I'm one of the hapless victims of a well known Aussie unlimited everything hosting company, and I'm looking for a new host. You honest Aussie hosts really ought to get them shut down, or you'll get tarred with the same brush.

Based on reports here I'm considering site5.com and dot5hosting.com.

But I'd like to hear from current (preferably unaffiliated) users of their services.

I'm in Asia and most of our site visitors come from Asia, and the site5.com site is a bit on the slow-loading side in this location.

I read the posts about them being willing to clear bottlenecks, so maybe their connections could be polished to Asia. Anyone in Asia host with them? Gimme your urls to traceroute please.

Dot5hosting are a bit cheaper, but new, and I was quite shocked to see the number of errors in basic English on their Terms of Service. Maybe English is their second language, but I think they are UK based, so why the poor grammar, and lack of attention to detail? (Their WHOIS registration mentions 'fasthosts' too. Gulp.)

I Emailed both companies yesterday with a list of questions, and I'll base my choice on their responses and your honest comments.

Thanks! :)

Originally posted by CMJC
I'm one of the hapless victims of a well known Aussie unlimited everything hosting company, and I'm looking for a new host. You honest Aussie hosts really ought to get them shut down, or you'll get tarred with the same brush.
Name them in this forum or PM their name to me, please. :)

Yes name them in the forum or pm me also, i would love to know.

Sorry for possibly hijacking your thread. :)

Site5.com is the more established company. Dot5hosting.com has only recently commenced, and that's not really good or bad. The 2 providers are totally different etc.

C'mon Aussie Bob! Name the worst Aussie Hoster and you'll be right.

Now let's hear from people who actually host with site5.com or dot5hosting.com please, so that I can find an honest host in the shark pond :)

shark pond..


Pond's dont have a good reputation in Australia - especially that if the *BIG* pond :angry:

Too many 5's if you ask me.

Originally posted by CMJC
C'mon Aussie Bob! Name the worst Aussie Hoster and you'll be right.
Could you please PM their name to me?

Aussie if you are being serious and don't know its h o s t o n c e , and if you were joking around the your not helping this guy out at all by choosing a host

Anyways it seem everyone here simply loves dot5hosting and that I have read so many great stories with him and no bad stories, so I would try them out

hostonce is aussie? wow. and yes the pond is a very dirty word here in OZ land.

aside from the froggies.

Seven replies so far and not one from anybody who actually uses Site5 or dot5hosting !

Strange.

Yes, I've seen the couple of threads by the people who've been with dot5 for a few hours, and weeks, but such promotion is meaningless.

I emailed both companies two days ago, *no reply from site5 yet*, and dot5 only accept cheques drawn on non-US banks *if the value is over $300.* (Bank charges for cashing them are about $10).

Yeh!

So nobody here has used either of these hosters for more than a few weeks?

Tap...tap...

Originally posted by vibehosts
Aussie if you are being serious and don't know its h o s t o n c e , and if you were joking around the your not helping this guy out at all by choosing a host.
Sorry, I was being totally serious. HostOnce.com, ahhhhh, now I see. :) Sorry for the interruption. :blush:

Originally posted by Richard Ward
Too many 5's if you ask me. We feel the exact same way. :rolleyes:

Originally posted by Site5-Matt
We feel the exact same way. :rolleyes:


LOL .. This was brought up the other day and I noticed F5Hosting.com(i think thats it) also out there.. :laugh:

Well, it will be very hard to find anyone who has been with dot5 for more than a few weeks, because they have been online for about two months

I haven't dealt with an "5" hosting companies. I have been with three providers and have had different experienced with each.

I wish I could help ya...

Site5 CEO posted:
'We feel the exact same way. "


__________________
Matt Lightner
mlightner@site5.com
Site5.com - The Future of Web Hosting.
http://www.site5.com



I Emailed some questions to you Matt at this Email address *2 days ago*, and I still have not had a reply from you. Dot5hosting have replied. Please check your Email. I'm a serious prospective customer. If you have time to browse these fora, you have time to answer my Email.

Out of those 2 i would go with Site5, mainly because site5 is a established and reliable provider of shared webhosting and servers, i have a few cpanel licenses with them, i highly recommend Site5 :agree:

Originally posted by CMJC
I Emailed some questions to you Matt at this Email address *2 days ago*, and I still have not had a reply from you. Dot5hosting have replied. Please check your Email. I'm a serious prospective customer. If you have time to browse these fora, you have time to answer my Email. Dear Sir,

I can assure you that there are no tickets in our system that have been open for 48 hours, nor even 24 hours. Most sales inquiries are responded to within a matter of a couple of hours--if not minutes. If you send me the ticket ID number that you received when emailing our sales department, I will pull up the ticket history for you and see why you didn't receive a response yet.

If you didn't receive an auto-response from our ticket system with an ID for your request, that indicates that our mail server did not receive your message. I would recommend re-sending your request to sales@site5.com.

Also note that if you sent your request to my personal email address, that may be the reason you didn't yet receive a response. Sales inquiries should not be sent directly to me, but rather to the sales address listed on our website. That's not to say that I won't answer one if I see it come into my inbox, but I guarantee you that you will get a much quicker response time by sending them through our tracking system. At this time, I don't see your request in my inbox (and believe me I have looked). It may have been accidentally deleted (I get hundreds of emails per day--it's very easy for an email to "slip between the cracks" if it's not sent through our tracking system), or for one reason or another, I may not have received it.

Whatever the reason is, if you re-send your request to sales@site5.com, someone will most certainly send you a response before the end of the business day.

Look forward to hearing from you!

Matt: Unless I'm wrong, I think CMJC *e-mailed* you. That's a big difference from submitting a support ticket. Furthermore, I believe CMJC sent an e-mail to your address at mlightner@site5.com, not to sales.

CMJC: I've only used dot5 for several days, so I'm not really qualified to give any opinions. But, their pre-sales support is good, and support, itself, is okay.

The funny thing is that I'm almost convinced that their pre-sales department doesn't work weekends. For example, I e-mailed Chris with an enquiry around Friday afternoon, and I didn't receive a reply until Monday morning. By then, I was already a customer, so his reply to my pre-sales question was rather useless...

As for the reliability of their server... It's been quite stable, except yesterday, I received a notice from site monitoring service that I use:

--------------------------

Error message: Illegal HTTP header
Problems detected while checking your server - xxx.com.
Server type: HTTP
Server Port: 80
Current server date/time is 09/02/2002 18:52:25

-----------------------------

And then:

---------------------------

This monitored server: xxx.com - HTTP came back on-line.
Earlier, we detected that it had failed.
Estimated downtime: 60 min
Current server date/time is 09/02/2002 19:54:01

------------------------------

Granted, I use a *free* site monitoring service that checks my site once every hour, so most likely, it had caught the server during a momentary lapse or something. I'm *positive* the site wasn't down an hour (I'm not even sure if it was really down), because the moment I received the first notice, I checked out my website, and it loaded perfectly fine.

All in all, my experience with dot5 has been positive (hey! I'm still with them!), with a few hassles (mentioned above -- pre-sales, subdomains, etc.).

Good luck in your search for a webhost!

mangguo

Originally posted by mangguo
Matt: Unless I'm wrong, I think CMJC *e-mailed* you.That's what I had assumed as well.

That's a big difference from submitting a support ticket.Not at Site5. All of our customer service email addresses (sales department, shared and dedicated support, network issues, abuse reports) all go through a central tracking system. When a customer sends an email to one of those addresses, it is automatically assigned a request ID by our system, and the customer receives an auto-response with that request ID number. That way, if a customer (or prospective customer) has any follow-up questions or needs to refer to a previous request, they can easily do so by sending us the request ID.

Furthermore, I believe CMJC sent an e-mail to your address at mlightner@site5.com, not to sales.That's what I gathered as well. Unfortunately my personal email address does not go through our tracking system, and like I said above, I get hundreds of emails each day. If someone sends a sales inquiry directly to me, there is a chance that it will be overlooked (not because I don't care--but just because I'm human).

Also remember that this past weekend was a holiday weekend in the US. I hardly think it's fair to chastise a company because they didn't reply to a sales inquiry over a holiday. We were, of course, answering sales inquiries this past weekend--but not all companies do that, and you should definitely take that into consideration when contacting a company.

Not at Site5. <snip></snip>

Ah, I see. Thank you for explaining.

That's what I gathered as well. Unfortunately my personal email address does not go through our tracking system, and like I said above, I get hundreds of emails each day. If someone sends a sales inquiry directly to me, there is a chance that it will be overlooked (not because I don't care--but just because I'm human).

Yes, I understand this, too, but if you're on this board, and you're here answering pre-sales questions, it doesn't make sense (to me) that you're using a personal e-mail address that doesn't go through your company's tracking system. As an employee, and by answering pre-sales questions, you're doing your job, so why are you using a personal e-mail address in your signature? Why not use your company's sales@site5.com or something? Furthermore, your e-mail address ends with @site5.com, and isn't it pretty obvious from the getgo that potential customers *will* confuse your personal e-mail address with sales? To me, it doesn't make sense that the customer is penalized (ie. their e-mail is not answered) just because they couldn't tell the difference between a personal@site5.com e-mail address and sales@site5.com. Maybe you could make this clear in the future? Or append something to your signature?

Also remember that this past weekend was a holiday weekend in the US. I hardly think it's fair to chastise a company because they didn't reply to a sales inquiry over a holiday.

And here, again, we have the American-egocentricity coming in. I don?t have anything against Americans (we are, in fact, neighbors), but why should I know that the US was having a holiday weekend? It?s not like I have *both* the American calendar sitting right next to my Canadian one. Furthermore, didn?t somebody, somewhere, make a claim that the Internet never sleeps?

We were, of course, answering sales inquiries this past weekend--but not all companies do that, and you should definitely take that into consideration when contacting a company.

Hmmm, I?ll remember that next time. Thanks. And I apologize for kind of getting off track. There are just some things about webhosting companies that boggles me...

mangguo

i've been with dot5 for a month now... it's just a very basic one page site for a client, but havent noticed any problems with them.

only thing i *dont* like is that they dont have a recurring monthly charge setup. all the other hosts i've been with have had this automatically done no problem, but dot5 wants you to input your credit card/billing info every month or your account will be suspended and eventually deleted as a "security feature." they send you the link in an email... i'd hate to see what happens if someone goes on vacation for the first week of the month and forgets to pay!

of course they do encourage you to buy annually to avoid this. :rolleyes:

RIPE: Yipes! Thanks for letting us know. I'm a dot5 customer, and haven't had my first monthly charge yet, so thanks for the forewarning! I suppose it's a good thing though, that they're not storing our credit card number somewhere...

mangguo

mangguo: i guess that is a benefit, altho (maybe i am lazy) i would rather not have to "sign up" all over again every month.

I use Site5 Myself and so far I never had a problem. They get back to you right away if there are any questions. I believe their servers are based in NJ USA. I could be wrong...

Now as far as bottleneck. Well that's up to the ISP that run the links between the ISPs is Asia. I can't image site5 telling the ISP to increase bandwidth to Asia b/c of a new potential customer. Once again I could be wrong…

John

This is the domain that is hosted on site5 www.retropunk.com

Originally posted by mangguo
Yes, I understand this, too, but if you're on this board, and you're here answering pre-sales questions, it doesn't make sense (to me) that you're using a personal e-mail address that doesn't go through your company's tracking system. As an employee, and by answering pre-sales questions, you're doing your job, so why are you using a personal e-mail address in your signature? Why not use your company's sales@site5.com or something? Furthermore, your e-mail address ends with @site5.com, and isn't it pretty obvious from the getgo that potential customers *will* confuse your personal e-mail address with sales? To me, it doesn't make sense that the customer is penalized (ie. their e-mail is not answered) just because they couldn't tell the difference between a personal@site5.com e-mail address and sales@site5.com. Maybe you could make this clear in the future? Or append something to your signature?Indeed that makes sense. In fact, I was considering doing just that earlier this morning, and you will see that I have now modified my signature so that is clear where questions should be sent. Hopefully the WHT mods won't have a problem with this change; I know people are really touchy about what you can and can't put in your signature (I have been yelled at about mine in the past :rolleyes: ).

As far as customers being penalized for emailing me directly--that's not the policy; it just happened that way in this case. I know for a fact that there are people on this board who have emailed me directly and received quick replies. It's just not as reliable as an email tracking system--for obvious reasons.

And here, again, we have the American-egocentricity coming in. I don?t have anything against Americans (we are, in fact, neighbors), but why should I know that the US was having a holiday weekend? It?s not like I have *both* the American calendar sitting right next to my Canadian one.lol. You sound exactly like our operations manager--who also happens to live in Canada. If you read my post, I didn't say that we weren't working yesterday, I just pointed out that it was a holiday weekend. Just because you don't know about it doesn't mean that it's not a holiday here. I'm sure there are some exclusive Canadian holidays, the dates of which I don't know (Boxing day, for example? :D ). If I were doing business with a Canadian company, I wouldn't expect them to be working on those days--even if I found out about them after the fact. I do, however, think that if a company is going to take a week day off, that it might be wise for them to notify their customers in some way (even if it is a holiday in their country).

Furthermore, didn?t somebody, somewhere, make a claim that the Internet never sleeps?Quite right. But that doesn't mean that the sales email gets answered 24/7. Sales and billing issues always take a back seat to support. Of course support gets done every day of the week, however that doesn't mean that sales does too. It's not always the same people doing everything. We don't expect our systems administrators to field billing questions.

Hmmm, I?ll remember that next time. Thanks. And I apologize for kind of getting off track. There are just some things about webhosting companies that boggles me...As a general rule, I think web hosting companies are held to a much higher standard than almost any other kind of company when it comes to customer service expectations. Take our hardware vendors for example. They clock out at 5 PM on business days and don't even come in on Saturday and Sunday--even the technical support departments. What happens if you have a hardware failure in a server on Saturday morning? Are you going to leave them a message and wait until 8 AM on Monday morning to get the server back online?

If we tried to pull something like that, you can rest assured we would have a few less customers come Monday morning. Web hosting companies are almost required to have people handling support 24x7 (which I think is good). But to say that there is something wrong with a hosting company not answering sales questions on a weekend (be it a holiday weekend or a normal weekend) is a little bit unreasonable, I think. That's just my 2 cents (USD that is...which equates to over 3 cents Canadian. I guess my opinion is worth more since I'm in the US :stickout).

Anyway, that discussion probably warrants its own thread.

P.S. Your apostrophes are coming out as question marks here (I.E. "didn?t" instead of "didn't")... probably the result of your çràzy Canadian keyboard. ;)

Matt: LOL. Yeah, our Canadian buck is worth jack. Call me cheap, but before I signed up with dot5, I got them to give me a 10% discount so that when the monthly price was converted to Canadian currency, it would still be less than $10 CAD. LOL.

Anyway, thanks for clarifying the support/sales issue. It is true (as you mentioned) that webhosts get way more flack, probably because they're on the web, and customers find it easier to be "rude" and/or complain.

mangguo

mangguo:

haha! i'm in canada too... but i never thought of doing that before! (re: converting to CDN)

Originally posted by Site5-Matt

Also note that if you sent your request to my personal email address, that may be the reason you didn't yet receive a response.

The post you replied to quite clearly states that *I DID Email your personal Email address*, so why waste time wondering if I used your Ticket Desk.

Your personal Email address was the only one in your signature.

When I sent the Email to you, I also entered a cc to your sales dept, but decided to delete that option to see if the CEO was on the ball or not.

It is not a holiday in Asia where I am. Do you not have an autoresponder set up on your personal Email to deal with enquiries you solicit through these fora, when you are at the beach?

Incidentally, I did the same to dot5hosting and their CEO passed on my Email to his sales dept, who have since answered my questions, twice.

I've been running tracerts on site5 and dot5hosting for the last two days, and there's a worrying amount of DNS error and fake DNS warnings in the readout from site5 to me here in Asia. 18 hops, 17 have DNS errors in them, and my current dodgy Aussie hosts tracerts are quicker than site5's! (ie. Current host: 15 hops maxm 90ms. two DNS warnings. Site5: 18 hops maxm 198ms, DNS warnings on 17 hops. My current hosts server is in America like site5's.

If only my current host could improve the rest of their service.

I notice one lady posted that she reluctantly had to move her site from site5 because of poor routing and slow loading. I'd like to see this improved before I sign up.

Come on Matt, you're on the back-foot.

Strange thing is, both these hosts (site5 and dot5hosting) advertise profuelsy in this forum, yet so far only *ONE person* hosting with either has replied here. Clio and Sparrow's threads are invalid in my opinion.

I've re-sent my Email to *you* Matt, please don't delete it.

I don't expect infallibility, I make plenty of mistakes, I'm just looking for some honesty and integrity, along with adequate delivery of advertised products.

Once bitten...

CMJC

Originally posted by jtrovato
I use Site5 Myself and so far I never had a problem. They get back to you right away if there are any questions. I believe their servers are based in NJ USA. I could be wrong...

Now as far as bottleneck. Well that's up to the ISP that run the links between the ISPs is Asia. I can't image site5 telling the ISP to increase bandwidth to Asia b/c of a new potential customer. Once again I could be wrong…

John

This is the domain that is hosted on site5 www.retropunk.com

Thank you John, I'll monitor your site over the next few days to see how it performs.

How long have you been with site5?

Where do you view your site from mostly?
I see some Japanese script.

Most of our visitors are in Asia and Europe.

You are mistaken, site5 can do alot about the routing of their delivery, if they wish to.

Here's the tracert readout I've just done on your site as accessed here in Asia.

It's NOT impressive!

retropunk.com resolves to 216.118.105.11

Do not contact either Los Nettos (ln.net) or Centergate Research Group (centergate.com) based on the results of this traceroute.

3 130.152.80.30 180.389 ms isi-1-lngw2-pos.ln.net [AS226] Los Nettos origin AS
4 198.172.117.161 224.354 ms ge-2-3-0.a02.lsanca02.us.ra.verio.net [AS2914] Verio
5 129.250.29.132 160.836 ms ge-6-0-0.r02.lsanca01.us.bb.verio.net [AS2914] Verio
6 129.250.2.187 213.745 ms p16-1-1-0.r21.snjsca04.us.bb.verio.net [AS2914] Verio
7 129.250.5.133 198.463 ms p16-0-0-0.r02.chcgil01.us.bb.verio.net [AS2914] Verio
8 129.250.2.220 141.465 ms p16-5-0-0.r01.chcgil01.us.bb.verio.net [AS2914] Verio
9 129.250.5.103 179.630 ms p16-2-0-0.r02.stngva01.us.bb.verio.net [AS2914] Verio
10 129.250.5.47 269.430 ms p16-7-0-0.r02.mclnva02.us.bb.verio.net [AS2914] Verio
11 *

Originally posted by CMJC


The post you replied to quite clearly states that *I DID Email your personal Email address*, so why waste time wondering if I used your Ticket Desk.

Your personal Email address was the only one in your signature.

When I sent the Email to you, I also entered a cc to your sales dept, but decided to delete that option to see if the CEO was on the ball or not. I have modified my signature to avoid any further confusion on this issue. It should now be clear that sales inquiries should be sent to sales@site5.com and not to me.

For future reference, Site5's contact information can be found here:
http://www.site5.com/support/contact.html

Also, I don't think that this method of testing a company's reliability is a very accurate one. You wouldn't email Gabriel Murphy if you had a question about ordering at Communitech.net (even if you did have his personal email address). That's not to say that I'm anything like Gabriel Murphy, or that Site5 is anything like Communitech. My point is that you would do well to judge a company's response times by sending inquiries through the proper channels.
It is not a holiday in Asia where I am. Do you not have an autoresponder set up on your personal Email to deal with enquiries you solicit through these fora, when you are at the beach?When I post here, it is not to solicit inquiries. The reason I post here is because I enjoy participating in discussions relevant to the web hosting industry. In fact, it is against forum rules for me to include any advertisement for Site5 in my posts (although I do put Site5's URL in my signature, which is allowed). It's not my job to post here and try to push Site5's services. We have separate advertising that serves that purpose. Just because you see me browsing WHT or making a post does not mean that I am "working" per se (although as a general rule, if my eyes are open, I am working).

As far as me being at the beach--I think not. I worked close to 48 hours this past holiday weekend... including going Sunday night without any sleep at all.
Incidentally, I did the same to dot5hosting and their CEO passed on my Email to his sales dept, who have since answered my questions, twice.Rest assured that if you would have emailed our sales department, your inquiry would have also been answered by Site5 before today. Of course, we probably would have only responded once (I'm not sure if receiving two responses is a good or bad sign, personally). I'll say it again: you can't judge a company's response (or lack thereof) when you don't use the proper contact methods. It's not a fair analysis.

You did re-send your request to me this evening, and I responded to it personally before your post was made here.
I've been running tracerts on site5 and dot5hosting for the last two days, and there's a worrying amount of DNS error and fake DNS warnings in the readout from site5 to me here in Asia. 18 hops, 17 have DNS errors in them, and my current dodgy Aussie hosts tracerts are quicker than site5's! (ie. Current host: 15 hops maxm 90ms. two DNS warnings. Site5: 18 hops maxm 198ms, DNS warnings on 17 hops. My current hosts server is in America like site5's.If you send the result of a traceroute with your concerns to our sales department, we will be more than happy to look into the issue and see if we can offer any advice. We can also have our upstream (Network Access) look into the routing issue to see if there is a problem with the link that you are coming across (although I am not aware of any issues currently).
If only my current host could improve the rest of their service.If only. :)
I notice one lady posted that she reluctantly had to move her site from site5 because of poor routing and slow loading. I'd like to see this improved before I sign up.I'm not sure of the post of which you speak, but we recently made a major network upgrade which improved transfer speeds drastically. I am consistently able to download from our network at speeds in excess of 3.5 Mb/sec--which is about as fast as I have ever been able to get from anywhere on this connection.
Come on Matt, you're on the back-foot.If me overlooking a single email puts Site5 on the back foot in your book, then I sincerely apologize. I certainly don't make a point of ignoring email that comes to me; that would make no sense at all. There is a very good reason that we have a ticket tracking system in place: to prevent situations like this entirely. If you choose not to make use of that system for your inquiry, that's fine, we will still be more than happy to answer your request--however you can't expect a human to be as consistent as a machine when it comes to keeping track of things like this. :D
I've re-sent my Email to *you* Matt, please don't delete it.It was answered approximately 30 minutes before you made this post. :)
I don't expect infallibility, I make plenty of mistakes, I'm just looking for some honesty and integrity, along with adequate delivery of advertised products.Of course. We all make mistakes. And here I am openly admitting mine--surely you can find forgiveness for this simple oversight on my part. I have taken steps to ensure that this same confusion doesn't come up again, and have rectified this issue by responding to the re-send of your original email.

As far as adequate delivery of advertised products goes, that's something you need to determine yourself. You seem to me to be approaching this decision very cautiously (which isn't a bad thing by any means). I simply hope that your research leads you to choose the provider that will best suit your needs.

I wish you the best of luck in your research. If we can be of any further assistance or if you have any further questions, don't hesitate to contact us.

Thanks Matt, I finally received a reply to my Email to you.

I assure you that there was *no confusion* on my part in Emailing you directly by using the only Email in your signature here.

I was not testing the reliability of your Company, *I was testing you* to see if you are on the ball or not. You are here in this Forum, and I used the Email you presented here to ask YOU questions.

You dropped the ball, have admitted it, apologized, and eventually answered my questions. No points for efficiency, full marks for honesty. Forgiven! :)

You've misunderstood my remark about dot5hosting 'already replying, twice'. They didn't send their reply twice, they have replied to my first *AND my follow-up questions already*.

I appreciate your willingness to improve your routing, and I'll certainly send you some test traceroutes. Have a look at the one I just posted for one of your clients in this thread.

I got a similar result from one of the other urls you gave me too ( I'll keep them private of course.)

I'll gather more at different times of the day to help you improve your delivery to Asia. I'll send them later in the week.

Thanks for taking the time to answer here, as well as answering my re-sent Email.


Yes, I am cautious about obtaining a new host (with very good reason, as I mentioned in my Email to you), and I will diligently obtain all the information I need to make a wise choice THIS time.


CMJC

Duplicate post removed

Originally posted by CMJC
Thanks Matt, I finally received a reply to my Email to you.My pleasure. :)
I assure you that there was *no confusion* on my part in Emailing you directly by using the only Email in your signature here.

I was not testing the reliability of your Company, *I was testing you* to see if you are on the ball or not. [b]You are here in this Forum, and I used the Email you presented here to ask YOU questions.If you feel that's the best way to test a company, that's your call. There doesn't seem to be much else I can say to convince you that I don't think it's a very accurate indication of what you're trying to find out. But... you're free to do as you wish (and you obviously have).

You've misunderstood my remark about dot5hosting 'already replying, twice'. They didn't send their reply twice, they have replied to my first *AND my follow-up questions already*.Ah. I see. Well then that's certainly nice to hear. I would encourage you to test out our sales department as well--if a quick response time is one of your criterion.
I appreciate your willingness to improve your routing, and I'll certainly send you some test traceroutes. Have a look at the one I just posted for one of your clients in this thread. I did review that traceroute, and it doesn't seem to be something on our end. If you notice, by hop 3, you are already getting response times of 180 ms--which would indicate the latency is either at or before that hop. If you would like us to look into this further, please send (to sales@site5.com) a full traceroute (including all hops) to one of the site URLs that you have.
Thanks for taking the time to answer here, as well as answering my re-sent Email.No problem. I always do.

Originally posted by CMJC
...
CMJC FYI, you double posted that last message.

Yes, I'll collect several traceroutes and send them to you later this week.

By private Email to sales@site5.com so you can't lose it :)

Together with direct comparisons between my current host, site5, and dot5hosting, taken at the same time.

As you know better than I, one off traceroutes are not enough.

Though so far, (two days worth) my current host is giving the best traceroute readouts.

Btw. I didn't edit the traceroute of retropunk.com. I just copied and pasted the whole result as it appeared. It's not impressive.
Hope it improves soon.

Originally posted by CMJC
Btw. I didn't edit the traceroute of retropunk.com. I just copied and pasted the whole result as it appeared. It's not impressive.
Hope it improves soon. Your tracert program seems to be modified--note the little "do not contact XXX company about this" at the top. I would recommend downloading a program like ping plotter if you want a more reliable traceroute program. They should not start on hop 3--they should start on hop 1. Notice that in the traceroute you posted, by hop 3 you were already getting latency of over 180 ms (which is about where it ended up anyway). That would indicate that the latency is originating from a point well outside of our network, and even outside of Verio's network. That looks more like something that you will need to talk to your ISP about.

FYI, a traceroute of 180 ms isn't absolutely horrid. Granted, you can get much better, but that isn't going to give you poor transfers necessarily. NAC is a very well respected data center with an equally impressive network. I would be quite surprised if your connectivity to their network is anything less than impressive.

Anyway--please do send those reports to our sales dept. and someone will look over them for you.

Matt wrote:

"Notice that in the traceroute you posted, by hop 3 you were already getting latency of over 180 ms (which is about where it ended up anyway). That would indicate that the latency is originating from a point well outside of our network, and even outside of Verio's network. That looks more like something that you will need to talk to your ISP about. "

180ms was the shortest hop, the last was 250ms!

No, it's not my local ISP causing the slow link. I can be sure because, I'm running tests at the same time against all three hosts, and so far site5 is number three :(


Hope it improves soon.


I'm using an *online* traceroute plotter, not my own.
I'll send you the details with the traceroutes later in the week.

Originally posted by CMJC
180ms was the shortest hop, the last was 250ms!

No, it's not my local ISP causing the slow link. I can be sure because, I'm running tests at the same time against all three hosts, and so far site5 is number three :(

I'm using an *online* traceroute plotter, not my own.
I'll send you the details with the traceroutes later in the week. Yes--but the 180 ms hop was not anywhere near out network. It was quite far away--even before the traffic got on to ont of our upstream's backbone providers. Between there and our network, the additional latency was only about 70 ms. For more information about how traceroutes work and how to interpret the results, you might want to review this page:
http://www.pingplotter.com/tutorial/HowItWorks.html

I have been running traceroutes on my local system here, and for me, Site5 and dot5hosting are both around 80 ms (although dot5 seems to have ICMP replies disabled on their web server--so it is difficult to get an accurate result). For testing Site5, you can traceroute to meltdown.site5.com (as ICMP is disabled on site5.com as well).

Additionally, I just went to tracert.com and compared site5.com and dot5hosting.com and in almost all cases site5 was as fast as, if not faster than dot5--so it's really more a matter of where, exactly, the traffic is coming from that determines the response speed.

Matt Wrote:

"I just went to tracert.com and compared site5.com and dot5hosting.com and in almost all cases site5 was as fast as, if not faster than dot5--so it's really more a matter of where, exactly, the traffic is coming from that determines the response speed."

Not so Matt. What really matters is the route chosen between source and destination.

You are only testing within the same nation. A tiny distance.

*I'm testing halfway around the globe.*


Wait until I show you the traceroutes we are getting, and you'll see for yourself.


I hope you'll use the info to improve your routing to Asia.

You CAN do something about your downstream you know :)

CMJC,

I can't imagine they (site5 or any other hosting company) have control over what your DNS server is doing or other ISP are routing. Your current hosting company is probably located in a different area and has different routes and bandwidth configurations.

The hosting companies only have control over what is located which their own private network. Once it reaches the outside (internet) it's a gamble basically. From what I know Site5 has redundant links with different ISP in case of failure or poor network performance. I’m sure Matt will agree that even the largest hosting company has no control over how IP packets get from their server to the final destination. This will be true with any hosting company.

John

We should talk. I represent a Canadian company that boasts the most reliable hosting in my experience. We have clients around the world ( Europe, Middle East, United State and Canada) and boast 100 percent referability. I am new to this forum. The name is Chris.

Originally posted by bartholomew1
We should talk. I represent a Canadian company that boasts the most reliable hosting in my experience. We have clients around the world ( Europe, Middle East, United State and Canada) and boast 100 percent referability. I am new to this forum. The name is Chris.
You should also read the Rules (http://www.webhostingtalk.com/misc.php?s=&action=forum-rules) before trying to solicit business in this section of the forum. Welcome to WHT. :)

Originally posted by bartholomew1
. . . The name is Chris. Welcome to the madness, Chris. But, what does your post have to do with the thread?

You lame spammer!

:spam:

Originally posted by bartholomew1
We should talk. I represent a Canadian company that boasts the most reliable hosting in my experience. We have clients around the world ( Europe, Middle East, United State and Canada) and boast 100 percent referability. I am new to this forum. The name is Chris.

Originally posted by edude
You lame spammer!

:spam:

Or someone who hasn’t read the rules (http://www.webhostingtalk.com/misc.php?s=&action=forum-rules) :D

Hi Revue. Once again, I am new to this whole thing. Just to give you a little background I have been a sales /techy for 8 years and now work for a hosting company in canada. I am just now ( believe it or not) becoming attuned to the idea of forums and chatting. I know....

I have already broken a rule on day one. oops:blush:

:) OKY DOKY I have read the rules and want you all to know that I will follow them to the letter... or.... jk

:spam: wont happen again

We are hosted by dot5hosting.com.

here are the pro's and con's.

Pro's - very easy to use messageboard and support ticket system if there are problems.
Pro's - Instant Messenger Support about 3-5 hours a day (EST time - they are online from my perspective)
Pro's - fast servers, great load time for my pages.

Con's - no phone number to call
Con's - i've had trouble tickets in for hours upon hours (if you catch them at the wrong time)
Con's - can't setup your own database on the server, you have to send a trouble ticket.

I would recommend them, as i have been to many hosts. Uptime is fantastic. If there was one thing i can change, i would want to setup my own mysql databases and have a phone number 24/7 to call.

-HostPr.com

Originally posted by CMJC
Not so Matt. What really matters is the route chosen between source and destination.

You are only testing within the same nation. A tiny distance.

*I'm testing halfway around the globe.*No. In fact, I did multiple tests from evey continent available. If you haven't tried tracert.com, I would recomend that you do so.

I hope you'll use the info to improve your routing to Asia.

You CAN do something about your downstream you know :) You can't just flip a switch and improve routing to a whole continent--it doesn't work that way. Like you said a couple paragraphs up: it has very little to do with physical location and everything to do with the network that your packets are coming across.

There is nothing that we can do about latency that is occurring 10-12 hops out of our network--we simply don't have control over the entire Internet like that. That is more within the domain of the upstream providers of the servers that are running the traceroutes for you.

At any rate, I don't have the desire to go back and forth debating and comparing traceroutes from every network to ours. We can't have the absolute best traceroute response times from every single host on the Internet--it is going to vary depending on the route that a particular host takes. If there appears to be a problem with our network or with one of NAC's upstreams, we will be more that happy to look into it--however what I have seen so far indicates neither. In many peoples' opinion, NAC has one of the strongest and most accessible networks available. If you find, however, that it does not meet your needs, then I can do nothing other than advise you to seek hosting elsewhere.

If you have further questions, please email our sales department.

Matt :agree:

I have watched this thread, and the way you have replied to all the posts is a very professional manner!

You definetly deserve a pay rise!

keep up the good job, i have seen many hosts on this forum lose their heads etc...

:D

Thanks for the kind words, edude. :cool:

:agree:

In addition do you really want someone like this to be hosted on your servers. You would be fixing problems that don't exist. I would have lost my head a long time ago....

J

CMJC needs to learn about networking. With my two cents in place, here are two pointless traceroutes from two very fast networks. The first is from 100Mbps at Communitech. The second is from 100Mbps at Cogent.

sugar% traceroute www.site5.com
traceroute to www.site5.com (64.21.152.4), 64 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 net3-vlan47-sup1.KCY.hosting4u.net (209.15.204.253) 3.122 ms 0.468 ms 0.435 ms
2 core2-c12012.KCY.hosting4u.net (209.15.116.252) 0.318 ms 3.723 ms 1.353 ms
3 core1-Serial1-0.ORD.hosting4u.net (209.15.6.22) 16.969 ms 17.519 ms 17.744 ms
4 aads-oc3.wcg.net (206.220.243.89) 18.308 ms 18.426 ms 18.416 ms
5 nycmny2wcx3-oc48.wcg.net (64.200.240.38) 41.210 ms 41.212 ms 41.428 ms
6 nycmnyhlce1-oc48.wcg.net (64.200.87.110) 41.965 ms 41.292 ms 41.257 ms
7 nycmny2lce1-netaccess-atm.wcg.net (64.200.86.150) 41.781 ms 42.981 ms 41.539 ms
8 a9-0-0-1066.msfc1.oct.nac.net (209.123.11.245) 44.251 ms 44.491 ms 51.207 ms
9 64-21-152-4.site5.com (64.21.152.4) 44.254 ms 46.260 ms 45.253 ms

traceroute to www.dot5hosting.com (64.246.16.35), 64 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 net3-vlan47-sup1.KCY.hosting4u.net (209.15.204.253) 0.602 ms 0.499 ms 0.446 ms
2 core2-c12012.KCY.hosting4u.net (209.15.116.252) 0.356 ms 6.254 ms 0.814 ms
3 core1-Serial1-0.ORD.hosting4u.net (209.15.6.22) 16.931 ms 17.89 ms 16.916 ms
4 899.ge1-0.mpr1.ord1.us.mfnx.net (209.249.137.1) 16.989 ms 17.33 ms 17.20 ms
5 so-2-0-0.cr1.ord2.us.mfnx.net (208.185.0.197) 17.89 ms 17.426 ms 17.553 ms
6 pos5-0.mpr1.dfw2.us.mfnx.net (208.184.233.149) 37.676 ms 37.795 ms 37.662 ms
7 so-3-0-0.cr2.dfw2.us.mfnx.net (216.200.127.217) 37.857 ms 37.886 ms 38.750 ms
8 so-5-0-0.pr1.dfw3.us.mfnx.net (208.184.232.114) 37.966 ms 37.904 ms 38.130 ms
9 64.124.51.171.cogentco.com (64.124.51.171) 45.795 ms 38.119 ms 38.814 ms
10 p15-0.core01.dfw01.atlas.cogentco.com (66.28.4.25) 38.914 ms 47.331 ms 38.669 ms
11 p13-0.core01.iah01.atlas.cogentco.com (66.28.4.98) 45.106 ms 43.344 ms 43.209 ms
12 g8.ba21.b000605-0.iah01.atlas.cogentco.com (66.28.66.238) 45.361 ms 43.626 ms 43.709 ms
13 Everyones-Internet.demarc.cogentco.com (66.28.28.210) 44.224 ms 47.45 ms 44.106 ms
14 207.218.223.35 (207.218.223.35) 44.214 ms 44.164 ms 44.216 ms
15 * * *

----

traceroute to www.site5.com (64.21.152.4), 30 hops max, 38 byte packets
1 64.246.36.1 (64.246.36.1) 0.942 ms 0.310 ms 0.282 ms
2 207.218.223.2 (207.218.223.2) 0.380 ms 0.299 ms 0.354 ms
3 207.218.223.5 (207.218.223.5) 0.354 ms 0.371 ms 0.401 ms
4 ge-1-1-0.r02.hstntx01.us.bb.verio.net (129.250.10.65) 0.837 ms 0.821 ms 0.885 ms
5 p16-2-0-0.r00.hstntx01.us.bb.verio.net (129.250.3.46) 0.841 ms 0.898 ms 0.870 ms
6 p4-1-0-0.r01.atlnga03.us.bb.verio.net (129.250.2.46) 20.699 ms 20.758 ms 20.677 ms
7 ge-1-2-0.r00.atlnga03.us.bb.verio.net (129.250.5.245) 21.174 ms 20.930 ms 20.946 ms
8 p16-5-0-0.r01.mclnva02.us.bb.verio.net (129.250.2.48) 36.502 ms 36.551 ms 36.428 ms
9 p4-0-0.r00.mclnva02.us.bb.verio.net (129.250.2.249) 36.580 ms 36.439 ms 36.355 ms
10 mae-east-atm.peer.nac.net (198.32.187.103) 39.122 ms 37.936 ms 37.917 ms
11 a9-0-0-64.msfc1.oct.nac.net (209.123.11.65) 49.755 ms 48.671 ms 48.130 ms
12 64-21-152-4.site5.com (64.21.152.4) 48.635 ms 49.842 ms 49.909 ms

I will not post results from Cogent to dot5hosting.com, because they are also on Cogent. Both Cogent and NAC are swift in these replies. Especially Cogent (homenetweb.com) to Cogent (dot5hosting.com). :)

ok, as a dot5 customer:

Pros:

spectacular uptime
extraordinary support
good prices

cons:
ensim panel
you need to have them set up databases

Originally posted by HostPr
We are hosted by dot5hosting.com.

here are the pro's and con's.

Pro's - very easy to use messageboard and support ticket system if there are problems.
Pro's - Instant Messenger Support about 3-5 hours a day (EST time - they are online from my perspective)
Pro's - fast servers, great load time for my pages.

Con's - no phone number to call
Con's - i've had trouble tickets in for hours upon hours (if you catch them at the wrong time)
Con's - can't setup your own database on the server, you have to send a trouble ticket.

I would recommend them, as i have been to many hosts. Uptime is fantastic. If there was one thing i can change, i would want to setup my own mysql databases and have a phone number 24/7 to call.

-HostPr.com

Been with Dot5 for just under a week or so.

very true what was said above, but they seemed to be online a lot more for me and he could setup the databases for me right away so that wasn't a big deal.

I liked them a lot because the guy was on msn which allowed for quick reponses for support. I had a lot of questions in the beginning, so he was REALLY helpful. Even though we are in different time zones and countries, I found the response time to be reasonable. Their support was more than i expected. I highly recommend them so far, haven't run into any problems. According to http://webhostingratings.com/plans/Dot5Hosting.html their uptiem seems pretty good too.

-Robert
(just so no one accuses me of anything the site is www.ridgeonline.com)

I can't tell you anything about Site5, but I'm fairly impressed with Dot5hosting so far. I signed up with them on 25th July, and am not affiliated with them in any way. Check my profile for the site that's hosted with them. I'm using their dot4 package, with 1GB diskspace and 25GB per month.

Pros:
Good uptime
Excellent service and support.
I was and am very impressed with their responsiveness on most of my support tickets, so much so that I sent a congratulatory note to Chris Phillips

Cons:
Once in a while they take a little while to deal with your support ticket. Not a serious issue for me as the wait is normally not longer than a day, and generally within a few hours. I feel their support is well above what can reasonably be expected for the price I'm paying.
The support have made some minor stupid errors when dealing with my domain. Well, I don't hold this against them, because they were very responsive and quick to fix the problem, and we're all human, after all. To their credit, they changed something on their support system that was wrong after I pointed it out.
Having to pay via WorldPay each month - i.e. no autopay. Again, this is a minor item for me.

As I said, I can't give you any comparison with Site5, but I'm well impressed with Dot5Hosting and can heartily recommend them. I came from UK2.net before, and that's perhaps a little like going from worst to best.

Cheers,
Mike.

John Tapped:

"I can't imagine they (site5 or any other hosting company) have control over what your DNS server is doing or other ISP are routing. Your current hosting company is probably located in a different area and has different routes and bandwidth configurations."

And...

"In addition do you really want someone like this to be hosted on your servers. You would be fixing problems that don't exist. I would have lost my head a long time ago.... "


A tad rude John. :) But I'll let you off, I know what you 'arty types' are like. (Stylish website btw.)

You've misunderstood what I'm doing, and what I wrote.
The fact that my current dodgy host is producing superior tracerts to site5.com speaks volumes.
I respectfully suggest that you should have done what I'm doing before you signed up with them.
I hope they improve, and my drawing attention to their poor tracerts to Asia may bring you quicker delivery to Asia and beyond too.
I repeat, there's lots they can do to improve their downstream performance.
If Matt's not aware of it, it doesn't bode well.
Their traceroute readouts are already replete with DNS error warnings, as I pointed out yesterday.
Same today too. :(

Thank you Hostpr, how long have you been with dot5hosting?
I'll monitor your site from Asia and see how their server performs.

Thank you Richard Ward for your input, but as you noted the tracerts you, posted were pointless in that they don't extend beyond North America. The tracerts between America and Asia tell a very different story. Collect some over the next week or two and you'll see for yourself what I'm seeing.

Site5-Matt Wrote:

"At any rate, I don't have the desire to go back and forth debating and comparing traceroutes from every network to ours. We can't have the absolute best traceroute response times from every single host on the Internet--it is going to vary depending on the route that a particular host takes. If there appears to be a problem with our network or with one of NAC's upstreams, we will be more that happy to look into it--however what I have seen so far indicates neither. In many peoples' opinion, NAC has one of the strongest and most accessible networks available. If you find, however, that it does not meet your needs, then I can do nothing other than advise you to seek hosting elsewhere. "

Not asking you to debate anything Matt, I'm simply a serious prospective customer seeking evidence of the performance of your delivery from long term users, and by other methods.
The results so far, have surprised me, to say the least. But I'll not publish them here, or it will damage your image and credibility. People can do their own tracerts between site5 and Asia over a few days, and see for themselves.

Sadly, your final dismissive tone shows that if I were to send them to you, you'd do nothing about improving your current delivery to Asia and beyond.
So I won't bother sending you my findings.

As yesterday, your tracert results (using both tracert.com and two other methods) are significantly inferior to both my current dodgy host and dot5hosting.

However, the good news is, I've also been monitoring a host who far outperforms them all.

Now, let's see if their CEO is awake ...


The absence of any posts by a *long term user* of site5 amazes me.
Especially, considering they advertise here, and are so active in chatting.

Thank you for your replies.

I think I've found enough information to make a wise choice, and it's not with ANY of the hosts mentioned in this thread.

Tara! :)

guys, please use the quote tags :rolleyes:

Tara,

You have no clue how the Internet works do you? If you did, you would know that one single company does not own the Internet. So for you to tell a hosting company that at hop 12 there are DNS errors is useless. They cannot do anything about what the middle ISP does with their network. They can’t tell them to use a certain routing protocol over another or which route to take b/c one person in Asia is having a little latency between their site and a server around the work.

Another thing, my partner and I have been with site 5 for over a year and half now without problems. I also know people who have been with dot5 which they never had problems.

BTW I’m not a web designer and never said I was. You shouldn’t discredit other peoples’ work it’s not nice.

Retiring this thread as of now…

Have a good day!!!

CMJC, I have to agree with jtrovato, you don't seem to understand IP routing very well. I suggest you change your expectations.

I don't think John was particularly rude, either. Your posts are not exactly shiny nice, that's for certain.

Originally posted by CMJC
The results so far, have surprised me, to say the least. But I'll not publish them here, or it will damage your image and credibility. People can do their own tracerts between site5 and Asia over a few days, and see for themselves.

Your complete and total ignorance of the most basic principals of networking and routing is staggering. I find your sheer arrogance to be even moreso.

I am saving this thread to disk however, as Matt's replies to you have been some of the most courteous, professional, and informative I've ever seen.

You have the opportunity to learn something here, it's a shame you're missing it.

-Bob

Thank you for your comments, rude and otherwise :)

Vested and biased though they clearly are.

A more objective appraisal is very revealing.

Todays results of the load time and tracerts from site5 and dot5hosting et al to Asia, have confirmed the trend.

Our current dodgy host and dot5 are about the same, but site5 is a solid third.

But in case you think of hosting with dot5hosting, I should mention my reasons for NOT subscribing with them.

1) They are too new, and have yet to encounter the problems which will test their mettle.

2) Their attention to detail is clearly defficient. Not even passing their TOS through a spell-checker for example. Or proof reading their site. Wait until they get busier, and the same people are typing in your new DNS settings. After crab fishing for clients around the fora.

3) More worrying to those amongst us who remember Fasthosts, Chris, the dot5hosting Sales Rep, responded to my Emailed question:

Re: 1) I'm curious why your WHOIS details are UK based but you and your servers are in America. Have you had any dealings or relationship with Fasthosts.com the notorious UK company?

Chris replied:

We found that our servers in TX, USA were the quickest, we have not hade experiences with "fasthosts Uk Ltd"

(Emphasis added. Chris' typos included. I wonder if he wrote the TOS?)

To which I Emailed Chris back:
A copy of his own WHOIS readout showing...

Registrant:
dot5Hosting
58 Roundway
Watelooville
Portsmouth, Hampshire PO77QD GB

Domain Name: DOT5HOSTING.COM

Registration Service Provider:
UKReg, domains@fasthosts.co.uk
+44 1452 541252
+44 1452 538485 (fax)
http://www.ukreg.com/


This is not an indictment in itself of course, but Chris' response I found alarming indeed. A brief:


We used to register out domains through a company called Ukreg.com. I was actually unaware that they were a fasthosts company.


(Chris' typos included again. Emphasis added.)

When Dot5hosting's Sales Rep is so ill-informed, as to deny a fact one day, which is easily proven the next, claiming ignorance in defence, it's time to say Tara!
(Tara, means Goodbye btw John, if you ever come back to read this.)

Fortunately, as mentioned in my previous post, I've discovered a host who's servers and delivery to Asia has far outperformed all the hosts mentioned in this thread, and I'm delighted to say their CEO is awake!

Please don't PM me for their name, just do your own research and monitoring, and if you take the trouble, you'll find a gem.


Tantalyzingly Yours... CMJC

Tara! :)

i say do5 all the way - not as cheap as some of the others out there, but worth it for the speed, support and reliability

cheers

Nah Speed Freak :) your missing it bigtime.

You can't measure 'reliability' over a few weeks, read my previous post.

Dot5's speed is a bit better than site5's, but I've been stunned to see the performance of one hosts delivery to Asia. I've been monitoring them all for the last three days, over a hundred tracerts, connection time, and load time reports so far.

I've just compared dot5, and this other host, again as an example for you.

dot5 US to Asia connect plus load time 76 seconds.
Other host: US to Asia connect plus loadtime 22 seconds.
More than three times faster than dot5


(Btw. As a comparison FQ plods along at around a minute to connect and load to Asia. Nothing to get excited about.)

The detailed tracerts show the same picture over the last three days too.

Tara!

That's goodbye in English :)