Chile Forum

Hello all.

I do now know, if this is the correct forum, but I hope so. Otherwise, feel free to move my post.

Since I'm going for Chile the 11th September, I'm in need of some advise. The last couple of weeks of the trip, I am going to do some business down there, and sell some of my products.
Because I am planning on doing some more business down there, I need a server located in Chile, so I wont be bothered with long-distance answering times.

My question is; where can I rent a server, or server space if I bring my own rack-server? I've been trying to google, but its hard to find, since I dont speak spanish.
I'd like a good company, that has english support (at least when installing the server, and billing my credit card ), and is not too expensive with the traffic.

Could you suggest me some companies?

Best regards
Christian Jessen

My recommendation is don't let anyone touch it in Chile.

I as yet to find a server host that was properly maintained or could provide the most basic hosting services you would need. 99.9% of all hosting companies physically located in Chile are kids with a box in their basement, or a big company with a box in the corner of their office.

Most people host outside the country because of the price. Of the ones inside the country selling hosting they are themselves web designers, and rather unfriendly to anyone else simply buying hosting from them as they see them as competition.

I tested some servers for a client a while back. Response times from one side of Santiago to the other where more than twice those of Santiago to our host in the States. This was from one of the largest web design firms in Chile. I did this also here in Temuco. The other side of town (2 km), was well over 5 times the round trip time to the servers in the States.

We make it mandatory for all of the sites we handle to use our server in the States. This is because the IT service for the host take weeks to respond to the simplest questions, if they will respond at all. If you need a physical reboot in the middle of the night, you might really have to go yourself and do it.


That said, if you can get your own up and running that can compete with the host outside of country for price and service, then you will likely do good. Just keep in mind to eliminate as many IT people as possible between you and your box. I would just love to have a mirror inside Chile, if it really resulted in a real service, price, and speed boost. So far, I have not found it.

I have kicked around setting up my own, but just running the financial numbers it does not make sense for us as the price of hosting is so cheap. Perhaps, at some point it might.

So, what is your advice? Find a US host?

The host's I've been looking at right now, just seems pretty expensive.. I have no idea, how much the companies in Chile will pay for services like CMS and Webshops, but i dont expect it to be very much (in comparison to what they pay here in Denmark and other western countries).

Which hosting company are you using? And do you have your own servers, rented servers or just webhotels?

Thanks in advance for your answers.
Only 4½ weeks till I'm going down there, so I should proberly start preparing!

Good Morning - has anything changed there as now are almost 4 years down the road from last posting?

I am looking for a provider/hoster who is renting a server with minimal requirements - a webbrowser must be able to run on that machine -

Thanks for your infos...

yes,

there is no amazon cloud type gui, so you are going to have to be here, find them off the internet, have a in person meeting, sign a lot of papers, and then you will have the service,

it doesnt come cheap, we looked at it for work, but ended up building our own mini data center

Not a thing. Not a single thing has changed. Not just in 4 years, but more like over 9 years.

Let me put it this way. Little over 10 years ago I ran an IT biz in Guatemala. Guatemala had better hosting options than Chile does now, 10 years ago. I don't think there has been even a major upgrade to the national bandwidth in over 4 years, and that was just from like 2 mb to 4 mb for the home user around the country. yea, there are some special packages that will give 10 plus mb, but very limited to very specific areas like Los Condes (e.g. where the money is).

Hosting, forget it. The 2010 earthquake proved that the web hosts and ISP in Chile have not improved a bit. Almost every government web site went offline and stayed offline for weeks. We kept our hosting in the States, and thus were online.

There is simply no reason to host inside Chile, unless you can run your own box.

I have a server (mail, file, web) for internal office use in Chile, that is reachable from the Internet, but even the DNS service that maps the domain to the connection in Chile is hosted outside the country. Everything else is hosted outside the country, including this web server.

I was in Lider in Temuco a year or so ago. They basically have a web application for all their checkout software in their stores that is hosted in Santiago. The server went down and stayed down, and 100's of millions of pesos in sales walked out the door. When one of the biggest companies in the country can not get proper hosting, little guys need to look somewhere else for reliable hosting.

Had a friend, that was looking for a host in Chile about a year ago. He interviewed one of the biggest web hosts in Chile (hosts government sites, big companies, bla, bla, bla). My friend asked about their backups. He said that he did monthly backups to dvd, and his computers were in his basement in Los condes. I have not done a backup to DVD in like 5+ years. I felt sorry for him, and I am now hosting his web site on my server.

Thus, all this frigen b.s. about turning Chile in to some sort of silicone valley start-up incubator is complete and total public relations stunt, pissing desperately needed infrastructure money in to the wind. $12 million U.S. would go a long way to expanding connectivity and reliability of the Internet in Chile, that really would do more for the economy and IT future of Chile.

SHOW ME THE FIBER FIRST!!!!

Telefonica del sur has however put some nice signs on the side of the highway that claim they are the first ISP to have fiber optic to the home in southern chile. I as yet to see anyone really get fiber, or anyone in the company that has any idea about how to ask for it (they seem to have nothing on their own web site). If there is a candidate for fiber, we are it. We are less than a kilometer from the local telefonica del sur office, on the same road, the biggest one in town, and not aware of any fiber optic anything being installed. In fact, I write to you, less than 2 km as the crow flies, from their office, using a (flaky claro) cell phone dongle because there are no phone lines in our area let alone Internet connections. In fact, due to the rain storm last night, I am writing to you using a backup generator running my computer at home, using a cell phone dongle. I doubt there is any host in this country with a backup power system of any serious nature (home UPS don't really count when it comes to mission critical infrastructure).

I would say however, there has been improvements in connectivity for cell phones, but that seems to be the only place the ISP are putting their money. In to cell infrastructure. I am still waiting for a modem from my ISP that will handle ipv6, even though they are in theory able to provide that now. That is more a forced improvement I think than, they somehow should get credit for it.

So, yea, I am fairly well ticked at the crappy state of technology in Chile.

thanks for that statement (even though it is not satisfying me at all )

The even more ironic or moronic thing is this.

As I sit posting from a cell phone dongle, running on generator because the power is out (pushing almost 12 hours now), I can look out the window and see the telecommunications backbone of Chile running by my window less than a km away along the panamarican highway. I can litterally see the fiber hanging from the poll. On the other side of my house are high tension lines that run from Puerto montt to the central grid. I am in a rural area, but not exactly on a mountain in the Patagonia.

All things being equal, I sit in a perfect location to be able to run a data center, even though this is a relatively small town. The infrastructure is all here. It is just not being used.

fyi, Just having a quick google, and what i have found, everyone in chile is reselling USA services, so you wouldnt receive your local IP you want!

This will give you an idea of the cost to host a server..... i wont say what company, but its a big one, i got this price in 2009, its per month, you would need to supply the server..., and manage it completely, backups are your problem

el alojamientos de ese servidor de 1 U cuesta 0,8 UF + IVA,

Internet Housing al datacenter 10/2, 9,7 UF + IVA (this is national 10meg, and int 2meg), you can get smaller plans

sorry - what does "0,8 UF" mean? (IVA is VAT -or?)

Thanks!

much wrote:sorry - what does "0,8 UF" mean? (IVA is VAT -or?)

Thanks!

About $US35 / month to rent the space, (that is not that bad), for 1 server, we need 20 U for our servers in santiago alone,

and about $US 400 / month for the internet connection to your server in the data server (that was a expensive plan, you can get cheaper)

then add 19% for tax (IVA)