How to test the speed of a host
How to test the speed of a host
Testing speed is not complicated, but it’s not very simple either. I will talk about speed in the large sense of the word. Basically speed is a measure on how fast can the data be transmitted between the visitor and the host’s server.
You can test a first type of speed by pinging the server. That can be done at the MS-DOS prompt with a simple command: ping serverID, where server ID is either a domain name (e.g. C:>ping yahoo.com), either an IP (e.g. C:> ping 128.65.134.89).
The results should be similar to these:
Reply from 64.190.235.64: bytes=32 time=432ms TTL=45
Reply from 64.190.235.64: bytes=32 time=180ms TTL=45
Reply from 64.190.235.64: bytes=32 time=377ms TTL=46
Reply from 64.190.235.64: bytes=32 time=216ms TTL=45
Ping statistics for 64.190.235.64:
Packets: Sent=4 Received=4 Lost=0 (0% loss)
Approximate round trip times in milli-seconds:
Minimum = 180ms, Maximum = 432ms, Average = 301 ms
To understand the figures, one must first understand how ping works. It’s actually pretty basic. When you ping a computer you’re sending a message: “Hey! yahoo.com! Are you there?” Then comes the answer: “Yes, I’m here!”. By measuring the time it took yahoo.com to receive your message plus the time it took it’s message to get to you (and by repeating this process a few times) one get a fair idea on how fast these computers can communicate.
It’s all in the time measurement. A ping time of under 200ms is very good, 200 to 400ms is average and 400ms and above are poor ping times. However, poor ping times do not always indicate a problem. If you are pinging servers that are very far away (pinging a server located in USA from a computer located in Australia), poor ping times are normal even for a good connection.
The Loss % represents the percentage of packets (sent messages) that were “lost” (did not return within 1 second). Lost packets are, obviously, not good.
Another way to measure speed is traceroute. Obviously this traces the route between the computer and the server. As the information goes from your computer to the server, it passes through a few so-called routers. A traceroute will tell you how many routers are involved and information about the routers.
The MS-DOS command for traceroute is tracert serverID.
The results should be similar to these:
C:WINDOWS>tracert www.mysitespace.com
Tracing route to www.mysitespace.com [64.68.191.111]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 119 ms 121 ms 120 ms sym0103723m01.bctel.net [207.102.1.251]
2 107 ms 114 ms 98 ms 207.102.34.249
3 113 ms 117 ms 123 ms 192.197.174.118
4 135 ms 122 ms 116 ms 166.48.13.245
5 134 ms 145 ms 159 ms core7.SanFrancisco.cw.net [204.70.4.93]
6 144 ms 142 ms 136 ms Hssi2-1-0.BR1.SCL1.Alter.Net [206.157.77.74]
7 145 ms 152 ms 147 ms 105.ATM3-0.XR1.SCL1.ALTER.NET [146.188.145.158]
8 138 ms 149 ms 146 ms 195.ATM2-0.TR1.SCL1.ALTER.NET [146.188.146.2]
9 189 ms 170 ms 209 ms 107.ATM6-0.TR1.NYC1.ALTER.NET [146.188.137.165]
10 187 ms 180 ms 180 ms 199.ATM7-0.XR1.BOS1.ALTER.NET [146.188.179.85]
11 194 ms 177 ms 185 ms 191.ATM8-0-0.GW1.BOS1.ALTER.NET [146.188.176.225]
12 196 ms 208 ms 179 ms NVC.customer.UU.NET [64.68.0.242]
13 197 ms 206 ms 207 ms www.mysitespace.com [64.68.191.111]
The numbers on the left are the so-called “hops”. The number of hops that it takes to transmit a packet of data from computer A to computer B is the number of routers. In our example there are 13 hops.
As you can see, each response line gives you the HOP #, the round trip times for the 3 packets that were sent and host information (IP address and/or host name).
The roundtrip times for each hop are representative of the time it takes to go from the source to the host for that particular hop and back to the source.
Short times are a good sign. Also, a small number of hops is usually a good sign.
Traceroute is a good way to determine path but, just as ping, it should not be used as the last word when it comes to speed evaluation.
The ultimate test is the download speed test. To do that you should ask the host for a test download file. That’s about the best way to judge speed. The goal is to find a host that has the capability of sending at least a few hundred kBytes/second. If you’re on a dial-up connection you’ll not be able to test this yourself. Read on and you’ll find a solution to this particular problem.
Because the host might try to fool you by giving you a test file located on a fast, almost empty server, it might be even better if you’d contact a current customer and ask him/her to post a test file on his account.
The file should be big enough to allow you to see the speed stability over time. A 10-15 Mb file should be enough. Another important aspect is the time of the test. The best times are rush hours actually, when the server are busy. These are are in the morning when most people read their emails (8am on the east coast of the US) and dinner time. Take care to compensate for time differences as not all servers host American websites.
Always keep in mind that all results depend on location, ISP etc. This is why it’s good to run a tracert from other computers located in other places of the world (where a significant part of your visitors might come from). Good places where you can do that are http://www.tracert.com/cgi-bin/trace.pl and http://www.traceroute.org.
I recommend you to ask the people at WebHostingTalk.com to help you with your speed test. Usually there are people from all over the world there, so you will get to have the host tested from various parts of the world, through different networks, etc. Don’t forget to post the URL of the test file!
For as much as I know the right place for this king of test requests is the “Other reviews” forum located at http://www.webhostingtalk.com/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=64.
Do all these things I told you about and you’ll get a pretty good idea about the speed of the host you’re investigating. Hmm… tough word… “investigating”. It makes all these things sound soo… dangerous!
http://www.whreviews.com
Web Space or Bandwidth: Finding the Right Balance
Web Space or Bandwidth: Finding the Right Balance
Before you choose a hosting plan, there are many things to consider. Two of the most important are the Web Server Space and the Data Transfer Allowance (also called bandwidth) that you will need. Web hosts will usually try to lure you with either a large amount of Web Space or monthly Data Transfer Allowance. Though the best case scenario would be to have plenty of both, most hosts tend to offer more of one and less of the other, so you will have to find the right balance.
To decide how much Web Space and Data Transfer you need, you must first decide what kind of site you will have. Small business sites generally fall into one of three categories:
One-product website (mini-site): Usually a very small site with two or three pages; its focus is to sell just one product, or to collect visitors’ email addresses to try to sell them at a later date. This kind of site is usually just a long sales letter plus an order page and a contact page.
Company brochure site: Usually around 10 or so pages describing what the company does, its products or services, its location, the markets it targets, an about us page, a contact page, etc. It is basically an online brochure of the company.
Theme-based site: Revolves around a very specific topic or market niche (for example: work-at-home moms), and is updated frequently with new articles, tutorials and resources. These sites can also sell products from affiliate companies, or sell their own products.
Each of these sites has different web space and bandwidth requirements.
A one product website doesn’t need a lot of web space. However, if the site ranks well with the search engines or has a large number of affiliates promoting it, it will generate a lot of traffic and the data transfer allowance will become very important.
A company brochure site doesn’t need a lot of web space or bandwidth. For this kind of site, a basic package offered by a reputable host is usually more than enough.
A theme-based site won’t probably need a lot of web space or bandwidth at the beginning. However, if the site is updated frequently with new articles and resources, its web space requirements will increase. Also, as the site gets more traffic and offers more content, the data transfer allowance will also become important. You must plan for the future from day one, and get more web space and data transfer than you seem to need at the beginning.
Here are some expamples of how you can estimate and calculate your web space and data transfer requirements (we will assume that the average size of a web page, including pictures, is 50 Kilobytes).
One-product Site
If your one product site has just three pages, it will just need 150 Kilobytes of web space (a drop in the bucket considering that basic packages nowadays offer upwards of 50 Megabytes of space). However, if it receives 150,000 page views per month it will require approximately 7.5 Gibabytes / month of data transfer.
Company Brochure Site
If your company brochure site has 10 pages, it will only need 500 Kilobytes (aprox. 0.5 Megabytes) of web space. If it has 5000 page views per month, it will need 250 Megabytes (aprox. 0.25 Gigabytes) of data transfer per month.
Theme Based Site
If your theme-based site starts off with 50 web pages of content, it will need 2.5MB of web space. However, if you add ten pages of new content per week, you will need 26 Megabytes more in your first year. After two years, you will need 52 Megabytes, and so forth. As you see, your need for space may add up pretty quickly. If we estimate that your site will have 30000 page views per month, its monthly bandwidth consumption will be 1,500 Megabytes (aproximately 1.5 Gigabytes). This figure will most likely grow as you add more pages.
Your space and data transfer needs will also grow dramatically if you offer large files for download. For example, if you give away a 1 Megabyte PDF Ebook and 1,000 people download it in a given month, you will need 1 Gigabyte of data transfer just for that one particular download (and you still haven’t accounted for the data transfer consumed when users access and browse your site!).
Since web hosts will usually charge you fees if you use more than your alloted web space and bandwidth, you must carefully monitor your consumption of both. However, you should pay extra attention to your bandwidth.
The reason is that it is easier to control your web space use (after all, it is you who decide how many files to load up to your host’s server). Data transfer, on the other hand, is not as easily controlled. For example, your site may suddenly get a good search engine ranking for a popular search term and receive a traffic boost, which will consume more bandwidth than you had originally planned. Or, unscrupulous webmasters may “steal” bandwidth from you by linking directly to images on your server, instead of saving them in their own web server space.
Therefore, it is wise to plan for the unexpected, by making sure that your host doesn’t charge unreasonable fees every time you exceed your web space and data transfer allowance, and that it offers a free and easy way to upgrade to a better hosting package whenever the need arises.
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You can freely reprint this article provided that you include the following resource box:
Mario Sanchez publishes The Internet Digest
http://www.theinternetdigest.net a website and newsletter that gives you useful advice on web design and Internet marketing, one free tip at a time
Selecting a Quality Web Hosting
By Shelley Lowery
“The page cannot be displayed.” Have you ever encountered this message while surfing the net? Of course you have. We all have. Think it can’t happen to you? Think again. If you’re hosting your business on one of the free hosting services, you’re literally placing your entire business in the hands of a complete stranger.
Free hosting services don’t need to have a reason to shut your site down. You may get up one morning, try to access your site and instead of your site loading, this message will appear, “The page cannot be displayed.” There goes all of your hard work, your web site, your traffic, your search engine positioning, your customers, all gone.
Free hosting services aren’t interested in your business or how hard you’ve worked to design your web site and create a steady stream of traffic. Their main concern is their business. That’s why they’re doing it. They display banner ads on every site they host. Pop up ads are not only irritating, but they make your site appear to be unprofessional. In addition, many Search Engines will not allow free host URLs to be listed.
If you’re serious about your business and you have a sincere desire to succeed, having your own domain name is a must. It’s not a luxury; it’s a necessity. Businesses using the free services are not taken seriously. Having your own domain name is just as important if not more important than a professional looking web site. They go hand-in-hand.
Selecting Your Web Page Host
When selecting a professional web host your first consideration should be the company. Check out their background. Talk to some of their customers and ask them if they’ve been satisfied with their service.
• How many customers do they serve?
• What is their uptime percentage?
• Do they require you to make payments in advance?
• Do they charge set up fees?
• How is their customer support? Test them.
• Do they offer fast connections?
• Do they offer shopping cart software to process your orders?
• Can you upgrade free of charge?
Web hosting prices vary greatly. When selecting your host, make sure you’re getting exactly what you’re paying for. Keep in mind, a lower monthly rate will not benefit you if your site is down a lot, slow, or customer service is poor.
Criteria for selecting a host
Selecting a professional web host is a very important decision. Make sure you do your homework and ensure the host you select offers exactly what you need.
• Your own domain name (www.yourname.com)
• Your own True POP email account – name@yourdomain.com
• Fast, low overhead, Multi-T3 access
• Your own unrestricted cgi-bin
• Access to SSL Encryption for secure transactions
• Java, C, C++, Tcl support
• Autoresponders
• htaccess Password Protection for your files or directories
• At least 1 GIGABYTE (1024 MB) of Daily Transfer
• Design (and upload to) your site using Netscape or other HTML editing software
• Microsoft Frontpage (98) Server Extensions for those utilizing Frontpage
• Unlimited free access to your server via Telnet/FTP
• Online invoices, account tracking, and payment history to enable you to check your account balance, monthly invoices, past payments, etc.
• Complete daily server backup
• Easy access to your log files
• Statistics on visits to your site
Free web hosts are great for hosting a personal web site, but not recommended for a business site. If you’re really serious about your business and want to establish your
Internet presence, I highly recommend Host4Profit. They provide you with exactly what you need to develop a profitable Internet business at a very reasonable price.
http://www.web-source.net/cgi-bin/t.cgi?l=h4p
Copyright © Shelley Lowery
Shelley Lowery is the Webmistress of Web-Source.net. Your Guide
to Professional Web Site Design & Development. Subscribe to
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UNBIASED STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE ON WEB-HOSTING
UNBIASED STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE ON WEB-HOSTING
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copyright (c) Pavel Lenshin
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No more speeches about importance of your own domain, no more talks about necessity of having paid hosting. If you think your brand domain name and stable hosting with a number of features and absence of ads are not worth, at least, $50-$150 per year, then you probably want to play games, rather than build online business.
Choosing hosting provider is something similar to choosing the place of your off-line office. Despite the fact that it is as easy to enter the URL and go to web-site that is physically located in Sidney as in Oslo, the final role here plays the speed of connection and stability of the hosting itself.
The problem with hosting comes down to the old statute of running ebusiness – that is RESEARCH before ACT! The easiest thing to do online is to pay money, the hardest is to THINK OVER what I’m paying for! That statement is true with hosting also because you can pay, let’s say, $35 monthly for some particular hosting service, without notice that in two mouse clicks there is a hosting offer providing two times better services for $15 per month only, so you will keep on losing services as well as $20 monthly that accumulates up to $240 annually losses as a Fee for not doing hosting research! Besides you should keep your eyes open for very good discounted offers that could save you 30-50% for the first year of payments.
Phase I – Determining NEEDS
1. Estimate your ebusiness basic requirements: total web-space needed, monthly bandwidth (approximate traffic volume multiplied by the most visited web-pages’ total size) and ability to run CGI scripts as a must for every ebusiness.
If it is content rich web-site, example of your first year of hosting may look like this:
* 30-50Mb of disc space;
* 500Mb-1Gb of monthly bandwidth;
* cgi-bin to be able to run your own scripts an offer additional services;
If it is sales web-site, your first year of hosting should be something similar to these requirements:
* 50-300Mb of disc space depending on how much info products
you are going to sell and therefore upload on your server; * 1-3Gb of monthly bandwidth;
* cgi-bin to be able to run your own scripts an offer additional services;
In particular case with one-two ebooks and three-four pages sales web-site, 10Mb of storage space with 500Mb of monthly bandwidth, in general, is more than enough, if you are not going to expand it, so look closely and examine your potential but remember: you ALWAYS have a chance to expand, but you will NOT be able to get your money back if you overpay for services or web-space you don’t need. That is called efficient ebusiness running.
2. Determine additional services that are necessary or preferably to have. Consider among them the following:
* Email aliases
* URL Redirects
* Web Mail
* FTP access/ FTP Accounts
* Web control panel
* Graphic statistics
* Custom error pages
* POP3 Accounts
* Sub-domains
* Autoresponders
* Mailing List(s)
* Password protected directories
* MYSQL database(s)
* Perl
* PHP
* SSI
and
* marketing info & support
* promotional help (SE submissions, free banner impressions)
* shopping cart
* chat
* forum
3. Plan your hosting expenses beforehand. Usually the amount you pay depends on the amount of services you choose, but not always as there are hosting providers, which offer identical services for totally different money. The saying that “You get what you paid for” is not necessarily true, especially what concerns high profit margins internet business. Although hosting service is not pure online as it involves some physical computer systems to be installed, nevertheless paying more for less is extremely possible. In other words, know your budget.
Phase II. Selecting the ONLY ONE!
1. Those who start looking for proper place or business web-site should have one or several possible hosts in view that you knew or met positive feedback about. For now just make a note of them and put aside, we will come back for them in the step 3.
2. Now it is time to search among hundreds of offers. Accomplish your search by filling online forms at:
http://www.google.com
http://www.hostcompare.com
http://www.findmyhosting.com
http://www.findwebspace.com
http://www.hostsearch.com/search_main.asp
Click on advanced/enhanced search option if available, input all your approximate criteria that we determined at the first phase and here we go! Tens if not hundreds of wannabe your host providers at your computer screen in less than a minute.
3. Narrow your search by selecting first ten (or more if you have the will and spare time) results on every search site page(s). Now you should have 50 (or more) host providers and 2-5 hosting companies you heard and knew about before.
In the next step we will start to compare all of them in order to choose the one that deserves your hard-earned money. This task is being accomplished by simple viewing and testing each of the host providers’ web-site. How to test and what things to pay close attention to are explained below, but first eliminate all duplicate hosts if there are any.
4. Knowing your potential market will help you to differentiate some of the host providers by selecting those who are physically located closer to your market. If your auditory is mainly English speaking people then you should think about choosing servers that are located in US. If you are a German restaurant owner running web-site for local market it is not critical, but preferable to put your web-site to web servers that are located in Germany, not in US. I have mentioned web servers instead of hosting providers on purpose, because the hosting provider itself may be located and registered in one place, but having their servers co-located in other city or country, like my own provider situated in Moscow, but the web-site they host, physically co-located at their US servers. If you provide universal services (like web-design) and shoot for the global markets offering multilanguage site, then physical location of host provider is subsidiary.
5. We start from removing absolute “losers”. The first criterion they won’t pass is the look of their web-site. Is it professional or there are amateurish colors with 3 or more banners? If you think the price of their site design is not even worth $100 you may close their site and forget about them. By doing so, you distinguish profitable host providers from those that don’t even have $300-1000 to invest in the professional look of their web-site. You may not even read what they wrote on their sites as their appearances tell ten times more about their businesses than no words can.
6. Check technical specifications of the hosting servers that are being offered for your shared hosting. Needless to say that Pentium III 450 Mhz with 1 Gb of RAM, for instance, is worse than Pentium IV 2.2 Ghz with 4 Gb of RAM. Outer channels bandwidth and speed can also give you the image of how established the host provider is. You may not need to know all specifications of routers, connectors or other devices, just ask for specific numbers that are easy to compare. That analysis will also tell what hosts are worth further testing and what aren’t.
7. We also need to reassure that our web-site as well as all possible databases won’t be vanished due to power supply overload, virus, fire etc. It is important to check what kind of maintenance conditions they offer. – Do they provide at least 99,5% uptime guarantee? – What kind of independent power supply they offer? – Is there automatic back up option? – Do they have fire and humidity control systems?
Some host providers wouldn’t even bother to tell you about these control systems. You know what to do with them – they go off the list!
8. Next stage is to send them a prewritten email asking for some question. It may be some purposeful inquiry or imaginary one just for testing task. Those who failed to response in 24 hours are off the list also. Remember, that email, due to the “unstable nature” of the internet, may not be even delivered, so write for the second time, if no response again, than they aren’t worth the ink to spend on them by crossing their web-site address out of the list :0) Just carefully tear them out :0)
9. The last test that we run is to check the connection speed of the remaining hosts. You should know how fast the response of your web-site will be.
Two online services would help us in fulfilling this task, namely:
* http://netmechanic.com/server_check/site_monitoring.htm this one will check a particular server within 8 hours and email you the report. * http://www.webhostdir.com/toolkit/comparehosts.asp allows to compare 4 hosts simultaneously by entering 4 domain names of respective web-sites.
I would suggest testing each host twice. First time to check the response rate of their corporate web-sites, and second time by comparing speed of their clients’ web-site as there may be a big difference. Just make sure clients are using approximately the same shared hosting plans.
That is all. By now you should have several options: your gold, silver and bronze hosting winners. You can go ahead in setting up your web-site with anyone you prefer more. Don’t lose the rest though, as they may prove to be useful in case some collision occurs with your present “winner”. Last thing. When your web-site is online, don’t just forget to create additional page for providing your new service – expert analysis of selecting web-hosting. :0)
Pavel Lenshin is a publisher of NET Business Magazine, professional web-developer and CEO of: – http://ASBONE.com/ – informational portal and provider of discounted internet services for entrepreneurs, including internet access, web-design and hosting; – http://InfoAlchemist.com/ – a must-have business library
Reseller Web Hosting Explained
Reseller Defined
The term Reseller according to the dictionary means to sell again i.e. to sell a product or service to the public or to an end user, especially as an authorized dealer, while making sure that you make a profit on the sale.
Reseller Hosting
Reseller hosting is no different either, a reseller buys a Web hosting package from a hosting company and tries to sell it independently. The profit for the reseller lies in either the discount or in the commission s/he gets from selling an account.
For example: The reseller might purchase a package whose features are valued at $100 for $90. So, the reseller stands to make a $10 profit on selling the package to customers. Normally as the customers increase, so does the profit margin for the reseller.Or, you can get some money by earning commissions from a hosting company. This happens when you refer potential customers to the hosting company. If the customer signs up with the company then you earn a small recurring commission until the customer uses the services.
Most web hosting companies try to outsource their services to resellers as it helps them to extend their business reach without the cost of marketing and sales and also helps them to concentrate on the business side of things.
What can be resold
As a reseller you can decide what kinds of services you can sell.
You can provide shared, dedicated or co-location web hosting or merchant accounts, store fronts etc.
If you go with hosting then it might be useful to offer some other hosting related services like domain names, search engines etc.
Of course, if you have problems selling these value added services in the beginning then you can sell them later.
The cost and resources involved
The cost of becoming a reseller and the equipment and people required in order to be successful depends on many factors.
If you just plan to earn commission by referring people to the hosting company by using the Internet, then you do not have to put up a lot of money, all you need is an Internet ready PC and an Internet connection.
For a small start-up not a lot of money and resources are required. You can purchase a good reseller package from a hosting company by paying them some money upfront. All that is needed is a decent computer that can manage the accounts of customers and a good Internet connection.
It is advisable to start small if you are very new to the concept of web hosting and reselling. Then you can expand as you go on and start getting more and more customers in which case offering domain registration is also a very good way to make profits.
If you have the money and the experience then you can go as far as buying all the server equipment required, in which case you will also be responsible for all the server maintenance costs.
The other option could be leasing a server as this will be cheaper than buying the server, but here as well you are responsible for all the maintenance and running costs of the server.
In the above two cases you also need to make sure that you have multiple connections with the hosting company so there are no complications in case a connection goes down.
Upside
The best thing about being a reseller is that you do not require a lot of upfront investment.
There is no need to have a lot of technical knowledge. Account management and Internet skills are all that is required. However, it would be really handy if you have some sales and marketing experience so you can interact with your customers better.
The hosting company generally provides and maintains all the hardware and software.
You do not need to hire a lot of IT staff to provide support. Providing basic support and leaving the more technical issues to the parent company support staff can be easily achieved.
Downside
Support can sometimes be delayed, as you are dependent on the parent company to handle the technical aspects. If there is a delay from their side then you along with your customer are affected.
Sometimes customers leave you if they find out that you are a reseller and not a real hosting company.
Tips for marketing yourself
If you are starting out on a small scale then visiting message boards and posting your services there is a good idea. A lot of potential clientele with relatively small hosting needs also frequent message boards and outline their desired services.
Having contests is a great idea for bringing awareness and interest about your services.
Online ad campaigns, signatures, and text links are very helpful techniques.
Once you have gotten a bigger budget then you can go for Google ad words or PPC search engines.
The best strategy is to try out various combinations of these approaches and work out the best one for your needs.
By Ashish Jain
M6.Net
http://www.m6.net
Leaders in Web Hosting, M6.net is a strong company that has pioneered in the web hosting industry since 1997. The company started with nothing but a few web sites and less clients; and is now hosting over ten thousand web sites across more than one hundred countries around the world. For reliable web hosting M6.net offers the best value, starting from $4 m/o with 500 MB space, 20GB bandwidth, a 30 Day Money Back Guarantee and 24 hour support.