line of business: servers and a "billing-application server, a graphics workstation at PC price", discounted computers, multimedia equipment (speakers, "MP3 and DVD players", cameras), used retail equipment — display cases, shelving for office equipment, office desks — and used office equipment: computers, printers, PBX systems. The full sale list could be downloaded as a separate 32 KB file. The page had a search box with a "On this site" / "On Yandex" switch; besides the news feed, the home page also had a "Theory and practice" section and an "IT news" block[1].

Partnerships, price lists and promotions

Most of the home page was taken up by the "Our news" feed, running up to 5 July 2007. It shows what the company was doing at the time: it described itself as an authorized partner, installer and reseller, and as a systems integrator of Intel products; it reported that it had renewed its Registered Partner status and obtained SMB Select Partner status from Cisco Systems, that it was an authorized partner for sales of the full range of HP equipment in the SMB sector, that it had received a certificate as a participant in the Intel partner marketing programme, and a diploma for a significant contribution to the development and promotion of Molex Premise Networks products. The site posted price lists from Microsoft, Cisco Systems, D-Link, Allied Telesyn, Ideco and Kaspersky Lab[1].

Prices were posted openly on the page. In June 2007 the company announced a new price list for HP and NZ-Technology servers, noting that IBM servers had been dropped from the list but were still being supplied, with prices sent on request; a lump-sum purchase of 150,000 roubles came with additional discounts promised. A special offer on NZ-Technology servers separately noted that the goods shipped from a warehouse in Nizhny Novgorod and that a 3% discount applied for cash payment. A Cisco ASA 5505 firewall cost 18,200 roubles on 21 June 2007 — against 27,860 roubles in an earlier, undated item; under a promotion on Cisco equipment the WS-C2960-24TT-L unit cost 36,260 roubles; Windows Server Standard 2003 R2 was offered for 18,500 roubles instead of 24,388 with the purchase of any server[1].

The company ran an annual February seminar, "SMB Enterprise IT Infrastructure", announced monthly "TOP-20" special offers — "20 items from stock at super prices" (a January and a May edition survive in the feed), a New Year promotion, "Work is work, fun is fun" ("Делу — время, потехе — час"), with a DVD player thrown in with a server purchase, and offered two configuration options for a standard telecom node made up of a wall-mounted cabinet, a 1U rack telecom server and a rack-mount UPS — under the heading "Hang your server room on the wall!"[1].

Place in the Nizhny Novgorod internet

The site was listed in the nn.ru catalogue in three sections at once within the "Firms (Enterprises): Computers and office equipment" branch — "Network installation and systems integration"[4], "Repair and technical service"[5], and "Sale of computers and office equipment"[6]. In a snapshot of the general "Computers and office equipment" list from 23 October 2000, the entry carried a verification mark "Working 25/07/2000", and the "Rating" column was zero[3]. In later snapshots that column shows numbers, but they belong to different sections and different dates: 20.94 — "Repair and technical service", April 2002[5]; 97 — "Network installation", June 2002[4]; 167 — "Sale of computers and office equipment", November 2003[6]. In that same June snapshot of the "Network installation" section, the "SOLAN Group" had 124 in this column, the "Trikon Systems" company had 102, and "Intek Service Centre" had 53[4].

In the final voting table of the Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day for 2004, the domain seti.nnov.ru does not appear at all[7]. On the counter itself, Counter.nn.ru, and on what the Nizhny Novgorod Internet of those years looked like by its data, see the Archival study of the Nizhny Novgorod internet from the counter.nn.ru rating.

Someone else's blog, then a placeholder page

The Web Archive holds about eighty captures of the site[2]; our sample of texts includes three of them — from 2007, 2017 and 2022[1][8][9]. What happened with the domain between 2007 and 2017 is not shown by this sample. By 2 June 2017, seti.nnov.ru was no longer the company's site but an "Automobile Blog | All About Cars" — judging by the markup ("Posted … by admin", "Read more", categories "Uncategorised" and "Hello world"), running on WordPress. There were no cars in the blog at all: nineteen post pages signed "admin", empty test notes, and English-language ad copy about custom essay writing, plagiarism checking and mobile app development. There were also traces of a hack — posts from 21 and 25 May 2017 signed "Hacked by ZeDaN-Mrx"[8]. In a snapshot from 5 October 2022, the address served the default nginx web-server welcome page — there was no site on the domain at all[9]. This is the last seti.nnov.ru snapshot in our sample.

Sources

  1. web.archive.org — Home page, 2007 (archive)
  2. web.archive.org — Index of seti.nnov.ru snapshots in the Web Archive (archive)
  3. web.archive.org — nn.ru catalogue, "Computers and office equipment" section, 2000 (archive)
  4. web.archive.org — nn.ru catalogue, "Network installation" section, 2002 (archive)
  5. web.archive.org — nn.ru catalogue, "Repair and technical service" section, 2002 (archive)
  6. web.archive.org — nn.ru catalogue, "Sale of computers and office equipment" section, 2003 (archive)
  7. web.archive.org — Voting results, Nizhny Novgorod Internet Day, 2004 (archive)
  8. web.archive.org — Home page, 2017 (archive)
  9. web.archive.org — Home page, 2022 (archive)