im trying to decide between these companies. Can you ping them and show the results please.
weinbar.com
pwebtech.com
vdi.net

Thanks

ping does not tell you anything... It might tell you something, but ping result varies depending on your geographical location. If you don't believe this, try to ping from South Africa or something....

pwebtech.com and vdi.net are all located at east cost.
weinbar.com are located at west coast. So, if somebody pings from east cost, then the ping time might favor both pwebtech and vdi, not weinbar. The converse is true too. For me a good measure at how fast a connectivity is (whether it's saturated or whether you are being put at 10 mbps switch port instead of 100 mbps switch port) is their upload/download burstability. My server at interserver (VDI) could burst (download) anywhere between 4-16 Mbps. My server at weinbar could burst anywhere between 3-17 Mbps (they claimed to have bursted to 25 Mbps, but I have never had a chance to get that rate yet). I have no server with pwebtech, but they should be doing fine too.

cheers,
:beer:

im actually trying to tell how fast it is from the uk because thats where a lot of my clients are. Theres little chance of me reaching a high enough download speed to really test it on my 56k modem

You don't test the download on your modem. No, you test it on their server using their fat connection (OC3, DS3, whatever) and using their switch port (10 mbps, 10/100 mbps, etc). For example, I was testing voxel.net at abovenet.net connection. How? They made me an account on one of their server and let me test the download/upload speed of their cpnnection (pretty impressive, close to 30 Mbps download rate). This is what I mean by a better way of knowing how fast their connectivity is.

If you try to ping from UK, then definitely VDI.net and pwebtect.com would be faster (both about the same, I believe) than weinbar.com since the data packet you send from you computer has to travel an extra 8000-10000 miles round trip (and going throuhg more hops/switches/and other electronics) from east coast to west coast. However, that does not mean that weinbar.com would be inferior to VDI.net and/or pwebtech.

Having said this, if your customer would most likely be UK based (or Europe in general), I would suggest you to find hosts located at the east coast of the US. And I am sure Abovenet.net would be one of the fastest since it has peering to major ISP backbone on UK/Europe (I believe).

cheers,
:beer:

ok - I am in the UK too.

Ping times...

Pinging <B>weinbar.com</B> [216.139.227.15] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 216.139.227.15: bytes=32 time=231ms TTL=240
Reply from 216.139.227.15: bytes=32 time=210ms TTL=240
Reply from 216.139.227.15: bytes=32 time=221ms TTL=240
Reply from 216.139.227.15: bytes=32 time=220ms TTL=240

Pinging <B>pwebtech.com</B> [64.21.5.34] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 64.21.5.34: bytes=32 time=130ms TTL=237
Reply from 64.21.5.34: bytes=32 time=130ms TTL=237
Reply from 64.21.5.34: bytes=32 time=131ms TTL=237
Reply from 64.21.5.34: bytes=32 time=130ms TTL=237

Pinging <B>66.78.29.172</B> with 32 bytes of data: (My dedicated server at <B>vdi.net</B>)
Reply from 66.78.29.172: bytes=32 time=130ms TTL=241
Reply from 66.78.29.172: bytes=32 time=131ms TTL=241
Reply from 66.78.29.172: bytes=32 time=130ms TTL=241
Reply from 66.78.29.172: bytes=32 time=130ms TTL=241

Pinging <B>*****.com</B> [63.249.159.33] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 63.249.159.33: bytes=32 time=180ms TTL=48
Reply from 63.249.159.33: bytes=32 time=170ms TTL=48
Reply from 63.249.159.33: bytes=32 time=170ms TTL=48
Reply from 63.249.159.33: bytes=32 time=190ms TTL=48


But as said before, ping counts don't matter too much - I have an account with weinbar and it is FAST
Just try out

http://www.kevlar-killers.com - hosted with weinbar
629.66 KB/s off of my dedicated server - not bad :)

One thing - do NOT use *****.

--WildWayz

your results are sorta makes sense!

pwebtech and vdi give the same ping result, since they are on the same region (New Jersey, probably no more than 50 miles from each other?). Weinbar is about 4-5000 miles west of both vdi and pwebtech, so the ping time is the longest from UK. *****, however, is in Texas, about midway between VDI/pwebtech and weinbar, so the ping time is in between that of weinbar's and vdi's/pwebtech's. So.. these numbers are all make sense (right? CMIIW).

Yes, network burstability is a more important issue than ping time. However this does not mean that the bigger the size of the bandwith pipe (DS3, OC3, OC12, etc) also will guarantee you the better your connection performance is. The more important is how saturates is the pipe. OC-48 doing 99% of its capacity would not be better than a T1 doing 0.1% of its capacity. From what I knew, VDI only has 2xDS3 yet their connections (yes, they had connectivity problems) was letting me to burst to 16 Mbps... pretty impressive. I have heard about a server at pogolinux hosted in abovenet OC-48, however the server could only burst to around 300 KB/s or so... Not great, considering the NOC has OC-48 connectivity.

Another thing: you may want to know whether your server would be connected to 10 mbps switch port or 100 mbps switch port. If your server is only connected to 10 mbps switch port, chances are your server would only be able to burst around 3-5 Mbps (still great, by the way)... If download/upload burstability is an important factor, then insist on 100 mbps switch port.

Just my additional 2 cents...

cheers,
:beer:

You have to remember not to just look at the speed of the lines but more importantly what these lines are connected to.

According to Jay, Pwebtech.com has connections to over 15 providers:
Exodus, aol, digex, psinet, abovenet, earthlink, mindpsring, erols, internap, deamon INternet, Broadwing, nasa, Williams, Hurican Electric, globix, Global center, erols, carrier1, att, covad and more.

Each of these connections is at least a DS3.

You may find this useful:
http://www.traceroute.org/#United Kingdom

From the UK we would most likely be alot faster than VDI and weinbar, for teh simple fact is we have a connection to deamon internet which is one of the UK largest providers, as you well know. Our bandwidth diversity, is without question significantly more diverse than that of weinbar and vdi together.

Diversity, maybe. But overall burstability, I doubt it. The connections that we have are only 3 -- UUNet, Genuity and Sprint, but we have a scaled down OC192 connection...not DS3.

You have three connections over 1 oc192??

There is actually an OC192 for each of the 3 connections. They are not in full use as the datacenter is only at 30% capacity and even at capacity, we don't need more than an OC3, so we do not utilize the OC192. But, it is there as we need it. No need to go out and upgrade. We just put in a board, turn it up and boom, we are at the next level.

This is done because we didn't want to build with the minimum and have to keep expanding. We wiull always have the bandwidth, even when we get to the 100% capacity. And once we do, we will still have more than enough to completely satisfy all of our customers even if they were all pushing out at 100% at the same time.

although jay has a connection to deamon when i tracert it doesnt go through deamon at any point

You should ask Jay about that.

you are right - goes over through exodus.net.

Come to think of it, I don't think I have ever seen any US webhost use demon links.

Usually level3, above.net or globalx thingie

--WildWayz

It looks like we cancelled the deamon internet connection and have switched to BBC, sorry for the confusion, this looks like a recent change I wasn't informed about.

don't blame u - they are meant to be in financial difficulties at the moment

--James

Also you have to consisder is where more of your clients clients are visiting your site from.

That may be true, but you also want to see how heavily the NOC is saturated. If you have a T3 line to your servers and there are 1000 servers on it, it doesn't mean a hill of beans where it is located. If it is in the same building as you are, your throughput will not be as good as a NOC with wide open connections.

The truth of it we said DS3 or better, most connection are 100Megabit Connections to the which are then backhauled over an OC3 Sonet ring capable of 192 if we do decide to upgrade it. Going to three diverse pop locations for redundany bring three connections back into our datacenter. Just that for public information it is easier to explain 15 connection at ds3 speeds or better. To the new york pop nac is getting their own dark fiber. So in terms of burstability we can most definatly handle almost any traffic, and with a full gigabit ethernet internal network we are prepared for spikes, DoS attacks and any other traffic hogs.

We're now located at Pwebtech/NAC.net. To get an idea of speed, take a look at my post in this thread:

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?threadid=7681&pagenumber=2

2400 KB/sec :D

After being at VDI for two years previously, I can say that the two are both very impressive when it comes to network speed, you really can't go wrong at either.

Hope that helps.

Best Regards,
Matt Lightner
mlightner@site5.com

i think ill be going with weinbar ven if pwebtech is slightly closer. Michael from weinbar seems to be the most friendly and that means a lot to me.