ZeldaBoy;1169831 wrote:I would just host it myself.
Which you might find is breaking the terms and conditions of your domestic connection if you read the AUP, all the Internet ISP's I have used all had a clause stating that you were not permitted to run servers and services such as FTP servers, Http servers or network device that services users.
You also have an issue of connection speed, whilst your connection may be 5 Meg, it will be configured to give you maximum download and minimal upload because your requests will be many coming in to a box with a bottlenecked output. Home connections are not symmetric in set up, a web server is. My connection allows for a limited 256K up stream with a T1 downstream but I pay traffic on incoming and outgoing requests and the bandwidth is dependent on the number of users logged in to the nearest tower.
As for the original poster...
You say your **** is slow to load, is this just on your computer or on all computers? Are you sure its not your machine or the local connections? It is common to blame the host for something that is running on their own computer. What I suggest you do is the following.
Over a period of a week, get a set of speed tests to determine the average speed you can get on your home connection and also try at times outside your normal connection times to get a comparison. This is because in the day, the more users on your node will result in service outages, pages not loading and problems with connection to the Internet. You need to also find your contention ratio, a domestic ratios can be 20:1 to 200:1 depending on the size of the pip feeding that node, the number of serviced users. If a housing estate of 1000 homes, the size of the pipe bandwidth will be divided between all the users on that network, the more users that join, the less bandwidth you have and therefore less speed and things get slow. So your domestic connection may be slow, perhaps you should look at who is using your home connection. For all you know someone may be stealing your WiFi or tapped in to your domestic pipe and are stealing bandwidth... NEVER EVER run a FiFi in Adhoc mode or without WPA or better encryption and if you can in the router, lock the machines IDs with Mac Addresses and map them to IP addresses so that your machine is the only machine able to connect.
You also need to ensure that anyone who uses a PC on your home connection is cleaned of viruses and malware as these are bandwidth hogs as is peer to peer and other web traffic that relies on a persistent or periodical update.
You should also look in to a firewall on your computer in addition to any NAT / Firewalled Router. The reason for this is long winded but the pint pot version is that generally, an open port is open in both directions, this means that a malicious server or a user on a machine posing as a server knowing a request coming from a port on a specific IP address can use that opened port as a point of entry if it wishes. More sophisticated bridges, switches and firewalls can be configured to move the flow of traffic and set directionality.
Even a free firewall is better than being reliant on a single router as security. If your on a WiFi connection it is even more important to be secure on the endpoint because the WiFi connection is not reliant on needing a WiFi router. You can have two WiFi machines connect to each other via the WiFI like you can get two Ethernet connections to connect with a crossover patch lead or if they are smart sensing cards, then any old UTP5 will do.
The only thing I can say is to troubleshoot the problem from a your machine issue perspective and when you have cleaned and cleared your machine from all defects, then you start to work your way out of your machine up your pipe to the router, check your router and modem are working correctly, the coax or fiber is properly inserted and that the power lights are constant and not showing any signs of power line interference.
Check the cable condition out of your building to the box if it is exposed.
Check the condition of the box that services your house and also check your local MUX if your near one.
Then talk to your ISP who services you to run some connection tests to see if any problems exist between you and them, they should not object to this when you explain why and that your experiencing connection issues with your web host and your eliminating any connection issues with your service provider, they should not object to this and they should be able to give you your contention ratio as well upon request. DO NOT accept the I think answer or Should be, get them to tell you exactly, if not happy, get them to give you a contact who can as this will be very important bearing on your connection speed.
Then you tackle your web host and let them know that you have trouble shooted and how you have derived your data over time and through your ISP and that you can say that your side of the fence is fine, the host should check out their servers as they may have a service hog and one site, not just yours is overloading one server, for the host, this is not a problem as they can move sites around to other servers without a problem or split a server load across several, etc.
This would solve the problem because you will be "Virtually" backing the host in to a corner, if they ignore your request to sort the service out that you are paying for, you will need to take the next stage of getting advice from the local business ombudsman, depending on country this has different names, in the USA it s called the Better Business Bureau, in the UK we have Trading Standards and also the OfT who deliver the Trading Standards service at local level.
What you need to do is to also remind your host about the fact that you have paid for hosting and it is not being delivered reliably or at all in some cases. I do advise you take screen shots of this as evidence and also get online friends to do likewise and email them to you and have them state who the ISP is that they use for internet services.
Good Luck!
