[Halide]

ftp://LOGIN:PASSWORD@DOMAIN/PATH_TO_FILE

An actual example of that might be:

ftp://admin:kd9302kFJ@ks9999.kimsufi.com/admin/mydum1.bin

If you have changed the port to your FTP from the original port the format is like this:

ftp://LOGIN:PASSWORD@DOMAIN:PORT/PATH_TO_FILE

just thought i'd throw that in there :P

Excellent guide!

[DedicatedPros]

I second that pdu, I have just gotten a very fast residential connection (120/10Mbps), and I max out my connection without a problem. OVH's connections are amazing, it's just a shame Windows does not want to install properly without an intervention.

[pdu]

I have to say that whilst I agree with everything Andy said in the first post regarding methods of trying to gather accurate speedtest results, I've always found ovh bandwidth to be awesome, I backup a server in london to a machine here and it literally flies, every single time. I've also done backups from one of my ovh boxes to lux, that also goes like mad. I'm so impressed by ovh, I now have 6 servers with them, can't say fairer than that

[gigabit]

Haha you dont need esata when youve got InfiniBand!

[Seedbox Paradis]

Probably because OVH's FTP is likely only hosted on a 1Gbps connection. Free.fr might have a load balanced solution, who knows, OVH may also have a load balanced solution...

Either that or OVH has all the servers hooked up via eSata so we all get 3Gbps access to their servers BTW that was my big idea as to starting an uber fast data center, but I guess now its not so secret anymore :-< Damn, what the hell am I going to do in life now, maybe man whoring lol

[Andy]

Probably because OVH's FTP is likely only hosted on a 1Gbps connection. Free.fr might have a load balanced solution, who knows, OVH may also have a load balanced solution...

[wackomoo]

ovh's FTP is a bit dodgy speedwise - I always get better speeds from free.fr's mirror when it comes to my linux iso needs etc :P

[Andy]

Bumping this up since its not been stickied yet...

[Seedbox Paradis]

im a torrent man mr seedbox
only legal torrents tho including my customers

Touche I like torrents, but just to build my ratio and rub it into people's faces, though I find that some things aren't available on some torrent sites (such as music and apps), and yea I could hunt down those trackers that offer them, but I'm far too lazy for that Of course this is all speaking of legal material that I have purchased or owned at some point and never gave into the [strike]wonderful [/strike] horrible world of piracy

Ok there is no strike through text enabled on this forum, but you get what I wanted to write.

[slayer2005]

I, like many people, enjoy using it and find it a great resource.

im a torrent man mr seedbox
only legal torrents tho including my customers

[Seedbox Paradis]

rapidshare=

I, like many people, enjoy using it and find it a great resource.

[slayer2005]

Ah well I have a solution :P You can get what's called a Collector's Account, which will allow you to upload via their remote uploads function, and you can even build RS points. The only thing you can't do with this account is download from their servers, but its free so you can test your speed!

To make one of these accounts follow this small howto:

1. Go to http://www.rapidshare.com/ and upload any file (keep it small, no need for biggies)
2. Once the upload is completed you will be redirected to the site with your link, beneath that link there is a field that says 'Create Collector's Account', click it and input the details you'd like.
3. Go to https://ssl.rapidshare.com/cgi-bin/collectorszone.cgi to login

To do simultaneous uploads to their servers go to the Remote Uploads tab, and assuming you have an ftpd running on your server, input the links to some dummy files you want Rapidshare to download from your servers. The format goes like this:

ftp://LOGIN:PASSWORD@DOMAIN/PATH_TO_FILE

An actual example of that might be:

ftp://admin:kd9302kFJ@ks9999.kimsufi.com/admin/mydum1.bin

To max out your speed, use at least 5 files at once, and in my opinion, they should be around 100MB each. Once you have inserted the links into Rapidshare's manager, press Add. At this point some of Rapidshare's servers will start downloading your files, and as I believe the servers are located either in Germany or Switzerland (definitely somewhere in Europe), you should expect blazing speeds.

Update: Ran a reverse IP search on one of their hosting servers and its located in Germany

rapidshare=

[Seedbox Paradis]

I was going to suggest that but as the free version doesn't allow multiple threads, and very few people will probably have a premium account, it wasn't worth it.

Ah well I have a solution :P You can get what's called a Collector's Account, which will allow you to upload via their remote uploads function, and you can even build RS points. The only thing you can't do with this account is download from their servers, but its free so you can test your speed!

To make one of these accounts follow this small howto:

1. Go to http://www.rapidshare.com/ and upload any file (keep it small, no need for biggies)
2. Once the upload is completed you will be redirected to the site with your link, beneath that link there is a field that says 'Create Collector's Account', click it and input the details you'd like.
3. Go to https://ssl.rapidshare.com/cgi-bin/collectorszone.cgi to login

To do simultaneous uploads to their servers go to the Remote Uploads tab, and assuming you have an ftpd running on your server, input the links to some dummy files you want Rapidshare to download from your servers. The format goes like this:

ftp://LOGIN:PASSWORD@DOMAIN/PATH_TO_FILE

An actual example of that might be:

ftp://admin:kd9302kFJ@ks9999.kimsufi.com/admin/mydum1.bin

To max out your speed, use at least 5 files at once, and in my opinion, they should be around 100MB each. Once you have inserted the links into Rapidshare's manager, press Add. At this point some of Rapidshare's servers will start downloading your files, and as I believe the servers are located either in Germany or Switzerland (definitely somewhere in Europe), you should expect blazing speeds.

Update: Ran a reverse IP search on one of their hosting servers and its located in Germany

[gregoryfenton]

I show off my server's bandwidth by downloading linux ISOs using wget which shows the connection speed in realtime.

Seeing an entire CD download in a minute impresses the pants off fellow geeks

wget http://releases.ubuntu.com/8.10/ubuntu-8.10-desktop-i386.iso
--2009-04-12 20:59:18--  http://releases.ubuntu.com/8.10/ubuntu-8.10-desktop-i386.iso
Resolving releases.ubuntu.com... 91.189.88.32
Connecting to releases.ubuntu.com|91.189.88.32|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 732766208 (699M) [application/x-iso9660-image]
Saving to: `ubuntu-8.10-desktop-i386.iso'

100%[======================================>] 732,766,208 11.0M/s   in 63s

2009-04-12 21:00:21 (11.0 MB/s) - `ubuntu-8.10-desktop-i386.iso' saved [732766208/732766208]

[Andy]

I was going to suggest that but as the free version doesn't allow multiple threads, and very few people will probably have a premium account, it wasn't worth it.

[Seedbox Paradis]

There is something I recommend for testing your upload, though I know you disagree Andy as we have discussed it. If you get either a Premium or Collector's account from Rapidshare.com and do simultaneous multi-threaded uploads via their remote upload function, you'll see amazing speeds. All of my servers uploaded to the Rapidshare servers at 10.2-10.9MB/s :O You might be able to hit more if you get business bandwith, but I have never decided to pay for it, so I wouldn't know

[Andy]

Testing your servers download and upload speeds the proper way:
By Andy

A lot of people seem to have issues knowing the proper ways to test their servers speed, and complain when it goes wrong. There are lots of factors involved in getting the correct speed from your server. Bad speeds can be caused by any number of the following:

- Bad routing to/from the remote server
- Lack of capacity at the remote server
- Congestion on route to/from the remote server
- Not enough capacity on route to/from the remote server
- The remote servers general inability to supply the speed (high resource usage, high disk i/o, hardware problem)
- The local servers inability to take a fast speed (high resource usage, high disk i/o, hardware problem)
- The remote servers software not being good enough for a high speed connection
- The local servers software not being good enough for a high speed connection

Methods you shouldn’t rely on for speed testing

Speed tests like speedtest.net

You can use them, but don’t rely on them. Too many factors are involved and will often give you a very bad result. Factors from bad routing to not enough bandwidth on the remote server and silly things like flash lagging over remote desktop can all cause speed loss. Yes, it happens, and I’ve proven this one as well. 5Mbps with the browser maximised, 75Mbps with it minimised, guaranteed every time.


Torrents (unless they’re the ones specified below)

Torrents can be very, very sporadic in speed, however the ones listed below have plenty of seeds/peers, and they also have super seed boxes on them as well. This is the only time I will ever say a torrent can be used as a speed testing method, purely because I’ve tried these two torrents myself and achieved full speed every time with ease. No other torrents should be used if you want to use torrents as a speed test. Just don’t solely rely upon those results, do some other tests too.


Single thread downloads/uploads in any shape or form!

A single thread is rarely enough to give you the full speed of any 100Mbps box. If its local, like the OVH speed test, then sure, perhaps, but when it’s a remote file it will very rarely happen. It down to a lot of factors again, and its down to the TCP/IP protocol and all this rubbish which I won’t go into, as it baffles even me. Put simply, never rely on a single thread, always use two or more if you can. Don’t go mad though, you can overload your hard disk if you have too many running and slow your speed down that way. 2-4 threads should be plenty to max out 100Mbps from a good server without reducing performance on your own.

Here are some proper ways of getting a correct speed test for your server:-

Download:

Try one or more of the following (not at the same time):


#1 HTTP

Download two or three of these Microsoft/Debian files at the same time, and add up the combined download speed.

http://download.microsoft.com/downlo...35-SP2-ENU.exe
http://download.microsoft.com/downlo...P3-x86-ENU.exe
http://download.microsoft.com/downlo...-X86-wave1.exe
http://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/...86-netinst.iso


#2 Torrents

Download both of these torrents at the same time, and add up the combined download speed. You will need a torrent client (e.g. uTorrent) for this.
Let the torrent run through to at least 50% before you decide its not working at the correct speed, torrents take time to acquire connections to seeds/peers.

http://releases.ubuntu.com/8.04.2/ub...86.iso.torrent ~700MB
http://torrent.fedoraproject.org/torrents//Fedora-10-x86_64-DVD.torrent ~4GB



#3 FTP

Download any two or three of these files at the same time, and add up the combined download speed. You will need an FTP client (e.g. FileZilla) for this.
Do not use a web browser; it does not have the capability to run at high speeds properly, an FTP client does. I have proven this in several tests.

ftp://ftp.ovh.net/test.bin No login required - 100MB
ftp://ftp.luna.nl/test/1024MByte.bin No login required - 1GB
ftp://ftp.abyssunderground.co.uk/test.bin User: test - Pass: test – 100MB



Upload


#1 FTP

For this test, you’ll have to find someone willing to give you an FTP account to upload to. As there are no public accounts, I can’t give you any links to use. You’ll have to hunt one down as and when you need it.


#2 Real life conditions

The only other real way to test the upload speed is under real life working conditions of the server. Sadly, this method doesn’t always come in peak usage when we need it the most.

=========================================
I hope this guide has helped you understand the problems with speed tests and why it is so difficult to get an accurate reading. I also hope it helps you understand that 100Mbps is a lot of bandwidth to utilise. It’s not easy, and until you actually know you need such bandwidth, I wouldn’t worry about making sure you’re really getting it. Your server is supplied with it, and you can get it. It’s a case of several dozen factors that can stop it happening, all beyond OVH’s control.
=========================================


P.S: Could a MOD please sticky this? Please leave it unlocked so I can continue to update it. Thank you.