Can anyone explain why whenever I ping Tera-byte.com that it always comes up 125ms?

Are there any other ways to test the speed of a host?

Graham,

That's because you're only testing from your own computer. What you can do is test from different locations and use other sites to help you. The two following sites may be of assistance :

http://www.netmechanic.com/monitor.htm - use their 8-hour report.
http://www.samspade.org and use TraceRoute.

Of course, the other option is to simply ask some of your friends or others here in the forum to ping Tera-Byte for you on a consistent basis.

If you want to test ping times and traceroutes from around the world, check out http://www.traceroute.org.

Thanks BC and Annette, When pinging to test times should one be pinging the host name as in tera-byte.com or the name of a web site using that host. Wouldn't the host name be on a dedicated server and show faster times than a web site sharing servers with others?

For those wishing to know I used net mechanic to check tera-byte and the result was a good rating.

I would like to check a site using affordablehost.com and if anyone can give me the url to a shared user site I would appreciate it.

Graham

In my opinion, Ping is not the best way to test the speed of a server... of course, it tells you how fast it replies to your request, but if you are worried at what speed it isa ctually going, "ping" will tell you nothing. Furthermore, pinging a server can easily go from 10 ms to 200 ms simply because it is not a stable value and a lot of external factors applies as well.

If you wish to know the speed of a hosting company, the best trick is to find someone hosting with them and try to transfer a big file (at least 500k) and see how fast it goes...

A server can reply to ping within 10ms but transfer at a steady 2k/sec... wich isn't good at all.

One could also configur his routers to allow high speed ping request to come through but slow down other traffic as well.

In brief... the best way to know of a speed... is to ask someone hosted there.

As you know, there are many things inbetween you and the server that could cause slow file transfers. I colo a server at tera-byte and can tell you that they are well connected (oc-3 and 2 ds-3's from sprint, oc-3 from uunet, oc-12 from at&t, and ds3 from PSI), so you shouldn't have a problem.

Thanks Chicken. What does colo mean? Is your site just one of their regular 6 plans? Would the speed from their basic plan 1 be the same as their highest plan 6?

Colo is short for co-location. Very demanding websites (like amazon.com, microsoft.com, slashdot.org) require their own server to run well, they can not afford to share resources (processor,memory,harddisk space etc... )with other websites (normal webhosting puts your site on a computer with 100 plus other websites). When this is required many companies decide to build/buy a server (or a few of them), install the webserver/ftp/email software on to it,configure it and then ship the server to an ISP (like tera-byte) who plug it into their fast well connected network and bang... the server is online and websites working at top performance. Co-Location saves the expense and running costs of having fast internet lines installed on their own premises.


source: http://whatis.techtarget.com/WhatIs_Definition_Page/0,4152,211815,00.html

Colocation (sometimes spelled "co-location" or "collocation") is the provision of space for a customer's telecommunications equipment on the service provider's premises. For example, a Web site owner could place the site's own computer server on the premises of the Internet service provider (Internet service provider). Or an ISP could place its network router on the premises of the company offering switching services with other ISPs. The alternative to colocation is to have the equipment and the demarc located at the customer's premises.
Colocation is sometimes provided by companies that specialize in Web site hosting.

Originally posted by Annette
If you want to test ping times and traceroutes from around the world, check out http://www.traceroute.org.

This is to correct Annette's link in her above post. By oversight, she had placed a dot after the word "org", so the link will generate a "400 Error".

here is the same link (without the dot at the end!) below:

http://www.traceroute.org

Learner

Actually, Learner, that's a problem with most forums. If you put a dot after a URL (which is perfectly reasonable) quite a few forums neglect to check where the URL ends and whether a dot is part of the URL, and as a result (by default) includes the dot. Most browsers will strip the dot and load regardless, but it can be a bit of a pain at times.

Originally posted by gthorley
Thanks Chicken. What does colo mean? Is your site just one of their regular 6 plans? Would the speed from their basic plan 1 be the same as their highest plan 6?


Your speed should be fine no matter what plan you choose. I usually hold back from recommending hosts, but I think you'd like them so long as they fit your needs.

Originally posted by BC
Most browsers will strip the dot and load regardless, but it can be a bit of a pain at times.

Thanks BC for pointing that out.

Annette had simply included the dot because it made perfect grammatical sense since the URL was at the end of her sentence... ie. the dot was a "full stop".

But when I tried to click on the same link in my Netscape 4.72 browser, I got the following message:

400 Bad Request

Request cannot be handled by the server.

Reason: Connection with Host: header containing unknown local host name "www.traceroute.org.". Received on IP address 194.38.160.135, which is not bound to any virtual server. Cannot proceed.

That is why I thought I should re-post the same link to this thread again without the "dot".

However, I'm very glad you pointed this fact out about most browsers stripping away the last dot automatically. I wasn't aware of this fact till now!

Learner

[Edited by Learner on 09-06-2000 at 05:29 PM]

I'm aware that the vast majority of IE browsers do so, but Netsheet (errr... Netscape) is quite pedantic.

Actually, I use IE (version 5.0) and it does *not* strip away the period at the end of a URL if someone puts it there...

Sorry, I should be a bit more clearer. What I meant was that in IE, the dot at the end of a URL is left there, but the browser ignores the dot and loads the URL required. That's what I meant by 'stripping away' the dot. My oversight :rolleyes:

Thanks Bill for pointing that out.