Well, I finally got AnimeWallpapers.com moved to a new host. ServerCentral.net has a "virtual server" for $235 a month (quite a ways up from the $20/mo I was paying at aplushosting.com but it's a good deal for 200 GB). It includes 800 MB of disk space and allows 96 concurrent processes (41 of those may be Apache processes). Bandwidth is unlimited (although the process limit does cap that somewhat, but not if you know how to tune Apache and/or run a single-process web server like thttpd on a high port). I found their website by typing "true unlimited bandwidth" into Google.

With my huge bandwidth usage (200 GB per month), it was maxing out my Apache process limit (I didn't want to run a high port web server because some visitors can only see port 80 due to firewall), but I managed to get it back down by putting:

SendBufferSize 524288
KeepAlive Off

into httpd.conf. I've been told that the large buffer size allows Apache child processes to exit immediately when serving any file under 524288 bytes (all my files are smaller than that) because it passes the job of serving the file into the OS. This way, a 28.8k modem user won't tie up a process for a minute when downloading a 250KB file. As for KeepAlive, that will cause Apache to immediately close a connection after serving the file (instead of waiting up to 5 seconds for additional HTTP requests).

I'm told that the machine I'm on is a Dual Pentium III 800 (running FreeBSD) and they are at 4% CPU utilization. They are on Verio's network (same one that Digital Nation uses, I believe).

I've been with them two days and it looks good thus far! My thumbnail pages (e.g. http://www.animewallpapers.com/wallpapers/slayers/ ) load in a split-second from my university computer lab. Just got an e-mail from the salesperson tonight asking me how things were working, too.

Are you allowed to patch apache? You can probably improve performance much more by applying the SGI patches.

I can't modify the Apache executable (every virtual server shares the same one). I don't have priviledges to bind low ports (<1024) either; if I did, I could run a non-forking server like thttpd and get around the process limit altogether.

In terms of influencing Apache's behavior, all I can do is to modify httpd.conf.

One "hack" I could do if I had some time to spend is to write an Apache module that hands the open accepted file descriptor to a slightly hacked thttpd over an AF_UNIX socket and then close the file descriptor - this would free up the Apache child immediately and would be just as good as running thttpd natively, if I'm not mistaken. I might actually look into that later, if my site grows to a point when the SendBufferSize and KeepAlive is not adequate anymore.

(I wonder why the people who programmed the virtual server don't allow the virtual root accounts to bind low ports. They have their own IP addresses, after all...)

This sounds too good to be true - 'Unlimited' bandwidth? So if I go over there and use 2000 gigs a month they won't charge me more?

I'll believe it when I see it. :D

Went to their site & saw nothing about "virtual server" :( Maybe you use the custom plan. But i happen to check their control panel screen shot and it looks like a cobalt RAQ's.

The traceroute do shows that they are on Verio network. Do keep us informed of your bandwidth usage & their performance.

One thing is if you indeed uses 200GB a month, they will be losing lots of money.

DJ

Why not get a dedicated server - at that price?

Just an update: everything's going great so far with this host. I have a perl script running on another machine that checks animewallpapers.com uptime every 5 minutes and I haven't seen any downtime with it.

My visitors can download fast from my site too; try it yourself, go to http://www.animewallpapers.com/wallpapers/slayers/ and click on any one of the 1024x768 links to see how fast the big image downloads.

mkaufman: I don't get a dedicated server at this price because I haven't seen any reputable hosts that offer unlimited bandwidth with dedicated servers. I could get two RaQ3s from tera-byte.com and rackshack.net and load balance them, but that limits me to 250 GB of bandwidth per month (I'll exceed that if my site gets more popular, and I'm planning to) and is more complicated to setup.