Download-friendly web hosts in China?

[mikelove]

Greetings,

We're looking to roll out a download server in China in conjunction with the next release of PlecoDict (which in its largest configuration will be several hundred MB in size) and I wanted to know if anyone had any suggestions about reliable China-based web hosts that would be well-suited to download hosting; i.e., lots of high-quality bandwidth (several hundred GB per month at least) and no griping if you actually use most of it.

Of course we'll be distributing the new version on CD as well, but we know a lot of people will want to download it immediately and we want to make sure they can do so from China without having to leave their computer turned on for a week.

Thanks!

[mikelove]

Answering my own question: we just set up an account with icdsoft.com, they're located in a high-end data center in Hong Kong so ping times from Beijing are delightfully low (40-50 ms on average), and they appear to be very generous with bandwidth. So we're hopeful this will improve the download situation for our customers in China/HK/Taiwan.

Incidentally, for any interested Plecophiles the hastily-thrown-together mirror site is at:

http://www.pulike.com/mirror.html

[flameproof]

Why not consider torrent distribution as an option? I think ChinesePod does it too for large MP3 bundles. If you have one PC in the US, and one somewhere in China it should give already a good D/L speed.

[mikelove]

Thanks for the suggestion, but unfortunately, there just aren't enough people downloading our software at any given time to make a good BitTorrent network. Plus we'd need a PC in China with a fast connection that was reliably turned on. There's also the problem that a lot of our customers are not very computer-savvy and would be hesitant to install a BitTorrent client, not to mention the ones that would download the .torrent file, attempt to copy it to their Palm / PPC / etc and complain that it didn't work (or worse yet, give up in frustration without even e-mailing us).

[badr]

Hey Mike,

how is it working out with the new host? I'm in the market for a backup host with excellent ping times to the mainland.

[mikelove]

Quite well, actually; people have had nothing but good things to say about the improved download times / reliability. Dirt-cheap, too; $10/month for 40 GB bandwidth, and unlike some hosting providers they'll let you pay another $10 for another 40 GB instead of nickel-and-diming you with some $1/GB additional bandwidth charge.