I am currently running a couple of dedicated Raq 4i machines at rackshack.net. I've been pretty pleased so far with what I've seen.

I am trying to decide right now between webauthorities.com and rackshack.net for some new machines I want to set up. Both companies have excellent prices. I'm leaning toward rackshack right now, but I thought it might be nice to spread my machines around a bit so that I won't have as much hassle if something goes seriously wrong at one facility.

Can anyone enlighten me on the relative merits of one company over the other? I already know what to expect from rackshack, positive and negative. Are there any webauthorities.com customers here that can comment on the service they receive?

Also, I will probably be running a game server or two on whatever new machine I set up. Can anyone comment on the relative speed of the networks with both companies? I live in Dallas, so I am assuming that my ping will be better with Rackshack, as it is based in Texas. But I understand that webauthorities.com has a fast connection and experience teaches me that geographical proximity does not always translate into low pings.

Jim

Why not ping both networks and see who's faster in terms of response time?

I did that, but I've been mislead by that before when I was running a Counter-strike server last year. The ping to the machine was good but the ping within the game wasn't. Before that experiment I naively thought that a 30 ms ping from the command line would equate to a 30ms ping within the game. Not so. At least not in my case.

I know that webauthorities.com is colocated at MAE-Dulles from info on their webpage. Rackshack has their own facility. Based on ping from my machine, both look good. But which company is probably going to be better for the majority of visitors to the game server?

Jim

Originally posted by jbourke
[...] Based on ping from my machine, both look good. But which company is probably going to be better for the majority of visitors to the game server?

Jim
Try to trace it from different locations.
The Site you'd like to visit for that is www.traceroute.org
Have fun ;-)

Greets

Originally posted by BiGWill
Try to trace it from different locations.
The Site you'd like to visit for that is www.traceroute.orgBut keep in mind that incoming traffic does not necessarily represent outgoing traffic. For example, if you traceroute to Rackshack, you won't notice any Cogent routers...but if you traceroute from Rackshack, Cogent will be staring you in the face (at least when they have their Cogent link up). I'm not sure whether outgoing traffic is more important for a game server than incoming traffic, but the point is that both should be evaluated if possible.