Hi there,

I am thinking of hosting with www.mchost for 6 of my clients in the UK. The reseller package is good value but it's in the US.

Does anybody host in the US and serve to the UK? I am wondering what the performance would be like (in general). Would it deteriorate or be minimal difference?

Any advice would be very much appreciated :)

Thanks to everyone :)

US servers on the East Coast are fine for UK and European clients. The speed difference you would notice for normal browsing is minimal.

MCHost are located in NAC.net, which is in NJ, on the East Coast, I believe, so they should be fine.


Tracing route to mchost.com [209.123.169.202]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 * * * Request timed out.
2 170 ms 161 ms 160 ms bir-dam1-a-fa10.inet.ntl.com [62.255.33.197]
3 161 ms 160 ms 190 ms bir-core-a-pos100.inet.ntl.com [62.255.32.129
4 170 ms 160 ms 170 ms bir-bb-a-so-200-0.inet.ntl.com [62.253.185.14

5 150 ms 160 ms 150 ms bir-bb-b-ge-720-0.inet.ntl.com [62.253.185.15

6 160 ms 191 ms 160 ms win-bb-a-so-700-0.inet.ntl.com [62.253.185.14

7 181 ms 160 ms 160 ms gfd-bb-b-so-500-0.inet.ntl.com [213.105.172.1

8 190 ms 160 ms 160 ms linx-ic-2-so-100-0.inet.ntl.com [62.253.185.7

9 170 ms 180 ms 171 ms core1.ltn.nac.net [195.66.224.94]
10 240 ms 241 ms 240 ms a6-0-0-1245.core1.nyc.nac.net [209.123.11.69]
11 240 ms 230 ms 251 ms a9-0-0-8.msfc1.oct.nac.net [209.123.11.85]
12 251 ms 230 ms 230 ms fa0-0.core1.nac01.site5.com [207.99.79.142]
13 240 ms 250 ms 231 ms 209-123-169-202.site5.com [209.123.169.202]

Our servers are in St. Louis and about 15% of our clients are uk based and no complaints, except when BT goes down and they think its our end :)

Originally posted by BlueBox
Our servers are in St. Louis and about 15% of our clients are uk based and no complaints, except when BT goes down and they think its our end :)

Much as I dislike BT, they are very reliable, their network is very very rarely down, but the price reflects this...
The outages a while ago were caused by ddos attacks on LINX.

Hi ya

The chap was going on about the 2 outages that happened this week.

All ADSL from all ADSL providers were down, as well as any dialups that use BT's network.

Also, I have servers in the US but I am in the UK :D

James

I wasn't aware of these outages (NTL are much better than BT imo - at times:P), but it wouldn't be classed as a network outage, it was their internet access down.

True

It affected BTOpenworld, Nildram, ClaraADSL etc basically all ADSL providers and some dialups.
To me that is a network outage - but to others that is internet outage as cable users were not hindered - apart from certain sites that were down too.

--James

Fair point, different people have different classifications of outages etc.

Out of interest, did if affect users in a certain part of the country, or was it throughout?

Regards
Matt

it effected all the UK apparently :)

--James

Hello
The differences in speed between UK and US.
Here are our average speeds:

Our servers in London 35ms
Servers at Burst 130ms
Servers at VO 200ms
Servers at Alabanza 165ms

In practice, all of them apart from VO will function OK from the UK.
However, the UK market expects to see you have servers here.
And not just in the Uk but in "docklands".
They expect sub 100ms ping even on a dial up modem and that can't be done from the US.

It actually makes no difference to the operation of their web sites, but you need Uk servers if you are going to have satisfied UK customers.

Gordon

Rememer the majority of the UK (sigh) is still on 56k, so the difference is negligible.
And when accessing a site, whether the server is located in London, or New York, there will be very little noticeable difference in terms of the delay it takes for the page to load.

At Reflex, we had UK based clients who were complimenting us on the speed of the server / network, so it really isn't essential to have UK based servers for satisfied British customers.

Out of interest, could you give me an IP for each of your four servers, to compare what I get when pinging them?

Thanks
Matt

agree with you M@tt, so many factors involved and with so many UK users on 56K you would need a real poor US based server/network to notice. In fact we have customers who have left UK based suppliers and commented how much faster it is to connect and FTP etc.

My 2 cents or pence :) would be that it really depends on your business/marketing strategy. If you are looking for global client base then avoid the UK, if you are looking for a solely UK client base then it could be a factor.

The other consideration is where are your customers customers? If there sites are aimed at global users then the USA may suit them better too.

Originally posted by BlueBox
agree with you M@tt, so many factors involved and with so many UK users on 56K you would need a real poor US based server/network to notice. In fact we have customers who have left UK based suppliers and commented how much faster it is to connect and FTP etc.

My 2 cents or pence :) would be that it really depends on your business/marketing strategy. If you are looking for global client base then avoid the UK, if you are looking for a solely UK client base then it could be a factor.

The other consideration is where are your customers customers? If there sites are aimed at global users then the USA may suit them better too.

If you are serving primarily the US and UK (first language = English), then the US would indeed be the most cost effective place to have the server.
If, however, you are wanting to serve the US / UK / Eastern Europe / Asia, then the UK is located geographically closer than the US, so I wonder at these sort of distances, would it be better locating a server in the UK, as it's in between? The distance is much greater between the US and Asia, than it is between the US and UK, so therefore the lag may become noticeable...

geographically eastern europe is obviously closer but the far east is about the same in distance

st. louis - tokyo 6406 miles

london - tokyo 5956 miles

the UUNET map shows the link through USA to Europe http://www1.worldcom.com/global/about/network/maps/

I'm not sure if there are any high speed links from the far east to europe without going through the USA, could be wrong

Originally posted by BlueBox
geographically eastern europe is obviously closer but the far east is about the same in distance

st. louis - tokyo 6406 miles

london - tokyo 5956 miles

the UUNET map shows the link through USA to Europe http://www1.worldcom.com/global/about/network/maps/

I'm not sure if there are any high speed links from the far east to europe without going through the USA, could be wrong

Afaik, the links from the UK to the far east, and australasia are quicker than from the US, which was why I brought up the point on whether it would be quicker for users in these regions, if the server was UK based. Although recently, I believe, they have been improving the trans-Pacific links somewhat?

Regards
Matt

Hello
I din;t say that there was any technical reason why you need to host in the UK.

I am just speaking from personal experience, that when we had servers in the US for UK clients it led to lost sales because we were not in London.

Here are some host names:


blue.srv2.com (London - Redbus)
indigo.srv2.com (Burst.net)
orange.srv2.com (Ventures Online - Colorado)

You will see a big difference between the three.
in practice there is not much of a difference when web pages were being served up, but customers in the UK are much more critical of web hosts than those in the US.

Thats my experience anyway.
I can now get server leasing, colocation and bandwidth in the Uk for the same price as the US so its really a non issue.

After setting up a seperate UK operation we are now completing a Canadian one with hosting in Canada and billing in Canadian dollars. People like to host in their own country and those who don't never object to doing so.

Gordon

Thanks for the names Gordon.

I would be interested in how you can get bandwidth for a similar price in the UK as the US - for Redbus, I think I was quoted about £3 / Gb.

Good luck in your Canadian operation.

Regards
Matt

£3 per GB is about what we pay in the US at the top end.
Comes down to about £1.70 when we are buying a lot.

www.ultraspeed.co.uk is who we use in London.
They have very good connectivity and prices which can match what we pay in the US.

I should say that we tend to use Medium priced providers in the US. If you are using Rackshack or one of these very cheap companies you will not get equal pricing in the UK.

Gordon

Originally posted by GordonH
£3 per GB is about what we pay in the US at the top end.
Comes down to about £1.70 when we are buying a lot.

www.ultraspeed.co.uk is who we use in London.
They have very good connectivity and prices which can match what we pay in the US.

I should say that we tend to use Medium priced providers in the US. If you are using Rackshack or one of these very cheap companies you will not get equal pricing in the UK.

Gordon

Yeah, exlcuding RackShack, though, its still more expensive from my experience. I would consider $2 - $3 to be the average (in small amounts) for US based servers, and £3 - £4 ($4 - $5) to be the average in the US.

To put it in perspective, I am paying sub £500 per month for server with 100GB in London

Thats lower than I expected - what spec server is it?

1.4GHz 512MB 40GB EIDE

To be fair, there is a volume discount there, but its worth speaking to them to see what they can offer you.
I have a machine on colo with them for about half that price.
As its got SCSI, 1GB RAM and other things it makes the annual costs a lot lower than leasing a machine of that quality.

The issue for you might be the VAT.
As soon as you host inthe UK you have 17.5% unless you set up an outside EU company and charge it to that or bit the bullet and VAT register which means increasing your prices.

Gordon

The issue for you might be the VAT. As soon as you host inthe UK you have 17.5% unless you set up an outside EU company and charge it to that or bit the bullet and VAT register which means increasing your prices

surely you would have to VAT register anyway? The threshold is only just over £50k per year

Thats correct, but the only income which counts towards the limit is that from customers in the EU.
Our EU income is well below the limit so we are not VAT registered.

We could voluntarily register but the amount of VAT we could reclaim would be so small it would outweigh the obvious price increase we would have to implement.
It would also force us to form two companies, one for overseas orders, one for UK orders which would be a real mess.

Our business is mainly focused on the US and Canadian markets, so getting embroiled in VAT is not something I am keen to do unless it becomes legally necessary.

Thats another reaon you might want to have servers in the US only.
Web hosting is classified as telecomunications so even if you are over the VAT threshold you can claim "place of supply" is outside the EU which makes you exempt.

This is why UK AOL subscriptions do not include VAT.
The place of supply is in the USA.
Complicated - see an accountant.

Gordon

On the point of exempt, they are not exempt, hosting and domain reg are taxable supplies, so no matter where the country of supply/destination the sale value is counted towards your VAT thresh-hold (if you are a UK registered company or sole trader), however supplies of such goods outside the EU are classed as 'zero - rated' this is not to be confused with exempt goods. On your VAT return form you would put the supply of taxable goods to entities outside the EU under the zero rated column.

Where the value of taxable supplies in the previous 12 months was more than £54,000 (£52,000 before 1 April 2001), or is likely to exceed this annual limit within the next 30 days, the trader has to register within 30 days

This would mean any UK hosting company would have to VAT register if they exceeded £54k in a year whether UK or none Uk supplies.

If the supplies were treated as 'exempt' then you would not be able to voluntarily register for VAT and you would not be able to claim VAT back on your purchases

If you would like to pull the AOL trick on your local VAT person good luck to you. Firstly lots of UK ISP's are challenging the case but the point that exempts them is that they are a 'none-British company' - if you live and have your office in the UK and bank account here etc etc it would be difficult to claim.

As our company is a USA based incorporation we are not liable for UK VAT registration

Originally posted by BlueBox
As our company is a USA based incorporation we are not liable for UK VAT registration

Just out of curiosity, what did you choose to incorporate your company in the USA?