Portal Home > Knowledgebase > Articles Database > My experience with managed hosting at Rackforce
My experience with managed hosting at Rackforce
| Posted by NathanR, 06-18-2007, 11:44 PM |
| We are a small game company that is just starting up so cost is the major deciding factor for us, but we also need to have reliable server connections so that we can run games uninterrupted.
Nobody likes playing a game and having a lag message pop up and ruin their day.
I was down to deciding between Intelenet and Rackforce, and then decided to go with Rackforce because they were a lot cheaper.
That was a huge mistake. The first month we noticed extremely high latency. Traceroutes always showed it was either inside their network (one hop or so outside our host) or on the first hop outside their network (one of their upstream providers). Every email to their support was met with the same dismissive generic response such as:
"The problem seems to be outside our network, there is nothing we can do with latency issues that are not within our network."
and my favorite one which I have seen more than I can possibly count:
"The problem seems to have cleared up now so I'm going to close this ticket."
That appears to be their stance on all of my packet loss and network connectivity failures. The problem is gone now, so why bother to check? Rather than solving their issues their track record indicates they just ignore them or use some duct tape fix hoping that the customer doesn't notice.
Today my server has dropped off their network 6 times since 10am. I have had a report open with their tech support guys for nearly 12 hours and it says "We'll have the network team take a look at your switch." Thats one slow network team if it takes them that long to look at a switch. Of course their first response was classic: "I checked the event log and I don't see anything, so the problem appears to be fixed now. I'll close this ticket."
I can reach in to the side of my computer and rip random cables out of it and nothing will appear in the event log. What kind of a lazy excuse is that? I'm seriously insulted by their lack of interest in my issues, and their continued eagerness to bill me full price every month for a service that is reliable about 90% of the time.
Needless to say I am abandoning them tomorrow morning to switch to Intelenet, who I have used in past to run an MMO and had exceptional uptime and non-existant latency issues. They are more expensive, but now I have learned that cheap bandwidth is that way for a very good reason.
So buyer beware: Rackforce is one to avoid!
|
| Posted by treyslay, 06-29-2007, 12:44 AM |
| How much do you pay for a month?
|
| Posted by edu4vision, 06-29-2007, 07:22 AM |
| I like your positive attitude. At least you see the situation in "half full" glass rather than "half empty" perspective.
Good luck!
|
| Posted by L33F3R, 06-29-2007, 05:04 PM |
| O dear. Rackforce is a dirt company. They oversell server bandwidth. Now would somone tell me how you oversell what you know will be completly utilized. I myself, never again
|
| Posted by suhailc, 06-29-2007, 09:35 PM |
| Did you run traceroutes from your location to verify where the network congestion was occurring?
|
| Posted by Podtech_Innovation, 07-03-2007, 04:27 PM |
| Hi Nathan
We understand your frustration with your ping times as they are crucial to your application. We have other gaming customers on smaller VPS accounts than yours was that are quite successfully running game servers. In later private correspondence in tickets and email with you, you indicated you understand that with one exception (which we took action on) this was not something we could control. We trust you will not mind us posting some of the traceroutes you, and we did, to and from your server in order to show where the problems were and thus clear up any misconceptions this post might create about RackForce’s network.
This one starts to break down in LA, long before it gets to us.
1 2 ms <1 ms 1 ms home [192.168.1.254]
2 13 ms 13 ms 13 ms adsl-69-219-239-254.dsl.ipltin.sbcglobal.net [69 .219.239.254]
3 13 ms 13 ms 13 ms dist2-vlan60.ipltin.ameritech.net [67.36.128.243]
4 13 ms 13 ms 13 ms bb2-g8-0.ipltin.sbcglobal.net [151.164.241.198]
5 29 ms 27 ms 29 ms ex1-p11-0.eqchil.sbcglobal.net [151.164.191.249]
6 29 ms 29 ms 29 ms xe-2-3.bbr01.ord01.us.xeex.net [206.223.119.87]
7 90 ms 90 ms 92 ms bbr02-ge-2-9.lax02.us.xeex.net [216.152.255.65]
8 91 ms 94 ms 92 ms bbr01-xe-3-1.lax02.us.xeex.net [216.152.255.74]
9 91 ms 88 ms 88 ms 216.152.241.64
This next one starts to have problems on our immediate upstream (Group Telecom) who were notified of the issue. Not something we can control but we can (and did) inform them of the problem.
1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 209.97.215.1
2 1 ms 1 ms 1 ms gt1.03.rackforce.com [209.97.211.213]
3 8 ms 8 ms 8 ms static-209-139-204-242.gtcust.grouptelecom.net [209.139.204.242]
4 12 ms 12 ms 12 ms 66.59.190.86
5 12 ms 96 ms 198 ms 66.59.190.94 ***bad!***
6 141 ms 196 ms 30 ms POS5-0.PEERA-PLALCA.IP.GROUPTELECOM.NET [66.59.190.78]
7 170 ms 40 ms 40 ms PALTBBRJ01GEX0201A001.R2.PT.COX.NET [198.32.176.144]
8 170 ms 79 ms 75 ms mtc3dsrj01-ge710.0.rd.ok.cox.net [68.1.0.105]
9 74 ms 154 ms 240 ms 68.12.14.42
10 78 ms 77 ms 78 ms 68.12.14.61
11 * * * Request timed out.
12 259 ms 307 ms 92 ms ip68-0-64-137.tu.ok.cox.net [68.0.64.137]
Trace complete.
Next it was in part inside our network as well as with Cox in Tulsa OK, but when support tried to recreate it, (see next traceroute), from your server, the trace was fine until it got onto WV Fiber’s network in Tennessee then completely went astray on Fuse Net’s router.
Tracing route to ip68-0-64-137.tu.ok.cox.net [68.0.64.137]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 77 ms 4 ms 373 ms 209.97.215.1
2 1 ms 1 ms 1 ms gt1.03.rackforce.com [209.97.211.213]
3 8 ms 8 ms 8 ms static-209-139-204-242.gtcust.grouptelecom.net [209.139.204.242]
4 12 ms 12 ms 12 ms 66.59.190.86
5 12 ms 12 ms 12 ms 66.59.190.94
6 30 ms 30 ms 30 ms POS5-0.PEERA-PLALCA.IP.GROUPTELECOM.NET [66.59.190.78]
7 40 ms 41 ms 50 ms PALTBBRJ01GEX0201A001.R2.PT.COX.NET [198.32.176.144]
8 85 ms 84 ms 75 ms mtc3dsrj01-ge710.0.rd.ok.cox.net [68.1.0.105]
9 101 ms 75 ms 75 ms 68.12.14.42
10 79 ms 79 ms 79 ms 68.12.14.63
11 * * * Request timed out.
12 122 ms 86 ms 90 ms ip68-0-64-137.tu.ok.cox.net [68.0.64.137]
As you can see the response from support, after the traceroute, in this one was very professional. It is unfortunate but a basic fact of the Internet is a data center can only control their own network and where possible inform other networks of perceived problems. RackForce works very closely with its immediate upstreams to alert them of issues on their network that affect us.
Tracing route to MW-ESR1-72-49-39-162.fuse.net [72.49.39.162]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 209.97.215.1
2 1 ms 1 ms 1 ms gt1.03.rackforce.com [209.97.211.213]
3 8 ms 9 ms 8 ms static-209-139-204-242.gtcust.grouptelecom.net [209.139.204.242
4 12 ms 12 ms 12 ms 66.59.190.90
5 12 ms 11 ms 11 ms POS9-0.PEERA-STTLWA.IP.GROUPTELECOM.NET [66.59.190.50]
6 12 ms 11 ms 11 ms sea-peer-six.wvfiber.net [198.32.180.85]
7 73 ms 73 ms 73 ms den-pos-6-0.OC48-sea-xo.wvfiber.net [66.186.192.118]
8 73 ms 73 ms 73 ms den-po-4-0.OC48-chi-xo.wvfiber.net [66.186.192.110]
9 73 ms 73 ms 73 ms 63.223.16.54
10 75 ms 76 ms 75 ms 63.223.16.50
11 81 ms 82 ms 81 ms 10ge0-1-0-0.core2.core.fuse.net [216.68.7.197]
12 76 ms 76 ms 76 ms 10ge2-1.sw1.core.fuse.net [216.68.6.196]
13 76 ms 77 ms 76 ms hsrp-1-vl34.zoomtown.com [216.68.54.193]
14 74 ms 73 ms 73 ms MW-ESR1-72-49-32-1.fuse.net [72.49.32.1]
15 123 ms 84 ms 84 ms MW-ESR1-72-49-39-162.fuse.net [72.49.39.162]
Trace complete
“I have also run the same trace from other locations within our network with similar results. Is there anything that is happening on your server at the times that you notice this latency? Such as a high server load or maximum usage of your allowed bandwidth. I am not currently able to recreate this issue, however I would like to look into it further. Can you please notify us immediately when you notice a high latency trace. That way we can login to your server and rule out or confirm an issue on your server.”
As mentioned at the start of this response Nathan we do understand the frustration you felt (and we continue to work with our support staff to increase their communication with customers) and your need to move to a new network where your latency problems are not an issue, but as also mentioned there is only so much a data center can do about latency problems outside of their network and RackForce does all that is possible in those circumstances.
With regards to the comment from L33F3R:
The industry standard for data transfer is to add more upstream capacity when your lines hit 60% usage in the 95th percentile. RackForce does this at 40%. We do not oversell our bandwidth and never have. If you were on of our older Linux VPS plans with a dedicated unmetered 1.5Mbps connection and tried to run a high bandwidth site of course you would run into problems - although the option to upgrade to faster (3, 5 and 10 Mbps) dedicated unmetered connections was always available. Today all Linux VPS plans get their own dedicated 10Mbps unmetered connection included in the price. If you were on a Windows VPS there was a dedicated 10Mbps unmetered connection going to the hardware node and shared by either 5, 3 or 2 other vps accounts depending on which one you chose. The MS software we use to create the VPS does not allow us to assign x amount of the connection rate to any individual vps only to the hardware node. This is clearly indicated on our site and customers should know their own bandwidth needs and choose the appropriate plan for those needs. RackForce does not oversell it’s bandwidth.
As an aside we'd like to suggest that if you have a serious Internet business hosted on a data center server you should consider have two separate Internet connection in your home or office with each one from a separate provider. All of RackForce's remote workers (sales team) have both an ADSL and a Cable Internet connection. Doing traceroutes from each connection can be very useful for figuring out these kinds of problems as well as giving you the ability to personally stay online to manage your business if one of your ISPs goes down.
|
| Posted by Intripita-MH, 08-05-2007, 07:37 PM |
| Interesting that there has been no other reply to this thread. The representative's response has been extremely helpful, as usual.
RackForce has been nothing but excellent in my experience. After doing extensive research, I've found them to be superior to most other wholesale providers for the price, which isn't the lowest I've seen, but that's *not* a bad thing.
|
| Posted by Podtech_Innovation, 08-06-2007, 11:59 PM |
| Thanks Intripita-MH, your comments are very much appreciated.
|
| Posted by Outlaw Web Master, 08-07-2007, 12:48 AM |
| That's not always the case, just the majority of them.
However the rep's response does seem fair enough.
owm
|
| Posted by coloheart, 08-16-2007, 07:20 PM |
| Good response.
Would like to see NathanR's feedback on this.
|
| Posted by Intripita-MH, 08-17-2007, 09:20 PM |
| One-post-rant-and-go .... we may not hear back from him, but... using their services, I might be interested. Ah well.
|
Add to Favourites 
Print this Article
Also Read
php or asp (Views: 753)