Re: [cobalt-users] RE: No.. No... Not hosting on cable...

["Steve Werby" <steve-lists@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

"Nicolae" <nicolaep@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> No... No.. mis-communication here. I am not looking to host on cable
> or ever, but thought about it.  I am at home PC running Time Warner
> cable connection to browse the internet.  I use a data-center
> in Virnginia (I am in Calif) and have a leased Cobalt 4 Raq
> unit in their data center.  I am complaining about the speed I get
> from them and it is because it's slow.  I get faster speeds on
> my cable than these guys in the datacenter.

Who are they and what are they promising you in terms of speed?  Perhaps you
can send the URL on or off-list.  Without knowing what you're supposed to be
getting I don't know if it's a misunderstanding, their promises are
misleading or confusing, they're lying, there's a technical problem, etc.
Incidentally, I live in Virginia.  Like you, hosting is a side effect of my
business (focus on web programming and server administration), but I know a
bit about a few of the bigger hosting companies based here.

>
> Thanks to David Lucas on this mailing list.  He pointed me to
> dslreports.com which I have used in the past for dsl but never
> knew they do monitoring and such.  I activated an account for
> traffic monitoring stuff and here is the link.
>
> http://www.dslreports.com/monitored/pp/65.170.79.187
>
> I don't know much about the stats but I think its slow based on
> what people say.

It's a MRTG report of ping times.  And except for the spike at about 10 PM
they look pretty good to me.

> I also opened up 3, 4 and 6 windows
> donloading the file: http://www.mp3bynet.com/xtunnel.zip to
> test out the speed.  It dropped to 12kbps.  I get 300-600kbps
> from download.com or other various sites.

12kbps per connection or 12kbps total across all 6 connections?  From what
you're saying, it's fair to say that your cable modem speed is good.  I just
downloaded your file from a RaQ4 of mine leased from a low cost data center
at a rate of 131.41 KB/s.  For comparison, I just downloaded
ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/binutils/binutils-2.10.1.tar.gz in 461.21 KB/s on the
same server.  That's kiloBYTES per second.  Jeff Lasman already alluded to
the difference between a kiloBYTE and a kiloBIT, but I'll go into more
detail.  A byte is equal to 8 bits.  A T1 is equivalent to 1.54 megabits per
second.  Divide that by 8 and you'll see that a T1 is equivalent to 0.19
megabytes per second.  There are 1,024 kiloBYTES in a megaBYTE so a T1 is
equivalent to 197 kiloBYTES per second.  So I was able to download a file
off of your server at a rate equivalent to 2/3 of a T1.  Not bad,
considering everything that can affect transmission speed between 2 points
and the fact that it's possible other data was being sent from your server
at the same time.

> I think the reports I get above from DSLReports might be able
> to tell my ISP that something is wrong and their new T1 Line
> they got in the datacenter is not really helping...

Well, ping response time will have little to do with the size of the pipe
they have.  In any case, did they get a new T1 line for you only?  Or are
you sharing it with other customers' servers?

> My unit is empty with parked sites.  No major traffic. Hardly any.
>
> I am only hosting sites for cleints I design their site for.
> I might as well lease a cobalt for 150/month and host 15-20
> sites pay the bill and also park my 10 or so domains also.

True.  Unless you have mission critical sites and/or sites doing large
volumes of ecommerce.  Then downtime is costly and it's important to be able
to handle burst of traffic.  I assume from your statement above that you're
paying much more than $150 per month.  If so, maybe you're not getting your
money's worth.  There are other hosting companies in your range that may be
worth considering.

HTH,

--
Steve Werby
President, Befriend Internet Services LLC
http://www.befriend.com/