Web Server Switch

[mikelove]

We're investigating the possibility of switching web hosts pre-2.0, specifically with an eye towards getting better bandwidth to Asia - even with the mirror in HK there's still the frustrating experience of going to the online store / downloading keyfiles / etc from our poky US server.

So I'd very much appreciate it if a few people outside of the US could let me know about the ping times / download speeds for the following IP addresses / test files. To ping a server in Windows, just go to the Start menu, choose Run, and then type "ping " followed by the IP address.

206.251.72.1, http://nocnx.com/100mb.bin
72.37.185.1, http://webnx.com/100mb.bin
69.46.41.32, http://69.46.41.32/100mb.bin
72.232.23.203, http://speedtest.layeredtech.com/8mb.test.file.zip
72.232.210.203, http://speedtest2.layeredtech.com/8mb.test.file.zip

If you could also let me know your ping time / download speed for Pleco's server (IP is 64.91.238.95, downloads of course are at http://www.pleco.com/palmdownload.html or http://www.pleco.com/ppcdownload.html) for comparison that would be great. Ping / download speeds from our HK mirror server (203.194.198.182, http://www.pulike.com/mirror.html would also help.

We're trying to get test IPs / file addresses for a few other hosts too, so I may post them here in a few days.

Many many thanks,

Michael Love
Pleco Software
http://www.pleco.com

 

[ipsi]

206.251.72.1: Average over 20 pings is 152ms with 0% dropped from Wellington, New Zealand
72.37.185.1: Average over 20 pings is 177ms with 25% dropped.
69.46.41.32: Average over 20 pings is 184ms with 0% dropped.
72.232.23.203: Average over 20 pings is 203ms with 5% dropped. D/L: ~95kb/s
72.232.210.203: Average over 20 pings is 198 with 15% dropped. D/L: ~85kb/s

64.91.238.95: Average over 20 pings is 214 with 0% dropped.
203.194.198.182: Average over 20 pings is 218 with 10% dropped. D/L: ~75kb/s

I'll check on the download speeds when I get back home. Gotta go out now. It's worth noting that I'm on wireless at home, and quite far from the router (15% connection strength), so that might influence it. On the other hand, I do, technically, have a 10Mbps down/2Mbps up connection.

EDIT: I'm not sure exactly how to measure the average download speed (Firefox's inbuilt thing won't tell me), so I just watched and guesstimated.

 

[Shadowdh]

206.251.72.1: 519ms to 550ms dl 106KBps to 122

72.37.185.1: 430 to 486 dl 118 to 151

69.46.41.32: 467 to 492 dl 87 to 146

72.232.23.203: 441 to 461 dl 58 to 71.7

72.232.210.203: 532 to 547 dl 38.5 to 59.5

64.91.238.95: 472 to 490 dl 90.2 to 131

203.194.198.182: 151 to 153 (with one timing out) dl 1.7 to 16

I am not sure if I did it exactly right (not being to tech proficient) but I typed ping and then the ip addy as instructed and the window came up did the ping test and then closed again. I did this for 3 times each IP addy and it sent a 32 KB package 4 times in each test. I then did the dl test by clicking on the link and then letting it run for a few minutes to get the max dl speed. I noted the start speed and the highest it reached. I did cut the long dls after about 3 or so mins once it had settled around a constant(ish) speed.

My location is Wuhan in Hubei province China. I am staying in the Student dorms and use the broadband (adsl I think, not wireless) connection there... these values may change as a result of the time of day, how many people connecting and so forth... I hope this helps. (ps sorry about the jumble of figures I did try to format it nicely but I can figure out how to tab or put large spaces in).

 

[mikelove]

Thanks a lot for checking on this so quickly! Between these and our own pinging experiments it doesn't seem like there's that big a difference between one US host and another, so our best bet may just be to stick with our current provider but try to put more functionality on the HK mirror site.

 

[daniu]

Hi!

Here some Germany result - 8:30AM local time:

Sorry - the text is in German - but I think you can transfer that easily - it is: sent, received, lost, min, max, average

Ping-Statistik für 206.251.72.1:
Pakete: Gesendet = 20, Empfangen = 20, Verloren = 0 (0% Verlust),
Ca. Zeitangaben in Millisek.:
Minimum = 176ms, Maximum = 236ms, Mittelwert = 180ms

Ping-Statistik für 72.37.185.1:
Pakete: Gesendet = 20, Empfangen = 20, Verloren = 0 (0% Verlust),
Ca. Zeitangaben in Millisek.:
Minimum = 186ms, Maximum = 356ms, Mittelwert = 202ms

Ping-Statistik für 69.46.41.32:
Pakete: Gesendet = 20, Empfangen = 20, Verloren = 0 (0% Verlust),
Ca. Zeitangaben in Millisek.:
Minimum = 216ms, Maximum = 244ms, Mittelwert = 224ms

Ping-Statistik für 72.232.23.203:
Pakete: Gesendet = 20, Empfangen = 20, Verloren = 0 (0% Verlust),
Ca. Zeitangaben in Millisek.:
Minimum = 185ms, Maximum = 214ms, Mittelwert = 187ms

Ping-Statistik für 72.232.210.203:
Pakete: Gesendet = 20, Empfangen = 20, Verloren = 0 (0% Verlust),
Ca. Zeitangaben in Millisek.:
Minimum = 152ms, Maximum = 321ms, Mittelwert = 168ms

Ping-Statistik für 64.91.238.95:
Pakete: Gesendet = 20, Empfangen = 20, Verloren = 0 (0% Verlust),
Ca. Zeitangaben in Millisek.:
Minimum = 136ms, Maximum = 192ms, Mittelwert = 142ms

Ping-Statistik für 203.194.198.182:
Pakete: Gesendet = 20, Empfangen = 20, Verloren = 0 (0% Verlust),
Ca. Zeitangaben in Millisek.:
Minimum = 347ms, Maximum = 357ms, Mittelwert = 349ms

Downloadspeed is a bit more complicated. Might do that tonight. It really looks like your server is the best anyways so far. I do remember however that the dl speed is not really fantastic. But since you do not do it everyday ...

And I guess Europe is not that interesting anyways ...

best regards
Daniel

 

[mikelove]

Thanks! Those times actually make a certain amount of sense since our current server is located in Michigan (central US) while most of these others are located on the West Coast and hence farther from Europe. Europe definitely does matter, we have an enormous number of customers in Europe and while the EU's ludicrous tax policies on downloadable software have made us wary about setting up an a European mirror server (I suppose we could still put one in Switzerland or Norway) we certainly want to keep our transfer rates decent at least.

 

[daniu]

Hi!

Sorry - I forgot to do the downloadtest ...and I just realize that it does not make sense at work in lunchbreak ... The numbers do not say anything ...

But I wonder: does it make a difference where you have the server? I mean: does the country where the server is get the tax for the deal?

regards
Daniel

 

[mikelove]

No problem, actually we've made our decision about a new hosting provider now - trying to get it done quickly before things get really crazy with Beta 4. Hopefully we'll be moved over within a week or two.

Re your question, the EU has recently decreed that all online content purchased/downloaded by EU residents should be subject to VAT, even if they're purchasing it from a company outside of the EU that doesn't have any business presence in the EU, and are demanding that non-EU companies collect and remit these taxes to them. We feel this is an exceedingly stupid policy and runs decidedly contrary to the open / borderless spirit of the internet, on top of which, if they were to succeed at enforcing it, other tax authorities might eventually follow suit and we could be stuck collecting VAT for dozens of different countries we have no presence in. Which is really not something we want to be spending our time on.

So since Pleco is located in the US, has no assets / offices in the EU and hence is not in any way subject to EU jurisdiction, we've chosen to ignore it and not charge our EU customers that extra ~20% tax. We're pretty firm about this sort of thing in general; in the US we're required to collect sales tax for purchases from customers in the state where we're located (New York), but we actually pay those taxes ourselves rather than passing them along to our New York-based customers - particularly when the product you're selling is an intangible download, we don't think it's fair to penalize customers just because they happen to be located in the same state that you are.

When we start selling Pleco 2.0 on CD we'll certainly obey the law on that and correctly declare the value / commercial nature of the product on customs forms, but we have no intention of following these ridiculous VAT rules. However, since we are in theory violating EU law we don't think it's a very good idea to have a Pleco server located somewhere where an overzealous EU tax official might be able to seize or otherwise do nasty things to it. Hence the interest in Switzerland, with its long and glorious history of thumbing its nose at said tax officials.

 

[daniu]

Hi!

Do I get that correctly? So far the deal is: only for products sold to customers in your very own state you gotta pay taxes? Or better: only for these you do pay taxes ... (for Europe now they want you to and for the rest of the US you do not have to?)

That does not sound right to me. Rather I'd say it would be right to charge the same - local - VAT to all customers - just the way it would be if people would visit you and buy in your store. Then if someone considers the VAT of your state too high he should be the one to go to your state, claim the VAT and afterwards (what is almost never done when people buy things abroad though I am almost sure illegal not to do) pay the VAT to his own country. The price of PD is still so low that one should be allowed to buy the thing without doing anything (just like if I visit the US and buy a digital camera - I do not need to do anything as long as the price does not exceed a certain value, unknown to me right now - but I could ... besides that I suppose that my countries tax is way higher than the USes ...)

regards
Daniel

 

[mikelove]

Actually it's standard practice in the US to only charge taxes to customers in your state - even very large online retailers like Amazon do this. Sales taxes can only be levied by state governments, as the national government doesn't have the constitutional authority to impose them (they're limited to income tax and tariffs, basically), and state governments don't really have the authority to impose taxes on non-residents. Some states don't even have sales taxes, so if businesses could pay sales taxes based on their location rather than their customers', we'd all just set up offices in a non-sales-tax state.

There's been talk for a long time now of an interstate agreement allowing states to levy/collect sales taxes on behalf of other states (though even the constitutionality of this has been questioned), but it's been stalled in part by the fact that small businesses and the US Supreme Court are demanding that states simplify their sales tax systems first - in New York alone we have several dozen different tax rates depending on one's county / city location, and thanks to weird postal addressing conventions you literally have to look up someone's exact street address for some countries to know whether or not they're technically within the limits of a specific city which has a different tax rate from the rest of the county. In the EU as I understand it there's essentially just one nationwide VAT rate in each member state, so calculating/collecting/paying VAT for the entire EU would be less complicated than doing it for just our one state is in the US. There's also a much better developed system there for claiming VAT rebates; here if you want to get a refund on sales tax you have to mail in a form, wait 3 months and hope some bureaucrat doesn't misplace your receipt.

As for the EU's downloadable software policy specifically, I just don't think it's reasonable for a country to expect a business over which it has no jurisdiction to collect/pay taxes on its behalf; if we start doing that then we're just a few short steps away from having to create a version of our software with "offensive" dictionary entries removed in order to placate some country's particular free speech restrictions. Or adopt some overly complicated national data interchange standard in order to satisfy a particular country's requirements on that. There's no way Pleco or for that matter any small internet company can do business if we have to spend time researching / complying with the laws of every country we have customers in.

 

[Shadowdh]

Gosh come on guys you know they have to raise taxes and revenue to pay for their pay rise so they can... ummm they can.... ok what is it they do again... The EU is so full of bureaucracy its just not funny... you should hear about the time they banned bent bananas... sheesh...