Basically, I'm looking at spending right around $150 a month on a dedicated server. Three have piqued my interest as of right now. FDCservers.net is offering an AthlonXP 2400+, 512MB RAM, 120GB HD running RH9 with CPanel @ $159/mo. They say it's a 100mbps unmetered port, which is nice, but my concern is their use of cogent bandwidth. I've also seen them referred to as "You get what you pay for" also. I've not seen any definitive reviews on them as of yet, but most people seem to consider them a budget provider. I won't be reselling the server, won't have any "clients" to worry about and it won't be mission-critical. Any input on FDC? I'm also considering two others.

X-Gravity.net seems to be well-liked and their prices seem to be pretty good. They have a Dell 600SC 2.4Ghz, 512MB RAM, 40GB HD, 2000GB bandwidth for $145/mo. My concern is the 40GB HD... that's a bit small, but their backbone providers seem to be of higher quality. Plus the support seems to be top-notch.

Thirdly, there's the deal that Beachcomber is running. For $135/mo, I could get a P4 3.2Ghz, 1GB RAM, 1500GB Bandwidth. Basically $124.99 + $10 extra for a 100mbps port.

The server would be used for 5-6 websites, media (video, music, pictures) downloads, and/or a Battlefield 1942/Vietnam server. I've considered a shoutcast server, but I don't think I'll go that route as they seem to use gobs of bandwidth @ 128kbps. Anyway, sorry for the long post, but any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I'm not in a huge hurry to get one (2 weeks at most).

Hi,

Thank you for considering us as one of your providers. We have dropped the price on the dell 2.4 to $125 and increased the Storage space to 80GB.

If you should have any questions feel free to email us at support @ x-gravity.net

Thank you for your time.

I would recommend Beachcomber, they have solid reputation comparing to the others.

xgravity, I believe they are reseller of ezzi, and FDC? Don't even think of them if you need great network and uptime.

x-gravity is in the same datacenter as ezzi, so yes... And it appears that Both of the other two have much better peering arrangements than does FDC. I guess I just kinda liked the idea of having an unmetered 100mbps port. However, I don't guess that does much good if the network goes down reguarly and/or has horrible ping times. Since the server is mostly going to be used for downloads and the like, I'd like good download speeds. Low latency would be a plus should I decide to run a game server off it at any point in the near future.

Ezzi has shown great improvement in their network and has also added 1-2 new providers. Their uptime has been very close to 100% this past year.

We will be setting up our own servers very shortly with Peer1 but that will not happen until mid september.

Isn't $159 for 100mbit unmetered utterly, ridiculously cheap?

Yeah... and I'm sure you get what you pay for. That's why I was looking into other options. By the way, xgravity, I sent an email to the email address you listed above.

A reply was sent out about 5 minutes ago. Let me know if you did not get it.

just got it... The only thing you didn't specify was that game/streaming meda servers are ok. I'm guessing they are, as I don't see anything explicitly prohibiting them. At one point, I had been looking @ serverbeach (sister company to rackspace) but they specifically told me shoutcast servers were not allowed.

Yes game/streaming are fine. Only thing we dont allow is IRC and spam.

I hope pre-sales questions are conducted privately ;)

Ezzi has a great network. It has definetely improved over the past 3-6 months. The past 3 months alone have been at or near 100% uptime. In my opinion, x-gravity is a little overpriced compared to 99% of the ezzi resellers. As for FDC, I would stay away from them. If you try to do anything over 10 mbps for a bit, they'll immediately cap your upstream (outgoing) to 5 mbps. FDC just seems to run a shady business and I would steer clear from them.

We may be a little overpriced but that is because do offer managed services.

I hope you understand. :)

cryogenic, good luck on choosing a good provider,

due keep us updated ;)

Another thing is...Choosing not to go with a provider just because of cogent in a BGP mix is the wrong choice. Cogent is better than a lot of providers such as Yipes, Williams, HE, Allegiance at some places etc..Cogent never was as bad as people thought, it was just the cheapest around (not anymore) and so was bought by the providers looking to oversell massively and congest things causing problems. Or when you heard about cogent downtime it was because the provider bought a cheap switch and it failed or something. Not always because of cogent. And they've done a lot with it since, ever since cisco invested a couple hundred million into cogent.

Originally posted by RaineTech
Another thing is...Choosing not to go with a provider just because of cogent in a BGP mix is the wrong choice. Cogent is better than a lot of providers such as Yipes, Williams, HE, Allegiance at some places etc..Cogent never was as bad as people thought, it was just the cheapest around (not anymore) and so was bought by the providers looking to oversell massively and congest things causing problems. Or when you heard about cogent downtime it was because the provider bought a cheap switch and it failed or something. Not always because of cogent. And they've done a lot with it since, ever since cisco invested a couple hundred million into cogent.

There are still areas where Cogent is just plain bad. Their network used to have more problems, etc., but it seems perectly fine now. As long as it's in a BGP mix I'd have no problem going with a provider that used Cogent.

Routing to FDC's datacenter seemed pretty good from both my area (southeast US) and even from Europe. My friend in the Netherlands said he got 9 hops, 130ms to fdcservers. net, which is pretty good in my book. So it seems that cogent isn't much of an issue there. My biggest concern is support if something DOES go wrong. The idea of a managed solution is appealing that way I don't have to worry about doing something horribly wrong and messing everything up. :P