Help EnWorld Find Cheeper Hosting!

[BrooklynKnight]

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]

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]

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

 

[Michael Morris]

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]

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

 

[rpgHQ]

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.

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]

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]

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]

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]

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.