Server Speed

[Mings]

Hey all, I'm baffled by the speeds I'm getting to the LA server from northwest UK with my 10mbit connection.

Testing with a ~100mb FTP and HTTP download, I get around 370-400kbytes. From traceroute (13 hops) the connection is via pccwglobal network.

Now the kicker is this, doing the speed tests (to LA but perhaps different data center) from http://www.speedtest.net and http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/ I'm hitting 550-650kbytes consistently and 1.2mbytes to Texas.

In comparison, the same file with my other host in Orlando, I get almost double speeds at around 650kbytes. Traceroute (24 hops) shows a level3 network.

Did I miss something here or is the connection from Europe to USA much faster when connecting via level3 ?


EDIT:
After some searching in Webhostingtalk http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?p=4681690, it does appear that level3 has a better connectivity to Europe whereas PCCW does better for Asia regions. Perhaps my ISP is on the PCCW backbone.

[Scott]

Hi, Zsev!

Speedtest.net and speakeasy.net are both to test your Internet Connection speed, not the speeds of routing to a server. When you use those tools, you are to select the location closest to you to get the best read of your internet connection speed.

Routing can be tricky and you would definitely get better speeds to Orlando than to Los Angeles as they are roughly 3000 miles apart from each other. Orlando is near the Atlantic and Los Angeles is near the Pacific, so naturally, you'll get better speeds to the East Coast of the United States from Europe.

And it's hard to say which network providers have better speeds. Some are great to some places and bad to others. When we had a Texas server, we always had issues with Level 3, but now our Atlanta server has a much better network connection.

Unfortunately, we don't control the network providers or the path that the internet takes to get to you once you've left the network providers of each of the data centers that we use.

You're welcome to ping our Atlanta server and see if you get any better speeds there. Atlanta is near the East Coast (close to Orlando) and you may get better speeds to Atlanta. You can check on the specks to test it out on our network page at http://powermonster.net/network/ .

If you do get better speeds and want to switch to Atlanta, please send us a support ticket and we can move you!

[Mings]

Thanks Scott,

I did the network test on the Atlanta server and downloaded the file so quickly there wasn't even a progress bar Seems like I'm hitting 1mbyte on that server although I can't be sure with only a 10mb test file. And goodness, USA is huge !

The speed to LA is perfectly fine for my usage , and it appears to have great global connectivity from the traceroute tests I ran from several parts of the world.

Just a slight confusion to the speedtest.net and FTP speed discrepancy which I now realize wasn't a good speed indicator to begin with. I can sleep well now that its cleared up

[Scott]

That's great Zsev!

And yes, the US is HUGE. Our states are your countries. Though I prefer Europe over the US any day and could live in Germany, Spain, or Malta (where my family on my mother's side is from) and probably not miss it here in the US.

And if you are ever not happy, please do let us know! We want you to be happy always!

[alexjems41]

I am currently trying a different web host and have had a couple of issues with the speed. its a nightmare trying to eliminate other factors from the testing such as my browser/ISP etc. After trying three ISP's and 4 browsers I'm pretty sure there was a problem but I would like a slightly more scientific way to test. Does anyone know of a site that can give me stats on response time and throughput?