Stable hosting connection

[morris]

Hi.

I am looking for a stable hosting and surfing link with static Ip's that won't break the bank. 1Mb with three static ip's for hosting a webserver and doing surfing from my office. I am in the cape town area, century city. I am currently with Kawuleza connect on wireless but their service is very bad and although they have solved some of their stability issues their product is terribly slow as of late. They also take their own sweet time to resolve issue and sometimes do not even return your support emails or acknowledge them. I have three static ip's with them at a speed of 1 Mb with a contention ratio of 10:1 at 1313 per month uncapped but doing test on that link for national and international i most of the time dont even get 300k. Due to their instability I have lost three clients already which has been very bad for my startup business. Not to even mention the 1800 I had to pay for installation which I am also going to lose when moving and the new installation cost. I am looking for a similar link and possible a smaller link at home from the same ISP as I need to replicate data between there and my office. I would appreciate some advise and recommendations as I am running out of ideas. Please let me know if this is posted in the wrong forum and suggest where i should post it.

Regards,
Morris

[Messugga]

Is there a specific reason you need to host locally? Without knowing your situation, I'd suggest a VPS as that tends to make your life simpler.

[morris]

Hi. Thank you for your reply. Yes, I need to host locally as there are various virtual servers running on the same hardware and I need to upload and download massive amounts of data to the servers, including the hosting server as well as back them up to another server locally. I prefer having them close by. I host exchange, websites and online backup for my clients and having my own servers makes customization so much easier.

[JasonH]

Firstly, stable and wireless do not go together, so dump the wireless connection as fast as possible. Get a dedi/virtual server at a local data centre and host your stuff there, then use an ADSL connection at your office. This will be the most stable setup for you and your clients.

[morris]

That is not aption due to my earlier statement. But thanks for the reply.

[Slashfunc]

Hey there! Not exactly sure what your exact requirements are with regards to Hosting BUT if you need an actual Windows server there are some sweet options out there...for cheap. It just depends what your idea of cheap is. And obviously this addresses hosting only.
Our company was hosting with MTN Business, two servers and about 90Gb of data usage per month. Cost us about R40000 per month. We moved it to AWS (Amzon) now it costs us a quarter of that amount for three virtual servers and from my experience so far I have not seen the speed limits on the bandwidth. There are cheaper options at Amazon as well (http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/).
Data costs $0.10 per GB, first 15GB for free for a year. If you want to host something, this is the way to go.

Example: To run a micro instance of Windows 24x7x31 (no license required) will cost you $89 per month (you only pay for it while it is on)

Micro Instance

613 MB memory
Up to 2 EC2 Compute Units (for short periodic bursts)
EBS storage only
32-bit or 64-bit platform
I/O Performance: Low

[JasonH]

That is not aption due to my earlier statement. But thanks for the reply.

That is the exact reason why I mentioned "local data centre" as this will give you access to the server if you need to plugin a hard drive and copy large amount of data onto the server as well as the stability of a datacentre's network.

[morris]

@aws
This is not an option. I have 12 virtual guest servers living on a single host server. Thus the cost to host 12 virtual servers in a data center would be enormous.
@JasonH
The problem here is that I will hae to drive to the datacenter to go and plug the disc in. It is not option either. i currently have hosting with the Telkom datacenter with a 12k diginet line in there. You know how expensive diginet is and when you want to transfer a couple fo Gb over 128 it will take forever. I used to be in a dc with this machine but due to bandwidth costs it had to be moved.

The scenario is this: The server must be in my office so I have fast access to it and be able to transfer Gb's of data. I need a link of at least 1Mb which will be used to publish apps and fro surfing for my personel. It should have good international connectivity as we deal mostly with microsoft products, so no satelite links.

I tried Neotel's fibre but unfortunately they could not accomodate me here.

I appreciate the feedback so keep it coming.

[Slashfunc]

Well, if you need a 1MB link (international as well) then I would suggest Datapro 1Mb, unshaped over Fibre ADSL. It's not cheap but probably cheaper than a Diginet line, approximately R2600 per month with 5 external IP addresses. We've had one for a couple of years now. At some stage over a year ago we upgraded to their 4Mb uncapped line but only to find that the contention ratio was VERY bad. We had serious international issues with the 4Mb line so downgraded back to the 1Mb. That was over a year ago, and although I'd prefer as faster line I have to say that the 1Mb is extremely stable and delivers.

[Slashfunc]

Keep in mind though... any ADSL 1Mb line that you get will have 1Mb download, and much less upload. Which is a problem for hosting large files for a big userbase. So, although we use our 1Mb line for SQL Replication, we don't use it for hosting much.

[morris]

@Slashfunc
Thanks for that info. I will need the 1Mb upload as well. The cost is also double. So it looks like i am stuffed and stuck with these guys.

[Slashfunc]

@Slashfunc
Thanks for that info. I will need the 1Mb upload as well. The cost is also double. So it looks like i am stuffed and stuck with these guys.

Well, then I'm actually in the same boat as you. I need at least 1Mb upload for VPN access and have approached Kawuleza since they provide the same upload and download speed (8Mb/s wireless). Well, I got the trial period going, then realised that the 8Mb/s was only going at 1Mb/s. Realistically I expected at least 4Mb/s. I then had other problems and these guys are just not getting back to me.

I'll keep on monitoring the post, see if someone posts a possible solution. Good luck.

[fluffypony]

I don't think it'll be double, I think it'll be more. The nature of any DSL based network (consumer or business grade) is that downstream data (ie. data flowing down to your computer/company network) is delivered using sophisticated reverse-proxy caching systems to lower the TCO of the bandwidth to the service provider. Upstream data will always be de-prioritised, as it can't reasonably be cached. The nature of ADSL, especially in South Africa, is that your last-mile connection is subject to the whims of Telkom. My strongest suggestion would be the following:

- host at a local data center (regardless of who it is) that gives you physical access to the machine
- get 1 or more 10mbps ADSL connections to your office (probably more than 1)
- create a one-off master copy of all of the data and put it on the server
- use decent de-duplicating (on a block level) synchronisation software to keep the local copy in sync with the hosted copy

Your only alternative is to get a 2mbps leased line (STM-1) that has an SLA guaranteeing uptimes to the curb and into your building. That will cost you a pretty penny...

[Tinuva]

STM-1 (aka OC3) is more like 155mbit/sec! T1 is 1.544mbit/sec.

[fluffypony]

STM-1 (aka OC3) is more like 155mbit/sec! T1 is 1.544mbit/sec.

Sorry - blame Mondays, I meant 2mbps E1 line. In fact, we may be approaching this incorrectly. Maybe what would be smarter is an E1 on Telkom's Metrolan, ATM Express or Megaline Plus where he just pays for his connectivity to the data center to synchronise the local data changes with the hosted server, and then a separate 4mbps ADSL line for browsing?