Question about dedicated server speed
 

I will admit that im more than a bit thick with the tecky stuff so if this is a stupid question i apologise!

I have a dedicated server with 1 mbps. Im not using my full bandwidth which is apparently 320 gig per month. Im only using 4 gig a day but that is growing fast now im full time and working harder.

If i upgraded to a 5 mbps server, would my surfers get better download speeds for both movie files that they download and also page download? Or would that just mean more bandwidth to burn??

Also will more memory or a better CPU help with end users experience of download times?

If it means anything, my "average load" is 0.03, 0.01, 0.00 but sometimes it goes up, each figure is 0.07 or something in that region. Im told that shows the strain my server is under??

I would say it would make no difference at this traffic level.

Thanks for the reply!

Does that include memory and cpu also? Like i say im building up pretty fast so how do i know when i need to upgrade? Im not really having problems, i just want the best for my surfers as happy surfer = retaining surfer :)

Bump for an answer :)

1) Bandwidth: If the 1Mbps plan and the 5Mbps plan are both uncapped switching between them wont make a difference in terms of download speeds for end users.

2) Loads / CPU: Loads indicate how many processes are waiting to use the CPU, anything below one is great. If its above that, then alot of factors come into play such as how many logical CPUs and whats cause heavy CPU utilization. With your loads your CPUs are fine.

3) RAM / Swap: If you run the top command you can see how much of your RAM is in use. Depending on the OS it may appear that all of it is in use even if it isnt. Whats more important is to make sure you arent using swap. No swap = no need to upgrade ram. Small swap usage <100MB is usually fine, anything above that and its time to consider upgrading depending on how your site performs.

4) If everything is configured and optimized you dont need to make any hardware changes your surfers should already be getting maximum throughput. If things aren't tuned then obviously you can squeeze out some more performance and make things faster for them.

If you have any questions hit me up on icq at 36837470. :thumbsup

Thanks i totally get that!

Ill have to get that translated for me lol Do i need to ask my host if im using "swap" and if its a no, im happy?

For swap usage you can run the "top" command which will show you how much of your memory is in use as well as swap.

Here is an example from a Linux Server:
Mem: 2075328k total, 1978408k used, 96920k free, 248468k buffers
Swap: 2104504k total, 8196k used, 2096308k free, 1011972k cached


Here is an example from a FreeBSD Server:
Mem: 999M Active, 610M Inact, 271M Wired, 115M Cache, 199M Buf, 14M Free
Swap: 2721M Total, 156K Used, 2721M Free

When that value for used starts growing thats when you need to be concerned. But ultimately you cant use swap or loads to really be an indicator. They are just telling you how the system is performing, more important is how your website actually loads. Depending on what system resources are being used and how, and where the limiting factors are you can have high cpu loads and/or swap usage and still have a site that loads fine. If you feel that your site isnt loading well that needs to be investigated regardless of whether your loads are low or swap isnt in use since there are many other factors to consider as well.

On the bw issue, I would like to point out that if it is capped,that means that you can only pass thru 1mbps at any time.The 320 gig/month is if you fully use at all time in full.

So if you have 10 users at the same time, they will share that 1mbps, giving a rather low d/l speed.

If the line was 5mbps,the d/l speed would be roughly 5 time faster ( surfers connection not taken in consideration ).

For you,at this stage, the best would have been a dedicated with a fixed allocation of 1000 gig to 2000 gig.Those servers are capped at the least at 10 mbps ...

:2 cents:

When you do upgrade to a new server - think about getting a RAID 1 setup, having a spare hard drive in place is really nice in case one dies :)

Just static content? Unless you're running something from 10 years ago your server should be fine doing 1 or 5mbps.

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