websites hosted in Australia

Hi,

I'm in New York and I've got a client in Australia. I set them up with
a US host for their website but they are now concerned that since most
of their audience will be accessing their site from Australia that there
will be lags in speed. They also want users to be able to download
music from this site which raises another concern regarding the distance.

Should I recommend they switch to an Aussie host?

Thanks so much,
T

> I'm in New York and I've got a client in Australia. I set them up with a
> US host for their website but they are now concerned that since most of
> their audience will be accessing their site from Australia that there will
> be lags in speed. They also want users to be able to download music from
> this site which raises another concern regarding the distance.
>
> Should I recommend they switch to an Aussie host?
>
> Thanks so much,
> T

Depends on how much traffic he generates. Traffic charges are insanely
expensive in Aust compared to US or Euro, if he is delivered media files to
any number of people from an Australian host I hope he has deep pockets.

Of course latency will be decreased for a majority of his (Aust) customers
but the difference is not as marked as it could be due to relatively poor
peering/interconnectivity within Australia (this is getting a lot better of
late though). Media file downloads are not as latency dependant as things
like online gaming servers for example - it is all about bandwidth. And
extra 10kbps bandwidth per customer would be much more noticable than 150ms
less latency.

TD wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm in New York and I've got a client in Australia. I set them up
> with a US host for their website but they are now concerned that
> since most of their audience will be accessing their site from
> Australia that there will be lags in speed. They also want users to
> be able to download music from this site which raises another concern
> regarding the distance.
> Should I recommend they switch to an Aussie host?
>
> Thanks so much,
> T

Kind of depends upon the arrangements the US host has with international
carriers. My reseller host has been going through a series of service
upgrades by contracting with additional and higher speed carrier services.
Lag between Florida and Oz is now pretty low. Server response time is now
the limiting factor.

On the plus side, Oz sites hosted in the US tend to get used during the wee
hours of US time when the US sites are idling. Unfortunately that's also
when the hosting service is likely to have downtime for upgrades which
appear in the middle of the day in Aus..

--
dp

Previously in alt.www.webmaster, TD <absolutdahl@yahoo.com> said:

> I'm in New York and I've got a client in Australia. I set them up with
> a US host for their website but they are now concerned that since most
> of their audience will be accessing their site from Australia that there
> will be lags in speed.

As others have said, at worst the lag is hardly noticeable.

For me, the main concern is that if someone searches google.com.au for
only pages in Australia, a site hosted in the US won't show in the
results at all, even if it's a .au domain. If they are worried about
that, then yes they will need to switch to an Australian host.

--
Mark Parnell
http://www.clarkecomputers.com.au