hosting dilemma

[basschick]

first off, this isn't about my host - it's about the host of a couple webmasters i work with. for the last 3 months my uploads and downloads to their server are 3 to 4 times slower than other sites. same with downloads in my browsers. they didn't understand the issue the head of their hosting company told them applied here, so he was kind enough to explain it to me.

i usually use roadrunner cable, which is time warner. he told me that roadrunner has "limited bandwidth along certainroutes and they also only purchase bandwidth from a single provider and manyof the connections they have to this provider are saturated and oversold." and that one of the oversold routes is the one to this host from the west coast.

he also says that roadrunner is aware of the situation and plans to rectify it, but that they are currently redoing their infrastructure and that will take time.

if you were otherwise happy with your host but had this situation going on, would you stay or go? i keep thinking there are a lot of porn surfers on the west coast who couldn't be very happy with their download speed to the site i am working with, but on the other hand the host otherwise seems to be a very good host for these particular webmasters.

thoughts?

[abostonboy]

if you were otherwise happy with your host but had this situation going on, would you stay or go? i keep thinking there are a lot of porn surfers on the west coast who couldn't be very happy with their download speed to the site i am working with, but on the other hand the host otherwise seems to be a very good host for these particular webmasters.

thoughts?

I would be GONE in a second. You can't fuck with hosting. It is the KEY in the link of ANY porn business.

A bad host can kill your business overnight.

IMHO, a bad host that buys shit BW is like someone competing in a race peddling a bicycle against some fast racing cars. You just can't win.

[DirtyRatStudios]

I had a similar problem last October with some hosting that I have in California. Basically I split my time between two locations in England: one in the city and one in the country.

Last October I arrived at the country pad, which actually has the fastest broadband of the two, to find that I was getting sub-dial-up speeds with FTP, pages wouldn't load and I couldn't even get into the control panel. This was only with this one host. Everything else was fine.

I had about a week of talking with the hosting company, doing traceroutes, meanwhile I was unable to update my sites (very risky if you are halfway through uploading and then unable to complete it). At first I thought it might be connected with the bush fires over there. But they decided it was because I was on AOL broadband and their provider and AOL had 'past history'.

However, after a couple of days, looking at the logs, hits were massively down, so it was clear other people were unable to access my sites too.

I had been with the host for years but, in the end, I had no alternative but to move my sites. One was moved to another host in California, where there was no similar problem. I still have the two accounts with the old host. They are fine now and I am currently at the location that has AOL broadband.

In my opinion you can't afford to mess around and I would take a close look at the stats to see if there is any evidence of people unable to access pages/pages timing out.

[basschick]

this is a host that many webmasters consider to be a very good host.


I would be GONE in a second. You can't fuck with hosting. It is the KEY in the link of ANY porn business.

A bad host can kill your business overnight.

IMHO, a bad host that buys shit BW is like someone competing in a race peddling a bicycle against some fast racing cars. You just can't win.

[Adam Mason]

It'a difficult one. From what I've learned, different hosts can have different issues with different ISPs - I doubt any one host has perfect connectivity to everyone on the web.

I have protected myself somewhat from the issue, what with having servers spread across 2 continents, but it's actually impossible to make it perfect for everyone IMHO.

[abostonboy]

this is a host that many webmasters consider to be a very good host.

Do I host with them by any chance? If so, I need to change.

[HunkMoneyLuke]

it sounds like this is a roadrunner problem and that this host has done good work to verify this, although it is out of their ability to fix it. I wonder if moving hosts will actually solve the issue since its ISPs "last mile" that is the problem?

[gaybucks_chip]

I would tend to agree with Luke's assessment.

Here's a way you (Patti) could tell what's going on. Presumably you are not having the problem with other clients, so I'd do a traceroute and see how the traffic is routing to the one host or site(s) with the problems. Then do a traceroute to a site that isn't having the problem another one and see how the routing is different.

If Roadrunner can get through to some hosts without a problem, that means at least some of their pipe isn't oversaturated, and the solution would be for the host to buy some pipe on the non-oversaturated transit provider.

This is Roadrunner, not some dinky small ISP, and the host should be bending over backwards to solve the problem since if it's systemwide with Roadrunner, it's affecting tens or hundreds of thousands of customers. If the host in question is unwilling to buy more pipe to solve the problem , then it's time to find a new host.

[basschick]

the only host i've seen this problem with is this host - the last sites i've seen that slow turned out to have other issues, so that's no help.

i was also surprised that the host wasn't doing something. everyone on roadrunner on the the west coast seems like it would be a lot of people. the head of the company says that if my associates call and yell at roadrunner, that they may be put on another route. i'm not going to do that myself because my line works well for other sites, so i don't want to get more speed to their server and end up with other problems.

thanks for your input, all. this is frustrating, so it's good to have other webmasters perspectives. btw, lloyd, i don't know who you host with... pm me or hit me on icq if you want.