I already have a co-location via a partner for free. Although I get hit by Cotennet.Com and really pushing me to host with him.

If I had no host or I need to have major traffic I would not use the freebie I would have. I would purely feel bad for stealing bandwidth.

I would go with VitalStream.Com for about $150.00 as of (last time I checked).

Cotennet.Com (http://Cotennet.Com) is giving out a 135$/month deal and they say they run DS3 lines this and that... Well the guy made it sound like he is "THE BEST" and asked me to go check his data center out.

I personally had a bad experience with Serverrack.net on bandwidth. I've got a SuperMicro server right now and I also look into hosting about 200 Streams of Audio... So I need the burst...

VitalStream has the following as their Bandwidth Literature:


The NetCluster Network is built around gigabit interfaces on all core equipment, and connected over multiple backbones, of which we have provisioned multiple OC3 and OC12 (622 mbps) connections. The Network is scalable in that additional connectivity can be added as needed.

Multiple OC3 and OC12 fiber optic connections to multiple tier-one service providers combined with quality equipment from Cisco, Alteon and Extreme Networks give the NetCluster Network the performance required to meet the demands of digital broadcasting.


Cotennet.Com Specs are:


Full-featured NOC with 24/7 on-call monitoring
Complete N+1 Cooling, UPS and Fire
Detection/Suppression
Redundant ISP topology implemented with Dual T3
BGP4
Cisco Switching Equipment
Dual homed topology with HSRP per customer VLAN
IDRP ready
Primary and Secondary DNS
Wire Speed Layer 2 and Layer 3 switches
No rate limiting


I just need your suggestion and I am not taking the 'web design' as a plus or minus because anyone can make a site look good and not have the back-end.

Thanks...

Visit both facilities and make a decision. :)
Drew

You might be right... I will tomorrow... Even though one is 1 hour away and the other is 10 minutes away....

I don't know if that will make a big difference...

One is 10$ / month cheaper. I just hope I don't get screwed again... I will be very very very angry... and I mean angry. I paid over 600$ for the colo previously and sat there empty. Now I am being charged extra because the lame colo company doesn't know how to do their accounting.

Lets face fact, the big one, if they've got multiple oc3's and 12's is probably fine for bandwidth, so you're fairly safe assuming you're not gonna run out of burst on there unless they do something to limit you. I'd ask if you could peek at the mrtg network graphs for the dual t3 provider and see how much they actually use, i mean how many mbps will 200 streams push realistically? Probably not that much :)

Originally posted by porcupine
Lets face fact, the big one, if they've got multiple oc3's and 12's is probably fine for bandwidth, so you're fairly safe assuming you're not gonna run out of burst on there unless they do something to limit you. I'd ask if you could peek at the mrtg network graphs for the dual t3 provider and see how much they actually use, i mean how many mbps will 200 streams push realistically? Probably not that much :)

Someone in the past mentioned that... I asked the previous data center for the logs or graphs and they said that they don't have stuff like that. Some hosts they actually display it to the public..

Right now I am facing a nightmare in the O/S decision. I have the latest copy of RedHat 7.3 and installed it.

I did a "server" mode install. It installed sooo much junk (rpms) I was shocked. Well the regular server mode now installs about or over 500 or so...

I installed another one and this one took me awhile. I did a selective install in server mode and I had to unclick sooo many addons my hand started hurting...

What I have noticed is that RedHat is becoming more and more like Windows... Everything GUI. I know of 2 major hosting companies running RedHat and not sure what version one of them is but the 2nd company I know for sure that they run RedHat 7.1.

Anyone Out there... that ran 7.1 and also tried 7.3 see major difference? Are they almost the same. Rumor also has it that they came out with 7.3 from 7.2 because Suse had their 8.0 come out...

Some suggested Debian some suggest FreeBSD but I am used to RedHat's file structure and ways. I also ran a Cobalt RAQ system with a Redhat 6.2 modified kernel that Sun did...

For the past 2 days I've been searching and searching for solution.

I just want a web server where I can host few of my own sites and maybe few clients here and there to cover the cost. I am not looking into making a living out of it.

I thought of hosting on Windows based but on my linux box I got/get so many IIS exploits and hits it's not even funny.

Update ---
Now that I look deeper into setup and other hosting companies.. they have just as much junk as I do....

Here is a sample of what they dump in every user's directory excluding some extras I added via their Cpanel.. like spam filters and some shopping cart via Interchange or Agora they have built in...:


../
.Xdefaults
.addressbook
.addressbook.lu
.autorespond/
.bash_history
.bash_logout
.bash_profile
.bashrc
.cgiinfo/
.cpanel -> /usr/local/et
.dns
.entropybanner/
.filter
.forwarders/
.ftpaccts
.htmltemplates/
.htpasswds/
.lastlogin
.listlogs/
.lists/
.mailboxlist
.mainaddr
.neomail/
.neomail-XXXXX/
.neomail-XXXXX/
.neomailXXXXXXX/
.pinerc
.popbull
.procmailrc
.searchblurb
.searchindex
.spamassassin/
.stores
.trash/
.webalizer-1
.webalizer-2