Their prices are great. Their support might not be the greatest, but I don't need to ask them questions on how to run my server.

Now, what about their network reliability? Does anyone have experiences?

I used to have a site hosted on Verio's network. The response time was great! I could download at 1.6 Mbps from my site. I got 60ms ping times.

<<MOD EDIT: Robert, please note:>>

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I *know* there are users of Rackshack here, maybe this has been discussed before recently, I'm not certain.

It's as good as you can expect for $99 a month. Search the forums, I'm certain their performance has been discussed by paying customers before.

Do you have a server with them JohnDillon?

I would actually say the network is better than what you pay for (is that possible?) :)

I've read the other threads here about RackShack, but I haven't found any really in-depth discussions about their network quality.

Here's what I am concerned about in particular. Does anyone have insight into these?

Ping time. I tend to do a lot of work in the shell, and if the ping time is bad then it's a lot harder for me to work in the shell since I have to wait for things that I type to show up.

I also want my website to have fast response times/throughput. When someone loads my website, it should come up at least as fast as their internet connection can handle (or 256kbps, whichever is lower).

Originally posted by pmak0
it should come up at least as fast as their internet connection can handle (or 256kbps, whichever is lower). There is a long running thread started by dektong about different hosts throughoutput called "How fast can your server burst (http://webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?threadid=7681)?", where people try to download 8.5 MB uumap.tar.Z file from ftp.uu.net and measure the results.

To save you from browsing the full thread, the results I got with my RackShack server are:

- 480-520 Kbytes/sec for one FTP session
- about 4 Mbytes/sec for 8 simultaneous FTP sessions together from one server

To start 8 FTP sessions, I logged into my server with 8 different SSH sessions, logged into ftp.uu.net in each window, typed get uumap.tar.Z in each one and then quickly switched between the windows and pressed enter in each one.

i had a raq at rackshack.net about a month or two ago ... things were good, except that i always got packet loss when pinging my machine (i was told that it was normal, but i've never seen that before) and ping replies were always high (roughly 90 ms, from multiple connections). this was one of the reasons i did not stay with them. if i didn't experience these two issues though, i would have stayed for sure.

90ms of ping time isn't bad, assuming you're doing web hosting. 90ms is under 1/10th of a second, which would hardly be noticable. As for doing work in the telnet prompt, a delay of 90ms is still under the limits of human perception (1/10th of a second).

Packet loss is not good, though. It's especially annoying when I'm trying to edit a file through telnet; packet loss will really slow me down. It can even cause broken SSH connections.

Originally posted by dabystru
There is a long running thread started by dektong about different hosts throughoutput called "How fast can your server burst (http://webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?threadid=7681)?", where people try to download 8.5 MB uumap.tar.Z file from ftp.uu.net and measure the results.

To save you from browsing the full thread, the results I got with my RackShack server are:

- 480-520 Kbytes/sec for one FTP session
- about 4 Mbytes/sec for 8 simultaneous FTP sessions together from one server

To start 8 FTP sessions, I logged into my server with 8 different SSH sessions, logged into ftp.uu.net in each window, typed get uumap.tar.Z in each one and then quickly switched between the windows and pressed enter in each one. i also did the same test on both my servers:

rackshack.net
ftp> get uumap.tar.Z
local: uumap.tar.Z remote: uumap.tar.Z
200 PORT command successful.
150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for uumap.tar.Z (8520221 bytes).
226 Transfer complete.
8520221 bytes received in 16.4 secs (5.1e+02 Kbytes/sec)

venturesonline.com
ftp> get uumap.tar.Z
local: uumap.tar.Z remote: uumap.tar.Z
200 PORT command successful.
150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for uumap.tar.Z (8520221 bytes).
226 Transfer complete.
8520221 bytes received in 17.9 secs (4.6e+02 Kbytes/sec)

Aloha

well if you want ping times here is a bit from one of my sites on there network I am from Maui so not sure if this will help
NeoTrace Version 2.02 - Registered (7-18-99)
Destination: www.snubamaui.com

-#--------------Node Name---------------IP Address------Location-----------RT*--High---Low---Avg-Tot---D-Who
1 fasthammi 209.84.65.218 20.735N,156.447W 0 0 0 0 1 0
2 cap84-65-01.pixi.net 209.84.65.1 Unknown 30 30 30 30 2 0
3 hydra.pixi.com 206.127.224.1 Unknown 20 20 20 20 2 0
4 cr02-fast1-0-216.fht.netenterprise.net 64.29.82.17 Unknown 20 20 20 20 2 0
5 cr01-fast0-0.fht.netenterprise.net 207.26.208.42 Unknown 20 30 20 25 2 0
6 sl-gw1-prl-1-1-0.sprintlink.net 160.81.33.85 Unknown 30 30 20 25 2 0
7 144.232.30.2 Unknown 20 30 20 25 2 0
8 sl-bb22-stk-2-1.sprintlink.net 144.232.8.217 37.950N,121.283W 80 80 80 80 2 0
9 sl-bb21-stk-15-0.sprintlink.net 144.232.4.241 37.950N,121.283W 90 90 90 90 2 0
10 sl-gw25-stk-10-0.sprintlink.net 144.232.4.226 37.950N,121.283W 90 90 90 90 2 0
11 sl-eleclight-3-0-0-155m.sprintlink.net 160.81.16.2 Unknown 91 91 81 86 2 0
12 srp2-0.cr02.rcrd.eli.net 208.186.20.18 Unknown 100 100 90 95 2 0
13 p9-0.cr01.sntd.eli.net 207.173.114.57 Unknown 90 90 90 90 2 0
14 srp3-0.er02.plal.eli.net 208.186.21.37 Unknown 100 110 100 105 2 0
15 p10-1.cr01.dlls.eli.net 207.173.115.62 32.783N, 96.800W 130 130 130 130 2 0
16 srp0-0-0.ar01.dlls.eli.net 208.186.20.67 32.783N, 96.800W 130 131 130 130 2 0
17 a4-0-0--170.gw01.hsto.eli.net 207.173.115.125 Unknown 151 151 150 150 2 0
18 gw-cust-ev1.net.hsto.eli.net 216.190.70.18 Unknown 150 150 150 150 2 0
19 twhou-ni-2.ev1.net 207.218.245.8 Unknown 150 150 150 150 2 0
20 np-dsl-216-12-209-122.ev1.net 216.12.209.122 Unknown 160 160 140 150 2 0
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

also check this out and plug in there network
http://www.tracert.com/

just to update what i previously said ... i believe rackshack have changed networks (if you do a traceroute now, it goes through verio), which is nice to see. their previous network is what caused me to cancel. i'd certainly consider going back now though.

We've had DS3s from Verio, Time Warner, Savvis, and ELI for some time.

However, over the last three weeks we've upgraded each of these to OC3s although the Time Warner which should have gone up today will likely go up on Tuesday.

We've also changed to Juniper routers(from Cisco) and Gig-E on the network core.

With the changes, especially on the GigE, we can allow true BGP4 routing for the best path. Previously, we were limited to 100MB on each Cisco router so we we're limited on true BGP4 routing.

I hope this makes the changes a little more clear.

Robert Marsh
Head Surfer Rackshack.net