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Short Term Layer7 Network Review
Short Term Layer7 Network Review
** I have only been a customer of Layer7 now for 2 weeks **
With that, I can say I am very impressed with their servers and network especially with the applications that I am using them for.
In those 2 weeks I have already purchased 3 vps's now. Currently all three are being used for streaming media. So with that need, network speed is what is important to me.
So with that here are a few tests of my own not just network-speed.xyz or yabs. Which are great in their own right, but I wanted to test what I feel is more of a general user experience for my needs.
- For me, what I feel is more up my needs are random reads on the drive and network delivory, we stream and when a new post goes up people hit it at different times so the mp4 starts at the begining for everybody at different times.
My site is running a almost default MediaCMS install, just a very few minor tweaks, and I mean a few.
I am not going to link to it as it is an adult site.
Now I have not had to use their support yet, so I can not comment on that, their sales was a little more cold, I sent a ticket in asking if they allowed adult content on their network and I got back a single word response. "Yes".
So I don't know if that may shy people away.
Setup took only a matter of minutes, but that is what I assume would be their proxmox customer installer, its very cool, but takes about 3/4 minutes to reinstall an OS. Oh the drama....
They do have an interesting control panel, out of the box ssh is disabled, but you can turn it on via their panel, or just use novnc and enable it yourself. The root password is not emailed or displayed to you by default, you have to have it changed after install. No big deal, but can be a little odd to some users.
Payment was Paypal for me, so no problems there at all.
So testing video playback was a little more of a challange then I thought. While I have several vps's around the USA all with desktops, if not configured perfectly streaming video will still be choppy so it was hard to say, but watching the progress bar there was no lag, and I was able to scub the videos on each device several times without problems, also at home with two phones, a desktop and a laptop.
** Note all streams are only encoded in 1080p
So for that while only 35 streams, I can not complain one word, the test was perfect to me.
I have 7 desktops between my house and vps's around the planet. I fired up Firefox and streamed 5 random videos from each vps/desktop.
I ran the test for about 30 minutes to get a feel for the network.
While this test was running, as you can see the cpu/ram wasn't even touched, which I would have assumed as there is no encoding, just streaming, but also the 0.0 helps me check the lack of steal.
Now my vnstat -l results.
Layer7's network graph, its a little different then mine but still.
Now lets test pure download speeds from the VPS to each location.
** The test vps I am currently using is in the FRA1 DC.
Now lets just pure network downloads.
Raw Speed on VPS
root@server1:~# speedtest
Retrieving speedtest.net configuration...
Testing from Aixit (193.24.210.126)...
Retrieving speedtest.net server list...
Selecting best server based on ping...
Hosted by Netcom Kassel Gesellschaft für Telekommunikation mbH (Kassel) [1.68 km]: 5.12 ms
Testing download speed................................................................................
Download: 911.84 Mbit/s
Testing upload speed......................................................................................................
Upload: 733.08 Mbit/s
root@server1:~#
One Provider - France
anthony@mirror-eu:~$ curl -O https://filelocation.com/512MB.zip > /dev/null
% Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current
Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed
100 512M 100 512M 0 0 66.6M 0 0:00:07 0:00:07 --:--:-- 69.2M
anthony@mirror-eu:~$
BuyVM - Las Vegas
root@localhost:~# curl -O https://filelocation.com/512MB.zip > /dev/null
% Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current
Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed
100 512M 100 512M 0 0 16.1M 0 0:00:31 0:00:31 --:--:-- 17.5M
root@localhost:~#
Linode - Dallas
root@localhost:~# curl -O https://filelocation.com/512MB.zip > /dev/null
% Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current
Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed
100 512M 100 512M 0 0 22.3M 0 0:00:22 0:00:22 --:--:-- 22.0M
root@localhost:~#
Rack Nerd - LA
root@torrent2:~# curl -O https://filelocation.com/512MB.zip > /dev/null
% Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current
Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed
100 512M 100 512M 0 0 19.8M 0 0:00:25 0:00:25 --:--:-- 22.1M
root@torrent2:~#
Rack Nerd - LA # 2
root@torrent1:~# curl -O https://filelocation.com/512MB.zip > /dev/null
% Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current
Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed
100 512M 100 512M 0 0 10.7M 0 0:00:47 0:00:47 --:--:-- 11.8M
root@torrent1:~#
Interserver - Storage Box
root@vps2806381:~# curl -O https://filelocation.com/512MB.zip > /dev/null
% Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current
Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed
100 512M 100 512M 0 0 27.4M 0 0:00:18 0:00:18 --:--:-- 25.3M
root@vps2806381:~#
Contabo - St. Louis
root@node1:~# curl -O https://killingamericadocumentary.com/512MB.zip > /dev/null
% Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current
Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed
100 512M 100 512M 0 0 22.0M 0 0:00:23 0:00:23 --:--:-- 23.4M
root@node1:~#
Digital Ocean - SFO
[root@node2 ~]# curl -O https://filelocation.com/512MB.zip > /dev/null
% Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current
Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed
100 512M 100 512M 0 0 18.0M 0 0:00:28 0:00:28 --:--:-- 19.4M
[root@node2 ~]#
Linode - Atlanta
root@localhost:~# curl -O https://filelocation.com/512MB.zip > /dev/null
% Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current
Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed
100 512M 100 512M 0 0 26.0M 0 0:00:19 0:00:19 --:--:-- 28.1M
root@localhost:~#
Knoxville TN - AT&T Fiber
anthony@Anthonys-Mac-mini ~ % curl -O https://filelocation.com/512MB.zip > /dev/null
% Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current
Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed
100 512M 100 512M 0 0 28.7M 0 0:00:17 0:00:17 --:--:-- 31.6M
anthony@Anthonys-Mac-mini ~ %
Pulsed Media - NL
root@lt2mp7-3-47:~# curl -O https://filelocation.com/512MB.zip > /dev/null
% Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current
Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed
100 512M 100 512M 0 0 80.9M 0 0:00:06 0:00:06 --:--:-- 86.7M
root@lt2mp7-3-47:~#
Hope this helps anyone looking at Layer7 for a vps, their prices are amazing, I 110% can't complain.
Thanks,
Anthony
Comments
What model are you using?
1 x Cloud Server - Mid CPU 3Cores-16GB-120GB FRA!
2 x Cloud Server - Mid CPU 6Cores-32GB-240GB FRA!
Thanks
I used their support, and they responded quickly (less than 3 hours, even on the weekend), and they were transparent and fixed a bug in less than 3 hours (on Saturday).
I can also recommend them - nearly no steal, no downtimes so far (I'm a customer for 2 months).
They changed the storage system in the last month, which resulted in slow io during that period, but now it's fast (even faster than before).
Below a yabs of Mid CPU 2Cores-8GB RAM FRA1 with 1TB HDD:
And HDD:
BTW, they are also active here (@layer7 )
nice review!
never have any service from them but I like how we can add some HDD storage additionally
@layer7 the discovery of the year for me.
Yes I also impressed with layer7 vps I Al's have a mid CPU vps 24GB ram using it for game servers thanks @layer7 for wonderful vps in cheap cost!
Recently purchased their server as well, very happy so far.
Yeah, bought from Oliver couple days ago. Looks like a very good deal.
But if to be honestly something scary for me: in @layer7 signature we can see that Oliver in business since 2003. As I can understand servers are owend by company (not rented).
Server location perfect for my tasks (for 10ms less latency that to the "typical Germany")
I just do not know what to say, from one side this is hidden gem, from other don't know...
Hostdoc started out great too and we know how that turned out.
Wish layer7 to be with us as long as possible. Great service, great company.
Hi,
hrhr welcome to the dark abyss
And yes, existing since 2003, and i hope LET wont kill us
The only problem is IPv4 shortage. We will soon have to restructure offers. So most probably we will remove offers < 3,- EUR / month very soon. That will go for new contracts only, not for existing ones of course.
Do you buy or lease IPs?
Sad, but understandable.
what about extensions once the first period, in my case 1 year, is over? would I like to continue my top deal at the same conditions?
@layer I'm interested in PAR location. Will Ryzen in PAR be restocked soon?
Hi,
neither. We are RIPE member since 2004 or 5. We have our own IPs, so we do not buy or rent them. Buying additional could be an option. But with a buying price of maybe 20-30 EUR per IP, it makes no sense to offer 24 EUR / year VPS's... thats economical obviously not too much smart.
We would only increase pricings if our colocation prices rising ( power, colocation or traffic ).
In the past years we never raised prices for VPS's. With the extreme price increase of power cost in germany of maybe 60% and around 15% for colocation in 2022 we had to increase pricing for colocation and low cost physical dedicated servers in the DE location. - But not for virtual servers. Thats because a VPS hostmachine is for us not a low cost physical dedicated server and has already a good ratio between colocation/power cost for us on one side and income from customers on the other side. So even if our cost are suddenly 30-40 EUR higher per month, it wont have the impact a 30-40 EUR increase would have on a low cost physical dedicated server we leased for 60-70 EUR / month.
So thats an advantage cloud has... the power of the team of customers giving single servers a good income.
So to answer your question in a short story: At least because of IPv4 cost, nothing will change for the extensions of contracts. And since the IPs are already there that existing customers are using, their cost will anyway not change ( except RIPE will increase the pricings, which is most probably not going to happen ).
But we will introduce a bigger difference between the france and the german location, as the france location is simply much cheaper.
Hi,
did we actually introduce them already in PAR location? I dont think so?!
Anyway, the plan is to have a date in the datacenter in PAR location coming weekend.
If all goes fine ( which is usually not the case, but hope dies last =0 ) then Ryzen will be available in PAR location and also the MID Cloud servers will be available too.
And most important, the storage instability will hopefully stop by changing there quiet some hardware.
But didn't you buy them at some point? Or how did you get them? And how do you get additional IPs if you neither buy nor rent them?
Of course not for the first years, but if you split the price across maybe 4 years, it would be with a price of 30€ per IP be only 0.6€ a month, and then no additional costs. Or do I misunderstand that?
IP addresses used to be free.
They were provided according to need (on request)
IP addresses should still be free.
But there aren't enough of them, which has led to the creation of a grey market.
That's why we need to switch to IPv6. And all providers should support it.
And @layer7 got them for free in 200X, and therefore neither bought nor rents them. Thanks for the explanation.
But @layer7, if you don't want to buy them, how do you plan to get additional IPs?
@layer7
The number 7 is often associated with good luck and spiritual significance in various cultures. It's considered lucky in many traditions because of its occurrence in nature (like the seven days of the week, seven colors in a rainbow) etc.
is this anything to do with 7 in the name Layer7?
[...]
if i have understood it correctly, that sounds promising. under these circumstances, i would pay for my vps, which i have already paid for a year, for at least another year at the same conditions as i paid for it a few weeks ago. is that possible?
even with a vps that had a massive, possibly too large discount (50%) for annual prepayment?
or should i better keep quiet and be happy about this "deal" and have to pay a higher price from the second year onwards? @layer7
Hi,
with the RIPE ( and afaik similar?! with the other RIR's ) it works the way that you pay X for a membership and you will receive IPs " for free " based on your justified needs.
When we became RIPE member, we got a /19 as a start. Of this /19 as a provider you would slice them in CIDR notation and write to the ripe that you will use this /24 for this purpose or this /26 for this purpose and this way justify the usage of your IPs.
As soon as you hit 80% of justified IP Space they will give you the next network ( in our case a /18 ) and then again, you will justify and so on.
Somewhere later, when people finally started to know that some strange thing called "internet" exist, the need of IPv4 space increased drastically. Up to a point where the RIPE did not give away /19 anymore but /22 and then, some years ago /24 and currently if you apply for a RIPE membership you will actually come on a waiting list to get your /24 IPv4.
Already since the introduction of a /22 it was already the case that you could not get more from RIPE, even with justification. In the end they gave you 1 "last" additional /24 network if you apply for it ( without justification ).
And you simply pay every year your RIPE fee's ( currently 1.4/1.5k -- its public on the ripe website anyway ).
So right now the only way to get IPv4 is to buy or rent it. And yes, we could buy it, and yes if you dont plan to close your company after 12 months, the buying price would be stretched.
But honestly i lack of motivation to prefinance IPv4 space for 1-1.5 years ( 20-30 EUR ) so that customers could order low cost 2,- EUR VPS's -- it just makes economically no sense ( for me ).
I will do that for customers paying 5-10 EUR per month -- while giving them tons of resources for this money. So its for both parties somehow fair. -- The customer gets a lot of resources for still a very good price and we dont have to wait for years until we make the first profit.
Honestly i dont plan to get additional. Actually in 2017/2018 we sold 24k IPs ( /18 and /19 network ) as my daughter was born in 2015 and i wanted to have more time for the family. So there was 0 customer aquisition. The existing customers were just there and nothing moved.
The only reason we are talking here right now is the fact that in 2019 my son was born ( unplanned hrhr lol f*** noobs ) and because of other family circumstances the financial needs just exploded.
So tadaa, here we are back again working.
And this low cost 2 EUR server offered currently are just there to say "hellow here we are" to this LET community.
With IPv6 we can offer 2 EUR or even 1 EUR servers, no problem, i am ready for the dirty stuff.
But with IPv4 we still have some thousand IP addresses, and i was never and do not plan to become a masshoster. I dont need the billion dollar business. I like it smooth, fair, personal and professional. So staying small is perfectly fine for me.
Hrhr, actually before we sold as ISP4P / IP Interactive. That were different companies ( same staff/hardware/etc. ) but juristically different. This Layer7 company i took over from a former customer who stopped his business ( became a normal employee to have time for his family ).
I took it over because it was simply cheaper but to change the company type of ISP4P / IP Interactive.
And if i remember correctly Layer7 is about the ISO/OSI modell 7th Layer. He is a programmer in the first place. So bear with him... you cant expect too much mystical stuff
My ISP4P is not much better... Internet Service Provider 4 Professionals ... sorry to disappoint you, nothing too much fancy/cool can be found here.. cold wanna-be-logic, thats all...
Aeohm, i dont know what vps with massive 50% discount you refer to ( and maybe its better if we keep it like this
) but that strategy there will anyway not work.
What ever price you have now, you will also pay in the extensions. So of course you could pay 100 years into the future, but you wont have more discount. And you can not secure the price this way.
Because all contracts are monthly ( at least if not explicitly agreed otherwise ) even if you pay multiple months into the future, they will still remain monthly contracts.
So if we dont like you anymore ( because you make nonsense, we become greedy or flying pigs from the mars command us to do so ) we can cancel the service in every month. Of course you will receive your money back pro rata ( except the pigs tells us otherwise... ;p )
but the prepayment is just for you to get better prices/discounts.
And since you have already maximum discount possible ( with 50% we could safely assume that ) ---- 50% ? still cant believe it -- and dont want to know it
---- you will just reduce your own cash-on-hand.
So if you want to use us as a bank, feel free to pay tons of years in forward -- the booking girl will seriously love you to give her this hassle to split a big payment from 2024 for the following years to have the tax declarations with the german finance department in a correct way.... if i were you, i would think about that twice...
But currently you can get 3-4% interest from the banks. Maybe it makes more sense to park your money there for now.
i'll bring the coal over in cash. i like you guys so it makes sense to drop by.
is anyone in the office at Zum Sonnenberg 1-3 today? i'm going to get on my motorbike and go for a ride anyway.
Hi,
hrhr, No!
Hiding in the safety of homeoffice
And please no cash.... remember the booking girl... she know's where i live
i always prefer cash. but it's clear that the vps is paid differently. nevertheless, i will check out the sonnenberg today.
Do you plan to do that?
Couldn't you rent them, as that is often less than 0.5€/month per IP?
Very nice and also great for the customers!
Then I hope that you don't become greedy and that the mars is uninhabited
According to Google Maps, at Zum Sonnenberg 1, there is IP Interactive UG, which is, according to Google, an electronics store
And @layer7, one final question: When do you plan to change the prices/products?
Hi,
yes sure, we can any time introduce micro services with IPv6 only. Actually already now we have that on the website/shop in the germany - dusseldorf location.
If you want/need something else/special/have an idea, i am open to anything.
--
Yes we could rent them. But i lack of trust. I will not base my business and sell services to customers on circumstances i can not control. Thats why we hold all in our hands. IPs, Hardware, Network, what ever.
Someone who rent IPs could loose them any time. At best at the end of the contract duration because the lessor wont extend the contract, at worst when the lessor is bankrupt and the IP space is forcefully deannounced. So at best, customers would have to do IP changes at worst, they will be streight offline out of nowhere.
Both situations are not compatible with how i aim to do business.
--
Yes, IP Interactive UG, thats us (too). And well, we do not sell bulbs or cables or tools
But there is also a good chinese across the street. The food is definitely not bad :-)
[...]
really? do you know "verbraucherfenster hessen" that's all i'll say. there's no harm in popping in every now and then. but i admit to having eaten there before.
That's of course a problem with leasing.
Do you still sell something as IP Interactive?
And I have two questions: how do you make the horizontal rule, as
---doesn't work for me? And when do you plan to introduce the new pricing?I like your thinking.
Wishing you the very best for the business.
Hi,
no, IP Interactive UG is empty. Nothing is happening in there.
horizontal rule? Cant follow you... i dont see any horizontal rule ( long dash across the whole line ) in my postings.
I am not yet sure when we will change. But as soon as the Ryzenhardware is in france we will change the website. And when the website is changed, it would make sense also to think about the future of the offers.
So i assume that within this month it will be a topic. If there would be changes or if we will decide to give it more time because the reserves of IPv4 are still enough, i can not tell.
In fact we also gave some IPs to one of our very longterm reseller ( while warning him that its just a time question before we will/might need them back ) to be routed somewhere else. So actually we rent some of our IP networks to some customers. It would make sense to cancel this kind of contracts if we could use the IPs ourself better.
The return of such IP space would change the overall availbility of IPs for us.
And just to make it clear again: Only the smallest configs will be a topic... means for now anyway just the smalles Mid CPU product. So actually not too much will happen for now.
So no need to buy now the whole available stock... ( of course you are free to do so
) but its just not needed.
EDIT: I just saw now that
---actually generated the horizontal line in this post! Thats how its written in the editor: