Hosting + URL

[Blackstar]

I'm currently making a webby (simple one, no PHP or anything like that) for a new business that makes jewelry.

Where's a good place to get hosting (not too much) and domain name?

Is it better to get the two together or shop around?

[new actually done this before so hence i'm in need of advice]

[eaterofpies]

its usually easier if you get the hosting and domain name together and sometimes cheaper as hosting companys will try and charge you to transfer domains to them.
cant suggest a good host company. its been a while and i got my domain name on its own without webspace etc as i use it for my home computer so i dont have to remember my home ip :)

[SlyDave]

123Reg - will supply you with everything you need with scalable options.
Freedom 2 Surf (yes the ISP - but they have very good seperate hosting packages, I currently use these for shadowxj5.co.uk and slydave.com)

[gump]

I dont bother advertising hosting due to the market saturation and high hassle to profit ratio, but If you can work out roughly how much disk space and bandwidth (gigabytes per month) you will need I can sort you something out. I have equipment on the LCHost (AS25098, formerly Woaf Tech) network located in Telehouse east but have now expanded with my own rack in Level3's London Braham Street Facility (and can do good deals on colo if anyones interested).

If not then I can recomend Catalyst2 (http://www.catalyst2.com/services/hosting/linux/index.asp) and HostPlanetUK (http://www.hostplanetuk.com/website_hosting.php).

For domain names I have used ghoulnet (http://www.ghoulnet.com/domains.php3) for the last 5 years, they have been around longer than that and ive never had any problems with moving domains etc with a few hundred domains over the years. Although ive never sued 123reg myself they dont have a great reputation within the industry, and if you do decide to use them i would investigate for hidden costs like transfering the domain away from them (afaik they charge for the IPS tag required to move a domain.. note this isnt simply changing a dns entry but moving the domain to another provider).

I would advise you to choose your host first, and check they are happy to host the dns for your domain as well as provide their name server details you will need to register the domain properly. Oh and how easy it is to manage your domain is also something to check out, heres a screenshot of the webinterface i provide customers to let them at subdoamins etc..

http://images.freshmeat.net/screenshots/32043.gif

[eaterofpies]

i was looking at colo last year as i wanted to run a game server but the bandwidth cost way too much in the uk compared to the us rate of 50 cents a gig and it would have been cheaper renting a server in the us over using my own server in a colo place in the uk :(

how much is bandwidth in the uk atm on colo servers as i might be interested?

[gump]

Your looking close to 100 per megabit based on industry standard 95th percentile chargeing model (which google can explain far better than I can be bothered to), however its not realy worth the ISP's while for small amounts. A rought explaination is that readings are taken every five minutes and the highest five percent are droped, thus billing is on the 95th %ile figure which means your highest 36hrs a month are not included. Personaly i will not offer this charging method without commitment of at least a megabit, and for lower useage requirements it will be based on data transfer as detailed below...

Per gigabyte billing (know as data transfer) is comonly used for webhosting and very low traffic colo as its a lot easier to qauntify, and 50 pence per gigabyte is a fairly reasonable pricing level. It can lead to unexpectedly high bills, and generaly would not be suitable for anythng but ocasional game servers such as for clan practice or a couple of matches a week.

If you looking to host game servers then hosting in the states is pointless as its going to take about 50ms at the speed of light to traverse roughly 4000km under the atalantic before taking incot acount the intrisnic latency of the access layer (ie your dsl/cable, thus a qaulity provider such as level3 will guarantee 60ms to their network borders in the states from a uk connection. As gamers im sure you will know that even the best adsl/cable connections in the uk will have at least 15ms delay before reaching your isp's network borders, thus 25-30ms is a reaslistic delay to a uk hosted game server. 95% of uk servers are hosted between around 10 datacenters in london, all built around masses of fibre optics and located on reclaimed land in docklands funded during the Thatcher era. Thus so long as you avoid equipment/isp's based in manchester (which bills itself as the second uk site for isp's, but would only be useful if london was flattened in which case im sure the internet would be the last thing on even the most hardcore gamesrs minds) you can be sure of decent pings. Please try pinging 82.211.75.2 to test my network, ive had reports of 13ms on BT openworld adsl but its about 16ms from my eclispe adsl.

Regardless of location you are going to get different teirs of providers, and thus the quality of bandwidth and the gaurantees the providers are going to give on their network availability. Global carriers such as level3, mci/worldcom, global crossings etc (known as teir1's) will be backed by 99.9% uptime gaurantess as well as the aformentioned latency figures (such as 60ms trans-atalantic and 20ms inter-europe for level3, i cant speak for the other providers as these figure are usualy only detailed in contracts and at the least require some badgering of a sales rep on the phone to find out). There are cheaper providers around that may be as low as ?50 per megabit, however there are many pitfalls and you simply cannot beat the security offered by an organisation who is big enought not only to have enough equipment to provide a fully redundant serivce from routers, their own trans-atlantic links (this means 2.5gbit/10gbit circuits over existing cables rather than their own cables) as well as enough staff to not only operate their network round the clock but pro-activly monitor for serice degredation. Without getting to bitchy there are providers around at the lower end of the pricing/qaulity spectrum in the uk who as well as being blocked by a number of larger providers due to technical incompentcy have aslo been unable to provide the level of service expected by their customers due to staff not being able to answer their phones while in uni lectures as well as living 200miles away from their equipment. However if you are prepared to risk this then bandwidth can be found for not much more than ?50 per megabit, but from experiance of such providers you well and truely get what you pay for.

wrt gameservers you are probably looking at about 1.5 to 2mbit monthly useage (on 95th percentile billing, which translates to 400-600Gb if billed on data transfer) for a high end p4 running 30-40 slots of half life based games, where as a 32 player bf1942/ut2k4 server on the same hardware will easily push 3mbit (800-1000Gb). This should make it obvious the advantage of using 95th %ile or another form of averaged billing, as the first example would proably cost you around ?150 a month compared to maybe upwards of ?300 with data transfer billing method.

Colocation does bring the resposability of the server hardware onto the customer, and especialy with the 9/11 crap youa re unlikey to be allowed into any datacenter without a member of the providers staff as the potential to damage the infrastucture is simply to great. For example to get to my rack with level3 you must go through 3 sets of electronic doors which require an access card + pin number, then palm scanner to get onto the data floor, manual pin coded lock to get into the suite and finaly the rack is locked with good old low tech key :)

Public gameservers have to be run on the assumption of being full pretty much 24/7 due to conectivity in america being so varied that its not uncommon to find british servers entierly ocupied by yanks in the small hours as despite the latency caused by the cast distances of the atalantic, the pings are often lower than traversing a patchwork of various isp's for say an east cost gamer to play on a server in LA. Private and non comercial servers are an entierly different matter, and in this situation i can offer gaming only bandwidth provided this is the only use of the server. This translates to a feed beng capped at around 3mbit with useage being monitored but not being used for billing so long as its only used for gaming.

Thats the end of 3am ISP 101, but if you are seriously interested then email me and i can give you a competetive quote against any other qaulity provider. Im sure everyone has heard of level3 so i wuld like to think i dont need to resort to drawing comparisons with something like cars, however in esence they both do the same thing. One will be a hell of a lot more reliable and you could proabaly draw rough comparisions between the top speed of cars and gaurateed maximum latency, however your looking at about 50% price difference as opposed to maybe 1000% between a lada and a ferrari :)

[eaterofpies]

Heh wasnt expecting such a big reply so thanks for the effort but unfortunately the costs are just way outside the measely ammount i can afford a month (student). I wasnt looking to actually host games in the states but was just using it as a price comparison as it would have just about been affordable if i was in the states tho i can sometimes get pings of 70 which i class as ok but im still used to the days of the modem where a ping of 180 - 200 was good :).

With reguard to the pinging 82.211.75.2 i get 12ms average varying between 11ms and 15ms from an ntl (1.5 meg down /256k up) connection so it seems it would be ideal to run a server appart from the fact that it would cost a bit more than i could afford even if i got a bunch of mates interested :(.

Hmmm might just go uncap my cable modem and host it on that instead ;)(just messing with you while it would be fairly easy to uncap i really dont want to risk it)

[BirdofPrey]

My ntl just got 13ms average.

And that uncapping would last like 30secs before ntl caught on!

[SlyDave]

eaterofpies, I'm always intrested in hosting a public game server, but it really depends on the game :)

I already have a stake in a UT2k4 Server.