Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Specialty Hosting and Markets : how economical are cdn vs. hosting your own ?

[jjk2]

i can easily see the scalability advantage in cdn.

but what boils down to is cost.

lets say i get about 1TB of bandwith a day in flash video. what is recommended?

should i get like 31 packages from cirtexhosting ?

i've calculated this one cdn's rate vs. hosting my own, and found hosting my own is cheaper.

even amazon s3 was cheaper.

so any suggestions on cdn's like level3.com ?

i would like to know all my options.

[Xeentech]

I think part of the benefit is supposed to be that CDNs have geographically dispersed points of presence. IE, UK users hit a EU or UK machine/cluster, and US users hit a US server.. and every one else can suck it up because they're not in the ad demographic

If you're worried purely about $ vs TB then hosting on "unlimited" dedicated servers seems the way to go.

[jjk2]

Originally Posted by Xeentech

I think part of the benefit is supposed to be that CDNs have geographically dispersed points of presence. IE, UK users hit a EU or UK machine/cluster, and US users hit a US server.. and every one else can suck it up because they're not in the ad demographic

If you're worried purely about $ vs TB then hosting on "unlimited" dedicated servers seems the way to go.

where can i get these so called unlimited dedicated servers?

[Xeentech]

There are many many companies that will lease you a machine with "unlimited" 100Mbps connection, most DCs will offer it. Though from any one actually capable of pushing that much bandwidth prices can get pretty ridicules.

[djorgensen]

Softlayer does a CDN and its as cheap to run as a standard box.

To get 100Mbs from a dedicated connection will require something costing $1000ish a month. 100Mbs unlimited on a shared port you'd be lucky to get 4TB a month!

[jasonaward]

Originally Posted by djorgensen

Softlayer does a CDN and its as cheap to run as a standard box.

Not really. You can get boxes at Softlayer for < 200 with 2TB of bandwidth. That's 10 cents per GB (assuming the box is 200). The equivalent bandwidth for CDN would be $380.

True, there are substantial advantages to CDN, but it's not as cheap as a standard box.

To get 100Mbs from a dedicated connection will require something costing $1000ish a month. 100Mbs unlimited on a shared port you'd be lucky to get 4TB a month!

Well, from a company like FDC you can get approximately 15-20TB of data through a 100Mb port for much less than $1000 (more like $200).

[utropicmedia-karl]

Originally Posted by djorgensen

To get 100Mbs from a dedicated connection will require something costing $1000ish a month.

Try 2500ish+. For a half-way decent network you're looking at 20-30/mbps. Non-oversold? 30-40/mbps.

Please, everyone needs to stop drinking the Kool-aid on this <$20/mbit infomercial racket. The numbers have never added up, even with large commits you can only get those prices if you don't have any other costs( e.g. Routers, switches, power, etc.) and have an ample supply of fairy dust and magic pixies.



Kind Regards,

[jjk2]

i see that fdcservers.net

they have like gigabit unmetered server @ 429 / month....

i've asked them they said they can push as far as 50TB a month at that price.

but i see cdn has its benefit. regional nodes and such. so if some dude in hong kong uploads his video, will it propogate a copy of itself to these regional nodes and so americans and europeans can access it very fast ?

[cristibighea]

Yeah, that's pretty much how a CDN works. Compared to FDC though, your users will get a much higher download speed, and will be able to view streaming movies with zero buffering, though the price tag is pretty high. Your best bet is to get a dedicated server, with great connectivity, for 30TB a month your pricetag will still be pretty high on a CDN.

[utropicmedia-karl]

Originally Posted by jjk2

i see that fdcservers.net

they have like gigabit unmetered server @ 429 / month....

i've asked them they said they can push as far as 50TB a month at that price.

but i see cdn has its benefit. regional nodes and such. so if some dude in hong kong uploads his video, will it propogate a copy of itself to these regional nodes and so americans and europeans can access it very fast ?

Try out that server and let us know how it goes...

[Xeentech]

Originally Posted by utropicmedia-karl

Try out that server and let us know how it goes...

Exactly my feeling about FDC. Let's just say my experiences with FDC were less than positive.

[jjk2]

in what ways were the not good ? i heard they are industry's big player ?