Buy the ARP T-Shirt! BIOS Optimization Guide Money Savers!
 

   
Desktop Graphics Card Comparison Guide Rev. 33.0
Covering 628 desktop graphics cards, this comprehensive comparison allows you ... Read here
BIOS Option Of The Week - Virtualization Technology
Since 1999, we have been developing the BIOS Optimization Guide, affectionately known... Read here
   
   
Buy The BOG Book Subscribe To The BOG! Latest Money Savers!

Rapid Expansion

Since its inception in 1998, Tech ARP has for most part relied on free webhosting, beginning with Tripod and then progressing to free hosting provided by generous hosts. However, to ensure that our visitors get the best service and fastest loading time possible, we decided to stand on our own feet and pay for our own hosting.

After developing our new site for nine months, we hooked up with GearHost for 20GB of bandwidth per month with the plan to upgrade to 30GB when more people start dropping by. Armed with a slim new interface and a database-driven backend, we didn't expect to exceed 20GB for several months, much less 30GB.

However, in the very first month (December 2002) we went online with the new interface, we exceeded our bandwidth by over 60GB! The reason? We actually served over 3 million page views to over 240,000 unique visitors during that month! We were also hit by GearHost's IIS limitation for all their shared hosting plans which caused many of our visitors to get HTTP 403.9 errors when they tried to access the site. After some negotiations, we managed to get the IIS limitation lifted and upgrade our hosting from the initial 20GB to a full 100GB per month!

Needless to say, the new hosting plan costed us a lot more than we expected to pay. But it was either pay up for the additional bandwidth or shut the site down. Since most of our bandwidth was used to serve HTML pages, we also paid for HTML compression. We looked set to handle all the visitors we can get... or so we thought... :)

Some of you may not believe it but by February of 2003, we were in a bit of a fix. Even with HTML compression and the 3-day downtime we suffered as a result of the SQL Slammer worm, we were fast approaching the 100GB limit! In less than 25 days of activity, we actually served over 3.7 million pages! It took us some spacing of our articles and reviews to keep within that limit. Evidently, 100GB isn't going to be enough in March.

It was in the final days of February when we started to look around frantically for a new hosting solution. Shared hosting wasn't possible anymore, not with a bandwidth requirement of more than 100GB! Although the cost of semi-dedicated and dedicated hosting is high, we had no choice but to expand. But thanks to helpful suggestions from some of you, we managed to get an affordable dedicated hosting solution from The Planet.

Finally, Tech ARP is on its own dedicated server. Imagine that - from a 20GB shared hosting plan to a dedicated server with 500GB of bandwidth in three months! Thanks to your support, we have had an incredibly rapid expansion. Although the server is way out of our initial budget, we believe in getting the best for our visitors. We don't believe in "unlimited bandwidth" accounts for Tech ARP. To provide you with the most reliable and fastest access to our site, nothing less than guaranteed bandwidth will suffice!

Updated 28-03-04 : We have just moved to a new server! The new server comes with a faster processor, a LOT more memory, hard drive space and bandwith. This upgrade will allow us to offer a better experience in the forums as well as upgrade our capabilities for the future.

Updated 30-10-05 : We upgraded the server with a new 80GB hard drive! In addition, we are happy to announce that our server now comes with even more bandwidth!

 

The ARP Server

Here are the technical details of our current server :-

Processor
2.8GHz Intel Pentium 4C
with Hyper-Threading Technology
Memory
1GB Transcend PC3200 DDR SDRAM
Motherboard
Gigabyte GA-8IG1000MK i875 motherboard
Graphics Card
ATI Rage XL PCI
Hard Drives
80GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 PATA
80GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 SATA
CD-ROM
48X LITE-ON LTN486S
Network Adapters
Intel PRO/1000 MT
Operating System
Microsoft Windows Server 2003

 

Maintenance

Running a dedicated server is never cheap. Most sites rely on advertising to keep afloat. So do we.

Unfortunately, advertising alone isn't going to cover our costs which also means our expansion plans are limited. So, if you like our work, please consider donating to our cause. Your donations will be used to maintain our server and pay for bandwidth costs as well as allow us to expand to meet the demands.

Please feel free to donate by the following methods :-

If you would like to send us a cheque, please e-mail me for the details. Please note that the bank charges us a minimum fee of $17 to cash each cheque. So, unless you are sending us a big cheque, please send by PayPal. If you send us $10-20 directly, you will merely be financing the bank! ;)

Team ARP is eternally grateful to all of you who have contributed generously to our cause! Thank you!

   
Hands On With The AMD Radeon R9 Fury X, R9 Fury X2 & R9 Nano
Samsung EcoGreen F4 (HD204UI) 2 TB Hard Disk Drive Review
The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 400 Tech Report
Save Your Mobile Phone From Theft!
Adobe Lightroom Photo Processing Software Review
ATI Tech Day 2006
Intel Duo Couture Event Coverage
Cooler Master Aerogate II Thermal Controller Review
Modded Radeon 9800SE Vs. GeForce FX 5950 Ultra Comparison
Spam - The Digital Pest

 


Copyright © Tech ARP.com. All rights reserved.