Dedicated Servers

[retired_member27]

Is it still best to have a UK hosted dedicated server if you have a UK website, surely now with broadband speeds people won't notice much lag if the server is based in the US rather than the UK? For example, I'm in Australia and I use this website all the time and there's no noticeable loading speed difference between this and local websites.

 

[Craig]

With the introduction of broadband internet in the UK I've found it easier to spot sites hosted in the USA rather than the UK - due to the latency.

For example, when I ping our servers in London I get <20ms pings. When I ping our East coast USA servers I get ~110ms.

In my eyes and opinion, I find USA hosted websites slower, especially present when your clicking around an ecommerce store - lots of images/requests on a page. Download speeds are also limited over higher latency routes.

There's also the SEO issue which many people here will host in the UK for..
If you have a .com and want to be included in the UK searches then you need to be hosted in the UK. No one knows if google puts any weight on the fact that if you have a .uk and its hosted in the USA for example, it's still included in the UK searches - but no one knows if its affected by its location over a UK hosted site.

I will always point UK users to host in the UK and USA users to host in the US., it really depends on your target market and of course whats best for your interests/business.

Craig

 

[jonno]

it's not only about speed, it's uptime, if your broadband connection goes down so does your website. If you have a dedicated server in a data centre you are connected to multiple peers so should one go down the traffic will be routed via another.