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Honest take: RackNerd isn't terrible, but I'm still leaving

Reviews by ana_mad 24 replies 2K views
ana_mad

Member OP

4 #1

Honest take after 14 months with RackNerd: they aren't terrible! But I'm still leaving.

Support speed is genuinely good — sent ticket yesterday about stuck backup, reply in 8 minutes, resolved in 45. That's better than my CloudCone experiment last year.

The problem is opaque throttling. I made test order with new account, same plan, same DC. Fresh Debian install, speedtest-cli shows 900+ Mbps. My 14-month account? 120 Mbps. Same time of day. Both "1 Gbps port."

I asked support. "Network optimization varies by node utilization." No graphs. No policy. Just "trust us." I don't trust numbers I can't see.

So where next? Looking at GreenCloudVPS or maybe HostHatch. Anyone left RackNerd recently? Cheers!

swimming upstream since 2019 🐟
marcus_qc

Member

7 #2

Hey folks

@ana_mad super stoked you posted this. I was gonna renew my RackNerd next week but this speedtest thing is sketchy. Gonna run iperf3 tonight on my box and compare to fresh trial. If they throttle loyal customers that's backwards.

Anyone got a GreenCloudVPS referral? https://greencloudvps.com

42U and still growing
tallinnying

Member

Night Shift

1 #3

Anyway

Idk why I do this but I wrote a cron job to log speedtest every hour for 6 months on RackNerd. Here's the decay:

# racknerd_speed_log.sh
# month 1-3: avg 847 Mbps
# month 4-8: avg 612 Mbps  
# month 9-12: avg 301 Mbps
# month 13-14: avg 98 Mbps

The graphs don't lie but RackNerd does

Moving to RackNerd, their trial still hits 900 after 90 days. Small sample tho

builds at 3AM, sleeps at noon
uma

Member

99.99% or bust

#4

I monitor 47 RackNerd instances across 12 accounts for clients. Speed degradation correlates with account age (r=0.81), not node load. New accounts in same DC, same hour: full speed. Old accounts: throttled.

Their status page shows 99.97% uptime. My probes show 99.94%. Small gap but consistent — "maintenance" windows not logged.

GreenCloudVPS: 18 months data, no age-based throttling. HostHatch: some CPU scheduling issues, network stable.

Wherever you go, bring your own monitoring.

436 days. reboot is surrender.
norafilch

Member

#5

RackNerd isnt terrible. Thats the problem, you know? Good enough to stay, bad enough to resent,, the throttling creeps in so slow you dont notice until youre paying 2019 prices for 2019 speeds in 2026. The support is fast because they practice saying no all day

I left for Time4VPS, the dashboard is uglier. I love it because what you see is what you get no dark patterns no gentle erosion just raw honest garbage or greatness, I cant tell which yet but at least its mine to judge

AlexWei

Member

Singapore

#6

GreenCloudVPS, HostHatch AS63473. Peer better.

Host                Loss%   Snt   Last   Avg  Best  Wrst StDev
1. RackNerd-gw     0.0%   100    0.5   0.6   0.3   2.1   0.2
2. cogent-ix        0.0%   100    1.2   1.8   1.0  12.4   1.5
3. cogent-transit   2.0%   100   45.2  48.3  42.1  89.7  11.2

Cogent-heavy, no local peering. Explains speed variance under load.

HostHatch: HE + local IX. GreenCloudVPS: multiple IX presence. Both peer better.

| Provider | Upstreams | IX Peering | Age Throttle |
|----------|-----------|------------|--------------|
| RackNerd | 2 | 0 | yes |
| GreenCloudVPS | 4 | 6 | no |
| HostHatch | 3 | 4 | no |

Data from my probes, last 90 days.

AL

Member

#7

Which DC were both VMs in?

ana_mad

Member OP

#8

Both in Amsterdam. Same /24 even, which is what made it so obvious. Fresh account gets full gigabit, mine gets 120 Mbps. Support didn't deny it, just called it "optimization." That's not optimization, that's segmentation.

Alpha393 said:
Which DC were both VMs in?
swimming upstream since 2019 🐟
AlexWei

Member

Singapore

9 #9
Alpha393 said:
Which DC were both VMs in?

Amsterdam for ana_mad. I checked from Singapore: RackNerd Amsterdam peers only through Cogent and Arelion, no AMS-IX. GreenCloudVPS Amsterdam has AMS-IX + NL-IX + DE-CIX. HostHatch Amsterdam same plus LINX NoVA.

For Asia traffic this matters. My traceroute to RackNerd AMS goes SIN-FRA-AMS. To HostHatch AMS goes SIN-AMS direct on HE. 40ms difference. I used https://bgp.he.net for the peering lookups.

marcus_qc

Member

#10

Ran iperf3 last night. 14 month box: 134 Mbps. Fresh trial same plan same DC: 891 Mbps.

Not even subtle. Cancelled renewal.

42U and still growing

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