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Albania
This discussion was created from comments split from: Need a cheap VPS in Albania.
Thanked by 1darkmaster
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As a real host really located in Albania, I'll share with you the issues and why most hosts are just GeoIP Albanian and not physically here like we are.
1) there are only 2 data-centers in Albania. 1 is ran by a university and hosts the national IXP for Albania (ANIX) that is called RASH. It doesn't sell directly to most EUs, you need to be an ISP with some weight to even get in. Even after getting in, you'll find only Albanian ISPs and HE (which has horrible routing). Getting Cogent at that location is possible, but it's over a link to Belgrade where it then routes normal from, adding 25ms +-/ to all international connections over Cogent. The other datacenter is just an ISP here and they will charge you 500EUR/mo to rack a single server. When someone is running a VPS host, they cannot afford to pay that.
2) There are no Tier1 networks really present here with their own links. All traffic goes across third countries. Most ISPs here are peered only to Eachother in ANIX (local IXP) and to everywhere else it goes out over 1 of 4 options:
1 - Italy over the newer undersea cable connecting Bari and Durress -> to rest of Europe and out (about 35ms just to hit Italy, then it goes up from there).
2 - To Podgorica, ME - this is a common route for ISPs as there is plenty of Dark-Fiber to rent and there are many Montenegro telecoms that will give very cheap transit. The problem with this for hosts is - they won't rent that dark fiber to web-hosts as it isn't profitable. They want bigger ISPs that will pay 10k a month for that line rent. No VPS host can afford to pay that.
3 - To Slovenia. Telecom Slovenja offers really cheap transit to Albanian companies and they rent the dark fiber themselves. This adds 20ms to all international traffic. Even if it's going next door to MK, it'll go Albania -> Slovenia -> Hungary -> Serbia -> Macedonia ... 50ms to get to a neighboring country.
4 - To Sofia - this is the OPTIMAL route. 12ms over IXP in Sopje MK where some Alabanian ISPs have a POP and a fiber line rented from the border of Albania to it. Only problem with this is it's over-saturated fiber and the speeds can dip badly. But this is of course the best route.
So when you lookup on bgp.tools for example an Albanian ISP and look through a few of them that aren't too obscured, you'll likely find Dedicated Server hosts or ISPs in 3rd countries as their Upstreams along with HE (for their free IPv6 transit in ANIX) and MAYBE Cogent which again, isn't a real POP here that's meshed, it's just to Belgrade on a leased line.
So that is the first thing that any host here has to overcome. And it is a lot easier and cheaper to just "Colo" in Germany (Hetzner in the case of most) and then just trick the databases to update their Geolocation to say Albania and rent it as Albanian. The company is usually really Albanian, the owner is most likely Albanian, the servers are not physically here in Albania. IF - they get a decent ping back to Albania, it's most likely through a small box they Colo in ANIX/RASH over a GRE tunnel back from Germany over a link like DE-CIX cross-connect or something. But that is VERY RARE. Most just don't care and hope nobody actually checked into it too much.
There is 1 other host that really is in Albania -- NOW -- if you make sure and force them to give you the Albania one and NOT the Hetzner colo one (they still have both). That host is host.al. BUT - their only Upstream is a very very bad one here in Albania with horrible international connections. And they have only IPv6 peering with HE in ANIX for free, which has very bad international routes.
Proof for host.al is here:
That's from my ISP in Tirana, Albania. 30ms - over Croatia, then Montenegro. And we see there Cogent to beg aka Belgrade.
NOTE: I AM NOT KNOCKING ON HOST.AL - THEY ARE DOING THEIR BEST -I KNOW THE OWNER PERSONALLY AND HE'S A GREAT GUY - JUST USING IT AS AN EXAMPLE OF THE ROUTING ISSUES ALBANIA HAS - GIVE THEM A CHANCE - THEY ARE GOOD PEOPLE
To overcome these, personally we use the same methods the bigger ISPs use. We have servers in other countries with lowest pings possible internationally - and we tunnel our BGP to those 3rd countries from Albania. It gives us a bit of an advantage because we can actually get to those countries faster than our own ISP usually. We test each upstream carefully with traceroutes and only choose ones that take certain routes (GTT / Arelion are the best, as they are right at border and just hop from there to border to us). The biggest thing we do different than the ISPs is we don't take lowest-cost / lowest hop paths and so on. We actually measure latency and pings and traceroutes over different routes manually and decide where it goes that way. It's a LONG - painstaking process and we are still working on it ourselves.
So in conclusion - You won't find any really-hosted-in-Albania good VPS hosts with low latencies abroad, etc because it simply doesn't exist unless the host is really creative and does a lot of testing different routes and forces things to route certain ways. Which is VERY difficult to do.
idk why you took host.al as an example. they use madcom which is a very small company compared to other big dogs like one.al who power up AMC in albania.
IG you don't live in albania or are from neighbors?
You can try get a free VPS by messaging @wadhah multiple locations possible including iran afaik
I do live in Albania and I just used them as an example because they are the only physically hosted in Albania real VPS host other than us.
Vodafone, One, etc do the same thing. Check bgp.tools or do a traceroutes. They route though Montenegro, Serbia, Macedonia, and Slovenia. Vodafone is the one I was referring to when I said obscure. Their bgp.tools shows them peered to Vodafone global only and they use that to hide which upstreams they are on here and where it goes. But I have Vodafone at home and I have done a lot of testing. They route always some very weird low-cost over-crouded routes. Only thing fast are those that they have peered in ANIX or that have the same Tier1 connections as them, such as Cloudflare.
Both do not normally allow downstream bgp sessions. And their "business plans" are extremely speed limited. I've got quotes from them both for a link to a dedicated server in RASH. They want 2000$ a month for a 1Gb/s link systemical.
For normal home users, Albanian internet is fine. For running hosting, it's not got many options.
yeah prices are crazy, haven't even tested them and don't plan to any time soon. just remember some friend having game server with one.al with static ip, the connection was somehow better within albania, low latency, but that was few years ago.
The better within Albania is because of this: https://www.anix.al/ BUT - not with One.. They aren't a member and latency inside Albania to One is very bad. One is the company everyone here complains about a lot tbh. My wife used to work for them as a Customer Service agent while going through college. Image this - she would get calls that they were in the city center - dead city center - and had no bars of internet reception at all while all the Vodafone clients were using phones normal.
Outside of Albania is more of an issue. Inside of Albania, it's not that hard to get decent latency if you're willing to spend all the money to get linked into XC to ANIX and those monthly fees and so on. That isn't at all difficult if you have the clientele to cover those fees. Getting good connections from Albania to outside is more the issue. And most clients that rent a VPS in Albania are probably not located in Albania. They want decent latency and speed to all normal things that aren't in Albania also. Which is where the issues begin.
One of course doesn't have to be a member of ANIX to get decent latency to within Albania. If you're on the edge say in Macedonia and you have a decent upstream with NO IXP connections (IXP connections cause very weird routing for some reason to Albanian ISPs, all their upstreams push over small IXP links with latency), you can get to most Albanian ISPs at 30 or less ms. For example, I have a Hungary server right now that I am working on adding to my mix to give good routes up to N.E Europe. 14ms round-trip from Albanian ISP to them over Cogent for some reason. Why? No clue. Cogent sends it from Tirana to Belgrade to Hungary and all that only takes 14ms. That same upstream can get me back into Albania to most other ISPs within less than 30ms. Vodafone is 23ms, One is 25ms. And looking at a map, you can see how far that is. But because of our very weird network routing here -- that somehow works out to be better for me than a server next door in say Skopje or Podgorica. Also to clarify - That single host in Hungary is good latency like that. Super low. Never seen that low except to another single host in Sofia. But - it isn't all of Hungary. 1 remote location or even just different website or host can be great. next slow as can be.
idk what dates are you talking about but they went thru several changes and a merge with albtelekom, during that time they got most of complains and reports that is a bad isp which is kinda expected.
just.hosting only hosting VPS hosting
Okay
just.hosting does have servers in albania - they are resellers under host.al
They are using it looks like a shared dedicated server or something. very slow connection.
Looking glass for address
https://bgp.tools/prefix/193.108.112.0/24#connectivity
Just a contribution to the discussion to add some clarity.
Not joining the DC discussion, that we were negelected while hosting some of the large providers that even operate here, but to the network connectivity bashing:
IP transit is expensive in the country still but we are doing our best. Companies like Vodafone sell 10Gbps for 6000€ when you can get 100Gbps for that price in EU very comfortably. So we have other paths and we will improve this continuously.
But, beside that we have done our best to have the best connectivity to some key services out there.
AWS - Milano
CF of course has servers nearby, we have even offered to host their infrastructure through a partner in Albania:
Same goes for YouTube, Google etc:
Quad9 used to have a server 1 hop away, but apparently they had an issue; still within 18ms
Now, someone can get create a tunnel and scream he has great latency routing through Vodafone in 1Mbps, but when it comes to heavy use and you want to push 60-80Gbps, you have to select a path that is more affordable, still providing great connection to the key content providers. Next year we will upgrade the network again.
Till then, the following providers provide great service in Albania:
@AlbaHost; \NordVPN; \JustHost @antonpa @Hosteroid etc. Some others are just playing hosting and lack the understanding of the bandwidth and latency.
You may have low latency with low bandwidth. You can have an amazing responsive experience, but downloading large files will be slow.
Necro
Thought this post is from this year and contributes to the discussion.
Original from January 2024, until someone comment again on January 2025, then moved here