Here are three important connectivity questions you should ask any potential hosting provider:

 

(1) What is the size of your Internet link/s?

(2) How much headroom do you have in this link/s?

(3) What is the size of the connection from my server to this link?

 

These questions answer the most important network issues for a successful website, which are:

 

(a) Ability to meet normal demand

(b) Ability to meet peak demand

(c) Evidence of ‘throttling’, ‘shaping’ or any other form of restricted bandwidth

 

There is also a fourth important question, which may be a result of inferior connectivity, redundancy, power or a number of other things. That question is this: "Would you please supply me with a record of all your outages, including dates, times and duration?"

 

Here are ICO’s responses to those three questions and the fourth:

 

 

We are capable of 1 Gigabit speeds with our main link to the Verizon Global Business Network. Our secondary connection is to Uecomm. Its size matches current traffic patterns on the main link. There is no traffic on that line. It is kept empty so if a failover is required, there will be no slowdowns. It is there simply for redundancy.

 

Your connection from your ICO server directly to the Internet connection switch is 100Mbps guaranteed. There are no artificial restrictions placed on your server or our switches that might reduce the amount of bandwidth you can use. We also guarantee that your server will have 100Mbps of burst-able headroom on the main link.

 

If you are a network professional, that’s all you need to know about the difference between ICO and almost every other hosting provider in Australia. And whether you are a professional or not, if you are currently weighing up different hosting providers, then make sure you get the facts from them before risking your business on poor, overcrowded or ‘shaped’ connectivity that can’t handle the job.

 

As for the fourth question, for over ten years, our auto-failover system had kept downtime to one 10 minute incident. Then two years ago, a component failed in one of our two $3 Million failover switches. We were offline for less than two hours, at night, outside business hours. We put a fix in place for that, and apart from a minor electrical failure that affected only 1/24th of the Data Centre, that's it. That's our five year record.

 

If uptime is important to you, and you are considering another hosting provider, ask them for their real world uptime record too. In writing. And don't forget to ask them about their electricity and air-conditioning failures as well.

 

 

If you are not a network professional, and you want to know why bandwidth is important, read on.

 

Let’s ignore for a moment the need to have a secondary standby network. Clearly that is required for redundancy and high uptime. If your provider doesn’t have a pure standby line with no traffic on it, then you’d better think carefully about what a network failure will mean for your business.

 

So let’s get one thing straight. Bandwidth is not data.

 

A promise of ‘data’ is not a promise of performance. In fact, it is meaningless and misleading. One of the easiest ways to spot a poor hosting provider is to look at the size of the ‘free data’ offer, which is often called ‘bandwidth’ to confuse the consumer.

 

The first thing we need to do is to separate and define these terms. Let's start with an analogy to understand Internet connectivity.

 

Imagine for a moment that data is water.

 

Imagine that your server is a pump that can send that water (data) into that set of connected but different sized pipes called the Internet. Those pipes are bandwidth.

 

The Internet is comprised of many types of connectivity; huge undersea pipes, rings of large pipes around cities, even satellite and wireless pipes. And from these larger pipes there are connected pipes, often quite small, into homes and offices.

 

That's one of the relationships between bandwidth and data.

Now imagine for a moment that 2,000 users were busy downloading 2MB of information from your server for half an hour. The bandwidth required is almost 18 Megabits per second...but the data download is only 4 Gigabytes!

 

So that's another important question you can ask your potential hosting provider. Use your own figures, but the question will still be something like this: "Can you guarantee that if my server requires a burst of 20 Megabits, that you will deliver it? That question usually separates the hosting sheep from the hosting goats. Get the answer in writing.

 

And be wary of offers that have conditions attached. For instance, some providers offer ‘free download’ but sting you for upload. Remember, every request for information from your server has upload attached to it. Do you really know how much of each you will need? A good provider will give you a rate that covers inbound and outbound.

 

‘Ratios’ are another trap for the unwary. Many providers have heavy penalties if you exceed some arbitrary ‘upload to download’ ratio. Do you know what your ratio is going to be?

 

A good provider will have no ratios.

 

And a good provider will guarantee, in writing, that you will receive the bandwidth you need without any slowdowns.

 

What kind of performance are you expecting from your servers? How many visitors are you expecting? Do you have confidence that the provider you are choosing can deliver the performance you need?

 

And do you really think that it is possible to build your business on the back of ‘free data’? The only thing we know of that's free is that it’s a free world and everyone is entitled to their own opinion.

 

If you need ‘free data’, then please don’t call ICO for a quote. We provide bandwidth at very competitive rates. But we purchase only the highest quality from the most reliable providers. Those are the same people who launch the satellites, lay the billion-dollar undersea connections and transmit the wireless links. The same people whose only return on those huge investments is to sell quality, reliable bandwidth to people like us.

 

But you know something funny? When you purchase bandwidth from ICO, you’re purchasing the real thing. You’ll get what you’re paying for.