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HiHi
Talker
Joined: Dec 01, 2005
Posts: 109
Status: Offline
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 Posted:
June 09, 2006 - 01:35 PM |
 
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| Post subject: Webhosting in China |
Hi guys,
I would like some information on the website hosting quality in China.
I am planning to set up a website where visitors are expected to be from around the world, including China. Where should I host it? In China (where it is cheaper, is it?) or in other countries (please recommend some countries where the quality is good)?
I have seen some webhosting ads from other countries like USA and UK where the speed, storage capacity and bandwidth are simply amazing and at a low price.
China is cheap too, but I am not sure about the quality. Any suggestions?
Thanks! |
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lababillarde
Rocker
Joined: May 26, 2005
Posts: 736
Status: Offline
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June 09, 2006 - 01:37 PM |
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HiHi
Talker
Joined: Dec 01, 2005
Posts: 109
Status: Offline
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June 09, 2006 - 01:52 PM |
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Thanks. It was very helpful.
If possible, I would also like an objective view of whether my website should be hosted in China or overseas, given the information I provided. |
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drummissimo
LoopKicker
Joined: Apr 24, 2006
Posts: 942
Location: French Concession
Status: Offline
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June 09, 2006 - 02:31 PM |
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host overseas!!! is a lot cheaper and faster (except from china). the connections between china and the rest of the world are often really slow, except the majority of your users will come from china.
just make sure that you have your own server (own IP address) since joint hosted servers (i.e. yahoo, etc) is often blocked from china (usually because of other users). also make sure you register your website in china, to avoid being blocked yourself! |
_________________
Truth, after all, wears a different face to everybody, and it would be too tedious to wait till all were agreed. |
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Fisher
Newbie
Joined: June 09, 2006
Posts: 8
Status: Offline
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June 09, 2006 - 04:44 PM |
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In china, there are some famous website hosting provider with good quality and low price, such as
chinadns.com
hichina.com.
Another hint:
The web site hosting provider always provide two network infrastructures for customers to select in the metrics of the network speed: China TeleCom (blue) and China NetCom(green). I suggest you select China TeleCom. Its availability is higher than CNC. |
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HiHi
Talker
Joined: Dec 01, 2005
Posts: 109
Status: Offline
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June 09, 2006 - 05:06 PM |
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Hi Fisher,
I checked out the prices of these two companies and they are not exactly cheap compared to overseas companies. Why are the local companies more expensive? |
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Fisher
Newbie
Joined: June 09, 2006
Posts: 8
Status: Offline
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June 09, 2006 - 05:15 PM |
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 Frankly speaking, I am not familar with the price of the overseas company.
I think the cause of high price is that China's telecom infrastructure market is not completly competed. There are only three providers in China is authrozied to provide internet access serivce. |
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Jim_cai
Reacher
Joined: Dec 24, 2005
Posts: 256
Status: Offline
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June 09, 2006 - 08:29 PM |
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Hi, Hihi,
you have to balance.
if you hosting in china:
a expensive than overseas;
b quciker for Chinese customers;
c service is not good compared to oversea's
d easy for you to contact the customer service of the server company
Vice versa~
Wish that could help you |
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horsemandk
StreetBeater
Joined: Mar 23, 2006
Posts: 2241
Location: Shanghai
Status: Offline
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June 10, 2006 - 06:11 PM |
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Hi,
I agree with Jim Cai,
China is more expensive because it's still relatively new
Hardware used in China is cheaper and lower quality (so it should be cheaper)!
Not quicker for Chinese customers though because the overseas service has 24/7 service by EXPERIENCED technicians (I speak from experience with Chinese providers)!
Super service from overseas as you're an asset to them and not just money
If it's a commercial website you need it to be up 99,99% of the time and no Chinese provider can GUARANTEE that (some overseas companies will pay you for downtime)
User panels and functionality of the service overseas is way over what you can get in China
Many Chinese providers can't support the latest technologies as they run Novel or Linux!
So all in all, if it's a website that doesn't break the Chinese "rules" you should host overseas, this will save you a lot of headaches! |
_________________
Those parts of the system that you can hit with a hammer (not advised) are called hardware; those program instructions that you can only curse at are called software. |
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HiHi
Talker
Joined: Dec 01, 2005
Posts: 109
Status: Offline
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June 10, 2006 - 11:00 PM |
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Hi Horsemandk,
Thanks for the input. Indeed, hosting it overseas is an attractve option due to the service and value for money. However, I am concerned of the maintainance as I have to maintain it from China. Also, the speed to Chinese users might be afffected.
But I do hope to host it overseas if I can find a reputable company. I checked out the website and found a few like Rackspace and others. Anyone knows more? |
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frenchlover1999
Shanghai Royalty
Joined: Sep 18, 2004
Posts: 8730
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June 10, 2006 - 11:30 PM |
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| Quote: |
Hardware used in China is cheaper and lower quality (so it should be cheaper)!
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Horseman, your statements always make me laugh. Anyway, my experience running businesses here is that hardware is more expensive in China than in other countries. More tax. As for quality, its international-level - most international brands manufacture here. Now if you meant that local hosting companies use crap hardware... how can you say that? |
_________________
That was no shark. That was my personal submarine. But enough of this polite conversation. What is the purpose of your visit? |
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frenchlover1999
Shanghai Royalty
Joined: Sep 18, 2004
Posts: 8730
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June 10, 2006 - 11:35 PM |
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Just make sure your server doesnt end up being blocked in China. I used HOSTONY before, their service was great until some day the shared server (someone wrote about this above) hosting my site got blocked. And their support website also got blocked. Email access can be a problem as well. |
_________________
That was no shark. That was my personal submarine. But enough of this polite conversation. What is the purpose of your visit? |
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horsemandk
StreetBeater
Joined: Mar 23, 2006
Posts: 2241
Location: Shanghai
Status: Offline
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June 11, 2006 - 12:16 AM |
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I've been visiting some of these "hosts" that claim they're professional. They use Raid 1 on their data drives without continous backup options, no serious UPS and only single cable external power. Besides that the main Internet Access is in a main slot, thus "digging" it would result in a total failure. Just the fact that they use RAID 1 tells me that they know nothing about what they're doing
Serious companies have 4-way Internet access, 4-way power, and emergency generators + high quality UPS for the "up-down-up" time in case of failure. Besides that I haven't seen any 4 nor 8-way servers in China, that is in Chinese companies so I don't think we can find serious Blade-Servers here as well. I've been in some international companies here in China that use "real" server structure and close-to 100% failover.
Hardware is not more expensive here in China, if you import it yourself like I did the price is only 5-10% higher for a 2 or 4-way server!
But to summarize it, if the company here in China is serious, they will offer to pay for downtime or loss of data (we talk serious amounts of money here)
I used to work for a Fortune 500 company and dataloss or downtime of their commercial website was set at 75.000,- USD a minute, just to give you an idea of how serious foreign companies are when they host your website.
If you website gets blocked you can always apply to have it reopened at the Ministry of Information Technology. |
_________________
Those parts of the system that you can hit with a hammer (not advised) are called hardware; those program instructions that you can only curse at are called software. |
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frenchlover1999
Shanghai Royalty
Joined: Sep 18, 2004
Posts: 8730
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June 11, 2006 - 08:40 AM |
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You are talking about something completely different. Such contracts with penalties in case of down time cost huge amount of money. If not regular free service by the average hosting company. It is true few companies in China can provide top end hosting services but I doubt thats what Hihi has in mind anynway. |
_________________
That was no shark. That was my personal submarine. But enough of this polite conversation. What is the purpose of your visit? |
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horsemandk
StreetBeater
Joined: Mar 23, 2006
Posts: 2241
Location: Shanghai
Status: Offline
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June 11, 2006 - 09:50 AM |
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But this is in fact the service you get from most of at least the European web hosting companies and the price isn't that high compared to the services.
If HiHi choses www.netpivotal.com as an example, he has most of the services he'll ever need including 24/7 support, backup, failover etc.
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_________________
Those parts of the system that you can hit with a hammer (not advised) are called hardware; those program instructions that you can only curse at are called software. |
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HiHi
Talker
Joined: Dec 01, 2005
Posts: 109
Status: Offline
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| Posted:
June 11, 2006 - 02:53 PM |
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Thanks for he information. If I host overseas, how do I ensure that what I pay for is what I get - meaning if I pay for a 120G space, it is not actually 100G. |
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drummissimo
LoopKicker
Joined: Apr 24, 2006
Posts: 942
Location: French Concession
Status: Offline
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June 11, 2006 - 03:16 PM |
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most western countries (europe,US,etc.) would not allow such a "false" advertisment. It is not like purchasing a hard drive, where the quoted space and the actual space vary. when you get a hosting package from any of the large western companies, you will definately end up getting what they advertise!
but as frenchlover pointed out, it is not guarranteed that the chinese government might not block access to those (shared) servers! |
_________________
Truth, after all, wears a different face to everybody, and it would be too tedious to wait till all were agreed. |
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horsemandk
StreetBeater
Joined: Mar 23, 2006
Posts: 2241
Location: Shanghai
Status: Offline
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| Posted:
June 11, 2006 - 03:44 PM |
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I agree with drummissimo, western companies will make sure that you get what you paid for and then a little extra because they want you happy
If you accidentally get blocked remember to contact the Ministry of Information Technology, as they tend to block IP's instead of WWW addresses! |
_________________
Those parts of the system that you can hit with a hammer (not advised) are called hardware; those program instructions that you can only curse at are called software. |
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drummissimo
LoopKicker
Joined: Apr 24, 2006
Posts: 942
Location: French Concession
Status: Offline
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| Posted:
June 11, 2006 - 04:22 PM |
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| horsemandk wrote: |
| If you accidentally get blocked remember to contact the Ministry of Information Technology, as they tend to block IP's instead of WWW addresses! |
the problem with the IP blocking is, that you are not the only site hosted on those servers, which means that it is not necessarily your site that caused the IP address to be blocked (i.e. might be another site with political content). large companies host hundreds of users on one server, so it is almost always impossible to find out what caused the server to be blocked.
if you register your website with the ministry, they only allow your website, but you cannot "register" for the hundreds of other users using the same server. so in most of the cases the server will stay blocked! you can however apply for a dedicated server, which is more expensive, but it guarrantees that you are the only user on that server (and you will have our own range of IP addresses). in that case, register with the ministry and you should be fine. (btw dedicated servers start from $75/month)! |
_________________
Truth, after all, wears a different face to everybody, and it would be too tedious to wait till all were agreed. |
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HiHi
Talker
Joined: Dec 01, 2005
Posts: 109
Status: Offline
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| Posted:
June 11, 2006 - 04:37 PM |
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So if I share a server with other sites but I have my own IP, will I get blocked because of other sites on the same server? |
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drummissimo
LoopKicker
Joined: Apr 24, 2006
Posts: 942
Location: French Concession
Status: Offline
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June 11, 2006 - 04:46 PM |
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normally the "great firewall" will block the whole IP range of the server. it is safer if you are the only one using the server (so you can control the content!). |
_________________
Truth, after all, wears a different face to everybody, and it would be too tedious to wait till all were agreed. |
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HiHi
Talker
Joined: Dec 01, 2005
Posts: 109
Status: Offline
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| Posted:
June 11, 2006 - 05:46 PM |
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masshysteria
Newbie
Joined: May 22, 2006
Posts: 3
Status: Offline
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| Posted:
June 14, 2006 - 02:29 AM |
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Hi HiHi
I think you got to consider where are most of your customers based. If they are based in China then hosting in overseas country although may provide a better (bullet proof) service but users are likely to experience a rather slow site. Some ISPs may have better routing than some. I am actually back in the UK this moment. I have used a few different ISPs here and I use it at times to access info from China. Most ISPs have real slow speeds to China and just like how it will be real slow for people based in China to connect to a UK based site average speed around 25-35kbps (dial up like speed on ADSL). I am using EasyNet http://www.easynet.com right now and they seem to be one of the better ones, may be they got a few more satellite links but at least we are getting around 100kbps and some site are getting above 150-200kbps which is pretty decent although still feels slow compare to going to a more locally based site in the UK or across to the continent where we are drawing over 3-4mbps.
If you host in China I think you will at least get much faster speeds for your China based users. You can test and see for yourself on this China Broadband test site
http://www.linkwan.com/en/
These show some stats although labels are all in Chinese
http://www.linkwan.com/gb/broadmeter/SpeedAuto/stats/avg.asp
http://www.linkwan.com/gb/broadmeter/SpeedAuto/Last20.asp
As you can see some intra-city download speeds within China are over 2 mbps and some inter-provincial speeds are around 0.5 meg ish.
May be try these people out if you need to host in China. They are Shanghai based.
http://www.cnservers.com
The downside of hosting in China is as well as the factors that have already been mentioned is that most of your non-China or Far Eastern based users will find the site very slow.
Another suggestion is if you have 2 sites. The international one based in US or Europe, the Chinese one hosted in China but that can mount up costs.
The other alternative is to may be host you site in Hong Kong, Japan or Korea. Hong Kong to China links are pretty good and Hong Kong links to the outside are pretty decent too so it may be the best compromise.
If you really decide to host the site outside of China for your China based user, this site may be useful for you to look at which country is best for it as it can show you the kind of speeds you are getting to different countries. That may help you to decide where to look for your ISP host.
http://www.numion.com/YourSpeed3/Select.php
NB Testing surfspeeds seem to be very inaccurate if you are using Internet Explorer and accessing the web through a proxy server (like a lot of people who access the web at work)
You probably find you get very low surfspeed readings even though other tests have shown you have a much bigger throughput because some caching is going on with the proxies.
Secondly, if you test connections to UK for example, don't tick the websites in English box as the measurements don't seem to differentiate too well sites that are in English and sites that are UK based. The same goes for the other languages, Chinese included.
Hope this was useful. Feel free to PM me if you want to ask more questions. There is also this useful site to look http://www.webhostingtalk.com |
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