Laaaaaaaaaag: Latency Issues with Hosting

When you first make your low cost web site hosting purchase, you are pumped to get your files uploaded and get your site online.  Nothing can be more frustrating than seeing a 1.7KB/s upload as you are trying to get your website online.  This article will attempt to address some possible causes as well as some possible solutions for those horrible upload and download speeds at your low cost web site hosting server.

If you have purchased shared discount web hosting, your high latency may be due to other users on your server.  Check the response time of your DNS server by utilizing the ping tool from a command window.  You can also ping from a number of free web sites, if you are uncertain how to use the command window.

If your ping is reasonable, then your problem is narrowed down to your affordable web hosting provider.  They may have allotted too many people to a server or there is a specific user chewing up much more bandwidth than he should be allowed to.  Contact your budget web hosting company and ask that they evaluate this issue urgently.  Remember, if they are reluctant to resolve the issue or deny the issue all together when you clearly see a problem that is harming your business, do not hesitate to seek the assistance of a new low cost web site hosting provider.  In fact, the majority of low cost web hosting companies out there will even assist you with the transfer process.

If you are on a dedicated server and experiencing latency, the problem may be a bit more serious.  First, ping the dedicated server from an external source (many free websites provide this tool) and then ping it from your computer.  By comparing these two ping results, it will help you determine if the connection issue is on your end.  Keep in mind, the pings won’t be identical, ever!  But, they should be reasonably close… say within 50ms of each other.

If everything is okay with your pings, do a trace route to see the response time of each individual hop, that way you can see where exactly slow downs are occurring.  In some instances, this will not indicate any issue.  Utilize ping and tracert tools to narrow down your issue and eliminate other possibilities.

Should the ping and tracert results come back without indicating an issue, you might want to evaluate your usage of the server.  Are you over-taxing its processing power?  This can occur if you are running far too many programs on your server.  If you do not know how to check this, contact your low cost web site hosting provider for assistance.  They will be able to check logs on your dedicated server to determine if perhaps you need more processing power, less programs, or even a bigger server.

Another cause for poor latency on shared or dedicated budget web hosting packages can be poor website design.  If your page is loading very slowly, you may want to audit the design of your website.  For example, if your site is heavy in embedded media and/or database calls/queries, it is going to DRAMATICALLY slow down the loading of your website.
This is not meant as a scare tactic, but, poor latency can also be indicative of a much larger, more malicious issue.  Denial of Service attacks occur malicious hackers flood servers with requests.  This renders the server effectively useless as legitimate requests can not be distinguished from illegitimate requests.  Due to the elaborate amount of requests, the server will stop responding all together.  Contact your low cost web site hosting provider immediately if you suspect this is the issue.

Along these lines, malicious attempts at utilizing your server for immoral or illegal practices can also result in dramatic latency issues.  For example, if your server is being used as a spam relay, you can expect slow downs and other very harmful repercussions.  If your server is being spammed or being used as a spam relay, users will be able to trace back the spam to your server and it can result in a loss of business or even termination of your low cost web site hosting account.  If you suspect this is the issue, contact your affordable web hosting company immediately.

There are a variety of other issues that may occur which result in poor hosting latency.  Keep your low cost web site hosting company in the loop.  They can see a lot more logs and performance detail than you can.  A good budget web hosting company will seek to resolve this matter in order to keep your business, keep you content, and protect their own reputation.