Pros' & Con's - NZ vs Foreign host for web forum?

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PSLog

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Ultimate Geek

#34022 15-May-2009 15:09

I have a forum hosted in NZ which has outgrown it's plan (bandwidth).
There seem to be much cheaper, unlimited bandwidth, plans available off-shore than in NZ.
What are the pro's and con's of going with a foreign host versus a Kiwi host?
Are there any Gotcha's?
Do foreign support desks tend to be better or worse than Kiwi - (for someone who struggles with some of these things)?

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#215086 15-May-2009 16:29

What style of hosting are you looking for: shared hosting or a vps? What's your budget, ie what price per month are you looking to stay under?

Cons of US hosting:

- Higher latency: A decent NZ host has latency <60ms with most US West Coast hosts you're looking at ~200ms and higher to central or east coast data centers. Basically the response time on every request is higher.

- Lower throughput: Most NZ ISP's have good routes to local servers, however many ISP's have congested international bandwidth especially in peak time.

Pros of US hosting:

- Much lower pricing

- Higher throughput and lower latency for overseas users

PSLog

291 posts

Ultimate Geek

#215094 15-May-2009 16:44

Thanks Ragnor
The only traffic that I care about is with Kiwis. Not sure what you are referring to as vps. Also I don't like the idea of sharing - mainly, perhaps, because I don't understand it.
I don't want to be constrained in what I do or how I set things up because I have to consider what anyone else might wish.

Hadn't thought about the latency and throughput caused by remoteness.

There seem to be reasonable plans offered by webhostingNZ

itxtme

2102 posts

Uber Geek

#215110 15-May-2009 17:36

VPS is a server (virtual server) that is a portion of an entire server. Currently in a shared environment you have to share resources with everyone (could be 100+ other customers), with a VPS you have a portion of the resources garunteed to you and you alone. There mayb 5 other cutomers on your server, and they are never able to use your resources.

For a forum would a US based server be such a bad idea? Not really; if you find one with good ping you will be fine. The reality is most people will not notice the difference between 36ping versus 120 ping. The other point is even if you are hosted locally there is nothing to say your customers ISP will access your server through an odd route. Ie. they type your site address in there computer talks to ISP in wellington, that talks to server in Australia, that talks to server in Singapore that then talks to your server in NZ.

I use offshore hosting and wouldnt consider a need to use local! The reality is the international market has superior backbone networks with cutting edge data centers, its safer overseas!!

nate

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#215131 15-May-2009 19:54

I would purchase/lease a 1U server and look at Maxnet or Hosting Direct if the majority of your traffic is NZ based. Both offer unlimited (fair use) national bandwidth, add alittle international bandwidth and you'll be away laughing.

If you need any help with doing this, flick me a PM.

edit: I believe Geekzone was in the same boat as it grew, now it's hosted on a dedicated server at ICONZ.

PSLog

291 posts

Ultimate Geek

#215132 15-May-2009 19:56

OK. Thanks. Plenty to think about there. I'm still wondering how responsive a foreign (or Kiwi) host might be to someone nervously trying to move a live forum.

freitasm

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Geekzone

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#215145 15-May-2009 21:47

nate: edit: I believe Geekzone was in the same boat as it grew, now it's hosted on a dedicated server at ICONZ.

We had to move to a dedicated server back in 2005. We currently run on a HP DL360 G5 with 10GB RAM and 900GB storage (data plus backup).

Yes we are colocated at ICONZ in Auckland.

nate

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#215159 15-May-2009 22:35

PSLog: OK. Thanks. Plenty to think about there. I'm still wondering how responsive a foreign (or Kiwi) host might be to someone nervously trying to move a live forum.

Easy.

Setup a subdomain (newsite.myforums.co.nz), point this to your new server and use this as your testing while you move your site over. Once you are happy that everything is setup correctly, take a backup of your live site, setup a redirect to your subdomain, and in the meantime point your www record at your new server.

This will get catch everyone - if their DNS doesn't propagate immediately, the redirect will point them in the right place; a quick DNS propagation and visitors will see your new site without needing the redirect.

On the hosting front, I would steer away from ICONZ only based on pricing (no complaints about service or bandwidth). I think Maxnet would be your best bet (Hosting Direct have had a couple of issues with their core Cisco switches, only brief outages, but annoying none the less).

I think a 1U server or something in the VPS space is where you should move to.

Quic Broadband

Move to New Zealand's best fibre broadband service (affiliate link). Free setup code: R587125ERQ6VE. Note that to use Quic Broadband you must be comfortable with configuring your own router.

digitaldivide

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Master Geek
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#215212 16-May-2009 12:06

It's not all about $ per year and fair use policys...

Depending on your requirements, if your at the "serious" end of selecting a web forum host, there's a useful site from the government about hosting overseas.

"Serious" means your managing private, confidential, personal or sensitive information, and moving it from being in NZ to somewhere overseas.

Check out the 'technology' and 'legal' section:

http://www.e.govt.nz/policy/trust-security/overseas-hosting.html

ZollyMonsta

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#215222 16-May-2009 12:41

Hosting direct looks pretty good... (are they?)

I've been using godaddy for my websites (www.thecheese.co.nz & www.healthnaturally.net.nz) but have found load times unacceptable lately. Though Go Daddy seems to offer a lot more than NZ based hosting.

Check out my LPFM Radio Station at www.thecheese.co.nz - Now on iHeart Radio, TuneIn and Radio Garden

As per the usual std disclaimer.. "All thoughts typed here are my own."

PSLog

291 posts

Ultimate Geek

#215223 16-May-2009 12:43

Thanks for that but No - not serious at all.

Ragnor

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#215231 16-May-2009 13:08

Ask yourself these questions:

Is the forum software php and mysql based or something else?
How much traffic do you use per month currently?
What's your budget, how much you want to spend per month on hosting?
Are you interested in purchasing your own hardware and co-locating it at a data center?

To get a better understanding of the different types of hosting have a look at these:
http://www.w3schools.com/hosting/host_types.asp
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_hosting_service

freitasm

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Geekzone

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#215246 16-May-2009 14:34

I you decided on having your own server colocated ask yourself and your provider about support.

Once on our old server we had a driver problem and the server wouldn't boot. ICONZ created a virtual server for me, while I jumped on a plane to Auckland - my thinking was to either use their virtual server or restore our main server functionality - depending on what would be the shortest time to solve the problem.

Since then we got a HP DL360 server with ILO2 (remote access) and if anything happened now I could still work from Wellington, even if the server is down. This reduces support time a lot, since this is internal.

I understand you don't have much experience so I suppose you will have to use your hosting provider's support - this might be expensive if the server is not theirs. They don't like to touch servers that someone else has been tampering with. In this case you might be better off with a support contract and let them do everything. Not cheap.

If this is done on an overseas provider you have problems with time differences. Your server might be down when your users in New Zealand are trying to reach it, and the hosting provider's support team in another continent is sleeping.

Back to ask yourself the main questions: do you want cheap hosting, or robust hosting? Is your server vital for your company? Is your website the main reason for the company?

Also think of backup. Do they offer backup strategy, storage?

PSLog

291 posts

Ultimate Geek

#215258 16-May-2009 16:32

OK Time to come clean and tell the whole story.
The forum is not (at this stage) commercial - only for a national interest group (motorhomers).
Started in July last year has grown to 413 members with about 10 new members a week and max of 19 concurrent users so far.
Currently using 65MB and just about to crack 5GB (our plan limit) bandwidth before the end of this month.
I have plans to wrap the forum in a containing website and provide (maybe) chat rooms and blogs - but there might be ways of tapping in to other (free) servers for this and just have the gateways on my site. Also looking at providing a business directory database for members' reference.

I'm funding all this so far (and am retired so have limited funds) so questions like "What do you want to pay?" confuse me a little. I want to pay as little as I can to get the job done.

I understand now that there will be downsides to what is offered as "Un-metered or Unlimited" bandwidth.
What I don't understand is how important those downside might be for my non-critical (in business terms) site.

Need to make a decision and move the site before we run out of bandwidth on our current plan - probably around the 24th of the month.

boby55

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#215265 16-May-2009 16:48

IMO you best bet would most likely be to get an overseas VPS, that way you are not sharing your resources with others, and Most INTL vps's come with high bandwidth 100gb +

sleemanj

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#215276 16-May-2009 18:24

I don't think you really need to go with a VPS.

If you went with a VPS you not only have the increased cost, but you will almost certainly have to largely manage it youself... unless you know what you are doing with a unix console then you are in for a big learning curve - if you want to do it properly that is.

I would advise with your fairly meager requirements, that just go with a plain old shared hosting account (this is what you have now, I think perhaps you think "shared" is something different, it's not, it's exactly what you have now). You will not have any noticable advantage from hosting in NZ for your purposes, if you moved it to NZ, it's doubtful your members would even realise anything has changed.

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James Sleeman
I sell lots of stuff for electronic enthusiasts...

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