Re: [cobalt-users] UK Colocation

[Kris Dahl <krislists@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

on 7/5/00 10:50 AM, Sales - Way to the Web at sales@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

> Hello Kris,
> 
>> I am actually curious as to if there are any decent
>> co-location facilities
>> in the UK.
>> 
>> If your server/site is to be a global presence, I would
>> consider shipping
>> the server to a world-class facility in the states.  If you are
>> predominately catering to the UK market, you would probably
>> be better off
>> staying put.
> 
> I have to wholeheartedly agree. We used to colocate in the USA and were very
> happy with our provider, but the main issue for us was the additional lag
> for UK hosting customers. So we made the decision to locate within the UK
> and so far have been happy (apart from the additional expense it entails!).

That's essentially the deal.  If you are global, most of 'global' means
US--or at least that is the "meet me point" of the globe for the most part.

If you are in the UK, however, and that is who you cater to, it would be
worth having that 'private' network in the UK.

We do the same thing here in Washington.  I like to keep everything near the
USWest private network.  It means that none of the traffic travels on the
'public' internet unless it has to.  A good percentage of our traffic never
goes off the uswest.net infastructure (or rather more than a hop or two)

> If you'd like a domain to test against, try www.waytotheweb.com - I'd be
> interested to find how it looks and feels from your end speed wise, as our
> scripting business customer base is about 80% American, though we rarely
> have reports of problems from anyone in the world to that server (this is
> the one we're happy with, btw).

The Alcom Internetix is top notch from what I can tell.  They are peering
with Layer3.net, probably the best high end international/global
connectivity company out there.  I am getting less than a 200ms ping from
here, which is really not too bad, all things considered.  Only other way I
could suggest is by going directly with layer3 in the UK.

> Apologies to those not interested in this thread, but it's quite a lottery
> in the UK with such a young market for the Colocation/Dedicated Server
> market and it's almost impossible to get data about companies without the
> suck-it-and-see approach which is a pretty dreadful way of going about it.
> Though it's obviously not directly Cobalt related, it offers those in the UK
> a chance to discuss this issue.

Not to sound highbrow or anything, but it sounds like it was *exactly* what
the colocation market in the States was like a few years back.  Nobody knew
what they were really doing, etc., and then things started getting better.
The advantage is that the growing market in the UK, etc., is going to
benefit from the stuff like BGP, etc. that was engineered fairly recently
and in use in the states.  Globally speaking, bandwidth is going to get much
better--or at least that is my prediction.

I think they are struggling with the same 'all you can eat for $20'
mentality that plagues (still) this industry.  In bandwidth, just as
anything, you get what you pay for (except for free--as in speech and
beer--software!).  Fortunately it looks like the UK market is starting to
mature at a very quick rate and is starting to put in the world-class
data-centers that are really needed.

BTW, IMHO, it looks like Alcom is very competitive price-wise.  Co-location
fees for a single U, with 50 GB of transfer would be 150 pounds per month.
That is what, about $225 US/EURO?  That is very competitive, even for here
in the states.  If anyone is in the UK looking for a decent hosting company,
it looks like they may be the ones to go with.  I think they are who I would
recommend if I had any UK based clients.

-k