I considered 24/7, but their input on the e-mail program was vague at best. Another option I'm considering is L90. Any other alternatives out there?

Thanks

good luck

This command will trace and time every hop between your computer and the host's server, so you can see exactly how close it is to the backbone, and decide whether it can meet your "need for speed". I recommend that you try tracing at several different times during the day, just to see how the route responds under different traffic loads.

The hops to which you should pay particular attention are the ones between the host server and the backbone. The speed of these hops will determine how fast the host is capable of serving your pages to your visitors. Of course, the actual server equipment will have some impact on site speed, but even the best equipment cannot overcome a slow connection.

If you need more help with this, you can contact me directly.

Still searching for something (Flycast was doing good for a while, but following the 95% defaults in the last newsletter and the situation getting worse...). Any other ideas?

http://www.domainwatch.com

You can run a tracert, find out how many domains are hosted by the DNS servers, even get a head request from the domain name. They even have a plugin for IE 4.0 that adds the ability to run a DomainWatch request from the right-click context menu on any web page.

Insert usual disclaimer about my being in no way affiliated with DomainWatch, etc.

HTH

Angie

Owen

CNet's Guide to webhosts. http://webhostlist.internetlist.com/
- Althought heavily commercial, I found their top 25 list very helpful. They are running sites through NetMechanic to determine load and down times. I think this was the best place to make a short list of hosts to check.

Web Hosting Survey http://www.whsurvey.com/
- A rather thinly populated bulletin board of user comments. Some people don't like AOL!!

ISPCheck http://www.ispcheck.com/shared/
- Has a feature that searches for hosts based on criterea that you check off. Several sites have this, and a significant problem is that it will be hard/impossible for sites to keep up with an ever-changing list of hosts, features, and offers. I wouldn't count on feature lists that Host reviewers provide.

Hostindex http://www.hostindex.com/
- Rather commercial, but offers a monthly ranking, you can vote for your own host.

TopHosts http://www.tophosts.com/
- Seems rather commercial and arbitrary at first, the the reviews of the hosts are apparently the work of three real people. Worth a stop to see what they have to say. Another cute feature is the ability to run a tracert against the "fastest" host on the web. (With an offer to sign up with them if your selection looses)

Cnet's Report on ISPs http://www.cnet.com/Content/Reports/
Special/ISP/index.html

DomainWatch http://www.domainwatch.com/
Useful tool. Will tell you how many domains are served by a particular url.

NeoTrace by NeoWorks http://www.neoworx.com/
Keith Pettersen turned me on to this. Feel like you're on X-files: "Our connection to Yahoo! went through 29 states!"

Owen

Keep in mind that email advertising (ezine, not spam) works far better than banner ads.

I know of a new ezine network about to come out, but I can't talk about it yet. I've written them to ask if I can post their announcement now, but I'll have to wait until they get back to me.

Anybody with expericence from BurstMail?
Otherwise I will come back with info as soon as I find out.

Owen