I think I found out what the catch was with the pwebtech's $129 dedicated server offer. I hope someone will prove me wrong. I did a lot of investigation over these past few days and it seems that their bandwidth is way oversold.

Just to take care of those that will say "why don't you talk to pwebtech first", I already did spoke to Jay through ICQ, and basically his response was "I am very busy" and "it's nohting that i have time to go into detail about". The thing I hate the most is the fact that they think nothing should be done about this.

Has anyone that got the $129 dedicated server noticed how slow the connection is? Try to upload a file to another server on the internet and you'll see. My average "burstable" :( speed is around 200 - 300 kbps, which is ridiculous. That's not "burstable", it's "crawlable".

Additionaly I did some research with pingplotter and occasionaly the ping times are 300 - 400 ms on average for about half an hour to an hour. The worst is at early to mid evening. Take a look at the mrtg picture for today and yesterday.

What do you people think? How "fast" can you really "burst" off of these servers?

Wow, "I'm too busy to deal with it, or explain it" I have never really dealt with pwebtech but customer courtesy/service seems to be lacking.

Just to add something. Here's an upload to geocities. I am constantly seeing the same or similar result. The same thing with other FTP sites.


220-Welcome to the Yahoo! GeoCities FTP server.
220-Need help? Get all details at:
220-http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/geo/gftp/
220-
220-No anonymous logins accepted.
220 Yahoo!
Name (ftp.geocities.com:root): xxxxxx
331-Enter your Yahoo! GeoCities member password
331
Password:
230-You are using 9.0% of your subscribed disk space
230 You have 18.206 MB of space available
Remote system type is UNIX.
Using binary mode to transfer files.
ftp> put test.jpg
local: test.jpg remote: test.jpg
200 PORT command successful.
150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for /xxxxxx/test.jpg .
553-The name you specified does not match the content.
553-See http://docs.yahoo.com/info/guidelines/community.html
553
1615706 bytes sent in 70.5 secs (22 Kbytes/sec)

Not only are they way oversold it seems, I am getting major lag spikes daily, all day long, from 3 different paths into the network, all high speed.

Plus, my emails to Jay and unixded support email go unanswered. I am trying to find out if they have a tool where we can monitor our bandwidth usage.

I have a server, it was a semi-decent setup (old pacakges, multiple FTP servers, old RPM, etc), longer then told for delivery, bad communications, and now horrible connections.

Heh, I guess you get what you pay for.

Tom

I don't think "you get what you paid for" applies to this case. The network speed and reliability is the only thing you don't need to think about when getting a dedicated server. Plus, there was no word from pwebtech at the time of offer that this was going to be hosted on a slow connection shared by who-knows-how-many servers. I think this very bad. I was about to call the Better Business Bureau, but I didn't have to because they already have an unsatisfactory record with the BBB. Check this link.

BBB report on PWEBTECH - Unsatisfactory record - BEWARE!!! (http://www.parsippany.bbb.org/report.html?compid=3790&national=Y)

Originally posted by netrose
1615706 bytes sent in 70.5 secs (22 Kbytes/sec)

:eek2: :eek3: :uhh:

Originally posted by netrose
The network speed and reliability is the only thing you don't need to think about when getting a dedicated server

Why is that? I think that it plays a very big factor in choosing a provider. If you want a dedicated server for under a hundred bucks, I could give you a dual PIII 1GHz with 2GB RAM and a 76GB 15000RPM RAID Level 5 SCSI system. THe only catch is it will be run out of my house using a fractional T1 with 200 other servers attached.

Interested?

No, the point is that they were well known and reputable on this board. Everybody was saying how good they were. However, I didn't check their BBB record and that was my mistake.

22 kb isn't too bad, I think you can burst higher.

Another thing is:

You are most likely purchasing SERVICE from pwebtech

and for $129, you will get a server with not a lot of service ,

Theres no free or discounted lunches here!

Except the lack of communication from pwebtech isn't too good.

I agree. Pegasus has a very good network and you shouldn't be concerned with them...normally.

I was just floored by your statement. It was general in nature and I wasn't clear that you meant for Pegasus and not all suppliers in general.

As far as the BBB report goes, it states that they have an unsatisfactory record because of an unresolved complaint. Now mind you, I am not defending Pegasus, but I thaink that you cannot judge a company based on one complaint that is still unresolved. If you did, then you would have to make the same judgement call on almost every company you deal with. Most companies have unresolved complaints. You will also notice that you never see any of the good reports from the BBB. They don't keep those records.

What do you mean 22 kbps is not too bad???!!!??? I have better uploads with my ADSL. 22 kbps is VERY BAD. I should be able to burst above 1 mbps to be ok, and above 3-4 mbps to be GOOD.

Originally posted by CLEARVERT
22 kb isn't too bad, I think you can burst higher.



Actually, far a dedicated server, that pretty much stinks.

Originally posted by WeinBar Jack
Interested?

Yes, Jack ... me interested ... :D :D

cheers,
:beer:

I Would like to see pwebtech's reseponse to this.......

You see Jack, the difference between your offer and pwebtech's offer is that you disclose the details, and those are some very important details, running the server off of a T1 in your bedroom. Pwebtech didn't disclose nothing about the connection. As the matter of fact they advertised that the servers were in one of the best NOC's in the US (Equinix), which by itself is a pretty obligatory statement.

Yep. And I am surprised because they are very tied into NAC, so why would they go to a different facility?

Grant it I am no dedicated guru, this is my first server but I posted this speed of a 27mb transfer from one of my old server companies to my pwebtech $129 server

http://www.webhostingtalk.com... (http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?threadid=18542)

Again I am not a hosting guru but I thought that speed was pretty impressive:)

Remember that Equinix does not provide bandwidth (as I was last told) so they have to get it direct from providers.

I went to CNET Web Services and did a speed test on pwebtech's dedicated server at Equinix. The speeds are okay. It was comparable to HostRocket's server.

BTW Is it true that our $129 servers are connected to an OC-192 + OC3? Coz that's what Jay 'n' Ed told me.

Yes, but you are talking about downloading stuff to your server. Try uploading something. Download speeds would be important for your home connection, for example, for downloading files off the net. But for a server, the most important thing is the upload speed, as all the traffic goes from your server to your visitors, not from them to your server. And that is upload.

Does anyone have an IP address of a server there?

The test at CNET Webservices only measures ping times. That has nothing to do with the actual speeds. The point is if you try to download a big file from the pwebtech's servers at Equinix you will get an average speed of about 22-27 kbps.

The IP block is 64.156.2.XXX See for yourself, although you'll have to find a site with a big file so you can test for the average speed.

So are our servers at Equinix connected to redundant OC-192 and OC3 connections?

It's connected to a Level3 pipe with no BGP from what I can see.

They might be, but they are either capped at the router or those redundant connections are 400% oversold.

Right, they may be on a Level3 OC192 that is in the facility but the actual feed to their equipment is probably a capped connection (which is common, but I a speculating as I do not work there :) )

One of the problems is it is Level3 .. Not a very good provider.

I`m reading this am i`m really confused, help me out here..

What do you really expect for $125.00 a month server included ??

The reality is this, your not going to run a Business on a $125.00 a month server, your not going to get all the support in the world.

What this company is offering is a nice little play server and to get things started.. It`s not like you just found the deal of a lifetime and you going to get yahoo to rent servers now.

I spend $125.00 to buy smokes every month.

I can`t even believe people can complain about this..

Please don't defend them. The fact that you buy smokes for $125 doesn't matter. Here's a quote from the offer "Pegasus is pleased to announce that we have arranged top notch colo in equinix newark, with level3/qwest connectivity.". That is clearly implying that the connectivity will be "TOP NOTCH". However after weeks of delay and next to none technical support ("I am very busy" or "it's nohting that i have time to go into detail about") lousy connection.

There are three (3) major issues:

1. weeks of delay
2. no support and/or lame excuses
3. connection that sucks

So, don't be so surprised that people are complaining about things like these.

I hope their uptime will not let us down.

Then wording it like this is better

Start up special "

We would like to offer to users a chance to have thier own server for $125.00 a month

Good hardware and good transfer speeds to get you started..

:)

Ahh, this is our equinix facility, which is NOT NAC, and is in fact a special. Those of you who are in NAC know the difference. And burst speed is hardly a measure of performance. But non-the less 100gigs of transfer for $129 does come at a price.

A) There is no active BGP threw but there is a BGP fail over to NAC

B) Netrose, support shoudl be sent threw unixded@pwebtech.com not threw icq for most issues. We are busy answering the email threw email, and you are contacting me directly which is one person, when if you send an email my team can answer it.

C) This offer was made for a very special purpose. We didn't expect this type of response to it, that is why it took a while.

TomK, I you sent any email to us within the last 9 days, I don't see any open tickets, with your name on it, Maybe, our tracking system didn't send it out to you, but we try to keep all support tickets under 12 hours and under 3 hours in emergency cases. So you not getting any response is most likely a technical issue and not us not responding.

And once again Netrose, that BBB is because we didn't repsond to a complaint 2 years ago. I woudl read the whole web page before you start jumping to conclusions.

Can anyone explain to me what BGP fail over means?
:cartman:

Originally posted by universal2001
Can anyone explain to me what BGP fail over means?

I've never heard of the term, but I can guess as to what he's referring to. Basically, most hosts run BGP to best utilize their multiple backbone connections ("active BGP"). BGP makes it so traffic goes over the backbone which will give you the best speed. By saying they're not running active BGP, he means that all the traffic goes through one backbone, no matter what. The only instance where it wouldn't is if the main backbone goes down, in which case the traffic would switch over to NAC.

"Active" BGP is a good thing.

Jay, I am sorry but those are old used phrases. Do you think I would talk here if there was anything left to try? I tried ICQ, you said you were busy, then I tried sending email to the "team", of course no response for days.

And that "we didn't expect this kind of response" is not an excuse for the delays, although the delay is not really the problem here.

you have to first review all conditions with your future host. Most hosting companie sell limited line/ Mbps with server package.
Some of them have a better deal. For example, dual OC48 lines paying per GB to an ISP so the hosting company can connect all machines with 100Mbps port and there would be no problem in peak time.

Peter

<mod edit>

Originally posted by westmaster
For example we have dual OC48 lines and we pay per GB to our ISP so we can connect all machines with 100Mbps port and there is no problem in peak time.


Just a reminder: I hope the above is not considered self-promoting in a non-advertising fourm... Buit anyway, nice setup there! :)

cheers,
:beer:

No advertise, just description of slowdown problems

OK, I just be expecting too little?

For $129/month I was not expecting the fastest server or network connection in the world. I was expecting a nice starter box for a dedicated server. I was expecting the network response time to be good, but not great. I was also expecting it to take a while before my box got set, cuz I waited until the last day to order it.

The box did take a while to get setup. Once they did start to set it up, I was contacted via ICQ with a couple of questions on how I wanted things set. I did/re-did most of the stuff my self because I'm pretty familar with Unix/Linux and how to configure/install the various components.

I had a couple of questions for their support and they got back to me quickly. The first question took a gentle shove to get an answer, but I assumed they were getting swamped with questions with all the new boxes going up. The nice thing is that their support e-mail account seems to be hooked into RT (http://www.fsck.com/projects/rt/) so I get an ack back for each e-mail I send I know that all the e-mails get tied together, even if different people look at my issue.

After reading this thread, I did a little speed test for myself. I downloaded the MySQL client rpm from the MySQL home site and from my server. The client rpm is about 6 meg. The speed from my site is about 1/2 the speed of the MySQL site. I though that was really good. I'm sure my bill is nothing like the bill for MySQL's site.

I know what I planned to use the box for and so far everthing seems quite acceptable to me. I'm not running a download site. I have a mix of static and php generated web pages on my various sites. I'm also planning on hosting a few friends to help them out.

I/we don't need blazing speed. We need a good solid box on a decent network that keeps running. I need root authority so I can build things the way I want them and not the way some webhosting company things they should be.

Maybe I just set my expectations too low, but for the price, I think I got exactly what I was thinking I would get.

Frank

I got a dedicated server from Pegasus during this deal as well- although I got a Windows 2000 server instead of Linux which does cost a little more than the Unix box- $149/- per month, but that's still the best deal I could find.

Granted, it took them quite a while to setup the Server but now that my server is up and rinning, I am VERY happy with it. This is my usage as reported by my stats server for last week:

Server Activity Totals for Period:
Total sessions served : 54274
Total hits made on server : 1685366
Total page view hits : 416675
Total non page view hits : 1268691
Total time spent by all sessions : 14366397 seconds
Total bandwidth : 2535285.76 kilobytes

Over 400,000 pages were served and NOBODY complained about the site being slow. I'm more than happy for what I'm getting for what I've paid for. When I need another dedicated server, I won't look anywhere outside.

-Abbas

Originally posted by RackMy.com
It's connected to a Level3 pipe with no BGP from what I can see.

how to check some provider had or not had BGP :confused:

Netrose I don't see any open support tickets for you, So either your not sending mail and complaining about not getting support, or your not receiving any of our responses. Did you recieve a ticket # when you sent in your support request?

Jay any offer for Windows 2000 server.

This offer is close, no more order will be taken. We offer win2k servers at $200 a month if you are intersted.

What
-cpu
-RAM
-Hard Disk
how many IPs
location of server?

Email me I will tell you.

Did that and did ICQ as well. Waiting to hear from you now :)

I'm freakysid - see below...

This download is from one of our server inside NAC.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 2.3 secs (3.6e+03 Kbytes/sec)
ftp>

And this below is a download from one of our servers in equinix

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 11.1 secs (7.5e+02 Kbytes/sec)

Granted there is a difference, but also granted this server is $129 with 100Gigs of transfer while in nac we don't even offer servers that cheap.


Equinix won't be the fastest, but it is very very reliable and your boxs connection will be up and steady.

[this post was above as SamIAm - which I created the other day when I could not seem to log into the forums - a problem with cookies in mozilla or something?]

I have the same outlook as ffeingol. This is my first dedicated box too. Also, my intention is to use it to incubate a current project which hopefully will have outgrown this server in three months time (wishfull thinking ;) ?!?). So I don't expect top quality or even great bandwidth - just reasonable for the price. I'm not even serving anything from my server yet, and I imagine that there will be other customers like myself who aren't even pushing out bits and bytes yet. I don't expect my site to come online for another three or four weeks. But I wanted a dedicated server because I need to configure and compile certain things to be so-so for the web application I have developed that is behind the service I will be offering.

I have a contract for three months, so in a couple of months I will weigh everything up and decide whether I want to keep the server then and renew the contract. Time will tell whether it will be worthwhile to do so. On the other side of the coin, I am sure that pegasus will weigh up how much they want me as a customer too. So if it works out it works out, if not, no drama.

Anyway, to keep this conversation objective. I have been uploading a 7.4MB file (mysql source tar.gz file)to a raq server at 4webspace.com. Make of these stats what you will, like I said, I will decide whether the deal is worth continuing, based on experience, in two months when the notice to renew/discontinue comes due. :)

times are approximate only:
uploads to a raq at 4webspace.com
midnight USA Eastern Daylight Saving Time
(2pm Sydney Time GMT+10)
7453020 bytes sent in 153 secs (48 Kbytes/sec)

10:20pm USA Eastern Daylight Saving Time
(12:20 Sydney Time GMT+10)
7453020 bytes sent in 261 secs (28 Kbytes/sec)

10:00pm USA Eastern Daylight Saving Time
(12 noon Sydney Time GMT+10)
7453020 bytes sent in 342 secs (21 Kbytes/sec)

very approx (time) from last night:
08:00am USA Eastern Daylight Saving Time
(around 10:00pm Sydney Time GMT+10)
7453020 bytes sent in 71.5 secs (1e+02 Kbytes/sec)

Note that at about the same time (08:00AM USA Eastern Daylight Time) I uploaded the same file to ftp.geocities.com which was much slower:
7453020 bytes sent in 278 secs (26 Kbytes/sec)

Then I uploaded to ftp.geocities.com again at about 10:00pm USA Eastern Daylight Saving Time:
7453020 bytes sent in 379 secs (19 Kbytes/sec)

I did the obligatory download of the uumap.tar.Z from ftp.uu.net at 10:30PM USA Eastern Daylight Saving Time (12:38PM Sydney GMT+10)
8520221 bytes received in 20.3 secs (4.1e+02 Kbytes/sec)

Here are my results for transferring the uumap.tar.Z from my Pwebtech server to saga.stanford.edu

ftp> get uumap.tar.Z
200 PORT command successful.
150 Opening ASCII mode data connection for uumap.tar.Z (8520221 bytes).
226 Transfer complete.
local: uumap.tar.Z remote: uumap.tar.Z
8564667 bytes received in 1.3e+02 seconds (64.39 Kbytes/s)

er - yeah - pasted the wrong results in for the download of the uumap.tar.Z file - I changed my post.

Here are upload (and one dl) speeds from my pwebtech (equinix noc) server for today. These figures are much, much nicer :)

The raq server @ 4webspace.com I uploaded to is www.hostingbetter.com (thanks Omair for letting me do this :) - I won't eat up any more of your bandwidth ;) )

8:15PM USA Eastern Daylight Saving Time (10:15AM GMT+10)
to: raq server @ 4webspace.com

ftp> put mysql
local: mysql remote: mysql
227 Entering Passive Mode (216,194,78,50,13,18).
150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for mysql
226 Transfer complete.
7453020 bytes sent in 113 secs (64 Kbytes/sec)

8:20PM USA Eastern Daylight Saving Time (10:20AM GMT+10)
to: raq server @ 4webspace.com

ftp> put uumap.tar.Z
local: uumap.tar.Z remote: uumap.tar.Z
227 Entering Passive Mode (216,194,78,50,13,19).
150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for uumap.tar.Z
226 Transfer complete.
8520221 bytes sent in 127 secs (65 Kbytes/sec)

9pm USA Eastern Daylight Saving Time (11AM GMT+10)
to: raq server @ 4webspace.com

8520221 bytes sent in 121 secs (69 Kbytes/sec)

9:10PM USA Eastern Daylight Saving Time (11:10AM GMT+10)
to: ftp.geocities.com

local: mysql.tar.gz remote: mysql.tar.gz
227 Entering Passive Mode (209,1,225,195,139,42)
150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for /*****/mysql.tar.gz .
226-You are using 49.7% of your subscribed disk space
226 You have 7.544 MB of space available
7453020 bytes sent in 213 secs (34 Kbytes/sec)
ftp> close

10PM USA Eastern Daylight Saving Time - 12 noon Sydney (GMT+10)
to: raq server @ 4webspace.com

ftp> put uumap.tar.Z
local: uumap.tar.Z remote: uumap.tar.Z
227 Entering Passive Mode (216,194,78,50,13,116).
150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for uumap.tar.Z
226 Transfer complete.
8520221 bytes sent in 82.5 secs (1e+02 Kbytes/sec)
ftp>

download (at 12:33PM Sydney Time - 10:33PM USA)
from: ftp.uu.net

ftp> get uumap.tar.Z
local: uumap.tar.Z remote: uumap.tar.Z
227 Entering Passive Mode (192,48,96,9,231,54)
150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for uumap.tar.Z (8520221 bytes).
226 Transfer complete.
8520221 bytes received in 4.57 secs (1.8e+03 Kbytes/sec)
ftp>

12 midnight USA Eastern Daylight Saving Time (2pm Sydney)
to: raq @ 4webspace.com at 2pm Sydney

ftp> put uumap.tar.Z
local: uumap.tar.Z remote: uumap.tar.Z
227 Entering Passive Mode (216,194,78,50,13,210).
150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for uumap.tar.Z
226 Transfer complete.
8520221 bytes sent in 75.4 secs (1.1e+02 Kbytes/sec)
ftp>

[mods note] Strange problem I'm having with the forums in IE5.5 - keep getting logged out, or for example, just now, vB didn't want to let me edit this post, but was going to let me post a fresh post (which of course I did not want to do). So I had to log in from Mozilla to edit this post - strange.

Originally posted by freakysid


The raq server @ 4webspace.com I uploaded to is www.hostingbetter.com (thanks Omair for letting me do this :) - I won't eat up any more of your bandwidth ;) )




Ohh.. You can eat as many as you can.. Does not matters.. I have got plenty :)