Hi Guys,

I'm working on a a search engine project, it involves the use of spider crawler software to crawl the web and record web content etc etc . You know how it works, google etc...

I currently live in Austalia. Data is *extremely* expensive here. Data for business use costs US$60 to US$80 per GB downloaded. What does it cost in the US?

Hosting fees are VERY expensive also. The hosting solutions are not very good either, the US and UK offer far more superior products and services.

So.... I'm basically looking at outsourcing the entire server hosting & downloading of content. Are there any hosts out there that allow the *downloading* of content? We are not leeches, we are happy to pay for the data downloaded. How much does data cost in the US? It would probably have to be a Windows server so that it could run our crawler software.


Thanks.

PJS

Sounds like you're looking for a dedicated, or colo server.

Dedicated: 75-350 /month including some amount of transfer, extra transfer 3-6 $/GB.

Colo: 35-100/U (rack unit) that normally just buys the rackspace, power, and remote reboot. Traffic is still 3-6 $/GB (This one, though, you have to buy the server, ususally upfront.)

Thanks for the info, I know that I would have to lease a dedicated server. My questions are in relation to the bandwidth.... in Australia data that is download is more expensive than data uploaded. All of the dedicated hosts I see offer from 10GB to 300GB of data per month. Is that upload or download? What if it was all downloaded to the server? Is that more of an expense to the host? What are their views on this?

I would like to find a host that would allow my server to download GBs of data per month, the server would then process and index this data (add it to it's database) and then allow people to visit the site and search (much like google).


Thanks.

Most hosts just charge you for traffic that is download, (correct me if i'm wrong) But you should ask your host this... :)

A lot hosts and datacenters charge only by UPLOADED data (from server to internet) because 99% of dedicated servers upload much more than they download.

However, most datacenters will charge by your downloaded data transfer rate if it is greater than your upload rate. (Example - you upload 30gbs, but download 200gbs - they'll charge you for 200gbs).

On average, it is $1.50-$3 per gig.