Back on line

[John Kennett]

Apologies for the extended downtime this weekend. As a result of the lousy service that we've received from the company where the server is colocated we're considering physically moving the server to somewhere more reliable. I'll keep you posted . . .

John

[Charles]

Mmmmm, want my money back for hosting web-site??!!

[John Kennett]

Charles, you know it's worth every penny!
John

[Scubakid]

Hi John I use Fasthosts as a web hoster and find them very helpfull their contact No is Telephone : +44 (01452) 541499
Fax : +44 (01452) 541633

http://www.fasthosts.co.uk

Regards

John

[John Kennett]

Hmmm. You may have had good experiences of Fasthosts, but I wouldn't touch them with a bargepole! They have a really bad track record of unexplained outages and uncontactable customer "service". As far as I know, they also run exclusively Windows servers . . .

John

[mstacey]

John

Fashosts do servers other than windows however my experience of them was not as good as iy should have been and so I switched to hosting my own server.

Have you considered hosting the server yourself on the end of an ADSL line ?

I host a number of websites on a Cobalt RAQ4 server which is connected to the wider world via an ADSL link.

I do not seem to suffer the outages you get. The telephone line into the building is BT and the ADSL is with Pipex.

Regards

Martin

[narked]

To run it on ADSL you'd need a business ADSL account, which is going to cost you more than paying for the server to be colocated with a better provider, and that would also provide you with a better connection. Home ADSL services prohibit the running of public servers, and if memory serves BT prohibit the running of web servers at all on a home connection. NTL permit the running of passworded servers providing they aren't using much bandwidth.

Anyway, do whatever it takes to prevent a repeat of this weekend, it's been crap without RIBnet access!

Matt

[mstacey]

Matt

One ADSL provider states ...


'With this business quality broadband ADSL connection there are no call charges and no usage restrictions - your PC can be connected to the Internet all day, every day at super-fast download speeds of up to 512Kbps (10 times faster than a standard dial-up modem). And contended at only 50:1, Xtreme Home Office is on offer for an amazingly low price of just £24.95 ex VAT per month. '

How this compares with having your server co-located with a provider depends on said provider and the service they give. At this stage John seems unhappy with his current provider and so ADSL is just one of many options.

Can't comment on BT or NTL as ADSL providers as I have never used them.

[Alex Brown]

Just off the top of my head, both Demon and Clara don't specifically say you can't serve from your adsl or dialup connection - I'm just checking their aup's again now.....

Demon for instance provide you with a static ip address by default, and Clara will sell you a static ip for something like a one off fee of £25.

However, on the downside to serving on adsl, you are pretty well restricted to 256kb upstream, unless you're on an SDSL exchange, where it'd be somewhat quicker

My Rib's website for instance is hosted on a box at work, and that's through the ADSL which is fine for my needs, but I suppose if more than say 6 or 7 people were hitting it at any one time, then it would become painfully slow.

One possibility I'm looking at for my site at the mo is www.rackshack.net which is based in the US, but gives shed loads of bandwidth for the money, which would be very handy for streaming videos

-Alex

[narked]

All ADSL in the UK is BT, other companies just resell it. The upstream on that ADSL is probably only 256k too. In addition with colocation you get the benefits of the physical security and fire protection at the centres where the servers are stored.

Even compared to ADSL costs, some colo providers are really quite reasonably priced.

But as you said, just exploring the options. Personally I think colocation is the way to go.

Matt

[mstacey]

Originally posted by Alex Brown
However, on the downside to serving on adsl, you are pretty well restricted to 256kb upstream, unless you're on an SDSL exchange, where it'd be somewhat quicker

My Rib's website for instance is hosted on a box at work, and that's through the ADSL which is fine for my needs, but I suppose if more than say 6 or 7 people were hitting it at any one time, then it would become painfully slow.

-Alex

A 256K ADSL link will handle plenty more than 6 or 7 people hitting it at a time. If I were running streaming video then yes I would want plenty more bandwidth however I suspect most of the stuff served by the Ribnet server is low bandwidth text with some pictures thrown in. Only John can tell us for sure.

I have a server on the end of an ADSL link and that server currently home to some 19 web sites. Daily average hits on the top two web sites are in excess of 4000 each and serving on daily average 143174K of data. (these are the average daily figures for Feb 2003)

I have had two recorded outages of the ADSL link to my premises in the past year and in both cases service was restored within a couple of hours.


No doubt others will have more to say but this is a snippet of my experience with ADSL in a live enviorment.

[John Kennett]

The server where RIBnet lives is on a 10Mb/sec connection, so no problem with capacity there. That's one of the reasons why the site is normally so fast!

I wouldn't consider running a public server on anything with bandwidth as limited as an ADSL line. Take the server to the bandwidth, not the bandwidth to the server - colocation is the answer.

However, colocation with a bunch of idiots who are completely uncontactable for 48 hours isn't so good -- "I'm sure we emailed you the new contact details! just doesn't cut it really.

Onwards and sideways . . .

John

[Jonny Fuller]

I don't know anything about all this techno stuff but, from a non tech aspect, ribnet does seem ever so fast compared to other forums around, some are bloody painfull!!!!!