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  1. #1

    Is international hosting worth it?

    I live on the west coast U.S.A. and currently have a number of dedicated servers located at Netriver in Washington state.

    I am extremely happy with them, and the fact that they are local for me is a huge bonus.

    I have been with a few datacenters over the past 15 years or so, and I have to say that the tech support I receive at Netriver is hands down the best I could ever hope for.

    My question:
    It was suggested to me to look into a company called Hetzner out of Germany I believe. Now normally I would never ever consider doing something like this, but their pricing is crazy cheap, almost to cheap to believe, especially compared to what I pay now for my dedicated servers.

    I use a combination of wowza and kaltura for live streaming and vod. All of my customers are in the west coast U.S. and Mexico.

    Given that, I am curious what the pitfalls are to hosting out of the country for live streaming and vod. Mostly I am worried about the lag and connection ability when hosting to a location that far. Pings from my house avg about 250ms where my local datacenter is about 15ms. Is this going to cause a problem for my users who use Adobe to stream media live to the server?

    Second...
    Anyone have any experience with this company when it comes to 'english speaking support'?
    I know absolutely zero about this company other than what I have read here.

    thanks

  2. #2
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    First... Yes, your users from west coast U.S and Mexico not going to be happy with your new move, slower.
    Second... Google translate but their shouldn't be any problem with language barrier.

  3. #3
    I think that hetzner has a pretty good reputation here on these forums. Why don't you try submit a few tickets to them to see the quality of their English?

  4. #4
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    Never had issue with Hetzner and their English, even over the phone they did well.
    (And English ain't even my first language)

  5. #5
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    Hetzner are spot on, totally unmanaged but they will help here and there and I have never had any hardware quality issues despite the price.

    Customers may see a difference in speed however whether that will be noticeable to the majority? I am not so sure.

    Their support people speak english, some better than others but it wont create an issues whichever method you contact them.

  6. #6
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    What about looking into colocating? You'll save a bunch of money in the long run that way. I'm sure you can find hosts in the U.S. that can compete with Hetzner on price as well.

    If I were you, I definitely wouldn't go with European servers if your audience is West Coast U.S. and Mexico.

  7. #7
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    Order one server at Hetzner and test for yourself. Streaming does require low latency, test before you move all servers..

  8. #8
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    Quote Originally Posted by Kairus View Post
    What about looking into colocating? You'll save a bunch of money in the long run that way. I'm sure you can find hosts in the U.S. that can compete with Hetzner on price as well.

    If I were you, I definitely wouldn't go with European servers if your audience is West Coast U.S. and Mexico.
    If it is just 1 server, forget about colocation .

    Specially 4 U
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  9. #9
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    Quote Originally Posted by net View Post
    If it is just 1 server, forget about colocation .
    First sentence of the OP kind of hints that he has multiple servers.

    Quote Originally Posted by imtiedup View Post
    I live on the west coast U.S.A. and currently have a number of dedicated servers located at Netriver in Washington state.

  10. #10
    Thanks guys.
    Yes I do have a number of servers in my wowza/kaltura cluster. I do not plan on moving them but I need to add a lot more horsepower to the system. Basically I am going to be adding in a few servers for wowza and a couple more encoding servers for kaltura.

    It was mostly the latency concerns that I had by adding in encoding servers overseas like that. For me it is a 250ms trip, and that seems a little high although not absurd. Of course that is pinging their website, not what would be my server, though I guess the times would be very similar.

  11. #11
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    dumb idea to stream from germany to the usa.

  12. #12
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    Quote Originally Posted by imtiedup View Post
    Thanks guys.
    Yes I do have a number of servers in my wowza/kaltura cluster. I do not plan on moving them but I need to add a lot more horsepower to the system. Basically I am going to be adding in a few servers for wowza and a couple more encoding servers for kaltura.

    It was mostly the latency concerns that I had by adding in encoding servers overseas like that. For me it is a 250ms trip, and that seems a little high although not absurd. Of course that is pinging their website, not what would be my server, though I guess the times would be very similar.
    Stick to servers in western or central U.S. Is colocating out of the picture? If you're looking to save money, it's going to be your best option.

    This is from a server in LA:
    Code:
    PING hetzner.de (213.133.107.227) 56(84) bytes of data.
    64 bytes from www.hetzner.de (213.133.107.227): icmp_req=1 ttl=52 time=180 ms
    64 bytes from www.hetzner.de (213.133.107.227): icmp_req=2 ttl=52 time=181 ms
    64 bytes from www.hetzner.de (213.133.107.227): icmp_req=3 ttl=52 time=180 ms
    64 bytes from www.hetzner.de (213.133.107.227): icmp_req=4 ttl=52 time=180 ms

  13. #13
    I think your best option is to colocate. Like the others said. This way you can build as powerfull systems as you want. If the cost to setup colocation is a issue I would find maybe server providers closer to you. But think of it this way, if you are happy with you current provider and the lever of services the give you why not stay.

    Stay with what you know type thing.

  14. #14
    Hetzner has a good reputation and their speed is quite good to USA, but the servers are most desktop grade quality especially the low cost line.

  15. #15
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    Quote Originally Posted by imtiedup View Post
    All of my customers are in the west coast U.S. and Mexico.
    In terms of streaming, sourcing your servers in Europe (not just Hetzner) is a bit like working in Seattle but commuting daily from Europe. It might be doable, but lots of "jetlag"

    If you're looking for a similarly priced provider in the US you might want to wait and see what OVH are going to offer when they open their north American services. They're fixing up peering in SIX Seattle which will suit you, and all over the USA including ANY2 in LA, Dallas Equinix, TELX Atlanta and NOTA Miami which should suit your Mexican customers just fine. Of course they haven't released any prices yet, but if they are anything like their French prices......

  16. #16
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    Quote Originally Posted by imtiedup View Post
    Anyone have any experience with this company when it comes to 'english speaking support'?
    I know absolutely zero about this company other than what I have read here.
    Currently have 2 servers with hetzner, and very pleased, no problems at all, but beware of the high setup + high cost of upgrades. Also note they're strict with IP allocation but most hosts are the same now due to the shortage.

    I've had very few dealings with support as there haven't been any problems, but when I did contact support their replies are either in German and English or just English (very good english from my experience, not google translated or anything). Also note they don't allow any porn on their network/servers.

  17. #17
    Thank you all for the great advice. I think everyone has managed talking me out of adding servers in Europe. Mostly it was a matter of seeing bandwidth at 10% what I pay now.

    I wouldn't do a colo to Europe because I just can't justify the cost of sending all of my equipment there with the hopes that someone on their end sets it up properly (yes I do own my own servers). The cost of airfare alone for me to fly there and set it up myself would ruin the savings for years to come.

    Like I said, I am VERY happy with Netriver, I just want to find a solid place to add servers with much cheaper bandwidth. Streaming video can become very expensive very fast, and considering I store multi TB of video, all cloud services are out of the question as their storage rates are insane compared to my simply building more nas units.

    Once again, thank you all for the advice.

  18. #18
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    I was pretty sure the suggestion was looking at colocating with another provider in the US. You may not get Hetzner pricing, but you will definitely be able to find bandwidth at far less than ten times Hetzner's pricing.
    Last edited by klisja; 03-08-2012 at 10:14 PM.

  19. #19
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    Quote Originally Posted by imtiedup View Post
    Thank you all for the great advice. I think everyone has managed talking me out of adding servers in Europe. Mostly it was a matter of seeing bandwidth at 10% what I pay now.

    I wouldn't do a colo to Europe because I just can't justify the cost of sending all of my equipment there with the hopes that someone on their end sets it up properly (yes I do own my own servers). The cost of airfare alone for me to fly there and set it up myself would ruin the savings for years to come.

    Like I said, I am VERY happy with Netriver, I just want to find a solid place to add servers with much cheaper bandwidth. Streaming video can become very expensive very fast, and considering I store multi TB of video, all cloud services are out of the question as their storage rates are insane compared to my simply building more nas units.

    Once again, thank you all for the advice.
    If you're looking to reduce costs there are options in USA, not just Europe, for example http://webnx.com offers competative pricing, and is on the west coast.

  20. #20
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    Ping measures latency not speed.
    Ping has no effect on speed unless you are getting dropped packets.
    The viewer will wait 250ms instead of 15ms for the video to start (unnoticable) then it will play as normal with no lag or freezes.
    High Quality Web Hosting from Host Ultra
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  21. #21
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    Quote Originally Posted by Host Ultra View Post
    Ping measures latency not speed.
    Ping has no effect on speed unless you are getting dropped packets.
    The viewer will wait 250ms instead of 15ms for the video to start (unnoticable) then it will play as normal with no lag or freezes.


    you run a hosting company yet you do not know the basics...

  22. #22
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    Quote Originally Posted by softshop011 View Post
    you run a hosting company yet you do not know the basics...
    I know exactly what I am talking about.
    Prove me wrong then.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ping

    I have no problems transferring data at 300-500mbps between USA and Europe with a ping of 300+.

    I can ping a dialup line a few blocks away and get 30ms, it means nothing.
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