September 9, 2008 -- (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) -- Internet backbone and colocation provider Hurricane Electric is the most reliable hosting company site for August 2008 according to UK research and security firm Netcraft (netcraft.com).
Managed hosting and services firm Datapipe (datapipe.net), and discount host and domain registrar GoDaddy (godaddy.com) rounded out the top three spots as second and thrid respectively.
Out of August's top ten hosting companies, four run Linux on their main sites, including Hurricane Electric, down from six last month. Other sites that made the list were New York Internet (nyi.net) that uses FreeBSD and Go Daddy with Windows Server 2003, and web.com (web.com) with Windows 2000.
Previously named the most reliable hosting company for November 2007, Hurricane Electric is based in Fremont, CA, where the company specializes in colocation, dedicated servers, direct internet connections and web hosting using its own network, using multiple OC192s, OC48s and gigabit ethernet.
Since its days running out of a garage in 1994, the company has grown to own several datacenters, including a 200,000 square foot flagship facility in Fremont.
Netcraft's ranking system is based on the number of failed requests. With performance measurements are made at 15-minute intervals from separate points on the globe, Netcraft measures the response times and averages the results each day. The percentage of failed requests, according to Netcraft, is more important to customers than outages on hosting companies' own sites because it gives a pointer to reliability of routing.
