Since leaving my old job, where I was able to host my server at an extremely secure, cutting-edge datacenter (redundant.com) for free, I've been looking for another reasonably-priced local datacenter to which I can relocate the server. I've found one that meets my needs (amhosting.com), and I plan on migrating the server this Saturday (3/6). There will be downtime. I will try my best to keep it to a minimum, but at this point, I can only guess how long it will take.
The question on most of your minds undoubtedly has something to do with whether or not the performance of the DC server (pings, lag, etc.) will suffer. At first, I figured that it definitely would, since Amhosting has less bandwidth at its disposal relative to Redundant. Also, whereas Redundant uses AT&T and Sprint for its backbones, Amhosting uses Sprint and MCI. This is bad for me, since I use Charter cable broadband, which uses AT&T. My pings will, therefore, almost definately go up since I will likely be routed through the Bay Area. I will miss my direct route to the server.
There is probably no need to panic for most of you, though. Since both datacenters use Sprint, I was able to do a comparison between the two using the Sprintlink Looking Glass (http://oxide.sprintlink.net/cgi-bin/glass.pl). With this service, I can run pings from any of Sprint's backbone routers to the gateways of both datacenters. In every test I tried, including New York, San Jose, Seattle, Florida, Germany, and Australia, among others, the pings were markedly better to Amhosting's gateway. This is very encouraging, and I hope it quells any concerns that some of you may have.
Only when the migration is complete can we actually assess the damage, but I am fairly confident that it will be negligible at worst.
