Hi All,
This will be my first post
Although budget does play an integral part in the selection of a host, I am hoping that these strategies will actually change that thinking and spending just a little bit above your budget will have a impact on your choice of host.
We intend to assess the download and connect times of a web host/site.
Start with the host. This is were you would primarily start to assess the quality of the host.
for this example I am going to use Dreamhost and supanames, dreamhost is $10 a month (US based) and supanames is $20 a month (UK based)
Using DOS command line to ping the server:
On the windows desktop go to Start-->Run and type in 'cmd' and then type 'ping www (dot) dreamhost (dot) com' without the quotes and and replacing (dot) with a . with the space between ping and the domain name. It will give you the following results:
We are looking at the highlighted yellow area that shows a whopping 162/163ms, this is no good.
Then go over to WatchMouse web site monitoring service - Check host
to see how long it takes for servers from around the world connect with this:
Since dreamhost is US based, if targeted response is from the US then in certain states you can get excellent response time as low as 9ms in San Francisco, but targeting the rest of the world you are looking at high response times as high as 679ms; The resolve/download time is very good for the US also.
Lets see who is hosted on the assumed dedicated server for the host, if other 3rd part sites are not hosted on there it is difficult to assess the response rate for these sites unless you actually know of a site that is hosted with them.
YouGetSignal.com - Find Other Web Sites Hosted on a Web Server
This is a reverse IP tool checker that will tell us just that:
Dreamhost is only hosting its own domains. if you know of a site hosted on dreamhost then you can follow the process above. I would suggest a reverse IP check on that site also as it gives you an idea of how many sites are placed on a shared host by a given host.
Now let us check supanames.
ping test:
As we can see a healthy 15/17 ms response rate. That is actually damn good. This is not much different from hosts like rackspace.
Then go over to WatchMouse web site monitoring service - Check host
to see how long it takes for servers from around the world connect with this:
As you can if the target audience is US based then the response rate is significantly high 80/251/161 ms. But for european countries the response rate can be low as 12/13 ms. The resolve/download time is poor for the US also.
lets see who else is hosted on the supanames server;
Plenty to go off here. Just pick a domain and go through the above process.
In my estimation I would not go with dreamhost (I have done a check with a site hosted with them) and would only consider supanames if my sites are targeting UK/European visitors. I would check to find other US servers that can get me response rates as low as 15/18ms at the monthly fee of $10/20.
Hope this helped
This will be my first post
Although budget does play an integral part in the selection of a host, I am hoping that these strategies will actually change that thinking and spending just a little bit above your budget will have a impact on your choice of host.
We intend to assess the download and connect times of a web host/site.
Start with the host. This is were you would primarily start to assess the quality of the host.
for this example I am going to use Dreamhost and supanames, dreamhost is $10 a month (US based) and supanames is $20 a month (UK based)
Using DOS command line to ping the server:
On the windows desktop go to Start-->Run and type in 'cmd' and then type 'ping www (dot) dreamhost (dot) com' without the quotes and and replacing (dot) with a . with the space between ping and the domain name. It will give you the following results:
We are looking at the highlighted yellow area that shows a whopping 162/163ms, this is no good.
Then go over to WatchMouse web site monitoring service - Check host
to see how long it takes for servers from around the world connect with this:
Since dreamhost is US based, if targeted response is from the US then in certain states you can get excellent response time as low as 9ms in San Francisco, but targeting the rest of the world you are looking at high response times as high as 679ms; The resolve/download time is very good for the US also.
Lets see who is hosted on the assumed dedicated server for the host, if other 3rd part sites are not hosted on there it is difficult to assess the response rate for these sites unless you actually know of a site that is hosted with them.
YouGetSignal.com - Find Other Web Sites Hosted on a Web Server
This is a reverse IP tool checker that will tell us just that:
Dreamhost is only hosting its own domains. if you know of a site hosted on dreamhost then you can follow the process above. I would suggest a reverse IP check on that site also as it gives you an idea of how many sites are placed on a shared host by a given host.
Now let us check supanames.
ping test:
As we can see a healthy 15/17 ms response rate. That is actually damn good. This is not much different from hosts like rackspace.
Then go over to WatchMouse web site monitoring service - Check host
to see how long it takes for servers from around the world connect with this:
As you can if the target audience is US based then the response rate is significantly high 80/251/161 ms. But for european countries the response rate can be low as 12/13 ms. The resolve/download time is poor for the US also.
lets see who else is hosted on the supanames server;
Plenty to go off here. Just pick a domain and go through the above process.
In my estimation I would not go with dreamhost (I have done a check with a site hosted with them) and would only consider supanames if my sites are targeting UK/European visitors. I would check to find other US servers that can get me response rates as low as 15/18ms at the monthly fee of $10/20.
Hope this helped
