Hi there,

For the first time in my life I will jump to a dedicated server because of high bandwidth needs. I have checked a lot of dedicated offers from other companies, other solutions like VPS but finally ValueWeb seemed the best for my needs.

They now have a Linux plan with Intel 1.7 GHz CPU, 512 MB RAM
80 GB HD, and 1000 GB Data Transfer, $59 / month. I'm wondering that is there anyone using their dedicated solutions, and happy with them.

There were some other good offers from some companies but I first eliminated ones offering unmetered bandwidth, as I don't believe those kind of offerings. My website now has about 200-250 GB/month bandwidth and I think It will need 350-400 by the end of this year, so ValueWeb's 1000 GB/month offer seemed the best.

I will appreciate if you can write your thoughts.
By the way, they charge an extra $50 for a 100MB port. I wrote this to them to learn will I really need a 100 MB (I think that's 100 MegaBit) port, they said I won't need it unless the website has a lot of traffic. Normally they offer a 10MB port. Will a 10MB port be OK for a website with (let's say) 500 GB traffic / month?

That is definitely a good base price, although I wouldn't trust hardware that low end (which is surely all consumer hardware not server class) with anything mission critical.

Really depends on what you're doing with the machine.

Would be easier if you posted your requirements and your usage.

BestValueServers.com - Used them for a month. Even though I've a fully managed server, my site was down for over 10 days this month. 4 days lately due a a DNS error. (* Rating) :D

VoxRox - Will be using them from next month. Contacting them was easy and I find them good. (*** Rating)


;)

Will a 10MB port be OK for a website with (let's say) 500 GB traffic / month?

if that traffic is equally distributed over the month, then definitely yes. however, if you get periods of low traffic and then big spikes (new software releases, etc) you better get 100MB since 10MB link might choke.

Well, I can't say that I will need too much server resources. A small forum, and an ad software but those will be served for another website which has less visitors. We can say that the main website generating the main traffic will be a html website, about 2500 pages and full of car pics and some videos. I can say that the reason I move to a dedicated server is high traffic.

I am using ServerFly now and I'm just below the monthly limits, using 3 different accounts 80 Gb/month traffic each and will total about 220-230 GB at the end of the month. Although Serverfly is the best hosting company I have ever been with (almost never down), and although being paid yearly, I feel now that it is time to move on. I just wanted to be sure that if ValueWeb really offer 1000 GB/month, withoutout downtimes.

In fact I have some 6 months hosting with ServerFly and If I have problems with ValueWeb then I can delete a 1/3 of the pics and videos and return back to ServerFly.

If we go with simple arithmetics, what is the maximum bandwidth that a 10Mbit port will deliver in an hour?

I have that server for some dev/backup. It's never been down unless we rebooted. Network has been stabled, have a simple ping 5/min.

But right now they http://www.valueweb.com seem to be down ?

Originally posted by lucky_s
Well, I can't say that I will need too much server resources. A small forum, and an ad software but those will be served for another website which has less visitors. We can say that the main website generating the main traffic will be a html website, about 2500 pages and full of car pics and some videos. I can say that the reason I move to a dedicated server is high traffic.

I am using ServerFly now and I'm just below the monthly limits, using 3 different accounts 80 Gb/month traffic each and will total about 220-230 GB at the end of the month. Although Serverfly is the best hosting company I have ever been with (almost never down), and although being paid yearly, I feel now that it is time to move on. I just wanted to be sure that if ValueWeb really offer 1000 GB/month, withoutout downtimes.

In fact I have some 6 months hosting with ServerFly and If I have problems with ValueWeb then I can delete a 1/3 of the pics and videos and return back to ServerFly.

If we go with simple arithmetics, what is the maximum bandwidth that a 10Mbit port will deliver in an hour?

4.4 Gigs/Hour on a 10mbit capped line.

However thats assuming 10mbit saturation which you dont want (leads to packet loss and performance issues). Assuming 8mbit saturation you're looking at little over 3.6 Gigs/Hour. Check your bandwidth stats. If you're using more than 3.6 Gb/Hour at any given point in the day, you're going to have slow downs and bottlenecking at those times. You decide if you're going to live with the slowdown during those times or provide a higher burst rate by getting a 100mbit port.

If you are doing a download site or any high bandwidth site that involves extreme huge incoming visitors when you have something new being released, it would be best that you take a 100mbit port for more burstable allowance.

I would not try to push more than 2000 GB OUT (~6.5 MBit) through a 10 MBit cap, unless you accept minor speed problems in those few high traffic hours at daytime, or have traffic that is spread quite evenly throughout the whole day (not the case with most sites)

Thanks very much for the answers, they are really appreciated.

I have checked the all 3 accounts, the highest traffic hours spread almost the same, between 09-16 hours. The sum of average hourly traffic of the 3 sites equals 410,000 Kb.

I will have the ability of adding some new content with the new servers, then lets say the traffic will be 700-800 K in a shorter period of time. There will be new show pics by the end of this year, and lets say over 1GB, or 1.5GB/hour maximum. That means the 3-4 times the traffic before. So, I think it seems that a 10MBit port will be OK for up to 2 years. In fact, the monthly price for the 100Mbit port is $50, which I can not afford. Anyway, that's very good news for me, I will not need a 100Mbit port in the near future. The only probability for a slow down is visitors' video downloads all at the same time.

The -near- equal distribution of hourly traffic is something that I want to realize, but those guys in the east use Japanese or Chinese letters, and it's impossible for me to add my site to their search engine and directories because of that :) I always wanted to have a solution for this, but no way.. :)

I was always wondering when hosting companies give you 1000G traffic per month with dedicated server for like 69.99. the 1000G traffic is 3.2mb, which cheapest from cogent is 60$, so how do they do it? Do you get true traffic?

Well, I'm thinking of that, too. In fact the problem here is that I will have a 10Mbit port as most of the dedicated server customers, some will pay extra and get a 100Mbit port and let's say they have 300-500 servers like that. So??

I think all these depends on assuming that the servers will not use that bandwidth all, at the same time. Otherwise, it would be impossible to have a connection which will serve all the servers at full capacity traffic at the same time. Maybe I'm wrong, not sure about that. We'll see when I move on to them.

Most customers will use way less than their committement. The average usage per customer will logically not be 1000 GB if the allowed transfer is 1000 GB.

And from a customer's view you usually want to have a comfortable distance between your actual usage and the paid for transfer.

Otherwise you'd have to pay overage transfer fees

Anyone using the dedicated servers right now? As of Today? (8/6/04)

Any rants or raves? Things to look out for with them?

Also is anyone using Ensim Pro with them?

Anyone?

I've been a customer of Valueweb/Skynetweb for a few years now and im sick of how ****** they keep their paperwork. Their billing/customer service department is atrocious. It would seriously surprise me if they used computers in those departments cause they never seem to have valid information.

Over the 3 - 4 years of being on dedicated with valueweb (and now their higher end skynetweb) i have upgraded my servers anually to newer better machines. By provisioning newer servers and then migrating over, and eventually asking them to swap the ip's of the machines.

And this is where their record keeping could help them, i dont know how they do it but any time i decide to cancel an older server they ALWAYS manage to turn off the wrong one. (3 times now) Even after spending 20 minutes on the phone with customer service explaining to them to NOT screw it up this time they still manage to...

The first time they pulled my machine from the rack and locked it up in the provisioning room and no one was around and had a key to the damn room! had to call someone in to open it up? was offline for well over 8 hours that day.

Not sure what Valueweb's problem is but ever since their merge or what ever with affinity i havent seen too many positive things happen. And if it wasnt for their record keeping i would give them an acceptable rating.. Their network at times is pretty brutal not sure if im the most unlucky valueweb customer but i've had way too many problems (that were not MY problems)

Would i recommend them... nope im actually in the process of trying to find a new home. So far i think The Planet is in the lead, their TotalControl packages seem very interesting.

Valueweb is a decent company actually for the price a really good company. We have 3 servers there although as of lately we have had like 3-4 downtimes in last month or 2 but before that we had 100% uptime for like 9 months I hoping the recent stuff will be fixed and us get back to normal.