How Much Do You Pay to Host Your Website?

DosGusanos asks: "I was curious how much people around the U.S. and around the world pay for hosting. Obviously size in cabinets/rack units/square feet, included features such as bandwidth, UPS/generator, management, etc. factor in. The configuration I am particularly interested in is three machines, one www, one search, and one database. The machines would be hooked up to a T1 and networked to one another over Ethernet. Anyone paying for colo or hosting in this same ballpark? How happy/upset are you with your provider?"

Comments

Rackspace

[corz]

"How happy/upset are you with your provider?"

Two words: Rackspace Rules

Re:Rackspace

[hermescom]

That's true if you can afford them - they're definitely on the premium side. I never had a problem with them, but once my site started outgrowing the 30 Gigs they allow you monthly by on their standard plans, additional bandwidth became way too costly.

At $3.50/Gig, I ended up paying almost 50% over my base fee for a month of popularity.

As a result, I moved the more bandwidth intensive part of the site off to a cheaper server with beefier specs, and felt the pain right away. These guys have no monitoring included, ignore email requests for support, and charged me a consulting fee when I needed my server backed up and wiped because of a Slapper infection.

Not that I blame them, since it's not really managed hosting they are selling, but the difference in service is tremendous.

If you can afford Rackspace - go for it. I think they even have an option to give you a private net work -- link your servers directly one to the other so intra-server communitation doesn't count towards your total bandwidth cap.

Re:Rackspace

[Amazing Quantum Man]

Isn't Rackspace blacklisted for being host to a bunch of spamhausen?

Politech got blacklisted several times.

Re:Rackspace

[Darth Maul]

I have three servers at Rackspace with the Private Net between them. They really are amazing. Service is actually *service* and they truly care about customers. It's amazing, and I'm more cynical than most people, but Rackspace truly impresses me.

My web pages are not just static HTML, either. This site serves an hour-long interactive training course that certifies over 3000 people a day. And the servers have been working perfectly. In fact, one of my three machines there has an uptime of 355 days (tomorrow is a whole year!!!). They're all running Linux, of course.

Re:Rackspace

[KC7GR]

There's one little thing about Rackspace that they, of course, neglect to tell you; They're a spammer nest.

Rackspace has a long history of being apathetic at best to spamvertized sites, despite their anti-spam Terms of Service. As of 3-Dec-02, they're still hosting at least 20 or so spammers, and chunks of their netspace may still be listed on SPEWS.

Cheap or not, good customer service or not, I would be very wary about selecting Rackspace for any sort of hosting.

Re:Rackspace

[Graelin]

** This is a plug, I admit it, I love Rackspace **

Rackspace rules them all. We've been with them for over two years now and I don't believe we will ever leave them. We've done our shopping, but compare Rackspace to any of the others and you'll realize something - these guys REALLY know what they're doing.

We will be at 9 servers with them in a couple of days (just added 3 more). We use just under 1.5TB of bandwidth every month. At this level of usage, we get it for $2/GB. That is certainly not bad. Given that their network has never had an unexpected outage (not that I can remember at least) I feel it's very justified.

The folks there _really_ know what they're doing. The sales guys don't try to be technical guys, the sales engineers are on the ball. The tech support folks can solve a lot of the problems right there but when the shit hits the fan they'll send you straight to the guy in the data-center. I've spoken to one of the founders (something technical, don't remember what) and I didn't even ask for him, they just conferenced him in.

We've been in some pretty bad spots before (lost most of a RAID 5 array once) and they've pulled us out of the gutters.

I've had security folks tell me the Rackspace network is very secure. But I cannot personally confirm this.

We're not a big customer of theirs by no means. We're TINY. I know they've got some very large contracts but they really do care about us. The
little guys.

I could easily go on for hours here so I will stop now. If you can afford it, get Rackspace. You will not be sorry.

Re:Rackspace

[3-State Bit]

In fact, one of my three machines there has an uptime of 355 days (tomorrow is a whole year!!!)
Don't you mean 255 days then?

Re:Rackspace

[pjrc]

There's one little thing about Rackspace that they, of course, neglect to tell you; They're a spammer nest.

I'm glad you mentioned this. I've been using Verio for the last couple years. Everything has been really good, except for little skirmishs with the blacklists.

When I first signed up, just about two years ago, there were just a couple of the minor blacklists listing a netblock that had my IP number. The listings were for a spammer that Verio had kicked off months ago. I contacted the blacklist maintainers (only one of those lists was could be be called "maintained"). It's remarkably difficult to contact these people. Eventually the better list dropped the block, and that gave me enough leverage to convince the other two to do the same (the spammer had long since moved on for greener pastures).

But in the last year or so, there's been a whole new crop of spammer acusations. I can't verify them... it reads like a whole lot of conspiracy theory. But a couple weeks ago it even got posted as a slashdot story (so it must be true, right?)

I called Verio. Before the slashdot story, they would just deny everything. They didn't admit they were catering to any spammers, but they didn't flat out deny that no spammers were operating on their network.

Verio claims that their hosting business is very separate from their network provision services (T1, T3, OC-something lines.... more bandwidth than I can envision). So far, the more reputable blacklists haven't waged netblocks on Verio's hosting side, or at least the few IP numbers allocated to my little server.

So because of these escalating wars between the spammers and blacklists, if you intend to host a mail server, the ISPs record about hosting spammers should be your top concern. Saddly, there are a lot of mixed messages and it's hard to tell if any particular provider is any good. Two years ago, for example, Verio was listed at the top of SpamCop's page of providers with exemplary anti-abuse policies.

Recently I've been making some tenative plans for jumping ship from Verio. Other than this spammer/blacklist issue, and one little incident where they didn't notify me in advance of (supposedly) scheduled maintainance (they claim they did), the decicated hosting service from Verio has been great.

But hitting blacklists, even occasionally, is a real show-stopper. For my little site, we do a light amount of e-commerce. When a confirmation email to a customer bounces (they placed the order over the web), we look like a little fly-by-night company out to steal their credit card info. Of course, emails bounce for a variety of other reasons, so we've gotten into the practive of picking up the phone and calling them with the tracking number.

The sad news is that there doesn't seem to be any really good way of determining if a provider is hosting or provisioning bandwidth to spammers. Even if everything looks good in advance (as it did 2 years ago with Verio), things change.... and they change more rapidly that you'd want to move providers when everything else is running so smoothly.

I wish I could recommend Verio, as the service, performance and reliability has been excellent. But this spammer problem and the reaction from the blacklisting community is definately something you don't want to get caught in the middle of.

I'm taking Rackspace off my short list of "plan B" options if the Verio/blacklist situation gets worse. Rackspace was actually at the top of my list.

"Free" hosting...

[`Sean]

I get DSL through Speakeasy and they allow hosting of Web sites. I pay $160/month for 4 static IPs and 768Kbps SDSL. Medium speed hosting and I host dozens of Web sites off my connection. Great deal!

Re:"Free" hosting...

[MoonFacedAssassin]

Speakeasy seems to be the best way to go if you want to host your own sites. My friend in Acworth (suburb of Atlanta), GA, has my domain sitting on a box on his Speakeasy DSL which is 1.5/384 ADSL. He's only being charged about $100-$120 for the 4 or so IPs and DSL connection.

Consequently I'm getting charged only $30...so it's a pretty good deal to run one domain on a P3 1 GHz, 512 MB RAM, 30 GB HDD machine.

And as a Slashback recommendation...

[fobbman]

...we'll take the best of the ones offered and link them in a /. story to see how they do under load.

Small businesses with Real People Support

[dagg]

I'm paying a smallish company about $160 a year for a shared server. That includes the use of Ftp, Apache, and MySQL. That includes 300 Megs of disk space and 7500 Megs of transfer per month. I've never had any noticeable down-time... and all of my questions have been answered within about 8 hours. I am extremely happy with the use of my $160.

Check out epinions.com for other people's opinions on hosting providers.

--
Your Sex

Three machines for a dual T1 ?

[tempmpi]

If you only want to use a shared dual T1, I don't think you need three machines. One good machine with a better internet connection would be a much better configuration for most applications. Space is expensive at most hosters.

This may seem obvious

[martissimo]

but, Webhostingtalk's website is basically a forum with user reviews, recommendations, and gripes dedicated to exactly the questions you seek answers too ;)

DMCA

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Asking hosting prices is in clear violation of the DMCA according to price copyright laws. Cease and desist, our lawyers are being notified.

ServerBeach

[DarkHelmet]

I use hosting called ServerBeach... They've done some advertising on slashdot, so I'm sure they're gaining awareness slowly.

I like them a lot. $100 / month for a dedicated server that's a 1ghz duron with 512 meg of ram and 60 gig hard drive. That's more than enough power for the sites I host. For $1000/month with them, I could get a site that can't be slashdotted.

The downside is support. They only have a mail ticketing system, and you're pretty much left to handle your own problems, but that's okay. I pretty much considered it a learning experience installing / configuring my own BIND, Apache, Mysql, and GD.

The best part of this is that they include 400gig/month in bandwidth to use. It would take some serious bandwidth to suck all that up. It's burstable too.

FYI they're based in Texas. If you're looking for discounted hosting, go for it!

Of course, don't cry to me if you run a commerce site with them. It's my belief that any site that's a breadwinner for a company should run at a place that has 24/7 support. A ticketing system is fine, just make sure there's always someone there to answer it.

Overall, I like them. Cheap enough to keep me happy, and it's my own machine with root so I can install/config and run whatever I want.

Re:ServerBeach

[Ian Bicking]

I'm using SmartHosting, which I imagine is a similar ($100/mo), though ServerBeach sounds like they give you more. One nice thing, I was able to have any OS, so I could get Debian. They installed the base system, and then I customized it for my needs remotely.

Support also sounds about the same. Which would be fine, except I had a bad experience with them when they gave me a server with a bad hard drive. Bad hardware happens sometimes -- but they denied the problem and tried to blame it on me for quite a while, which shouldn't happen.

But most of the time I don't need them to do anything, and everything works well.

eryxma.com

[dalutong]

Eryxma Networks really has done a great job for me. They use GNU/Linux servers and are dirt cheap (right now 1GB of storage and 50GB of transfer for 3 bucks/month).

the service has been great. the ceo even gave me his AIM screenname. I recommend them highly.

Re:eryxma.com

[ahacop@wmuc.umd.edu]

i signed up with eryxma in february. my login password didn't work. i contacted customer support twice and got no response. i then forgot about it cause i didn't have my website ready. 6 months later when i finally had my website ready my password still didn't work. sent them another email. again, no response. not a big deal...i'm out $16 but i won't use them again.

Message Board costs

[Gyorg_Lavode]

I help moderate a message board. We have roughly 40,000 registered users and between 100 and 400 on at any one time. We do between about 3 GB per day average with peak days around 7 GB from the forums only. That does not include the forum images which add a few more GB per day.

We pay roughly 6,000 per year. This includes the software, the hardware, the bandwidth and the service. (This is through http://www.ezboard.com) We have been very happy with the service, receiving assistance from the company CEO when need be. Their software/hardware is also capable of handling very long threads, (our longest being over 12,000 posts and 130mb for the text only before becoming corrupted.)

Beware of Rip-Offs...

[redink1]

While I tried to find a new host a month or so ago, I stumbled upon Your Host Sucks and the WebHostingTalk Forums. Both are excellent for finding out if a potential host is worth the bother of going through... I saw quite a few horror stories while browsing around. For example, I think FeaturePrice said a failed router was an 'act of god', and therefore the down-time didn't fall under their uptime guarantee. Yeah. God smited their router... try proving that in court.

Also, the WebHostingTalk forums have a dedicated forum subsection for having companies compete over you... it was somewhat amusing when I did so. I got like 5 responses within an hour, plus 5 or so e-mails. But then I realized that the bandwidth I'd require was much greater than I anticipated (or could afford), so I edited my post saying something like that. And they're still e-mailing me. Like once a week...

Re:Beware of Rip-Offs...

[Waffle Iron]

For example, I think FeaturePrice said a failed router was an 'act of god', and therefore the down-time didn't fall under their uptime guarantee. Yeah. God smited their router... try proving that in court.

But read the fine print in their service agreement --

And concerning our routers God hath spoken: tell unto thine people these Terms and Conditions which I give to thee, and abide ye by them and ye shall drink of the fruits of My routers.

1. Thou shalt allow no spam to enter or leave the confines of My routers, for the spam is sure to sap the life of the men who behold it.

2. Thou shalt route no pr0n upon My routers, in order to keep them pure.

...

10. Thou shalt not hack My routers, nor shall thou employ My routers to hack thy neighbor's ox, nor thy neigbors wife, nor thy neighbor's information systems.

If thou shalt disobey these terms, I your Lord shall smite down these routers and they shall be barren of all thine packets and the packets of your children and your children's children, and the anointed keepers of this router shall not reimburse unto you the gold which you have given them in payment.

Re:I love my provider

[_ph1ux_]

well - speakeasy isnt so great for some customers. I had my DSL through them (covad/northpoint) and when PacBell put a CO in across the street from my house that offered full DSL speeds I wanted to switch (or at least upgrade).

Speakeasy could only offer me sdsl at 128k - for $60/month... PacBell wanted $49 for 1.5/384 adsl.

I wrote them a bunch to find out the terms of my contract - and was told different things by different people. So I decided to leave.

Since I told speakeasy that I was going to leave they were trying to charge me $350 for terminating the contract. I told them no way I was going to pay that. I told them of all the conflicting info I got from all their service reps, and told them that since they couldnt even clearly show me the terms of my service, their claim that there was a termination fee of that size was BS. They said they'd have to bill me for it. I said go ahead and bill me - but there is no way in hell you're ever getting any money from me. I have a better service here - you cant/wont match it, and you want more money for me. We can go to court if you like - but I doubt you would win. They billed me once. I mailed them all the email correspndence I had with them - and they dropped it.

Hurricane Electric, Baby

[ShotgunEd]

The same guys who host php.net and mysql.com mirrors have an absolutely amazing deal for website hosting. Ten bucks a month for full Unix development environment (with javac, gcc, crontab, and all that stuff), a real shell account, and a sweet webserver setup: PHP, MySQL, cgi-bin (with Perl and Tcl), anonymous FTP, SSL, and a whole mess of POP features. Plus, they have onsite UPS/generator, a gigabit backbone, and lots of other hardware goodies.

Running your own server loads of fun, don't get me wrong, but $10 a month for all this stuff seems worth it. Unless you really have money to burn, it's impossible to the same kind of performance out of your own server... Do you think Verizon will run a gigabit backone and Hubble power connector to my house for $10?

Hurricane Electric http://www.he.net/

Re:$0.00

[Jack William Bell]

Hmm...

As a State of Washington taxpayer, I am not so sure I am happy about you serving pages over a connection I subsidize.

So, you can send me forty bucks a month and we'll call it even!

Re:Work == lots of bandwidth

[Courageous]

You've just advised people to engage in a behavior which can justify their termination. Did you know that?

Just curious.

C//

Dreamhost

[timur]

I pay $10/month for this:

• Five Subdomains
• 150 MB disk space
• 20 GB/month bandwith
• 20 Mailboxes (unlimited aliases)
• 5 Shell/FTP Users

I don't think they offer co-location, but they do offer dedicated machines for managed or unmanaged co-hosting. If you're interested in signing up, click here.

JohnCompanies - Collocation Services - SWEET

[Desus]

I don't usually post but I'm very satisfied with my Johncompanies FreeBSD Box

I pay $65 / Month
- root on your own server
- Full FreeBSD Filesystem
- 2 gigabytes disk space
- 40 Gigs transfer / Month
- Firewall access
- Unlimited tech support
- We supply the hardware

I'm currently running a very kickass apache box with an incredible uptime (they've been down once and they weren't really down, just a network problem, 90% of my customers were able to still reach the sites)

I'm hosting over 30 domains on there, not low bandwidth either. And I'm probably going to be buying more boxes to setup a web serving cluster as the number of users increases

The support is fast fast fast. I get replies in less than 5 minutes in some cases.

http://www.johncompanies.com/

Re:Why don't you go do your own research?

[Cap'n Canuck]

Geez, if you feel that strongly, maybe you shouldn't post under AC.

Also, did you ever think that it's the editors who are too lazy to do their own research?

CmdrTaco: Did you see the latest bill for our website - aack! We've got to stop posting such big stories, or else we're going to have to find another provider.
michael: Why don't we ask the /. readers where the best deal is?
timothy: They've been pretty pissed at us lately - have you seen the comments?
michael & CmdrTaco: No.
timothy: Why don't we pretend it's from another person, then...
CmdrTaco: Great! It's so crazy, it just might work!

how to buy a dedicated

[pretzel_logic]

ask the sales team a few questions:

Ask how many internet connections they have and what speed with each one.

Ask how many NIC cards will be in your machine.

Ask what your max Mbps is

(This always gets you put on hold) Ask what the machines bus speed is

Ask if RAM upgrades/HD additions are priced per month or if there is a one time fee.

Ask if they will search your box for illegal materials. (you be surprised how many said yes) That means you are not the only one with root. so throw them out of the list.

Ask if you get unlimited users accounts. (dell host caps you at 100 pops) thats not full service!

Ask what the minimum billing is for support. some have 30 min some have 1 hr.

Ask if they use a in house linux distribution.

Ask if they offer security bullitens and offer links to patches.

call there tech support before you sign up and tell them you are a customer. (play the dumb blonde) see how they treat you.

Ask your salesman for their cellphone. (that gets some laughs)

Look up the server companies IP block then hit em on ARIN and see if they own a substantial block or if they own one at all!!

Ask if you are your own dns or if you have to use theirs.

Ask if your on a virtual dedicated.

Ask what the levels of discount are per GIG over allocation.

Ask who owns them

Ask about offsite back ups storage., how far away is it?

Ask if you are allowed on their property

Ask the price of additional IPS

Ask if you can tour the facility

Ask if you can ethernet multiple boxes to bypass bandwidth fees.

Ask if you can host adult sites

Ask if your machine has a control panel that support insists you use. (cobalt!!! ahhhh!!!)

ask how long they have had a business license.

and last, ask about the spam policies and what they consider spam and what the fine is per message.

that should help with the fodder ;)

Re:how to buy a dedicated

[giminy]

Ask if they will search your box for illegal materials. (you be surprised how many said yes) That means you are not the only one with root. so throw them out of the list.

You present a lot of great questions, but remember: A -> B != ~A -> ~B. They might have root on your box even if they don't search it. So better be anal and just ask them if they'll be logging into your box ever.

Re:how to buy a dedicated

[paitre]

And as an aside, I'd -personally- consider it very poorly managed if you colo a machine (or lease a dedicated server somewhere) and the hosting company -DOESN'T- have root. That's fucking stupid, because -part- of what you're paying them for is to keep yer machine up. If you don't want someone else having root on your machines, then lease your own T1 and drop it into your house/apartment.
Seriously.

For people looking for budget hosting:

[uigrad_2000]

bsdwebhosting.net has cheap rates:
$2/GB traffic
$.50/GB/day storage
$.15/minute CPU time (for scripts)

It's easy to track your usage through their website, and create multiple accounts with different privilidges. For any site with less than 100 visitors a day, this is perfect, because there's no monthly charge. I've maintained my church's website for 6 months there, and haven't exceeded $.15 yet.

nearlyfreespeech.com is cheaper, but they don't allow ssh (or telnet) access. This is a big downside for those of us who enjoy unix because of it's user interface ;)

Unfortunately, I can't help you if you need more bandwith than those guys can give. Good luck!

Reseller accounts!

[WPIDalamar]

I have a reseller account with nocster, and it works out pretty cheap. I split it with one other person, we each pay $15/month. But the best thing is WE CAN HOST AS MANY DOMAINS AS WE LIKE. So I got 1 domain, he has a domain, and we share another one. Plus my little brother has been wanting to make a website, so a $8 DNS registration and bamn, he gets some space too.

We get 1gb of disk, and 20gb transfer. This is the lowest option, you can get a lot more.

Checkit out.
www.wpidalamar.com - Personal web site

Our joint-venture: www.geek4.com - public web site, like slashdot, but anyone can post, and then people can subscribe to various authors to determine what news they get.

Re:Work == lots of bandwidth

[Xzzy]

> a behavior which can justify their termination

not all employers are sour pusses, you know.

Obviously you want to ASK if it's okay to borrow some company bandwidth, and I have no pity for the guy that starts using it without asking. If they give the go-ahead however, there's absolutely nothing wrong with it. Some companies may give you free coffee, others may give you an ethernet port on a switch.. consider it a perk.

My website has been hosted, for free, for almost 3 years now on a machine that lives in exactly this situation. It exists with the full knowledge of the superiors, and the word is as long as the machine complies with company security policy, it can continue to exist.

Re:ServerBeach (OT)

[big_oaf]

Whoa! I read ServerBeach as BeaverSearch. Perhaps it's time to call it a day.

managed hosting--pogo linux

[fence]

I've used several ISP/CoLo sites over the past six years and have been with PogoLinux for the past two.

I'm very happy with them, $149 a month for their hardware at their site (15 GB xfer/month). I've paid more to CoLo my own boxes.

You have root access on your box.

Had no service interruptions or power outages since I've been with them. I just checked my uptime and it was 292 days, I bounced it earlier this year after patching something.

Anyways, I'm not affiliated, etc, but I've been very happy with PogoLinux.

For a side-by-side comparison....

[uigrad_2000]

use www.hostsearch.com

Find one that looks adequate for your needs, then ask about it on webhostingtalk.com, to make sure it's reputable.

Re:Why don't you go do your own research?

[jeffy210]

CmdrTaco: Did you see the latest bill for our website - aack! We've got to stop posting such big stories, or else we're going to have to find another provider.

michael: or maybe if we just stopped posting the same stories twice...

Re:Speakeasy.net Sucks

[StandardDeviant]

Did you read the link you posted? On the first page there were several horror stories similar to what I described: overcharged, underprovisioned, horrible speeds and/or latency, rude/lying/unresponsive customer service, etc. etc. Their advertising promulgates an image of them as being a place that caters to geeks by providing a low-fluff connection and great service for a premium, which is 100% A-OK, but as I and other people have observed, they're not very good about living up to their advertising. Sure, there are a bunch of 5 star reviews, but there are also a bunch of 1 star reviews. If i had the time to flame them good, believe me, I'd be typing in pages there and giving them a ZERO star rating if the form allowed it... Maybe, being *very* charitable, it's a case of growing too fast on their part... Honestly I as a paying customer shouldn't have to care about that though. I was paying for 1500/768, getting more like 300/200, and that with 300-500 msec pings to grace.speakeasy.net (their shell server) or any of the servers where I work (an ad firm/programming shop here in Austin).


If speakeasy.net is the cream of the crop, the others must shoot your dog or something. I honestly don't see how an ISP could be any worse.

$36,000.00 per year!

[Incongruity]

Okay, so my website is hosted by the university that I attend, so I suppose the package deal (including room and board) isn't that bad...I mean, I get a BA out of it in the end as well! -tcp

Hurricane Electric, $200/month colo

[markwelch]

I was paying $200 per month to colocate a server for 11 months, ending in September. I was quite happy, but decided that the server's low usage (way below 128K at the 95th percentile) and dwindling revenue (now under $500 per month and still declining) could be served with a DSL connection. (With my web revenue shriveling, I decided to replace the combined cost of colo plus cable modem, $250, with a single business-DSL line (with dedicated IP address) for $68 per month.

When I first signed up with HE.net, the $200 rate was for 1U or 2U of rack space, but I'm quite sure they sent me a card more recently quoting the same rate for 4U of space. I think they offered a half-rack for a really good price (maybe $400 per month?). Their rates might be cheaper now, or they may have different specials. You didn't say what size or shape your three servers are, so I have no idea whether your equipment could fit in 3U of space, or might need 12U or even as much as 21U. (A rack unit, or RU, is 1.75 inches vertically, by something like 26x39 width and depth, sorry I don't have the actual dimensions handy.)

They provide all the features of a good colo facility: enclosed, locked racks (so someone servicing a machine in another rack can't knock out your cables, as sometimes happened with other colo providers I used); 24/7 staffing and access if needed; UPS and air conditioning; staff that will power-cycle your server at no charge, and they even hooked up a monitor and keyboard to see what was wrong when my server's power supply failed, and they didn't charge extra for that. I think they also have the fancy oxygen-reducing and fire-suppressing equipment.

I was extremely happy with Hurricane Electric, by far the best of my three experiences with colocating a server in the area. They have facilities in San Jose and Fremont, California.

Beware: When I was shopping for colo services, I often found that the salesman's claims were not honored in the contract or in practice. One colo provider told me for THREE months that my outages were not their fault, then when I spent money and proved they were at fault, they agreed and allowed me to terminate my contract, but wouldn't make good on any promises (thankfully I did not sue, since they filed for bankruptcy several months later).

In some cases, you may be promised 24/7 access, but when you need access at 2am you find out that there is no staff from midnight to 8am and the on-call tech just refuses to come out because he's really tired and you're not an important customer. Or they promise redundant internet connections from multiple backbone providers, but they are connected to those providers through a single Pacific Bell T1 line (e.g. they had one T1 line that connected to a facility served by multiple backbone providers, but if the T1 line is lost, your connection is lost). And of course, with the domino of bankruptcies of colo providers, many facilities close with only a week's warning, and sometimes a facility may be closed and your equipment disconnected and shipped to another facility without your knowledge -- so your server is offline for several days, and then when you want to pick it up from San Jose, you find out it was shipped to Virginia.

Read the fine print in your contract.

My take on Pair and Fatcow

[Call Me Black Cloud]

Pair rocks. I've used it for years. They're rock solid, great customer support, and cheap. I recommend Pair to everyone looking for a domain. I also use Fatcow for one domain. Nice perks for $99/year, but the servers could be faster. Sometimes web response is slow, as is checking mail.

Use mod_gzip people.

[Deal-a-Neil]

Remember, if you host a bandwidth intensive site (not even necessarily tons of visitors, but huge pages -- such as all busy threads on slashdot) use mod_gzip or something similar to it. Slashdot supposedly has mod_gzip installed, but they did not seem to have it configured correctly in the past -- not sure if they do now.

Anyhow, we use it on our properties that have message forums, and we easily take 120K threads down to around 10K per page impression. This could definitely help you save on your bandwidth spikes if you run a burstable or 95th percentile billing with your ISP.

mod_gzip here

T1: A Slow Beast?

[suwain_2]

A lot of people seem to be of the mind that they can run a T1 to their house and start a massive hosting company, serving countless websites.

While 1.5 Mbps is a substantial amount of bandwidth, DSL/cable modems are becoming increasingly common. I maintain a server hosted on a T1 that's mainly used for web browsing during the day, and when I do bandwidth-intensive file transfer from my cable modem, I'm able to come very close to filling the T1. While serving normal webpages does work flawlessly, I just wanted to point out that if you offer downloads -- or even just use lots of images/Flash -- your bandwidth will disappear surprisingly quickly. A single user with a cable modem can be eating up all your bandwidth. (Again, I'm not suggesting that a T1 is now worthless, just advising people -- if the T1 is shared with numerous other sites, if a single one is somewhat active, you may have precious little bandwidth.)