Hi,

I'm searching for a new host. As my main audience is located in Europe I've been using VisualRoute to ping/trace several US based hosting companies (they're cheaper and I get better pings than to European servers). The average I get is 220~250, but pinging to www.abovenet.com this value gets slashed to 120... and that's an huge difference. ;)
Although I am aware that the server where my site might be located has less bandwidth or whatever, it still is a reasonable indicator (not being any kind of guru).

From what I've realized visiting the correspondent site, Abovenet/MFN is a carrier/datacenter/co-location company.

Now for what I need: where or how can I get a list of hosting companies connected directly to or in this company's data center where I can subscribe an hosting plan?

But, if you do know an affordable european hosting company that "speaks" english I welcome your comments or suggestions.

Thanks.
Best wishes and a sunshiny day to you.
:cool:

kdawebservices.com...Awesome host in the UK...

ABrazell

Originally posted by abrazell
kdawebservices.com...Awesome host in the UK...


Absolutely, couldn't agree with you more.
They host some very high traffic sites with awesome download times.

I know Karl from KDAWebServices for quite a while now, and I can vouch for his technical knowledge. He is also a friendly and very nice guy.

Note: I am in no way affiliated with KDAWebServices.

Regards
Jim

Originally posted by abrazell
kdawebservices.com...Awesome host in the UK...

ABrazell

It's not in the UK. And unfortunately 260ms pings... :(

But thanks for your reply. :)

Karl is located in the UK, his servers are (some at least) US-based. I think he may now have some UK-based servers too.

I get about 130ms pings to kda... and 166ms pings to abovenet.com (from South London, UK). It all depends on where you are, which backbones the route takes, and whether the backbone providers are having a good day, etc, etc.

And ping is really a very poor measure of performance -- I get far better "real" performance (ftp upload/download, mail download, site responsiveness) from US-based servers with pings in the range 130-160ms than from UK-based providers with pings a third of this or less.

Too true Chris, ping is only a useful measure of performance for something that needs to be as real time as possible, like online game servers, as ping is only a measure of the latency of the connection.

We get about 120ms from Licnolnshire, UK on our ISDN, but it does vary by where you are and your connection. At the moment we don't have any UK servers but that will change soon.

You might try Site5. They are located in NAC which has very good connectivity through to Europe:

Note the times on the last hop - very good. Now all of these are servers on the net, not from someone's home - so you'll have some additional time on top of that.

Here's some traceroutes from various countries:
traceroute to meltdown.site5.com (216.118.109.201), 32 hops max, 38 byte packets
1 g4-1-0-3.c7513.science.belnet.net (193.190.199.69) 0.991 ms
2 g1-1.c12410.science.belnet.net (193.191.254.9) 0.498 ms
3 g6-0.c12008.brussels.belnet.net (193.190.197.181) 0.308 ms
4 p1-0.c7206vxr.london.belnet.net (193.191.254.22) 5.635 ms
5 core1.ltn.nac.net (195.66.224.94) 10.937 ms
6 a9-0-0-245.msfc1.oct.nac.net (209.123.11.217) 77.792 ms
7 216.118.109.201 (216.118.109.201) 77.740 ms

France
traceroute to meltdown.site5.com (216.118.109.201), 64 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 enst-free.enst.fr (137.194.2.253) 0.272 ms 0.253 ms 0.330 ms
2 telehouse-3.routers.proxad.net (213.228.3.3) 1.344 ms 1.721 ms 1.197 ms
3 blackd-cbv-2-a6.routers.proxad.net (213.228.3.22) 2.945 ms 2.484 ms 1.973 ms
4 Vlan208.msfc2.Paris2.teleglobe.net (195.219.53.97) 3.276 ms 1.781 ms 1.849 ms
5 if-3-0.core1.Paris2.teleglobe.net (195.219.15.161) 1.971 ms 1.631 ms 1.559 ms
6 if-8-0.core1.Frankfurt2.teleglobe.net (195.219.15.206) 10.610 ms 11.164 ms 10.984 ms
7 if-10-0.core3.NewYork.Teleglobe.net (66.110.8.154) 90.612 ms 90.881 ms 90.635 ms
8 if-6-0.core2.NewYork.Teleglobe.net (64.86.83.157) 206.094 ms 104.591 ms 150.745 ms
9 if-4-0.bb8.NewYork.Teleglobe.net (66.110.8.130) 90.740 ms 90.806 ms 92.106 ms
10 ix-8-0-1.bb8.NewYork.Teleglobe.net (207.45.198.74) 84.343 ms 84.443 ms 84.457 ms
11 0.so-6-1-0.XL1.NYC9.ALTER.NET (152.63.22.226) 84.493 ms 85.085 ms 84.559 ms
12 0.so-7-0-0.XR1.NYC9.ALTER.NET (152.63.23.138) 84.564 ms 84.466 ms 84.542 ms
13 181.at-1-1-0.XR1.NYC1.ALTER.NET (152.63.27.102) 84.494 ms 84.688 ms 84.783 ms
14 507.ATM6-0.GW7.NYC1.ALTER.NET (152.63.25.81) 84.660 ms 84.791 ms 84.762 ms
15 nac-nyc-gw1.customer.alter.net (157.130.9.142) 100.260 ms 100.116 ms 96.578 ms
16 216.118.109.201 (216.118.109.201) 98.747 ms 95.486 ms 86.750 ms

Germany:
traceroute to meltdown.site5.com (216.118.109.201), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 fe0-0r0.ffm1.de.carpe.net (212.96.130.129) 1.093 ms 0.945 ms 1.012 ms
2 frankfurt41.de.eqip.net (195.206.67.65) 1.745 ms 1.693 ms 1.649 ms
3 frankfurt5.de.eqip.net (195.206.64.89) 1.984 ms 2.135 ms 1.913 ms
4 frankfurt50.de.eqip.net (195.206.65.149) 1.933 ms 2.061 ms 1.877 ms
5 frankfurt55.de.eqip.net (195.90.66.41) 6.168 ms 3.165 ms 4.702 ms
6 london55.gb.eqip.net (195.90.66.74) 16.376 ms 16.285 ms 16.098 ms
7 london50.gb.eqip.net (195.90.66.137) 16.406 ms 16.908 ms 18.717 ms
8 london2.gb.eqip.net (195.90.64.26) 21.752 ms 20.384 ms 17.017 ms
9 195.206.65.134 (195.206.65.134) 21.014 ms 17.239 ms 18.416 ms
10 nac-gw.thdo.bbc.co.uk (212.58.255.178) 95.974 ms 99.317 ms 96.17 ms
11 a9-0-0-245.msfc1.oct.nac.net (209.123.11.217) 107.02 ms 106.048 ms 98.549 ms
12 216.118.109.201 (216.118.109.201) 98.54 ms 97.102 ms 108.264 ms

UK (this is a server, not fair, look how few jumps!)
Tracing the route to meltdown.site5.com (216.118.109.201)

1 telehouse3-telehouse1-100.1anetworks.net (193.243.177.10) 0 msec 0 msec 0 msec
2 core1.ltn.nac.net (195.66.224.94) [AS 5459] 72 msec 68 msec 72 msec
3 a9-0-0-245.msfc1.oct.nac.net (209.123.11.217) [AS 8001] 80 msec 68 msec 80 msec
4 meltdown.site5.com (216.118.109.201) [AS 8001] 72 msec 72 msec 68 msec


UK
traceroute to meltdown.site5.com (216.118.109.201), 30 hops max, 38 byte packets
1 213.165.128.129 (213.165.128.129) 0.681 ms 0.567 ms 0.598 ms
2 510.cr11.th.rtr.uk.netscalibur.net (195.157.6.37) 1.090 ms 0.889 ms 0.805 ms
3 gige2-0.br1.th.rtr.uk.netscalibur.net (195.157.7.97) 1.294 ms 0.816 ms 0.761 ms
4 core1.ltn.nac.net (195.66.224.94) 1.168 ms 1.241 ms 0.895 ms
5 a9-0-0-245.msfc1.oct.nac.net (209.123.11.217) 72.735 ms 72.841 ms 73.167 ms
6 216.118.109.201 (216.118.109.201) 72.529 ms 72.643 ms 72.800 ms


Not bad at all... which is why I host and co-locate there.

Use this tool - http://www.tracert.com/cgi-bin/trace.pl - not all the hosts work, but enough do and its useful.