Lost Packets on your servers

Steady · 15th July 2008, 10:18 AM

Hello,

I am looking to move away from my current host Webfusion.

This is mainly because I am not happy with their server uptimes and support on the shared hosting and reseller hosting accounts I have with them.

Good support is very important for me if things go wrong etc. I want to know that server problems will be handled quickly.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, I came up with three new hosting choices: you guys (UnitedHosting), Heart Internet and eukHost.

Today I had pretty much decided on you guys as you have many good recommendations on the internet.

So I decided to try one last little test of my own. I looked at some of the websites that you mentioned on your Testimonials page and noticed one or two of them ran a little slowly.

This could be the way the sites are built, so I decided to run a ping test using just-ping.com

To my horror three of the sites I tested came back with numerous Lost Packet messages.

They were:

SchoolHistory.co.uk - online history lessons, revision, games, worksheets, quizzes and links.
Caravan Holidays - UK Static Caravan Hire
Touring and Tenting

I entered a few of my own sites into just-ping.com and these all came back 100% okay. I also checked these sites a few days ago and there were many lost packets there too.

So I am concerned.

I don't know enough about pinging etc. to know whether this is a serious issue or in fact not an issue at all. It doesn't look good though.

Does it mean these sites will appear extremely slow if viewed from overseas?

Please let me know if this should concern me.

I had hoped I had found my new hosting company :-)

Now I would like to know if this is important before I decide to go ahead with you or not.

Please help.

Kind regards,
Colin

UH-Simon · 15th July 2008, 10:25 AM

I am 100% certain the site owners you mentioned above will have no complaints with the speed of the sites. The ping results all depend on the route taken from that "test" site to our servers. It also depends what actions our security measures on the firewalls are taking against that type of traffic (ping) (our dedicated server customers can run different levels of firewall protection right down to completely blocking ICMP traffic so these types of tests are generally inconclusive).

Steady · 15th July 2008, 11:21 AM

Thanks Simon,

That's reassuring.

I am not "techy" enough to know what it means.

The sites in question do all come up and they seem all ok to me.

I just wanted to check with you first as good hosting seems hard to find and from what I hear you guys offer a very good service.

Is there anything else I should say about this issue to our MD just to put his mind at ease or is what you have written good enough do you think?

Thanks,
Colin

UH-Simon · 15th July 2008, 11:26 AM

I think the saying "the proof is in the pudding" rings true here, I am sure if you give us a try you won't be dissapointed and won't be looking for another host X months down the line

UH-Matt · 15th July 2008, 11:33 AM

Hi Colin

Between yourself and our servers are numerous routers and switches which handle the route from your PC to our server. These all have differing security filtering and prioritising, which can mean for general "ping" they may delay a response or not respond at all.

If you wanted us to look at anything specific for you to put your mind at rest, I would recommend you email us with all the specific details and we will happily analyse and offer you a more detailed response.

A true analysis for comparing hosts would be to use an uptime monitoring service to monitor page load times and availability, these types of test use multiple geographic locations and offer a true test of uptime, independant of anything else.

We ourselves use hyperspin, you can go to their website and view the rankings of all the hosts they monitor, you might be shocked at the poor uptime performance of some of those hosts you are comparing us to.