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Recommendation to Providers When Making Offers
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Recommendation to Providers When Making Offers

pubcrawlerpubcrawler Banned
edited November 2012 in General

A few points to the providers here.

When posting offers please consider providing:

  1. The datacenter the offer/gear is in.

  2. The network upstream providers.

  3. The port speed of your speed test file server.

See lots of interesting offers and end up doing a few test things to make these determinations. Sometimes speed test file perform oddly due to networks and QoS on either side. Been a few times I've wondered if providers here truly were Gbps or not.

Thanks, your friendly VPS consumer.

Comments

  • i suggest provider hit serverbear first and post the result together with offer. that way it will reduce benchmarking by many people

  • blackblack Member
    edited November 2012

    @jcaleb said: that way it will reduce benchmarking by many people

    But then they sell less VPSes :P

    I'd rather see a benchmark from a user than a provider anyway.

  • JacobJacob Member
    edited November 2012

    Pretty sure all offers already have what is stated above.

    pubcrawler, stop with the threads!

  • @black said: I'd rather see a benchmark from a user than a provider anyway.

    its serverbear... its 3rd party

  • @jcaleb said: its serverbear... its 3rd party

    True, but the host can wait for a node to be somewhat idle and run the benchmark or run it on a new node.

  • got ur point

  • @Jacob,

    Most providers don't provide all those details.

    Going through most recent offers:

    @jhadley - Covers datacenter and upstream. Speedtest doesn't say speed nor port on the offer, which might be different. (Good informative ad by @jhadley though).

    Next @jeff_lfcvps, no providers upstream, no datacenter mentioned and port speed on offer as well as speed test file absent.

    Next @Alex_LiquidHost, no providers upstream, no datacenter mentioned and port speed on offer as well as speed test file absent.

    I could go on.

    Many offers are fairly scant on the important details. Thus my original post.

    Perhaps there are other details folks would like to see in ads?

  • AlexBarakovAlexBarakov Patron Provider, Veteran

    Not sure where you are reading those things, however the only thing that is not mentioned on our newer offers is the upstreams. Datacenter and test files/ips are in our LEB offers and are always provided on request, if the user didn't see them.

  • Just a thought regarding benchmarks: the provider's hardware may be quite a large array of hardware. Our stuff ranges from ~4 years old to modern, and we sell on all of it.

  • pubcrawlerpubcrawler Banned
    edited November 2012

    Sorry @Alex_LiquidHost, you were observed since most recent post top 3 for VPS offers.

    The ad is here:
    http://www.lowendtalk.com/discussion/5837/liquidhost-7-for-1.5gb-ram.-15-per-year-deal-inside

    "no providers upstream, no datacenter mentioned and port speed on offer as well as speed test file absent."

    Location, as in city was mentioned and an IP was given for each place. But no, didn't cover the upstream providers, datacenter, port speeds.

  • jhjh Member

    @pubcrawler said: doesn't say speed nor port on the offer, which might be different.

    They're both 100Mbps. I would class the ad as deceptive if they were different.

  • MaouniqueMaounique Host Rep, Veteran

    I think also the upstream total capacity for that particular dc might be interesting. Commit, 95 percentile, whatever.
    I am VERY interested in traffic speed and availability, not only the allocated heap.

  • CoreyCorey Member
    edited November 2012

    The only way for a provider to be true gbit is if they have at least a 2gbit pipe. That will rule out almost every provider here. We're running on a 200mbit unmetered commit and only using 50mbit 95th during times when we are selling new product (bout 25 during slow times), but we also only give out 100mbit ports. In order for us to justify getting a 100mbit commit with a gigabit pipe is when we have to have a 400mbit unmetered commit.

  • MaouniqueMaounique Host Rep, Veteran

    @Corey said: The only way for a provider to be true gbit is if they have at least a 2gbit pipe. That will rule out almost every provider here.

    I am sure many have at least 2 gbit. Some have 10-20.
    For example just yesterday had someone use up 3 tb in the first 10 days of the month and want to buy 10 more. One VPS only used that.
    3 of those and the 100 mbps port is saturated with no place for spikes. You have to have 1 gbps port on the node or will be swamped.

    Only if the traffic allocation is small, that is unlikely to happen, but still possible at times when one VPS will behave like a DDoSer even with legit traffic during some crazy spike.

  • @Jacob said: Pretty sure all offers already have what is stated above.

    Uhm, in short, WRONG. I actually end up trolling all the new offers and often have to tell them to read the rules. You must not look at many offers if you have missed this. The one that sticks in my mind the most is Provision Host, it seems @Brandon finally got it right this time, but if you go back through his older offers, you will see this was not the case. I could list more examples... but I think @pubcrawler already listed a few and its not worth calling attention to more of them. Simply put, it just needs fixed.

    TL; DR:
    I think this thread is worth having and makes a valid point. Thanks @pubcrawler!

  • Thanks @TheLinuxBug.

    Problem with many providers here is that they literally are reselling a small bandwidth server with a small upstream pipe (100Mbps).

    Saturation and lousy service is quick to happen.

    I try companies all the time, since getting real service that performs as advertised is very rare. Probably 6 out of 10 companies here fail to live up to their advertised plans. Bandwidth part is the huge thorn in my a%%. Don't use much, but when I do, shouldn't be waiting for slow scaled trickle.

    For this reason, I try to find providers that have servers and upstream running gig speed. But even that isn't an absolute solution.

    The datacenter part is somewhat minor. Use it to quick rule out providers and auto qualify others. Not all datacenters are equal.

    Upstream providers is huge. Lots of Cogent and HE heavily dependent networks. Not anti these companies, but not interested in have 20 locations that use their networks.

    I am NOT a provider, but imagine a large number of inquiries by customers about some of these point normally.

    To me it's part of the ingredients list on the back of the label. Be forth coming folks.

  • @jcaleb said: i suggest provider hit serverbear first and post the result together with offer. that way it will reduce benchmarking by many people

    Thanks! I do find it a good data point to see how a particular server holds up over time. i.e. do the benchmarks degrade quickly or not.

    I could possibly whip up some sort of script to pull the announced upstream providers for a particular benchmark. Someone did mention that just because something is announced doesn't mean they use it though? (BGP isn't really my strong pont).

  • @serverbear, I like what your site does. Am weary of performance tests though since they lack any info on node load generally. Subject to degrade horribly as node loads with subscribers.

    Upstream provider info would be nice :) Sellers should know who they have upstream. Whether the upstreams are used active-active or one is just for emergency or whatever is unimportant. Generally want to see 2 upstreams for a seller's offers. Would be great to know if they have any peering exchange connectivity (can be a horrible sign or sometimes real beneficial strategically--- like when serving content near to a certain geographic market (i.e. city).

  • @serverbear said: Someone did mention that just because something is announced doesn't mean they use it though? (BGP isn't really my strong pont).

    Exactly, just that your AS does have BGP peers does not mean any or all ranges announced make us of it and in what qty (prepending).

  • serverbearserverbear Member
    edited November 2012

    @pubcrawler said: Am weary of performance tests though since they lack any info on node load generally.

    You can see the load average (and uptime) in UnixBench, but not for the node.

    00:45:49 up  7:38,  0 users,  load average: 0.00, 0.01, 0.05; runlevel 2

    Can't think of a decent non intrusive way to get that info.

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