Need help determining if my web host's service is spotty

[rexolio2008]

I'm a classic ASP developer (a dying breed, I know) and know enough SQL Server to do my job. I'm not major server professional, although I can figure somethings out if given enough time and Google.

I'm having a hard time determining if the service I'm using (hosting service) is dependable. It was at one time. But recently the host changed co-location facilities and I moved. So I'm not sure if what I'm seeing is from him or from me.

FTP and website performance just stalls sometimes. Literally, nothing will budge. I click a link to go to a page on a site I'm building and nothing will happen. After a period of time, if I try again, it loads no problem. Same thing with FTP.

If I ask the host, he'll say things are fine. If I call my ISP (Comcast) they'll say that they're showing a great connection with my modem and it must just be my router (I have a brand new Linksys router).

I don't notice this with other sites. I've had the host tell me it must be something between me and him.

I don't know how to troubleshoot this and it's going to start costing me problems. What finally convinced me that it was the host was today. While speaking with a guy in Boston (I'm in Atlanta, host in Orlando) he said he tried to click on a contact page on the site I'm working on and it didn't move - the same thing I see all the time.

Can someone advise me how to trouble shoot this. I need to rule out my ISP and/or the host. If its the host, I have to move elsewhere.

I have access to the server, btw, so I can check some things there. The reason I've not left is because I've had such nice access. But I'm concerned now.

Server is Windows Server 2003. SQL is SQL Server 2005. The sites in question are ASP pages, if that matters. Don't think I've noticed an issue with a *.HTML page.

 

[Roadki11]

Well i would start at a very basic level, ping test. Open 2 command line windows and do a ping -t yourwebsite.com and the other ping -t yahoo.com. This will do a continuous ping test to 2 separate locations. Then you experience this "stall" check the pings and see if one the other or both are not replying. Look for very high reply times also.

RoadKi11

"This apparent fear reaction is typical, rather than try to solve technical problems technically, policy solutions are often chosen." - Fred Cohen

 

[rexolio2008]

Great thinking! I did that and have attached screen shots. For the most part, although there are some high response times on the host, compared to Yahoo's resources it doesn't seem off to me (correct me if I'm wrong).

Too bad you can't do a ping on specific pages. That's what I'd really love to do. It could be argued that perhaps the scripts on some of the pages are poorly written or are taking too long to connect to SQL Server, but some of the pages (and the one that the guy in Boston had an issue with) are nothing more than a page with NO scripting on it that just so happens to have a .asp extension.

Any other ideas?

 

[rexolio2008]

bump

 

[rexolio2008]

Okay, I ran a ping on the server in question (the one I'm having performance issues with my site), one site at Go Daddy (which has the occasional issue, too, but not like this) and then a 3rd that I know is being hosted at a facility near the guy hosting the problem server (for comparisons).

Tell me what you think... Feel like it's a dumb question - looks like I need to move!

 

[Roadki11]

Sorry, forgot about this thread. I dont think anything can be determined for certain from the ping tests. If you are showing us images of ping replies during the period of one of your so called "stalls", i dont see any durations of poor replies long enough to think its a network connection issue. I would start to lean towards a web host issue but that will hard to prove. Do these "stalls" happen at specific times of the day consistently? Could it be a code issue on the asp pages? How complicated are the asp pages? Are they hitting a backend sql server?

Fishing here.



RoadKi11

"This apparent fear reaction is typical, rather than try to solve technical problems technically, policy solutions are often chosen." - Fred Cohen

 

[rexolio2008]

the problem seems to happen throughout the day and it doesn't seem to matter whether the page has actual ASP or is just an HTML page with an ASP extension.