bensd

Just enquired about getting a quote from them after reading an advert in .net

Anyone else used them? Apparently they have the fastest hosting in UK...

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MrMason

"Fast" ... what defines fast?

I can't even find a link to any files on their site to test their speed... (Maybe I wasn't looking hard enough!)...anyway luckily I know for a fact they run a CentOS mirror... so you can test out the download speeds here : Index of /sites/ftp.centos.org/5.3/isos/x86_64

I did some tests for you from my connection

UKFAST :
00:38:37 (4.39 MB/s) - `CentOS-5.3-x86_64-bin-1of7.iso' saved

Goscomb :
00:45:23 (10.5 MB/s) - `CentOS-5.3-x86_64-bin-2of7.iso' saved

so they weren't the fastest there, but that could easily depend on peering - and other factors.

Now for website speed... that is dependent on many things :

Location of server dependent on visitor
You can tell when a site is located in the USA when you load it up, and you can actually measure the speed with firebug if you have it installed. For example load up Dedicated Servers | Managed Dedicated Server Hosting (texas) - it took 20seconds for me acording to firebug! But to someone in america it would probably load in under 5. The Ukfast homepage took 2.9 seconds for me, and the Krystal homepage took 2.3 seconds.

Server Spec + Server Load
If you are using shared hosting, then the spec of the hardware and the contention of the hardware really matters. If you go with a budget host then they are going to be using SATA hard drives, 100mb network connections, and are probably overloading their servers. If you are willing to pay for a premium service then you will be getting better specifications, and a lower contention.

I noticed on their site that only their top linux server (Linux server hosting with Red Hat Enterrpise, Fedora & more from UKFast) comes with SAS Drives, and the rest come with SATA drives and you aren't getting all that much RAM to service those machines. If you are running a website/s with databases then you need RAM and SAS drives if you want them to be FAST!

Website programming/optimizing
This is probably the BIGGEST factor of all! If you want a fast website then you need to work hard to make sure you are doing as little computing as possible. You want to be serving files without hitting the database, and you want caching wherever possible. This obviously isn't needed for small websites, but once you start hitting the 10,000 visitors per day then you will start noticing the load on your machine from serving all these people with dynamic content!

I'm not trying to discredit UKFAST at all, but claiming you are the fastest in the UK is a sales tactic, rather than fact! If you fancy chatting technical about anything to do with fast servers/sites then give me a call (hm my sig doesn't work yet! number is 0845 2000 699 - ask for Tom!)

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Skinner

On UKFast using the *nix links, I averaged 470KBps-512KBps and 720KBps-741KBps (both are KiloBytes not Kilobits) on the Goscome one, so I'd guess that they ain't that fast really :P

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jimm

UKFast host their webperf box in london and client boxes in Manc.
They also have a video tour of 'their' DC which isnt actually theirs. They have space in there in a cage but the DC is not theirs (and they have been asked to remove footage showing other companies racks).
Their service isnt bad but there are pleanty of equal or better people who dont have to resort to these dirty tactics.

nick279

I used them before (dedi server) and didn't have a great experience - would go with rackspace/someone else

bensd

After some of the comments on here i decided not to get a quote from them.

Incidently i have just recieved an email from them (generic sales email), in which they say:
How can they quote this if it isn't true?

jimm

Its all spin.
I dont know the rest of the email but that quote does not say they are the fastest network...

Skinner

Its very careful wording they are insinuating they are the fastest but they are not saying they are it.

RackSpace albeing very good they look at you like you just said you was going to bone their dog when you tell them you need more than 1tb of bandwidth, surely if you going to spring a grand and a half a month on servers and balancer, you should be able to get more than a TB but they really did not know what the hell to say to me.

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MrMason

1 Terabyte per month is only 3mb/second ... That doesn't sound like nearly enough to even require a balancer unless you are going for 99.999% uptime?

Rackspace do seem to set the marker in dedicated hosting here in the UK, but very few people shop around and speak to the right people.

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Skinner

The site that was going to be moved to the UK but now is staying in the US with a different company was using closer to 5-7tb a month, serving 4.5gb DVD ISO/VOBs (Burn your own DVD), Streaming Video, and Downloadable WMV/AVI/MOV, they was just planning to do Webcam sessions and Bluray downloads so was expecting BW to rocket. Rackspace just seemed bewildered that we needed more than 1tb of bandwidth that comes with the servers as default.

They ended up going with Managed Hosting and Application Management Solutions - NaviSite who had CDNs, video platforms etc all ready to rock.

Burning your own DVD is going to be the next big thing

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