New website, need a good host...

techpops said:
I guess you've got your heart set on championing the UK for hosting
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No - my heart is set on giving the client what they need. If we were in the US and someone was advocating US, Asian or UK hosting everyone here would be championing US hosting. For example Cloudfare's sole reason for existance is to provide an intelligent CDN so I'm going to presume they know more about the internet than the rest of us :p

You're right about CPUs being a bottleneck too (I've mentioned that before on another forum) but the CPU is just running software ultimately - optimising software before hardware is the way forward, eg Varnish RAM cache. But the page itself is only one part - a page could have up to 100 or more individual HTTP requests in it.

Additionally your point about routes is invalid because anything in the UK will have a maximum ping of, say, 30ms (maybe a little more to Europe which is why French/German locations aren't massively noticeable) - whereas to cross the Atlantic takes 70ms, no ifs or buts about it - it's slower.

Networks take care of routing themselves - it's in their interests to be efficient and surely a crap UK ISP would be more interested in providing quality UK routes because it's significantly cheaper for them ;)

Congestion is a factor however, but if your ISP is congested then all traffic passing through it will be, regardless of where it's coming/going.

Wikipedia has a good summary of the main factors involved in TCP speed limitations, one of which is the round trip time which helps govern the maximum throughput.

asim18 - you do care about bandwidth because bandwidth is throughput and throughput is the data you want, as fast as you can get it - you might not care about absolute max bandwidth of course but RTT (and hence number of hops - and hence chance of an error) is a major factor in TCP's connection algo as preventing congestion avoidance mode is vital to throughput.

Interestingly Google and Bing both break TCP rules by skipping slow start and firing packets as quickly as possible...TCP algorithm discussion and sender/receiver buffers (and avoiding 'buffer bloat') is a fascinating area.

Cisco also have a detailed page which is a great read if you're interested.

Better stop here - yes, I did do a networking degree and yes the networking bit was my favourite part :o
 
How can anyone not care about bandwidth? Websites are all about SEO position and speed. You do your google search you visit the first most relevant and how long do you give it to wait if it is slow loading? I read somewhere the average person moves on if your site hasn't loaded in 5 seconds.

As for monitoring services, I assure you they do not pick up downtime blips that many sites and hosts experience. I used a host once (although this time it was a USA based one) and while working on a heavy blog over the course of 2 hours I had 9 stutters of connection lasting between 20 and 30 seconds. My monitoring service stated zero downtime, it wasn't until I searched a few forums that I found dozens of people having the same issue.

They did find the problem in the end and it was an over stretched shared server with a script someone had installed hogging all the resources. Point is though the monitor service never picked it up as the downtime was too short but at an average of 4-5 times an hour that could be a serious amount of lost customers.

You would probably need on average a £25 a month UK hosting package to match what the USA can offer for $10. I am not here to argue about USA or UK host, I have been using both since 1999 and I can tell you from experience in general USA hosting is by far the better.

Maybe my sites are doing well in the serps because so many competitors are in the same mindset that it has to be UK hosting so long may they continue ;)
 
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techpops said:
1&1 for instance are hosted in germany i believe and they are a huge uk host.
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1&1 are a German company - they are United Internet AG. They also own Fasthosts (who have their datacentre in the UK).

How can anyone not care about bandwidth?
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I think what Asim is trying to say, is that he doesn't care about monthly data transfer - i.e. he doesn't want xTBs of transfer a month. Of course he wants a host that can deliver his content as quickly as possible. You're more likely to find that with a company running an uncongested network, that's not overselling (e.g. 5TB for $5 a month is overselling).

Personally, I think you're absolutely crazy to be labelling an entire industry based purely upon location. There are many terrible hosting providers out there in the world because the barrier to entry is so low. There are many terrible hosting providers in the world because they might have got in to the market early (e.g. early 2000s or late 90s) and thus have an established customer base that can't be bothered to move away...

But that applies to both the UK and the US.
 
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ristac said:
How can anyone not care about bandwidth? Websites are all about SEO position and speed. You do your google search you visit the first most relevant and how long do you give it to wait if it is slow loading? I read somewhere the average person moves on if your site hasn't loaded in 5 seconds.

As for monitoring services, I assure you they do not pick up downtime blips that many sites and hosts experience. I used a host once (although this time it was a USA based one) and while working on a heavy blog over the course of 2 hours I had 9 stutters of connection lasting between 20 and 30 seconds. My monitoring service stated zero downtime, it wasn't until I searched a few forums that I found dozens of people having the same issue.

They did find the problem in the end and it was an over stretched shared server with a script someone had installed hogging all the resources. Point is though the monitor service never picked it up as the downtime was too short but at an average of 4-5 times an hour that could be a serious amount of lost customers.

You would probably need on average a £25 a month UK hosting package to match what the USA can offer for $10. I am not here to argue about USA or UK host, I have been using both since 1999 and I can tell you from experience in general USA hosting is by far the better.

Maybe my sites are doing well in the serps because so many competitors are in the same mindset that it has to be UK hosting so long may they continue ;)
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Nobodys listening. Apparently bandwidth isn't important, its all about the ping and nobody ever needs more than £15 a year hosting. I'm glad someone else stepped in and said something. I was starting to think my own experience over the past 10 years was just a dream I had and UK hosting really was the best in the world hehe
 
If you can't see that latency is important with regards to performance then I guess there's not much point continuing on this discussion.
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As Beansprout has also explained, maximum throughput is limited by the round trip time with TCP.
 
ristac said:
So you know your site is up 100% or say 99.99% of the time and you know it isn't slower loading at certain times? I dare say you pop on and check it from time to time but do you really know and would you if it had a problem or downtime?
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How presumptuous of you. I dare say you must be one of those 'know it all' types who are never wrong.
I actually use my hosting for work purposes and am on it constantly throughout the day and night. My average workday is 9am-10pm and in the last few years, I've only seen my hosting go down twice, for a short period of time and has never been slow.


ristac said:
Of course they still would and don't be silly, you think Google needs to spread it's data centers in order to manipulate its own searches :D

I rank very well for my keywords, several #1 spots and all on USA servers but if you want to believe hosting in the UK will get you better serps then carry on, I am not arguing with you.
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You're replying to something I didn't even say. Where did I at all mention that the server farms were for SEO purposes?
 
Very happy with Vidahost myself. Looking forward to their new Cloud service too that will hopefully be launching soon.
 
I don't see the point of going to US hosting when UK hosting is very affordable. Although I do know quite a few who use them and they seem to like the 'unlimited' bandwidth etc more than anything else.

I like Vidahost myself for 2 main reasons: they always answer phone calls (difficult to explain on a ticket sometimes), and they are always investing in new servers and technology.

I could probably find cheaper if I'm being honest but I don't want to compromise on service and support. I find the fact that I can phone them up gives me peace of mind. In fact peace of mind should be one of the points they mention on their website. I guess it's what you value .. you want unlimited then it's going to be hard to beat USA providers. But for a few pounds more you could have some nice UK hosting.
 
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