Webhosting downtime generic question

[salewit]

I've been with one host for geez like 8 years or so. It seems like I always get these intermittent "burps". That is, every once in awhile (maybe 2-4 times a day?) while working on e-mail or updating the website, I get "Server Not Found" errors or "Can't connect to mysql" errors. *Usually* they last for a few seconds and a simple refresh and they're back up. Once in awhile they last long enough for me to check the server status at my host where it confirms the server is down. But most times the problem is cleared up before I see the status.

Is this normal for a host? I'm never had the problems when working on other sites not at my host.

[nomis5]

I get the same with one of my sites. I have made one of its pages my browser home page so I visit it maybe 20 to 30 times a day. I reckon I get a server not found once every couple of days.

I posted the same question as the OP a few months ago. I forget what the answer was but it stopped me being concerned.

[lammert]

I forget what the answer was but it stopped me being concerned.

Not being concerned if your site doesn't respond always to your request seems not to be the right attitude. If you can't connect to your site always, other visitors or maybe even the search engines will probably see the same. This results in less visitors, and maybe has influence on your rankings.

[rocknbil]

Well, my first thought is to not be too quick to blame the host - it may not be your web site, it may be your connection. However, the mysql connect errors nix that thought.

If it's shared hosting, **in my opinion** this is "expected behavior." Not to say we shouldn't expect better from a shared host, but by nature at any given time one of the sites you're sharing with can be running some stupidly coded script, hogging up resources, or may even just be popular and hogging up. In any case, shared hosting is always a bumpy ride. Sometimes you get lucky, sometimes you don't.

If it's a VPS/VDS/dedi, this is completely unacceptable, move. I'm on what most consider a "economy" dedi, and it is mostly flawless, I do get hiccups 3 or 4 times a week, but they are often related to my crappy DSL connection or a temporary glitch in the network backbone of the host. What I mean by that is, it's not my server that's hiccuping, it's the network on which it resides.

2-4 times a day that you know of is likely 10, 20 times a day that you don't. It could be anything - DNS problems, host network problems, and many more I am clueless about. If it's shared, do yourself a favor and upgrade, you'll never look back.