Check it out! http://www.rackshack.net just changed from offering 175 GB with their $100 servers to 300 GB!

They must have a lot of spare bandwidth!

(They didn't update their http://www.rackshack.net/compare.asp page yet to reflect the 300 GB, though.)

I know, strange isn't it (as mentioned in my post about this a few minutes ago). 175gb was almost within the realms of being believable... but 300gb is really pushing the boat out, drilling a hole in the middle, and letting it sink.

It could possibly be feasible, but it just seems bloody unlikely. It's rather like giving your server a T1. Doesn't seem quite right somehow.

Anyone care to enlighten our poor unknowledgeable souls? :)

Wes.

Can one of these Raqs even handle that much transfer?

No chance ... !

they are banking on people not using it, but if you do they really cant feasibly cut your account

> Can one of these Raqs even handle that much transfer?

I don't see why not. A Pentium 100MHz can saturate a T1 line (that's about 324 GB a month) if you're running thttpd (instead of Apache) and serving static files.

A RaQ4i is 450MHz. It might be able to do 300 GB with Apache. Cobalt's specs says that the RaQ can output 30 million hits per month I believe. If a hit is 10,000 bytes, that adds up to 300 GB.

Originally posted by TechnoHosts
they are banking on people not using it, but if you do they really cant feasibly cut your account

lol, wanna bet? :D

Hosts can make staying without paying out more damn hard if they so choose (look at NoMonthlyFees right now, they've given me 2 options - one for the original price of the renewal which is a hell of alot of trouble! and the second for double the price of renewal to keep things as they are and have another useless 300mbs of space... no bandwidth upgrade, of course).

Disgruntled,
Wes.

Originally posted by pmak0
> Can one of these Raqs even handle that much transfer?

I don't see why not. A Pentium 100MHz can saturate a T1 line (that's about 324 GB a month) if you're running thttpd (instead of Apache) and serving static files.

A RaQ4i is 450MHz. It might be able to do 300 GB with Apache. Cobalt's specs says that the RaQ can output 30 million hits per month I believe. If a hit is 10,000 bytes, that adds up to 300 GB.

I've personally never heard of anyone do more than 100GB of a RaQ. I'm sure it's technically possible. But I'm not sure if it's really practically possible.

What rackshack is doing, is the same idea of offering unlimited transfer.

Its putting a high amount that almost none will use.

I mean, its very simliar, but i wouldnt want a PIII 450 to handle that much transfer

Joe

Planet Z: Why don't you think it's not practically possible to do 300 GB of transfer on a RaQ4i?

Someone who has a huge website can just dump his static media content (JPG, ZIP, etc.) on the RaQ. If his main website is database driven or something, it could be hosted somewhere else while the RaQ just hosts the files. If he runs thttpd on the RaQ, it can handle all of that load without problem.

I could imagine some existing heavy bandwidth websites doing that. They do have to be careful not to go over 300 GB or else they'll get charged something like $3.50 per GB over. If they consume more than 300 GB, they can get multiple RaQs and do round robin balancing.

RackShack could lose a bunch of money to people like that, if it costs them more than $0.33 per GB.

I've used about 250 on a raq3i
Of course, the server is constantly crashing

mxtabs: Are these static files, or dynamically generated files that you're serving? Are you running thttpd?

pmak0:

Glad you asked that question. I've been trying to find out why I was using so much, and if that Cobalt Raq was right for me.

Currently I am receiving 250,000 hits on dynamically generated pages, and about 50,000 on plain text files. The server does not handle this too well, and I have had to optimize my queries and code to the best of my ability. However... its still not working, and my server continues to crash.

I would switch, but the main problem is the bandwidth... so far this month I have used 65 GB. I don't really have a huge budget to pay bandwidth fees.

I'm not sure what thttpd is

Not to sound incredulously thick, but could someone possibly give me a quick rundown on what "thttpd" is please? Thanks :D

Wes.

So you're running a MySQL generated site then? If you pay them an extra $60 per month to upgrade your memory, that might help, if the crashes are being caused by running out of memory and swap space.

When you type "free" or "top" does it show that you have a lot of swap space in use and very little free memory?

But with only 250,000 page views per month, I would think that the server should be able to hold your site fine. I think that MySQL optimization is another possible issue.

thttpd is a web server (like Apache) that uses up a lot less resources. It's more efficient for serving static files.

Ah right... that makes some sense out of the other references I've seen of it. :D

Much obliged.
Wes.

On running top, nothing seems amiss. Almost all memory is used up, and almost no swap space. The main factor appears to the be the sheer number of idle tasks running, and of course, the CPU levels.

I've been getting a lot of errors when I go past my max_connections variable with MySQL. I'm not sure if I should raise this.. would allowing more connections put more strain on the server?

Originally posted by pmak0
Planet Z: Why don't you think it's not practically possible to do 300 GB of transfer on a RaQ4i?

Since I've never heard of anyone doing it (successfully). I'm sure there are people that have done it, but obviously not a lot -- so it can't be that easy.

> Since I've never heard of anyone doing it
> (successfully). I'm sure there are people that have
> done it, but obviously not a lot -- so it can't be that
> easy.

I think this may have something to do with the fact that RaQs, with their control panels, are designed to be easily used by non-programmers.

One has to be knowledgeable in UNIX in order to install thttpd. Once thttpd is installed, any virtual sites served by it must be configured manually, since the control panel cannot do this.

Putting a site's images on another machine (without moving the whole site over) is not so trivial if you've got a static HTML site; you'd have to manually edit every IMG tag to put the new server in. For non-programmers, this may be the only way they can do it.

Getting a second RaQ and running DNS round-robin to split the bandwidth load between the RaQs is definitely not trivial. Even I don't know how to do it (although I'm sure I could find out how to, if the need arose).

I think that could be the explanation of why people don't max out the bandwidth of a RaQ4i much. You really have to plan for it, and know what to do.

Originally posted by Planet Z


Since I've never heard of anyone doing it (successfully). I'm sure there are people that have done it, but obviously not a lot -- so it can't be that easy.

This is completely possible. One of my RaQ4i's was pushing a ton of bandwidth out (250+ GB) before I caught it. Their wasn't anything unusual as far as load goes etc... The only way I found out was an ICQ message by my host.. He hadn't been monitoring the port, he turned monitoring on, and WOAH we were both surprised.

RackShack have lost the plot.

I hope 4webspace dont follow suit. I thought 175gb for $99 a month was stupid but 300GB for $99 ... ok ... I'm glad i didnt move to RackShack.

Im gonna get some raqs there and host my customers images off it or something :) I could use 1mbps for $100...

-Brendan

What I think it's just a promotion method. Don't you think a normal site can tranfer 300GB per month? Sometimes, an adult site don't need this kind of traffic too. Also, they don't allow adult site, so what's the point for it? Everyone know only adult site can have such a traffic. You can offer me 1000000GB per month with $1 but only allow me to serve 1 html page, so what's the point for it? I just don't buy it :-).

i don't think any normal site can transfer 300 GB.

cobalt racks can not handle 300GB for normal web site. it may work fine for FTP sites.

Well, there are a couple of things you should consider here..

1. A RaQ4 can not possible handle 300GB of transfer per month unless it's a download site.

2. How many of their customers (in percent) do you think are actually using more than 50GB of bandwidth per month? I know when I was with Tera-byte, I had a music site with 300+ real audio songs for download, with 2,000 uniques per day, I hardly used 30GB per month!

I have a site that used up 1500 GB a month with simple zip files (demoes, freeware games, solves, codes etc.). I'm planing to maybe order a few servers for now since the transfer won't be 1500 GB again at once as my visitors will first have to get back.

This could really be a very cheap solution.

Anyone got any suggestions for how I could divide the transfer load to the different servers?

Can we host download site on the rackshack raq? If possible, i would love to get one. Are we able to store mp3?

Originally posted by kaz
Can we host download site on the rackshack raq? If possible, i would love to get one. Are we able to store mp3?

As long as they aren't copyrighted.

256 RAM + 300Gb bandwidth look really ATTRACTIVE..

You guys are missing the big picture its impossible for them to offer 300gigs and be profitable, I know this for a fact. SO what they are doing is illigal, its illigal to false advertise. Bandwidth costs them at a minimum 1.00/gig to provide more if you factor in staff and hardware. You do the math! For people looking for the cheapest server out there this is their ticket, i sure wont feel bad, when their networks slow as a snail or raqshack goes out of business. DO you want to live in a shack or a house, the name says it all :)

Could someone post their IP address which is a Raq4 on rackshack.net so I could ping it and trace it from my location.
With that much bandwidth it might be a very good deal.
Also, current customers, does rackshack have a lot of downtime recently?

Originally posted by webleo
Could someone post their IP address which is a Raq4 on rackshack.net so I could ping it and trace it from my location.
With that much bandwidth it might be a very good deal.
Also, current customers, does rackshack have a lot of downtime recently?

They have had quite a bit of planned downtime due to moving servers around and hardware upgrades.

Okay, so how is that companies are able to offer cheaper transfer to their customers? These days it's not difficult to get $1 per gig and in many cases if you buy in mass you can pay much less. I can only imagine that the hosting providers don't pay as much.

The fact that they (ev1.net) are a sizeable isp in Texas is another thing to consider. Also because of ev1.net's popularity with Rackshack they seem to be building their second datacenter just for this. Expanding in to two datacenters in just 5 or so months is amazing progress.

As far as human resources go... I've seen them automate many processes which help cut the need for additional tech/support personnel. Even their sign-up is automated, this probably reduces their cost greatly. Most hosts here don't have that for dedicated servers. Also they don't provide true 24/7 monitoring as discussed here already. That probably reduces HR costs too. :)

Also i am guessing 80% of their customers did not use even 100 gigs of transfer with those raqs. I am also guessing that 98% of rackshack owners can't get their sites to use more then 140 gigs in normal conditions.

It's not too hard to see how they CAN be profitable.

Good point. For example, I myself am only using around 5-10 gigabytes of bandwidth per month at the moment. I do not expect this to increase dramatically in the near future either.

Its impossible to offer bandwidth at 1.00/gig if you use bgp routing first of all. And the lowest ive heard of for bandwidth is through level 3 and thats around 1.00/gig maybe a little less, and your still not figuring in the cost to provide that bandwidth, thei playing the numbers game, its just simply bad business.

i had cobalt raq4i
i used it only for hosting porn movies ......
i was being able to make
80 GB /day without any problems


over 100gb/ day i was getting problems
apache crused or stoped working
etc etc
but 80 GB /day it worked as a baby


the bigges i was able to make just as a test it was 185GB in one day


it was raq with 128 mb ram
and one 20 GB disc

216.12.215.17 here is the ip for pinging etc

i plan to host 5 mp3 site's only htmls.......
that make aroudn 250 GB per month

Cbaker17: you haven't asked for quotes lately. These prices are for a fairly high commitment level, but still, $1.00 per GB is not a tough thing to do anymore.

Level3: $190 per meg
Globix: $155 per meg
Verio: $175 per meg
Epik: $150 per meg

To name a few.

Regards,

domus, you sure your mp3 is legal? Isn't rackshack going to find out?

It's marketing, every dedicated hosting newbie feels save with 300GB included, you'd never need to pay for overusage.

But in my opinion you should look at the price and what you really need (not what you max. get). Then decide if it is a good deal for you.
The only problem you have is that other customers try to rip them off.

- domi

NO mp3.s will be on server
ONly high traffic mp3 sites and their html files and scripts
mp3.s are all on free servers .....

Originally posted by Voodoo Web
[B]It's marketing, every dedicated hosting newbie feels save with 300GB included, you'd never need to pay for overusage.

But in my opinion you should look at the price and what you really need (not what you max. get). Then decide if it is a good deal for you.
The only problem you have is that other customers try to rip them off.


And i think the nail has just been hit on the head... :)

Their real attraction to me, as a dedicated server 'newbie', was definately the fact that I would be able to feel safe in the knowledge that I would probably never come close to 300gb (be it possible or not). Even though I've been involved in sites before that have far exceeded and moved onto 4-6mbps connections to keep up.

But recently, I've been trying to put things in proportion. I came across another company that offers a low-end server (Celeron 667, 64mb ram, 20gb hd, 40gb/month in transfer) for $50/month, and those specs I would likely never outgrow by myself.

My only doubt about any box other than a Cobalt system of some sort, has always been doubt in myself of being able to administrate it. I've used Cobalt servers before and been quite happy in their operation.

Now I'm just torn between the two... :) the Celeron system I could afford own my own, but the RaQ4i I'd need to share to manage (particularly with that setup fee!).

Oh decisions decisions... :D

It's been a most enlightening thread.

Wes.

You mean the acsdatanet server for $ 49? I'm looking into that one as well. I will get either the a) serverhost or b) pwebtech or c) acsdatanet server within a few weeks I think.

As for RAQ administrable: I find them even harder to handle, the cobalt interface sucks big time IMHO, it's so damn slow.

and you are connected to a 12.5mbps connection

rackshack is cool man...

Pushing big traffic on a RAQ is possible... I had a site doing 150+ gb per month on a RAQ 4... Mainly picture downloads...

But that site was on a shared server with 10 other sites! Don't underestimate the power of a raq... The only thing, that I have found to slow down a raq is the use of scripts (Perl, CGI, ETC) especially UBB! A total resource HOG.

If you have a lot of scripts on a raq, dont expect to push more than 50gb... But a raq relatively clean of scripts, can push some decent traffic.