# Help EnWorld Find Cheeper Hosting!



## BrooklynKnight (Oct 28, 2003)

Hello everyone.
As it stands assuming we collect 1600 in donations tonight and tommorw morning, Enworld still has to cover 400 a month in hosting costs. This is very steep and high and obviously not manageable.

This is a semi-official call (with Morrus' blessing) for everyone and anyone to post any information they have to better hosting options.

As stated at Nutkin land Enworld uses 80% of a t1 line per month in bandwith.
A few weeks ago I think Morrus mentioned that we need over 150gigs of bandwith a month, and 80gigs of storage space. Thats what Enworld was working with. I've asked Morrrus to direct Enworlds Tech Guru's here to post what Enworld needs to make it easier for you to scour and post information.

So to sum up. Please post links to good hosting sites and special deals that you think can handle enworlds traffic and bandwith issues.


----------



## Angcuru (Oct 28, 2003)

To be honest, I think it would be a better idea for Russ to purchase/construct a server of his own and run EN World off of that.  It may be a little costly up front, but it will save a LOT of money in the long run. (At least the way I figure it.)

A cable or maybe T-something line to keep the connection up and running fast, plus electrical costs would be WAY less than paying someone else to do it for him.


----------



## Michael Morris (Oct 28, 2003)

Ok, quick search with my Google-Fu and start making inquiries (most sites don't prepare plans outright for sites this large)


----------



## Michael Morris (Oct 28, 2003)

Angcuru said:
			
		

> To be honest, I think it would be a better idea for Russ to purchase/construct a server of his own and run EN World off of that.  It may be a little costly up front, but it will save a LOT of money in the long run. (At least the way I figure it.)
> 
> A cable or maybe T-something line to keep the connection up and running fast, plus electrical costs would be WAY less than paying someone else to do it for him.




Do you have a spare $10,000 in your basement, cause this site would require at least a T2 line ran to Russ' house and that AIN'T cheap.


----------



## Psionicist (Oct 28, 2003)

T1 = 1.5 mbps. I doubt it. I'd suggest 50+ mbps for smooth operation.


----------



## rpgHQ (Oct 28, 2003)

ArthurQ said:
			
		

> Hello everyone.
> As it stands assuming we collect 1600 in donations tonight and tommorw morning, Enworld still has to cover 400 a month in hosting costs. This is very steep and high and obviously not manageable.
> 
> This is a semi-official call (with Morrus' blessing) for everyone and anyone to post any information they have to better hosting options.
> ...




I had sent a email to morrus along those lines but didnt wish to post anything here as I didnt know how the relationship with cyberstreet was and didnt want to cause any undue strain between the two. I always wondered if it was the machine or the internet connection that causes all the slow downs here from time to time though.

Depending on the dedicated machine needs I can get you 300 gigabytes a month at a very reliable data center who uses 8 major backbone providers as their tier 1 internet connections and they have 12 fallback connections (which means the only thing slowing things down would be the machine and it nic card) for about half that. 

If I had specs on the physical server machines requirements along with avererage bandwidth usage I can give you all a more exact answer and price. But the the internet connection itself wouldnt be an issue we're talking 7 internet providers each with 1 Gbps(GigE) lines and the 8th is a DS3 line, most of their backup/fallback connections are 100+Mbps lines and some OC3's.

But I have space and equipment leased in this data center and can cut you some nice deals if I knew what the machine spec requirements are.

For example I could get you a 1Ghz AMD Duron with 1 Gig DDR SDRAM and two 60 Gig IDE harddrives and 300 Gig bandwidth with 5 ip addies and cPanel/WHM interface with redhat 7.3 for 200 a month after a 370 one time setup fee or if you want a stronger machine I can get oyu a Dual AMD Athlon MP 1800 with 1 Gig DDR SDRAM and 80 gig IDE hardrive witht he same 5 ip addies and the cPanel/WHM interface with redhat 7.3 for about 250 a month with a 1 time setup fee of 500 bucks.

Stronger machines cost a bit more and weaker machines a bit less. It all depends on the specs for the server machine.


----------



## Michael Morris (Oct 28, 2003)

Psionicist said:
			
		

> T1 = 1.5 mbps. I doubt it. I'd suggest 50+ mbps for smooth operation.




Very true.

Anyway, I've contacted:

Freeservers.com
Ipowerweb.com
hostnuke.com

And I'm working on more.  If you contact someone with an inquiry post their name here so that we don't duplicate each other's efforts.

BTW, this is the form letter I'm using...

Hello.  

I represent a site that has outgrown it's current server.  Our bandwidth needs exceed your given plans and I would like to inquire about the charges for a site that currently places the following demands on its server (These are approximate values that are expected to grow)...

Bandwidth:  150gig / month
Storage Space:  80 GB


----------



## BrooklynKnight (Oct 28, 2003)

I think i should clarify.
Morrus already OWNS the machine Enworld runs on.
Its the bandwith and colocation that he pays for. (I belive).


----------



## BrooklynKnight (Oct 28, 2003)

RPGHQ that sounds amazing. Morrus said once things calm down for the current major problem he'll focus on this. I'm waiting for the tech gurus' to post and tell us about the machine morrus runs.


----------



## BSF (Oct 28, 2003)

Morrus is in the UK, right?

- Can anyone weigh in on the services that would be available in the UK?  (E1, ISDN, Cable Modem, DSL, etc)

- Would Morrus really want to run the site from his house?

- What would it take to get the server being hosted at Cyberstreet to Morrus' home?

Europe uses E1, not T1.  That being said, I know that I can get tremendous rates for T1 access for work, in state, but tremendous deals is still a very significant portion of $400/month.  Not bad for a business WAN that we need up all the time.  But, not as reasonable for a hobby site.  Admittedly, a very popular hobby site.   

We would also need a router.  But, that is not that hard to come across.  Especially if it wasn't bleeding edge.  Something like an older 2500 series cisco would handle things pretty darn well.  Maybe even a 1600 series cisco.  

In the US, consumer level cable-modem or DSL service is reasonably cheap, but you do have Service Level Agreements that are not friendly to 24x7 access.  And really, that is what we are talking about is 24x7 access with good bandwidth.  

To get creative, you could try to bring in a cable modem and a DSL line and then run it through a router that would treat them as redundant links.  The biggest problem with this idea is that DNS might be a real bear to manage under those circumstances.  

Hmm, it is after work and I am a bit brain fried.  Surely I am not the only one here with some network experience, so somebody else might have some better ideas.


----------



## grodog (Oct 28, 2003)

www.he.net and www.directnic.com come highly recommended from folks in the Juniper Networks IT department.


----------



## Psionicist (Oct 28, 2003)

rpgHQ said:
			
		

> For example I could get you a 1Ghz AMD Duron with 1 Gig DDR SDRAM and two 60 Gig IDE harddrives and 300 Gig bandwidth with 5 ip addies and cPanel/WHM interface with redhat 7.3 for 200 a month after a 370 one time setup fee or if you want a stronger machine I can get oyu a Dual AMD Athlon MP 1800 with 1 Gig DDR SDRAM and 80 gig IDE hardrive witht he same 5 ip addies and the cPanel/WHM interface with redhat 7.3 for about 250 a month with a 1 time setup fee of 500 bucks.
> 
> Stronger machines cost a bit more and weaker machines a bit less. It all depends on the specs for the server machine.




Calm down and take a deep breath. 

The one reason why the current machine cannot handle EN World optimal is the forums, a large MySQL database with a neat GUI more or less. A database server needs one: A whole lots of RAM, 2 gigs + preferable (which is actually waaay cheaper than it sounds). And two, a reliable storage subsystem such as SCSI. Raw computer power is nice too, but somewhat secondary.

The problem is, as always, money. The server can be replaced later, the current problem is the bandwidth - or more precisly, the lack of bandwidth. So the best option right now is probably to find a cheaper host which shouldn't be too hard and then in 6 months or so replace the actual computer.


----------



## rpgHQ (Oct 28, 2003)

ArthurQ said:
			
		

> RPGHQ that sounds amazing. Morrus said once things calm down for the current major problem he'll focus on this. I'm waiting for the tech gurus' to post and tell us about the machine morrus runs.




I forgot to mention also that its managed dedicated server included in that monthly fee, update redhat or apply security fixes for redhat and whatever web services your running. Run your own irc server on the box for instance and they'll update it for you with security fixes as they come out or at your request.

And of course with cPanel/WHM you can setup as many domains, subdomains, email services, and all that type of goodness that comes with having oyur own dedicated machine. With 5 ip addies you can setup your own DNS servers so oyu only need one IP you can share with all your website domains and subdomains and still have 3 IP's left over for running say a IRC server app or for your email pop3/smtp server app.

I still cant believe the site has been running thru a T1 (someone said E1. whats the differance in thruput?), which explains a lot of the slow downs and other funkyness that happens withthe site from time to time.


----------



## roninuta (Oct 28, 2003)

my site is hosted on a shared server at macserve.net (albeit pro-bonno)

before you go nuts - it's a mac based service but they do colocation at the infomart in Dallas - that's is a huge pipe 1 hop from the internap backbone in Dallas(Mae Central). I think I get on average around 60-80Mb bursting.

http://www.macserve.net/services/colocation.php 

I think the baseline for 160GB is $300 US and that is at a 512Kb metered rate.

just my 2 cents - but the contact info is onthe site.


----------



## SnowDog (Oct 28, 2003)

*Rackshack (or, EV1Servers)*

Just another point of contact.  I'm part of a rather large online community for computer games and we get our hosting via RackShack, which I guess just changed their name to EV1Servers.

www.rackshack.net or www.ev1servers.net

A quick check on their price page seems to show decent rates for what you're looking for, but it also suggests they don't have much available.  Still, I figured one more piece of info would help.


----------



## DanMcS (Oct 28, 2003)

I'm seeing figures kicked around like 150 gigs a month transfer.  Bandwidthwise, $400+ a month sounds high for that, though I guess there are colo costs there too.

For instance, pair.com has a "high-bandwidth" plan that's $180/month for 120 gigs of transfer, and $4/gig extra, so 150 gigs on a medium plan like that would run $300ish dollars, which is at least a step down.

Really, I don't consider 150 gigs a month exceptionally high usage, but I'm used to thinking in terms of good-sized info companies like the one I work for, which does tens of gigs/day of transfer, more or less.  For webhosting, 150/month probably high.

Wait, I was looking at the wrong section.  Here is a dynamic server plan with 200 gigs a month of transfer for $250 a month.  That is more in line with what you'd be looking for for a site like this.  Insufficient hard drive though (what on earth is this site doing filling 80 gigs of hard drive?).

I don't think pair has what enworld needs, this site needs co-location (which it has, but it needs it cheaper), but this is an indication that it can probably be done cheaper than it currently is, at least.

Then there's always fat-trimming, which Morrus already did a bit, removing a bunch of images from the front page.  People complained about that, I don't know why.  If the front page is the major bandwidth sink, it might need an enforced diet though.


----------



## BrooklynKnight (Oct 28, 2003)

The database for the forums apparently takes up the majority of the space. Plus do not forget that Morrus hosts a number of smaller sites, for free.


----------



## Morrus (Oct 28, 2003)

One thing that you guys shouldn't forget, though, is how great Cyberstreet are.  They have always been very patient while waiting for payments, responsive to questions and generally friendly and supportive.  That, in itself, is worth a lot.


----------



## Flyspeck23 (Oct 29, 2003)

I'm not quite sure if it would be good to quit on Cyberstreet just yet.
As Morrus pointed out, they were very patient.
Wasn't it just because of this patience that this site kept running in the first place? IMHO it would be highly unfair to them if EN World employed a new host.

While I _might_ understand this "find a new host" issue in other circumstances, it's just plain wrong now (btw, the $400/month shouldn't matter right now...)


----------



## EricNoah (Oct 29, 2003)

Moving to Meta...


----------



## KnowTheToe (Oct 29, 2003)

Morrus said:
			
		

> One thing that you guys shouldn't forget, though, is how great Cyberstreet are.  They have always been very patient while waiting for payments, responsive to questions and generally friendly and supportive.  That, in itself, is worth a lot.





AMEN Brother!


----------



## mythusmage (Oct 29, 2003)

roninuta said:
			
		

> http://www.macserve.net/services/colocation.php




The XServe is $75.00 a month, according to the specs. Is this the basic 60 gig model, or the fully tricked out 480 gig?

(Once a 160 gig internal hard drive is on the market the XServe will be able to store about 640 GBs. With a 200 GB HD it'll go up to 800.


----------



## mythusmage (Oct 29, 2003)

Yes, Cyberstreet has been pretty good about everything. However, they are an ISP, not a host. As things stand it looks like ENWorld has simply outgrown Cyberstreet. All things considered, I must wonder how much strain this site puts on their resources.

What ENWorld needs is a dedicated co-location service. At a good rate of course. So I've included the URL for the Google page on web host directories. The very first one listed specifically mentions co-location hosts. In any case...

Hosting Directories

As I said, Cyberstreet has been good about everything, and I heartily recommend them for folks in their area. But, when a site becomes too big for a location it must needs move to a larger space. Finding a company that can handle a site like this comfortably does not mean you think any less of your old company.

Besides which, think of what Cyberstreet could do with the resources this would free up.

My thoughts and my thoughts alone.


----------

