US, France, or Germany Server?

[bumrocks]

For whatever reason I seem to have a problem with posting and/or lag. So let's see if this post actually shows...

I have seen that server hosting for the most part takes place in the US, France, and Germany. What are the advantages of each? Pros/cons? Not for surfing purposes but strictly torrent purposes.

[bumrocks]

Does nobody have any input or knowledge on this?

[bigdaddydude]

I was recently using a seedbox from Xirvik that was located in the US. After joining a tracker I found out that my torrents would not connect. The tracker had banned the servers that are located in the US. I'm in the middle of being transferred to a server in Germany. I will see how it goes after that. Hope this helps.

[bumrocks]

good infp...Much appreciated!

[chrisbeebops]

I can't say anything about specific countries other than generalize about the server hosts within those countries.

France:
Largest host is OVH. Chosen largely because it is the cheapest host (and cheapest gigabit host). Routing is good to certain parts of Europe, but isn't great elsewhere. I've found routing to the US to be poor, so FTP speeds will be low.

US:
FDC. Cheap server host. I've heard weird things about them, reports of varying latency, hardware problems, even something about on of their datacenters getting ddosed (no joke). I've seen some rather sketchy pictures purported to be from their datacenter.
Softlayer. Expensive, but you get what you pay for. Premium bandwidth and support. VarsBox (http://varsbox.com/gbit) resells from servers hosted at Softlayer datacenters.

LU:
Server.lu. Bit more expensive than OVH, and better routing in general. I found that my server would become unconnectable for a few minutes a few times a month, and would sometimes require a reboot in order to re-connect to the network. Support is painful to deal with.

NL:
Leaseweb. Best routing out of all European hosts I've used. I can max my US connection with a single ftp thread from a Leasweb server. Server and network have both had 100% uptime since I started my lease.


My suggestion:
If you looking for a server to host znc, maybe some irc bots, and rtorrent for a few TB max per month, go with a host like Leaseweb. You won't regret it. Once you set everything up, it'll stay exactly the way you set it pretty much forever. FTP speeds to home will max your connection with 1 or 2 threads. My current plan with them is 25 euro/m for a dedicated server with 2GHz processor, 1GB ram, 250GB disk, 100Mbit connection, 4TB traffic. More than enough for my needs.

If you are looking to whore upload, your best bet is OVH or server.lu, as both are unmetered traffic. Server.lu I've found to be better in most swarms as it has much better routing, while OVH dominates in others due to OVH<->OVH traffic.

[lukarav]

Just do a speedtest and trace from those provider and see how it goes. If you will use it on sites with lots of leechers and dont have to worry about your ratio, you should go for non-ovh boxes because in most cases they are faster to non-EU, unless your isp have direct peering with ovh. Watch out for sites with lots of OVH seedboxes, because they will dominate swarms, especially 1gbit boxes. Also i have a .NL box located at ecatel and i am very satisifed with it, i can easily get 10MB upload.

[seeder22]

if you want fast ftp speeds to your home, then you prob want USA data center, if you want max upload speeds on your

[spiridonov]

+1 for Leaseweb
For me, it has been fast and reliable for 1.5+ years

[bumrocks]

I have now heard issues with some sites and US servers. OVH is now tracking/metering (or whatever) speeds again. So it looks like I will look for a box in Germany...

Thanks for the advice!

[EchoAlpha]

Leaseweb is great but it's just too expensive :<

[Thelen]

Ecatel should be stayed away from AT ALL COSTS. They are affiliated with/owned by the RBN (russian hacker mafia). They regularly rip people off, there are tonnes of threads on WHT about it.

chris assesments are fairly accurate otherwise, except I wouldn't say LW is very reliable. They have even worse support than OVH. If you want a good provider that connects well to everyone though, then they are the only choice. That or server.lu, but their support is almost as shit.