Hello everyone. I would like to get your input on which server has faster load times, UNIX or NT. I am currently using a Linux server (westhost.com) and my pages loads very slow. I suspect it's my banners because it's accessing a different server for the banners.

I am also looking for another hosting company for a mirror site with the following features in descending order of importance.

1) Bandwidth limit no less than 15 GB (no unlimited transfers)
2) Disk space no less than 25 MB
3) Perl CGI, PHP, MySQL, SSI
4) Monthly price no greater than $40 (am I asking too much for this price?)
5) User friendly control panel
6) Own IP address, own domain name
7) P***word protect directories
8) 30-day money back guarantee (more is better)
9) FTP access
10) Access to raw log files
11) Established company having more than 1000 sites hosted (for security reasons)

So far I've found tera-byte.com to meet my specifications. Has anyone tried or are currently hosted by them? What do you think of their server?

Thank you.

Actually that is pretty reasonable. Try finding a host that has a package that fits your space limit and if they don't offer the bandwidth you need, find out how much it would cost to purchase additional bandwidth. Most hosts charge around $5 - $10 per gig.

HTH

I have read lot about tera-byte.com at webhostingtalk.com (usually favorable).

There are few host which charge only $2-$2.50 per GB for extra bandwidth after providing huge bandwidth allocation with normal account. Need to do some research.

Faster loading times is really the question. More often than not, it is not the fault of the webserver so is therefore nothing to do with unix or NT.

Banners are often the cause for slow loading, you can see this well downloading a page on a slow modem, first you will see the page appear and then the banners will appear one by one from whoever is your ad server.

Try running a page without the ads and see what happens, also you can speed up page downloads on a server such as IIS (on NT) by running it in buffer mode where the page is sent down only after the page has been "painted" in the servers memory - useful for server side scripted type web pages such as ASP. there may be a similar feature in your PHP environment.

Also search the web for advice on optimin running of PHP on a particular platform.

Of course, the amount of graphics on the page - each image will cost a round trip to the web server.

The another reason could be your connection to your website, check the route it take across the internet, this varies greatly between locations. use a tool like tracert which will show the times between each router taken to cross the internet to your site.

At the end of the day, if it is an average website (unlike a huge one) like Yahoo, then there is no real difference is performance between NT and Unix - it is merely a technical/business decision as to which technology fits your requirements better.

[Edited by Mr Chunder on 03-22-2001 at 03:41 PM]