I decided around the 24th of November that the way I was testing speed on each blog was inaccurate.

Therefore as of November 24th, we changed the way we are testing each host.

Fixed Page Size Testing

Now we are testing using a fixed size HTML file with 10k worth of text, or exactly 10,251 bytes. This same document is put on all servers we are testing.

Previously we were testing using the blog’s main index page which changes every day for each host and therefore not controlled or set fixed size.

In the results we post for November, you will see a sharp drop in ping / page load response times because of this switch. Now that the test page is only 10k in size, the response times sharply improved for each host.

If you want a more accurate result set, compare each screenshot test times after the 24th of November.

Faster Ping Resolution

Now that we are using a fixed page size, we could increase the resolution to get better results with our uptime reports. Previously we were testing using a 5 minute resolution, now we are using a 1 minute resolution. This will give us a better uptime percentage reporting for each host. Now if a host is down for a few seconds, we won’t report it as a 5 minute outage but will report it as a 1 minute outage. Still not completely accurate but it is a huge improvement.

In December, all days will have these new methods in place and will be a much more accurate result set.

MidPhase did better than average for all testing we did. MidPhase did really well for server uptime for the month of October. Below you will find our complete testing results.

Top Web Hosts for US Traffic in October 2007

For the month of October, HostGator came out on top with an amazing 512 ms average main page load time from tests via our US testing servers.

Below you will find all eight web hosts we tested from US traffic, ranked from best to worst.

#1 HostGator - 512 ms Average on US Traffic
HostGator Review - HostGator Customer Reviews - Visit HostGator

#2 Globat - 572 ms Average on US Traffic
Globat Review - Globat Customer Reviews - Visit Globat

#3 LunarPages - 589 ms Average on US Traffic
LunarPages Review - LunarPages Customer Reviews - Visit LunarPages

#4 MidPhase - 685 ms Average on US Traffic
MidPhase Review - MidPhase Customer Reviews - Visit MidPhase

#5 HostICan - 747 ms Average on US Traffic
HostICan Review - HostICan Customer Reviews - Visit HostICan

#6 EasyCGI - 1,260 ms Average on US Traffic
EasyCGI Review - EasyCGI Customer Reviews - Visit EasyCGI

#7 HostNine - 1,419 ms Average on US Traffic
HostNine Review - HostNine Customer Reviews - Visit HostNine

#8 IX Web Hosting - 1,499 ms Average on US Traffic
IX Hosting Review - IX Hosting Customer Reviews - Visit IX Hosting

Top Web Hosts for Non-US Traffic in October

Globat came out on top for traffic based outside of the US. We have several servers we use to test web hosts with and here are the results from those tests.

#1 Globat - 1,134 ms Average on Non-US Traffic
Globat Review - Globat Customer Reviews - Visit Globat

#2 HostGator - 1,184 ms Average on Non-US Traffic
HostGator Review - HostGator Customer Reviews - Visit HostGator

#3 HostICan - 1,219 ms Average on Non-US Traffic
HostICan Review - HostICan Customer Reviews - Visit HostICan

#4 MidPhase - 1,333 ms Average on Non-US Traffic
MidPhase Review - MidPhase Customer Reviews - Visit MidPhase

#5 EasyCGI - 1,631 ms Average on Non-US Traffic
EasyCGI Review - EasyCGI Customer Reviews - Visit EasyCGI

#6 IX Web Hosting - 1,753 ms Average on Non-US Traffic
IX Hosting Review - IX Hosting Customer Reviews - Visit IX Hosting

#7 LunarPages - 1,789 ms Average on Non-US Traffic
LunarPages Review - LunarPages Customer Reviews - Visit LunarPages

#8 HostNine - 2,528 ms Average on Non-US Traffic
HostNine Review - HostNine Customer Reviews - Visit HostNine

Best Overall Web Hosts With Worldwide Traffic

Overall, when we combine our tests from all US and non-US servers, we were given new numbers to rank hosts with. Worldwide testing concluded that HostGator was the number 1 host overall with a 741 ms score.

#1 HostGator - 741 ms Average on Worldwide Traffic
HostGator Review - HostGator Customer Reviews - Visit HostGator

#2 Globat - 764 ms Average on Worldwide Traffic
Globat Review - Globat Customer Reviews - Visit Globat

#3 HostICan - 914 ms Average on Worldwide Traffic
HostICan Review - HostICan Customer Reviews - Visit HostICan

#4 MidPhase - 915 ms Average on Worldwide Traffic
MidPhase Review - MidPhase Customer Reviews - Visit MidPhase

#5 LunarPages - 1,007 ms Average on Worldwide Traffic
LunarPages Review - LunarPages Customer Reviews - Visit LunarPages

#6 EasyCGI - 1,390 ms Average on Worldwide Traffic
EasyCGI Review - EasyCGI Customer Reviews - Visit EasyCGI

#7 IX Web Hosting - 1,596 ms Average on Worldwide Traffic
IX Hosting Review - IX Hosting Customer Reviews - Visit IX Hosting

#8 HostNine - 1,808 ms Average on Worldwide Traffic
HostNine Review - HostNine Customer Reviews - Visit HostNine

Top Hosts Ranked by Server Uptime in October

For server uptime, we were impressed to see HostICan have a 100% uptime score for the month of October. To experience actual 100% uptime, HostICan is highly recommended for server stability.

It appears that HostICan, as of November 25th, has 100% uptime again! Really amazing.

Here are the results of our uptime tests:

#1 HostICan - 100% Uptime
HostICan Review - HostICan Customer Reviews - Visit HostICan

#2 HostGator - 99.79% Uptime
HostGator Review - HostGator Customer Reviews - Visit HostGator

#3 MidPhase - 99.50% Uptime
MidPhase Review - MidPhase Customer Reviews - Visit MidPhase

#4 Globat - 99.47% Uptime
Globat Review - Globat Customer Reviews - Visit Globat

#5 EasyCGI - 99.44% Uptime
EasyCGI Review - EasyCGI Customer Reviews - Visit EasyCGI

#6 LunarPages - 99.02% Uptime
LunarPages Review - LunarPages Customer Reviews - Visit LunarPages

#7 IX Web Hosting - 98.54% Uptime
IX Hosting Review - IX Hosting Customer Reviews - Visit IX Hosting

#8 HostNine - 97.89% Uptime
HostNine Review - HostNine Customer Reviews - Visit HostNine

Keep in mind, we only sent pings every five minutes to each website. Therefore, if we found an outage and it really only lasted 20 seconds, we will still show a 5 minute outage. For this reason, the actual uptime percentage is lower than what we really experienced. Starting in December, we changed the ping times to 1 minute and we are testing using a controlled 10K page as well for better equality.

Please Reference: About MidPhase Speed Tests
This reference has important information on how our MidPhase tests are performed. We do not just send a tiny ping, these reports are from full page loads of this site’s main page. All uptime reports are based on 5 minute ping times, therefore, we acknowledge that reported uptime percentages are lower than actual uptime experienced.

Let’s take a look at how MidPhase was for October when looking at their uptime.

Each and every dip you see on the graph above represents a period of downtime we have experienced while hosting at MidPhase.

Let’s take another look at a previously posted image for the total uptime percentages and daily statistics.

Remember, during this period from October 1st through October 31st, we had our ping times set to ping and load the main page every 5 minutes. Therefore, if MidPhase was offline for 5 seconds, we’ll still show 5 minutes on our reports.

MidPhase was offline on:

October 5th, 1 Hour 25 Minutes
October 8th, 5 minutes
October 10th, 50 minutes
October 23rd, 5 minutes
October 26th, 1 hour 20 minutes

Above, I highlighted the major outages. Apparently MidPhase struggled a bit to keep us online for October. It looks like there were a couple days in November so far that were a problem as well, but nothing serious like full day outages (or even longer than 1 hour).

Overall, we’d like to see our uptimes improve. We have graded MidPhase a B for uptime in October.

Please Reference: About MidPhase Speed Tests
This reference has important information on how our MidPhase tests are performed. We do not just send a tiny ping, these reports are from full page loads of this site’s main page.

Finally, we will combine both US based traffic sources with Non-US based traffic sources and come up with a final score for MidPhase.

Here’s the graph for all traffic sources:

Not too bad. Let’s see the daily average statistics for October.

I love it! When MidPhase shows below 1,000 ms for all traffic sources, I am very happy. In this case, MidPhase shows 915ms average page load times for our homepage from all traffic sources. Overall, we grade MidPhase an A- for the month of October. 

Please Reference: About MidPhase Speed Tests
This reference has important information on how our MidPhase tests are performed. We do not just send a tiny ping, these reports are from full page loads of this site’s main page.

Now we will compare how MidPhase has done for traffic that is from United States. Here’s the graph:

Looks pretty good. A few noticeable spikes but those spikes aren’t close to the daily averages for these days either. Check out the daily statistics for US traffic to this MidPhase hosted website:

The average full page load times from US traffic to this MidPhase server was 685 ms. Considering this blog has a large main page that our testing servers must load, we consider this excellent and grade MidPhase an A.

If you are looking for reliable server responses from most popular traffic sources, MidPhase is a great choice.

Tune in later when we compare all 8 hosts we’ve tested in October and see who ranks where. It should be interesting!

Please Reference: About MidPhase Speed Tests
This reference has important information on how our MidPhase tests are performed. We do not just send a tiny ping, these reports are from full page loads of this site’s main page.

Wow, time flew this month and I am bit late posting my data I have collected for October, 2007. Sorry about that! I’ve actually been putting all of my efforts into making my new site Customer Hosting Reviews for MidPhase the best it can be. It still has a long way to go, but at least it has a steady flow of user hosting reviews coming in!

Anyway, on with the results for October. These results are for Non-US server traffic coming to MidPhase Reviews homepage.

For non US traffic, these scores look very good. Take a look at the daily statistics for October below:

The average full page load time for MidPhase from testing servers out of the United States (such as Australia, Sweden, etc) is 1,333 ms. We consider this a B+ grade for load times from “foreign” traffic.

We found one host that has a worse response time from US based traffic this month, so MidPhase is doing very well and has proven very stable

Please Reference: About MidPhase Speed Tests
This reference has important information on how our MidPhase tests are performed. We do not just send a tiny ping, these reports are from full page loads of this site’s main page.

Finally, we report on MidPhase’s very impressive US-based speed tests.

First, here is the graph for US based speed tests that we have completed.

As you can see, our MidPhase speeds improced around the 14th for US based traffic. Here is a breakdown day by day:

Very good! Remember, these are speeds reported after fully loading our full main page, not simple tiny ping requests!

We rate MidPhase US based speed testing a 9/10 for this month. We would have given it a 10, but the 12th and 13th of September had really bad speeds. So we took that into consideration.

How do you rate MidPhase? Let us know!

Please Reference: About MidPhase Speed Tests
This reference has important information on how our MidPhase tests are performed. We do not just sent a tiny ping, these reports are from full page loads of this site’s main page.

MidPhase is a US based web host so scores from our testing servers outside the US are expected to be lower than from our testing servers within the USA.

Here is a graph from our testing with our non-US based testing servers when sending page load / response times requests to this website:

Here is our full detail sheet from this September testing period:

This testing is based on all other servers outside of the US. Reference our link below to see which countries we are testing from. If you would like a average response time report from a specific country, please ask in the comments and hopefully we’ll have time to get that for you!

We saw a noticeable increase in speed from the 14th forward from non-US servers. From that period forward, the test scores have been pretty good! The only other host we have found to have faster non-US server test speeds was HostICan. Overall, we have to rate these scores a 9/10.

Please Reference: About MidPhase Speed Tests
This reference has important information on how our MidPhase tests are performed. We do not just sent a tiny ping, these reports are from full page loads of this site’s main page.

At first, we were worried that MidPhase testing scores would be extremelynegative based on our first results, however, after about a week of testing, MidPhase improved their performance throughout the rest of the month.

For this post, we are reporting speed tests from servers from US and non-US destinations. Please see our reference link at the bottom of this post to further understand our testing procedures.

If you have any questions that we haven’t answered on our reference link below, please post a comment and ask. We’ll be glad to answer any questions. If the question warrants, I will update the reference page with further detail.

On with the reports!

Here is a performance graph for MidPhase testing completed from Sept 9th through the end of September:

As you can see above, the response times were very poor at first but then cleared up really well after the 14th of September.

Here is a full detail, day by day, of MidPhase response times measured in milliseconds.

Please Reference: About MidPhase Speed Tests
This reference has important information on how our MidPhase tests are performed. We do not just sent a tiny ping, these reports are from full page loads of this site’s main page.

Overall, we are very satisfied with the results of our MidPhase web hosting service we have this website on.

We started monitoring MidPhase on September 9th, 2007 with requests being sent once every five minutes. These requests load the full page then respond back with time it took to load the page.

Our service also monitors MidPhase from servers all over the world. We will start reporting uptimes and response times specifics from all US and non-US servers as well as an overall report of all servers combined.

For this month, MidPhase, from the 9th of Sept through the end of September, had a service interruption five times. Here is a graph of the uptimes experienced:

As you can see, from these reports, MidPhase obviously had problems when we first started monitoring them, however, since then, we have experienced excellent stability. Here is a full breakdown, day by day, of outages and service response times from all servers including non-US ones.

As you can see, based on our 5 minute testing, MidPhase had our site available to the internet 99.09% of the time with a total of 4 hours and 30 minutes of downtime. Remember though, we only send tests once every 5 minutes, so they may have only been down 30 seconds during one test, and it still counts as 5 minutes.

Overall, we are happy to see MidPhase online at least 99% of the time. If you see our HostNine Outage Report, you’ll quickly understand how hard that 99% is!

Good job MidPhase. You get an 8 out of 10 for your uptimes in September.

More reports coming for September….