What is better for a host trace route times or wget speeds?

[Matrix]

In other words are better trace route times frome various cities over the US mean a host is better than another host that has higher trace route times? This of course is using the exact same trace routes on traceroute.org

Seems like on some hosts I can burst with a download file with wget faster than vs. another host. But when doing trace routes the higher bursting host has worse traceroute numbers.

So which is better when comparing a host?

[allan]

Traceroute is not a good measurement of speed, it is a measurement of the route that is taken to get to a host, which is important but a long traceroute does not necessarily equate to a slow host (it does not help, but it does not mean a host is slow).

A wget from multiple locations is your best indication because that is most reflective of the experience people are going to have visiting your website.

[Matrix]

Allan,

On Wget though what if I had someone doing that test with their east coast server to a west coast server

Vs.

Them using their east coast server vs. east coast server.

Wouldn't the location of the east vs. east be normally faster because the 2 servers are closer to each other?

Thus that's the reason I figured lower traceroute times would be better evaluation since its using places all over the US.

Are you also saying that with a lower traceroute the server still may not burst well on wget thus it could be actually slower than a server that has higher traceroute times?

Was doing wget test for he.net and getting very nice times, but on traceroutes from various times I don't get great results.

Was comparing them with dedicatednow who got slower wget times but had better traceroute times. This was before the recent problems.

My server is located in Phoenix and i've been told that it mattered that my server was close to he.net (California) and then I was told that it didn't matter.

Thanks

[allan]

Distance is just one of many factors that affects the performance between two hosts on the Internet. Other factors include bandwidth, server speed, line utilization and backbone connectivity.

Traceroute just shows the path that all packets traverse to get from host A to host B. WGET transfers traverse the same path as traceroutes.

Lower traceroutes are obviously good, but they are not necessarily indicitive of good network performance. Traceroutes are ICMP messages, so they are low priority messages. A router is going to answer all other queries and then answer ICMP requests -- so WGET transfers are more indicitive of the cusotmer experience, since they will be answered in the same manner as a browser query.

[Matrix]

Allan,

What hosts do you like? Or use?

[allan]

Originally posted by Matrix
Allan,

What hosts do you like? Or use?

I have VPS accounts with Fluid Hosting and Vilitas.