Question about web hosting speed

Question

I started using a VPS with HostGator not long ago, they have 9 levels of VPS and I started out with level 3.

I'm testing a page on the website and it doesn't take too long to load,
something like 2 second in my browser.

But I feel that the webpage is very small, so it should load faster.

So I tried downloading a 5 MB file from my VPS to my PC, I also tested the file on HostTracker.com, which let's you test download speeds for different places around the globe.

The average speed was 88 KB/Sec (both my PC and HostTracker)

According to the HostGator FAQ:

We provide a Gigabit uplink with a guaranteed 20mbit connection.

We traffic shape each container to 20mbit. We do not foresee a situation when we would not meet the 20mbit guarantee without the stability of the entire server being affected.

If the server does have an outage, not including regular maintenance, we will offer a prorated credit for the amount of downtime.

From my calculation 20Mbit means 2.5 MB (divided by 8),
if it's supposed to download at 2.5MB/s than it means there's a huge difference here?

The questions are:

1. Is my calculation correct, is the file really supposed to download at 2.5 MB/s? I realize not all PCs have a 2.5MB/s connection, but today most do, and I know I do.

2. Is this some kind of error? should I contact the hosting company?

3. When they write 20mbit connection it means 20mbit/sec right? can they mean something else?

Thank you a lot in advance!

fiftyeight

Answer 1

Although I'm not an expert about networking hardware I think what Hostgator is referring to is a 20mbps connection per server which is shared across the hundreds/thousands of customer websites provided you're on a shared plan.

With a VPS however I think the 20mbps is being split across the customers on your server (typically a VPS only means guaranteed processing power & RAM) but if you were on a high end host, you probably could get a dedicated bandwidth pipe (similar to a dedicated plan) however that would be a huge premium over a traditional VPS.

Although they say each container has a 20mbps adapter, that is likely a peak figure which they'd only max out for maybe a minute or two before bringing your site offline. In the fine print I'm sure Hostgator has a less glamorous figure which is for actual usage. Typically hosts will publicize the peak capacity just to look better than others.

I'm actually a HostGator customer myself so I know the issue, and I think also your ISP might be severely crippling your upload speeds, which is common to keep customers from running servers and also to prevent P2P piracy. The issue probably could be resolved by upgrading to a Small Biz ISP plan, but going back to the other issue, it probably can't hurt to ask HostGator if they can improve your pipe