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View Full Version : FQ and Speed


BruceM
03-16-1999, 07:44 AM
I going down a well warn path - I'm looking for a new provider.

My current problems are with cgi execution speed and a perception that there are too many of us for the hardware to cope. In the early days my cgi derived pages were coming up in 3 or 4 seconds and now we are talking of 15,20,30 secs etc.

Its nice to see all the support and forums etc but what I'm more interested in is how FQ and FQ servers perform in a cgi, PHP, and database context. This is all extra stuff above and beyond supplying HTML at high speed. I wonder what would happen in a years time when all the sites have grown a few Mb, are serving twice as many users and each webmaster has tucked some cgi on her site and is starting to experiment with php pages hitting a 10Mb database? I was with a great provider 2 years ago - excellent performance, because the machine was lightly loaded (I just didn't know thsi at the time). 2 Years down the tracks and it's pretty grim. Do FQ have any hard performance metrics or is it goodwill (or which there seems to be plenty) that folks rely on to deliver pages acceptably fast?

A final question to those who are hosting with FQ from overseas. Have comms difficulties ever been an issue - performance or otherwise. I'm concerned about connect times (Ping) up above 300msec and there being lots more routers/hops in the line between the bulk of my UK users and the servers.

Sorry if I have not yet been convinced by all the good words about how good FQ are! Compared to many providrs FQ ideed look very good.

Thanks for your help

Bruce

Justin
03-16-1999, 08:54 AM
Hello Bruce,

I don't run a lot of cgi really, but my UBB (and this one) loads fast at all times of day for me - and I've had no user complaints as yet. I have been quite satisfied with the performance all around.

If you want to see a ping / traceroute from a different perspective, go to www.domainwatch.com (http://www.domainwatch.com) and type in some domains hosted here, like aota.net, futurequest.net, or vdj.net. I get a much faster response time through them (my ISP is probably the culprit here, as I get slow timings on all sites). You can compare the timings with URL's from other hosts, too http://www.aota.net/ubb/smile.gif

I don't know about international issues, but I know there are a few clients on FQ from the UK and elsewhere that seem satisfied. They can probably better answer that one for you.


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Justin Nelson
FutureQuest Tech Support

Terra
03-16-1999, 09:38 AM
With CGI being dynamic in nature, so are the servers that drive them... We monitor the servers closely and adjust the loads as needed... I am always optimizing the underlying engines (Apache/MySQL/Perl/PHP) to help meet the demand placed on servers... The content of 1 - 2 years ago is vastly different from what is the norm today... Much of it is driven dynamically, and this is something that FutureQuest is always forward designing/building for...

I won't say that we haven't had our fair share of problems in this area... We had a huge surge in growth Jan - Feb that caught us offguard... These growing pains forced us to scramble with building new servers to spread out the load... Our biggest concern at the moment is bandwidth, which will be obliviated when we obtain OC-12 connectivity (second half of 1999)...

As far as server metrics, I will honestly tell you that it's all done by (seat of the pants) methadology... Metrics don't show real-world usage... My main metric that I do watch is 'load average', and then couple that with CPU and IO resource usage... Each server has it's own unique personality, and I've learned to become best friends with them... March has been an awesome month for us as the growing pains have subsided with all the Phase2 upgrades...

It appears that you are an extremely heavy CGI domain with the majority of your customers in the overseas market... Perhaps you should investigate Web Hosters in the UK that provide dedicated solutions, if your concerns are that paramount... We cannot guarantee any router/hop/link on the Internet - all we can hope to guarantee are the servers and our own connections before we reach a major backbone link...

FutureQuest is developer driven, and always has been our primary goal... It's my job to design the servers and tools offered, so that the only limitations are bounded by your own creativity...

We do our best to take Web Hosting to the next level - we listen - we respond - we learn...

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Andrew Gillespie
Systems Designer/Coder
FutureQuest.net