For your response, please research the most cost-effective way to
attain the following Web hosting solution, consisting of:

1. Approximately 500GB of data storage

2. Preferably, an unlimited amount of data transfer, but if that’s not
possible, between 50GB to 1000GB per day will be required, and a quote
for as much as 50,000GB per month would be appreciated.

3. A required bandwidth of approximately 200MB per second would be
favourable, but as little as 100MB per second would be acceptable.
In other words, 200 people should be able to connect to our database
and make simultaneous downloads at an estimated rate of 100KB per
second each.

4. An estimated 80% of download requests will come from Australia,
America and Europe.
The rate at which a download can be made from Australia should be the
same speed as what can be achieved by a user in America or Europe.

Please research which Web hosting companies have a package that best
meets the above requirements, or whether we should consider investing
in our own server(s), providing as much details as you can.

For the most accurate response, perhaps it would be beneficial to
contact several Web hosting companies to ascertain whether they can
make a special package, and tabulate your findings.

For additional valid information and advice, an optional $15 tip is
available.

Thank you!

In a nutshell, the requirements:
500GB of data storage
30,000GB of data transfer per month
200MB bandwidth
Global accessibility with download speeds up to 100KB per second for
users in Australia, America and Europe.

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Clarification of Question by steve78470-ga on 28 Mar 2003 00:37 PST

Thank you for your comments!

Yes, it's a lot of power! And yes, having several servers sounds very
viable, and thank you for the two URLs.

An email has been sent to PowWeb.

If any one else would like to have a go at the question, it will be
open until 26 Apr 2003.

Thats a lot of power you're after.  Maybe you would like to consider
having more than one server (one in North America, one in Europe, and
one in Australia) and streaming the downloads to the user based upon
the geographic mapping of the IP address - IP addresses are allocated
to regional and national regustries in blocks, and the information can
be collated from www.arin.net / www.ripe.net etc or bought as a
commerical feed.

You're still going to need to go hardware shopping, and buy rack space
and bandwidth in appropriately located data centres.

Hi steve78470,

You can check with PowWeb at: http://powweb.com/

Regards,

tlspiegel
Google Answers Researcher

My company was in the same situation a few months ago. We needed 250GB
RAID Storage with 150GB A day Transfer, we decided on the cheapest
solution

We went with a Dual dedicated server setup, and the bandwith quote we
recieved is among the cheapest in the industry. We ended up paying
alot less than initially imagined.

The company we went with is

Unacom INC
http://unacom.net

They built the servers for us, and setup everything.

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The cheapest way to fill your request would be to

1. Shop around for the cheapest bandwith (with minimal global latency)
2. Find out what the prices for rackspace for your dedicated/colocated
servers
2. Decide on the type of server solution you need. What will you be
doing with the bandwith. Hosting Websites? Transferring large files?

Can you get away with 6-10 cheap servers? each pushing about 10-15mbs.
Or do you need something more complex, like a fully load balanced
cluster with a nice SAN (Storage Area Network) backend. good
information on clustering here http://www.lcic.org/

I would suggest you contact the company above.

Cartack,
thank you very much for your answer! Which to me justifies the $10
answer fee I posted with this question, so please, you may claim it.
thanks for helping,
Steven