Q: Who do you tell how fast a connection your website has?

I'm thinking about switching hosting companies and I want one
that has a fast connection to the net.

So I found some tools out there and got some reports.

Looking at my reports, it seems that my current website has
an average ping time of 62ms while my possible new hosting
company has a ping time of 81ms.

But, when I run the visualroute report, I get a time of
116ms for my current and 46ms for my possible new hosting
company. Also it show my current site needs 5 more hops
for a packet to get there.


What is this time that the visualroute report displays?
Which website is faster?

Thanks --Steve

----------------------------------------------------------------
REPORTS:

--- Possibly_New_Hosting ping statistics ---
5 packets transmitted, 5 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/mdev = 72.606/80.950/86.843/5.399 ms

--- My_Current_Website ping statistics ---
5 packets transmitted, 5 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/mdev = 52.096/62.171/76.000/8.054 ms


Reports using http://visualroute.visualware.com/

Report for Possibly_New_Hosting

Analysis: Possibly_New_Hosting was found in 14 hops (TTL=116).
It is a HTTP server (running Microsoft-IIS/5.0).


------------------------------------------------------
| Hop | %Loss | IP A | ms | Graph | Network |
------------------------------------------------------
| 0 | | 161. | | | Verio, Inc. |
| 1 | | 161. | 0 | x | Verio, Inc. |
| 2 | | 161. | 0 | x | Verio, Inc. |
| 3 | | 129. | 0 | x | Verio, Inc. |
| 4 | 10 | 129. | 31 | x | Verio, Inc. |
| 5 | | 129. | 31 | x | Verio, Inc. |
| 6 | | 12.1 | 31 | x | AT&T ITS |
| 7 | | 12.1 | 32 | x-- | AT&T ITS |
| 8 | | 12.1 | 31 | x-- | AT&T ITS |
| 9 | | 12.1 | 33 | x-- | AT&T ITS |
| 10 | | 12.1 | 31 | x-- | AT&T ITS |
| 11 | | 12.1 | 31 | x-- | *********** |
| 12 | | 12.1 | 44 | --x | *********** |
| 13 | | 216. | 47 | x--- | *********** |
| 14 | | 216. | 46 | x | *********** |
-----------------------------------------------------

Report for My_Current_Website

Analysis: My_Current_Website was found in 19 hops (TTL=106).
It is a HTTP server (running Microsoft-IIS/5.0).

------------------------------------------------------|
| Hop | %Loss | IP A | ms | Graph | Network |
------------------------------------------------------|
| 0 | | 161. | | | Verio, Inc. |
| 1 | | 161. | 0 | x | Verio, Inc. |
| 2 | | 161. | 0 | x- | Verio, Inc. |
| 3 | | 129. | 0 | x | Verio, Inc. |
| 4 | | 129. | 31 | x- | Verio, Inc. |
| 5 | | 204. | 31 | x- | UUNET Techno|
| 6 | | 152. | 31 | x-- | UUNET Techno|
| 7 | | 152. | 31 | x-- | UUNET Techno|
| 8 | | 152. | 94 | -x- | UUNET Techno|
| 9 | | 152. | 94 | -x- | UUNET Techno|
| 10 | | 152. | 98 | -x- | UUNET Techno|
| 11 | | 152. | 96 | x | UUNET Techno|
| 12 | | 157. | 100 | -x- | UUNET Techno|
| 13 | | 66.5 | 94 | -x- | ************|
| 14 | | 216. | 113 | -x | ************|
| 15 | | 216. | 119 | -x | ************|
| 16 | 10 | 216. | 116 | -x | ************|
| 17 | | 216. | 111 | -x | ************|
| 18 | | 139. | 113 | -x-- | ************|
| 19 | | 139. | 116 | x- | ************|
------------------------------------------------------

to test your website speed, try to upload some big files (30megs?) to the server and go download in different times a day (peak time, normal time, night..) to see how high is the transmitting speed near the end of the files. That will show you what's the upstream/top upstream your host is giving you (and your website).
Make sure you have an as fast as possible downstream
to avoid underestimate your host.. eh... downloading with AOL internet and blame your host for giving you a 5KB upstreak is ot fair. :D

ML

your site's got nice ping when you ping it within the U.S. does not mean that's the ping you always get when pinging it elsewhere (Asia.. Europe..?)

you can always try pinging with the ping <IP address> command from your Windows command line, why buy VisualRoute just to ping?

ML

This could be due to several things. The speed of your hosting provider really can't be judged by how fast you can get to it. The best test would be from multiple locations (ie,.. your desktop, several different starting points). You may hit a speed bump from one location because it goes through a network that might be having issues at the time of your test. This in most cases has nothing to do with your provider or their network.
-Dan

Thanks everyone.

What you are basicly saying is with the data I collected, there is no way to really tell.

I would have to get an account with my new hosting provider and evaluate it by up/down/loading large files in a timing test. And even then, if somewhere (not the hosting companies fault) there is a traffic bottle neck, the results could be wrong anyways.

Is there any data I could ask my new hosting company to provide that would give me a general idea on the connection speed they have to the web?

Do most web hosting companies have basicly the same types of internet connections anyway?

Where is the slow-down when I have 100 visitors on my site at the same time? On my machine? On IIS? On my DB? On the connection to through the backbone?

How do I compare webhosting companies for speed?

Oh, almost all of my customers are US-based and that vituralroute info is free. It's fun, go try out your site.

First thing to do, is ask your potential provider about their network. What kind of connection do they have, who provides their cicuits etc. Like I said before, it's a good idea to test from multiple locations, so you can get a good idea of the all around speed.

Speed is not really that big of a factor when choosing the right provider (unless they just flat out suck), in most cases your visitors are not going to notice the difference, because they are limited by their own connection. Reliability/Redundancy is much more important.

Usually the slowdown when you have a lot of visitors, is going to be server related. Depending on what type of hosting you have, there could be up to 500 or more domains hosted on the same machine. Imagine if even a quarter of those sites are getting a good amount of hits all at once.

-Dan

http://webservices.cnet.com/ping/ Is good to 'screen' hosts. It will let you know if it's worthwhile looking into :D

Originally posted by Mester
http://webservices.cnet.com/ping/ Is good to 'screen' hosts. It will let you know if it's worthwhile looking into :D

Wow, great site.

thanks

No problem :D
NeoTrace is also a useful (but more cool that functional) tool you can use :)