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  1. #1

    Looking for Host - Ping times

    Hello,

    I am looking to set up a small site with e-commerce, a forum, etc (maybe also TikiWiki). I am in Australia, but most potential customers would be in the USA and Europe. I'd like to have a Mac host, but Linux is fine.

    I have looked at a lot of company web sites, and every time, I've done a ping on their home page. This leads to interesting results. Some companies block pings. Of those that don't, most are between the 250-300 ms average response time for 10 pings. A couple I've tried, so far are down in the 200-220 ms range: serverlogistics and aqhost

    I have been using superbhosting.net for a while now, and I think they are very good. However, the ping times for the site I host is around 300ms.

    Of course, being being up to 1/3 faster is good for me and fellow Aussies, but I have no idea how that relates to the speed and quality for the target market. But it does seem that faster machines would be generally more responsive...

    Can you give me any advise on the above?
    - Does pinging from Australia prove anything about the host company?
    - Can you recommend a host company which matches my requirements (include, say, 20-30 gigs a month bandwidth and a couple of gigs' storage)...


    Thanks in advance!!

    Karl

  2. #2
    Pings aren't the best measure but I can see why your trying it.

    A better question is does their site seem to load slow or fast for you ?

    If most of your target market is in the USA/Europ then I wouldn't worry to much, but if you go for a host with some sort of money back guarantee if the speed isn't good enough, you can get your money back and move on.

    I'd suggest sending some sales emails and try and get a feel for a host before choosing one.
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  3. #3
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    Quote Originally Posted by FHH - Tim View Post
    but if you go for a host with some sort of money back guarantee if the speed isn't good enough, you can get your money back and move on.
    I would monitor a host for a while record their up or downtime , research and more research. Even as long as I've been around I have fallen into the wrong providers.

    ******************************************


    Tim .... moving on is a pain regardless if you get your money back or not. The way you worded that sounds like you don't understand how hard it is to pick a host, get set up only to discover its not the host for you. So you have to start the process all over again. So what that you got your money back your business , family site or what have you is in limbo ... again.
    Dana aka Laci My Alter Ego
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  4. #4
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    Assuming no network problems along the way, latency really just relates to location. From Australia you can expect around 180-200ms to West coast servers, 240-260ms to the East coast. For European visitors the situation is reversed - East coast will be faster for them - so choosing a location comes down to deciding which visitors you want to favour.

    But since you're running application sites (forum, ecom, wiki) the server performance will be more important to you than the location. Look for a specialist application host if you want the fastest page loads, eg. Medialayer who use lightly-loaded top-end hardware and Litespeed - the difference (page loading speed) is noticeable on this kind of site.
    Chris

    "Some problems are so complex that you have to be highly intelligent and well informed just to be undecided about them." - Laurence J. Peter

  5. #5
    Quote Originally Posted by Laci View Post
    I would monitor a host for a while record their up or downtime , research and more research. Even as long as I've been around I have fallen into the wrong providers.

    ******************************************


    Tim .... moving on is a pain regardless if you get your money back or not. The way you worded that sounds like you don't understand how hard it is to pick a host, get set up only to discover its not the host for you. So you have to start the process all over again. So what that you got your money back your business , family site or what have you is in limbo ... again.

    I completely agree with you, but at the end of the day a host can be great for one customer and bad for another, So regardless you will only find out once you try them.

    Since his prime concern is how well his site performs on a certain host, the only way he can find out for definite is to actually use the host, I was merely saying that if it doesn't work out, then worse case scenario he can move on but without monetary loss.
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  6. #6
    Quote Originally Posted by FHH - Tim View Post
    I completely agree with you, but at the end of the day a host can be great for one customer and bad for another, So regardless you will only find out once you try them.

    Since his prime concern is how well his site performs on a certain host, the only way he can find out for definite is to actually use the host, I was merely saying that if it doesn't work out, then worse case scenario he can move on but without monetary loss.
    exactly correct Tim..

    Besides, pings and tracerts really do not tell you much. These requests are often de-prioritized in transit, so, the further away you are, the greater the liklihood of hitting a route that is slowing down these requests. Actual web requests may indeed be alot faster. Eitherway, there will always be greater real latency from Australia to the US, but, what should really matter, as Tim so correctly pointed out, is actual performance..
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  7. #7
    Hi Guys,

    Thanks for the information!

    Yes, page load times is, of course, much more important than ping times - thanks for that.

    How do I determine page load times for US/Eur from Aus?

    Re: MediaLayer - Wow, it does seem to load pages very fast! Using SMF on my current host, you can see each piece of the forum arriving, whereas on MediaLayer, it just comes down in one lump (from their main forum, anyway)! Very impressive.

    Still, there is a delay between click and response - about 1/2 a second - which would agree with an approx. 300ms latency...

    Any other hosts comparable to MediaLayer?


    Regards,

    Karl

  8. #8
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    As long as the webhost that you go with is in a good datacenter and/or has a good reputation then you shouldn't worry too much about the ping times particularly unless you are running a very content rich website like video streaming and things like that.

  9. #9
    Quote Originally Posted by markjut View Post
    As long as the webhost that you go with is in a good datacenter and/or has a good reputation then you shouldn't worry too much about the ping times...
    I suppose that's true if you are lucky enough to live close to these data centres. Unfortunately, I'm not, and I can tell you that the difference between 50 and 300 millisecond latencies is palpable.

    However, I'm not in my main target market, so you are right in what you say!
    :-)


    Regards,

    Karl

  10. #10
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    We offer hosting in several locations and the general information we give customers is that if more than 50% of your target audience is coming from the one location choose a network that is based in the target market.

    IE if you have a webshop that sells to Australian's then you would go with an Australian based server and vice versa.
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  11. #11
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    Yeah pretty much right, I mean we are Australian too though our servers are run in the States. I mean we can take on Australian Potentials, though as coight has said if you have a webshop you are better off with an Australian Based Server.
    l Dedigeeks Shared Wordpress Dedicated Established 2006
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  12. #12
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    Jetwash, I see you copped some ridcule over at whirlpool. Don't bother there mate their are rules for different people. It's a pecking order.

    Nice site by the way.
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  13. #13
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    Yeah I know I had read on it, I stopped replying to it cause that is all I was getting. I mean we are a Genuine Team, Yeah o.k there are different Gouverning laws for each state and country. I had actually applied for an ABN Just waiting on it...

    Thanks coight for understanding

    - He He Yep all Integrated
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  14. #14
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    Karl like mentioned above forget pings, and do live download speed tests of those sites u wish to go with.

    And note why do you care about your ping, when you said you are concentrating on usa & europe, if you want get something from UK than if europe > usa.

    Set your priorities right and only than can guide you.

    Cheers
    12+ years -same website , new server [SSD Inside] providing shared/reseller hosting only !
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    So check out the numbers that actually fit >> << the page as well as your budget too !

  15. #15
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    Generally speaking, west coast USA will give lower ping times to Australia and obviously ping well in the US. Ping time however shouldn't be one of your prime criteria when choosing a host.
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  16. #16
    Thanks a lot guys!

    Looks like I need to try out a couple of hosts and see what their 'live' performance is like...

    Karl

  17. #17
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    Good Luck Karl best of luck...
    l Dedigeeks Shared Wordpress Dedicated Established 2006
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  18. #18
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    Sorry if I missed it, but I did not yet see this suggestion: If you have a certain relationship with some of your users in the US/Europe, have them download the files and ping the hosts that you are interested in and get compare the results. Alternately, open several accounts, most shared hosts these days offer a 30 day moneyback guarantee, have your users access the site via the IP address you get from your host and gauge pageload times that way.
    Chris Larkin
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  19. #19
    Thanks SingleHopChris - your recommendation is the right way to go about it!

    Karl

  20. #20
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    Karl,
    Always glad to help, let us know how it goes.
    Chris Larkin
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    SingleHop Managed Dedicated Servers
    http://singlehop.com

  21. #21
    Quote Originally Posted by karl_g View Post
    Hello,
    I have been using superbhosting.net for a while now, and I think they are very good. However, the ping times for the site I host is around 300ms.
    Where are you in Australia? If you are on the Eastern side (Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra, etc.) it should be well under 200ms from you to our SEA2 data centre (west coast). If you are however on the west side (e.g. Perth), then it'll be understandably some 40-60ms more, given the adeed accross-Austrlia trip.

    But, trying from Telstra for example I see <200ms latency from Melbourne to us:

    traceroute to slsdemo.sea2.superb.net (209.160.40.47), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
    1 vlan250.lon-service6.Melbourne.telstra.net (203.50.2.177) 0.256 ms 0.249 ms 0.251 ms
    2 TenGigabitEthernet0-12-0-2.exi-core1.Melbourne.telstra.net (203.50.80.1) 0.486 ms 0.44 ms 0.398 ms
    3 Bundle-POS1.chw-core2.Sydney.telstra.net (203.50.6.13) 14.821 ms 14.821 ms 15.237 ms
    4 Bundle-Ether1.oxf-gw2.Sydney.telstra.net (203.50.6.90) 15 ms 15.086 ms 14.907 ms
    5 10GigabitEthernet6-0.sydo-core01.Sydney.reach.com (203.50.13.38) 15.454 ms 15.471 ms 15.414 ms
    6 i-4-0.paix-core02.net.reach.com (202.84.144.154) 173.689 ms 173.74 ms 173.596 ms
    7 202.84.251.106 (202.84.251.106) 171.831 ms 171.835 ms 171.888 ms
    8 GBLX.peer.paix05.net.reach.com (134.159.62.98) 173.83 ms 173.785 ms 173.921 ms
    9 * * *
    10 * * *
    11 * * *
    12 sls-ac1p21.sea2.superb.net (209.160.40.47) 193.086 ms 193.052 ms 193.075 ms

    On AARNet it's a lot less, from Sydney <150ms:

    traceroute to slsdemo.sea2.superb.net (209.160.40.47), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
    1 nswrno2-eth2-0-ultimo.nswrno.net.au (203.15.123.113) 0.439 ms 0.337 ms 0.348 ms
    2 203.15.123.177 (203.15.123.177) 0.678 ms 0.392 ms 0.711 ms
    3 ge-1-0-3.bb1.a.syd.aarnet.net.au (202.158.202.1) 0.512 ms 0.388 ms 0.487 ms
    4 pos2-0.bb1.a.suv.aarnet.net.au (202.158.194.82) 36.613 ms 36.411 ms 36.511 ms
    5 so-2-1-0.bb1.b.hnl.aarnet.net.au (202.158.194.86) 95.808 ms 96.122 ms 95.864 ms
    6 so-2-1-1.bb1.b.sea.aarnet.net.au (202.158.194.90) 148.776 ms 149.206 ms 149.067 ms
    7 ge7-0.core1.sea1.hopone.net (66.36.224.205) 148.784 ms 148.784 ms 148.807 ms
    8 ge4-0.core2.sea2.hopone.net (66.36.224.25) 149.916 ms 150.307 ms 149.94 ms
    9 vl3.distb2.sea2.hopone.net (209.160.60.245) 150.159 ms 149.787 ms 149.577 ms
    10 sls-ac1p21.sea2.superb.net (209.160.40.47) 149.538 ms 149.911 ms 149.579 ms

    Even from Perth, with a good ISP such as AARNet (usually the best latency out of Australia) you can get <200ms to west coast US, e.g.

    traceroute to slsdemo.sea2.superb.net (209.160.40.47), 30 hops max, 38 byte packets
    1 v112.gbe0-0.parnet.parnet.edu.au (203.19.110.113) 0.143 ms 0.112 ms 0.103 ms
    2 ge-1-0-4.bb1.a.per.aarnet.net.au (202.158.198.17) 0.342 ms 0.311 ms 0.304 ms
    3 so-0-1-0.bb1.a.adl.aarnet.net.au (202.158.194.6) 27.595 ms 27.593 ms 27.588 ms
    4 so-0-1-0.bb1.a.mel.aarnet.net.au (202.158.194.18) 36.636 ms 36.631 ms 36.631 ms
    5 so-0-1-0.bb1.b.syd.aarnet.net.au (202.158.194.34) 48.696 ms 48.675 ms 48.678 ms
    6 so-2-1-0.bb1.b.sea.aarnet.net.au (202.158.194.94) 192.294 ms 193.245 ms 192.167 ms
    7 ge7-0.core1.sea1.hopone.net (66.36.224.205) 192.286 ms 192.130 ms 192.148 ms
    8 ge4-0.core2.sea2.hopone.net (66.36.224.25) 193.607 ms 193.326 ms 193.319 ms
    9 vl3.distb1.sea2.hopone.net (209.160.60.244) 193.038 ms 193.256 ms 193.116 ms
    10 sls-ac1p21.sea2.superb.net (209.160.40.47) 192.938 ms 193.138 ms 192.985 ms

    but with other ISPs it may be a higher latency due to a less direct route.

    What makes a big difference here is also your ISP and how [in]direct is their route to the US.

  22. #22
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    contact a few hosts and ask for ip's of the server you would be put on and ping that ip

  23. #23
    Hmm.. First time for everything i have never seen anyone type i am looking for a webhost - ping times.

    Anyways what you mean is you want everything to run quick and smooth.

    Have a good look round and pick what suits you.

    Goodlook with finding a host.
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