Networking

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Huawei reported on Wednesday its first quarter sales were down 16.5% compared to last year, but an expected result. Revenue for the Chinese giant was reported at 152 billion yuan, with its carrier business remaining steady, and its consumer business seeing sales decrease thanks to selling off its Honor brand last year. While revenue was down, margin was up thanks to a $600 million patent royalty, and “ongoing efforts to improve quality of operations and management efficiency”, the company said. “2021 will be another challenging year for us, but it’s also the year that our future development strategy will begin to take shape,” Huawei rotating chair Eric Xu said. “No matter what challenges come our way, we will continue to maintain our business resilience. Not just to survive, but do so sustainably.” Speaking at the company’s recent analyst summit through an interpreter, Xu said many other Chinese companies might be worried that what happened to Huawei in regards to US sanctions might happen to them. He said he hoped Huawei’s suppliers could produce chipsets that were not subject to US intervention.Xu said he did not expect Huawei to be removed from the US Entity List, and its overall strategy was to survive this extremely difficult period.

Across the sea in Japan, Sony reported its full year results on Wednesday, with sales increasing 9% to just shy of 9 trillion yen, and net income increasing 590 billion yen to 1.17 trillion yen. For the fourth quarter, sales increased 27% to 2.2 trillion yen, and net income rose 94 billion yen to 107 billion yen. Sony said its gaming business contributed an extra 679 billion yen in sales to 2.66 trillion across the year, thanks to the launch of the PlayStation 5. Headed in the other direction were its electronic products, and imaging and sensing businesses. The former reported a 70.5 billion yen decline in sales to 1.92 trillion yen, while the latter saw a 58 billion drop to 1 trillion yen across the year. Due to a reduction of costs in its mobile communications business, which is responsible for its smartphones, operating income was positive at 28 billion despite a slight drop in sales across the year to 359 billion yen. Sony said it expects image sensor sales to increase in the next year for both smartphones and digital cameras. Related Coverage More

Vodafone New Zealand has been found guilty of misleading consumers over the branding of its FibreX HFC-based broadband service. Auckland District Court ruled last Friday that Vodafone NZ was guilty on nine charges of violating the Fair Trading Act between October 2016 and March 2018. The New Zealand Commerce Commission (ComCom), which brought the case last year, argued fibre was a generic description of fibre to the home, especially in relation to the country’s government-subsidised Ultra-Fast Broadband network, and consumers where likely to think the same in Wellington, Kapiti, and Christchurch where Vodafone was promoting its FibreX service. “Judge Sinclair agreed that fixed line broadband networks are identified in telecommunications markets by the technology used for the last mile to the home/premise, and that in the case of the UFB networks, that is fibre optic cable,” the ComCom said on Wednesday. “She rejected Vodafone’s argument that consumers would understand that FibreX was a ‘fibre like’ network delivering superfast reliable broadband but not pure fibre, due to the ‘X’ in its name.” It was argued that the X was derived from “coaXial”. The HFC network Vodafone was promoting, was gained as part of its 2012 purchase of TelstraClear. During 2015-16, the network was updated to DOCSIS 3.1, after which it took on its FibreX branding. The network passed 250,000 households.

Lead counsel for Vodafone, Antonia Horton, said during the trial that a background stock image containing beams of light that was used, was “night sky filled with shooting stars”. Expert witness for ComCom, Professor Phillip Gendall from the Department of Marketing at the University of Otago, said the suffix “X” put forward that the service was a superior form of fibre, and the stock image was “reminiscent of fibre optic cable”. Gendall pointed to UFB retailers offering plans with names such as Fibre 100 for why consumers would assume the service had an “X factor”. Sinclair added in the judgement that the HFC network has a number of limitations not found in a full fibre network — such as variability, congestion, speed, reliability, latency, upgrade pathways — and that consumers would wish to know about them. Sentencing is due later in the year. More from New Zealand More

The company responsible for the National Broadband Network has floated the prospect of a soft cap on overage CVC charges to limit the amount Australian telcos have to pay for increases in traffic. For the soft cap to kick in, total NBN costs before rebates for any telco would need to rise 7% across a three-month rolling average, and the telco would need to keep customer churn below a threshold of 10% on top of its yearly historical churn. A fair use provision is floated as being set around the 30% to 40% mark. The proposal arrives after retailers kicked up a stink when NBN attempted multiple times to taper off its CVC boost due to the pandemic outbreak in 2020. “The TC-4 Bundles Discount Roadmap is a minimum commitment of inclusions and, as demonstrated during COVID, NBN will consider increasing inclusions if usage growth is significantly above expected usage growth levels,” the company said. “While the previous CVC boost was not financially sustainable in the long-term, NBN agrees that a new mechanism could (subject to certain conditions) potentially reduce RSP risk and management costs whilst also enabling NBN to achieve its financial objectives.” It is proposed that the soft cap would kick in on December 1, and be reviewed prior to its expiry on 1 December 2022. NBN stated it believes the cap will provide “significant cost savings” for its retailers. In response to its February call giving telcos two paths for extending CVC bundle discounts, NBN said it would be pressing ahead with maintaining the bundles discount at the same charge rate of May 2021 while increasing CVC capacity inclusions.

After receiving feedback from retailers, NBN said it would be lifting CVC by 0.25Mbps higher than in its February paper, and the 250/100Mbps plan would see its CVC inclusion boosted to 5.25Mbps on December 1, before hitting 5.75Mbps in May 2022. The change would see its 500/200Mbps play get 6.25Mbps of CVC in May 2022, with 1000/400Mbps going to 7Mbps in May next year. On the standard CVC list price, currently sitting at AU$17.50 per Mbps when not part of a discount, the company said 90% of purchases at the list price are made by telcos selling satellite connections, and “satellite access technology is already substantially subsidised”. It added that a reduction to AU$15.75 per Mbps by no later than March 31 was fair. “This will improve the economics of Sky Muster services, noting that Sky Muster Plus provides some unmetered data and that satellite services are loss-making and heavily subsidised by fixed line services,” it said. The company said it would look to shift its billing cycle to the start of the month, however a small number of retailers were against the change because they would need to update their internal systems. Nevertheless, NBN is ploughing ahead with the change. NBN also said it would look to begin consulting on an Special Access Undertaking (SAU) variation that would be its long-term pricing vehicle. “In response to the industry’s strong desire for NBN to implement long-term pricing changes quickly, we are initiating an SAU variation consultation that will involve the ACCC,” NBN chief customer officer Brad Whitcomb said. “We believe this is the best way to progress this important industry conversation.” In concert with NBN’s consultation, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) said it would also consult on the SAU. The watchdog pointed out the current SAU, originally submitted in 2013, only covers pricing and regulatory terms on technologies it was using at the time — namely fibre to the premise, fixed wireless, and satellite networks — which only make up a quarter of the network in 2021. “Until now, access pricing has largely been developed by NBN Co, so the prospect of bringing this work squarely within the remit of a special access undertaking with effective ACCC oversight is a very significant change,” ACCC chair Rod Sims said. “This is the start of a long reform process that would effectively put NBN pricing under the ACCC’s regulatory umbrella, and would improve access pricing for NBN Co customers.” One of the issues to be nutted out during the SAU process is the entry-level pricing on the NBN. “There was consensus that the low-income offering should be targeted to those most in need and that should be based on social security or similar status and this could be achieved via Centrelink integration or a list of eligible location identifiers sourced by NBN,” the company said. “Most RSPs stated that the process needs to be simple for them to manage, with some RSPs contending that Centrelink integration would likely be too complex and costly for them.” In advice to Communications Minister Paul Fletcher on sub-1GHz spectrum holdings published earlier on Wednesday, the ACCC said in a heavily redacted section that it had no issue with NBN purchasing spectrum in the 850/900MHz band to provide wholesale bundled voice and broadband services. “NBN Co noted that this supports the government’s commitment to explore better ways to deliver voice services under the Universal Service Guarantee, and could also provide an ██████████████████████”, the ACCC said. NBN said it is accepting written submissions on its pricing proposals under the close of business on June 18. Related Coverage More

Networking equipment stalwart Juniper Networks this afternoon reported Q1 revenue and profit that topped Wall Street’s expectations, and projected this quarter higher as well, even though its business is being affected by the global chip shortage, it said.In a separate “commentary” document, CFO Ken Miller, the chip shortages are going to last a few quarters, though the company has enough chips to get by for this year’s planned business:There is a worldwide shortage of semiconductors impacting many industries. Similar to others, we are experiencing ongoing supply constraints which have resulted in extended lead times. We have invested to strengthen our supply chain and have increased inventory levels over the course of the last year. We continue to work closely with our suppliers to further enhance our resiliency and mitigate recent disruptions outside of our control. Despite these actions, we believe extended lead times will likely persist for the next few quarters. While the situation is dynamic, at this point in time we believe we will have access to sufficient semiconductor supply to meet our full-year financial forecast. Juniper shares rose 3% in late trading. CEO Rami Rahim called the results “strong,” adding that the company “experienced better than expected product orders across each of our customer verticals.”Added Rahim, “Momentum is strong entering the June quarter and we are confident regarding our growth prospects. We believe the success we are seeing is a result of the deliberate actions we have taken to strengthen our product portfolio and go-to-market organization, both of which are enabling us to capitalize on attractive end-market opportunities now and in the future.”Revenue in the three months ended in March rose 8%, year over year, to $1.074 billion, yielding a net profit of 30 cents a share, excluding some costs.

Analysts had been modeling $1.05 billion and 25 cents per share.This was the first quarter that Juniper broke out results for its individual product categories. During the quarter, revenue from what the company calls “Automated WAN solutions” was the star, rising 23%, year over year, to $386 million. Another particularly strong area was “AI-Driven Enterprise” revenue, which rose 13%, to $161 million. Revenue from “cloud-ready data center” products declined 10%, year over year, to $157 million. And maintenance and professional services revenue rose slightly.Juniper additionally said its security revenue rose 11%, to $163 million.This was also the first quarter in which the company disclosed its annualized recurring revenue, a common measure of a company’s pipeline of signed business. ARR rose 28% in the quarter, the company said. For the current quarter, the company sees revenue of $1.14 billion, plus or minus $50 million, it said. That compares to consensus for $1.12 billion. EPS is seen in a range of 33 cents to 43 cents, above consensus for 37 cents per share.Despite the chip challenge, the company raised its outlook for this year, forecasting revenue growth of 4% to 5%, a point higher than previously expected. However, that is being boosted by “recently acquired assets,” said Juniper.Juniper’s two most-recent acquisitions were for Apstra, in January, for undisclosed terms, and 128 Technology Inc., in October, for $450 million.By market, this year, the company expects its enterprise sales to grow the fastest, it said, while “cloud is expected to grow towards the high-end of our long-term model range, and Service Provider is now expected to be flat to slightly up versus last year.”

Tech Earnings More

I’ve long used Netgear networking equipment in my home office. Most of it is prosumer gear, such as the NETGEAR Orbi Whole Home Tri-band Mesh WiFi 6 System (RBK852). That’s great, but it’s also expensive, and it’s not a perfect fit for a small-medium business (SMB) network. There, you want business-grade management tools such as Netgear Insight 6. That’s what you’ll get with Netgear’s latest Insight Managed WiFi 6 AX3600 (WAX620) Wireless Access Points.

First, it’s fast. This new dual-band access point uses Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) performance to deliver up to 40% higher communication speeds to each connected device as compared to Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac). What that means for you is its dual-band 2.4GHz and 5.0GHz data streams can handle up to eight streams of data for an aggregate throughput of up to 3.6Gbps. Individual users can expect to see speeds of up to a single Gbps. It’s also, of course, backward compatible with all prior Wi-Fi generations, so even your oldest network PCs won’t be left out. To back this up with connectivity, the WAX 620 uses a Gigabit Ethernet port that can also double as an 802.3at 2.5Gbps Power over Ethernet (PoE) port.  It’s also capable of handling a lot — and I mean a lot — of users at once. In its tech specs, Netgear claims it can deal with up to 256 total users and 75 concurrent users. Making it even more useful the WAX620 can work hand-in-glove with other Netgear Insight Managed Access Points. This includes the Wi-Fi 5 (WAC 510, WAC 540) and Wi-Fi 6 (WAX 610, WAX610Y) models. Better still, WAX 620 enables access points to be connected using Instant Mesh. This lets you connect your network equipment without a wired connection using dedicated wireless backhaul technology. Besides the Instant Mesh feature, the WAX620 is very flexible. You can use it as an access point (AP), bridge, repeater, or as a bridge and an AP.For security, it comes with WPA3 128-bit to 192-bit encryption. You can also set up Virtual LANsANS (VLANs) with up to eight different SSIDs. 

Netgear claims the WAX 620 is ideally suited for environments with open spaces where there is a need to provide Wi-Fi connectivity for a large number of concurrent users such as schools, community colleges, mid-sized manufacturing facilities, and warehouses.They’re right. It is well suited for most SMB uses. And, for $239.99, it won’t break your business credit-card limit.Related Stories: More

Singtel has begun issuing SIM cards that are compatible with 5G standalone networks, which the telco currently is rolling out in Singapore. Its next-generation mobile network has been deployed for testing in “hundreds” of locations across the island including a couple of indoor sites, though, customers still will need to wait until their handsets are ready to access such networks. Singtel’s said Tuesday its new customers or those renewing their service contracts could opt for the new 5G SIM card, if they signed up for the telco’s 5G Now add-on service or 5G XO Plus 68 plans and above. The SIM card would be issued for free, with the SG$37.45 registration fee waived until May 31, 2021. Existing customers on XO Plus 68 plans and above also could swop for the new 5G SIM cards for free. However, customers with these SIM cards still would not be able to access services via the 5G standalone network, even if they owned 5G-ready smartphones. Such handsets would require software updates from their manufacturers to allow users to access 5G standalone networks. Singtel said it was choosing to issue the SIM cards now to “future-proof” its customers’ mobile experience. The telco’s 5G standalone network had been rolled out in “hundreds” of locations, though, it declined to reveal the exact number. These sites currently included the Central Business District and Sentosa as well as a handful indoor locations, such as Vivocity, Ngee Ann City, and some Singtel retail outlets. 

The Singapore telco was working with Ericsson to deploy its local 5G standalone network, running on 3.5GHz spectrum. The cloud-native network would have slicing capabilities, which it said enabled “dynamic distribution and optimisation of network resources” to support a range of applications. 

Pitched as a prominent feature of 5G, network slicing was touted to enable connectivity and data processing customised to the customer’s specific requirements. Network equipment vendors such as Nokia offered automation network slicing features that were pitched to slash costs associated with boosting networking capacity. Singtel said it would launch more handset models that were compatible with 5G standalone networks later this year, as manufacturers released software updates for their existing 5G smartphones.Singtel’s consumer CEO Anna Yip said the telco’s engineers were working with “top” handset manufacturers to test and prepare for its 5G commercial launch. Earlier this month, it launched “5G in a box” to provide enterprise customers the ability to deploy and test their apps on-site. Tucked inside a suitcase-sized container, the “portable 5G platform” was touted to eliminate the need for these organisations to access an actual 5G network to do so. In February, Singtel also began offering its 5G edge computing infrastructure on Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform, which the telco said would enable businesses to run applications such as autonomous guided vehicles, drones, robots, and virtual/augmented reality, in closer proximity to users. The partnership would allow Azure customers to tap Singtel’s Multi-access Edge Compute (MEC) services.Singapore’s other two 5G licensees StarHub and M1 also launched their respective consumer services, running these on 5G non-standalone architectures. Both operators, which are joint licence bidders, currently are deploying 5G standalone networks with Nokia.StarHub told ZDNet that it was “on track” to launch its 5G standalone network services later this year, having commenced its rollout in the fourth quarter of 2020. Full nationwide 5G standalone networks are expected to be up and running in Singapore by 2025.RELATED COVERAGE More

It seems like there is an almost unlimited number of hosting providers who will serve your website for a monthly fee. In the best web hosting providers for 2021, I spotlighted 15 providers that offer a wide range of plans. When doing a full review of a single hosting provider, I set up the most basic account possible and run the service through a barrage of tests. In this article, I’ll dive into Bluehost’s offerings.

Shared hosting starting a $2.95 per monthOnline store hosting starting at $12.95 per monthManaged WordPress hosting starting at $9.95 per monthVirtual private server (VPS) hosting starting at $18.99 per monthDedicated server hosting starting at $79.99 per monthPrice bump after end of period: Yes

View Now at Bluehost

Because there are so many variables among plans and offerings, not only among hosting providers, but within the plans offered by any one provider, it can be difficult to get a good comparison. I’ve found that one of the best ways to see how a provider performs is to look at the least expensive plan they offer. You can expect the least quality, the least attention to detail, and the least performance from such a plan.

How hosting provider pricing really works

For this series of hosting reviews, I’m testing the most basic, most entry-level plan a vendor is offering. In the case of Bluehost, it’s their appropriately named Basic plan. To get pricing, I went to the company’s main site at Bluehost.com.

As with most every hosting provider, Bluehost’s published pricing is somewhat misleading. There is no option to get billed only $2.95 per month.

While it looks like you can get the Single Shared Hosting plan for $2.95 per month, that’s only if you prepay for three full years, which means you’re actually paying $106.20. A hundred bucks or so for three years of hosting isn’t a bad deal, but can be confusing. If you want only one year, you’re charging $59.40 to your card (which is $4.95 per month). It’s more expensive, but not terrible.

There’s a gotcha though. When you renew, you’re going to pay more. A lot more. Three times more. This, too, is not uncommon for hosting plans and is a practice I strongly wish the hosting industry would stop. When you renew your $2.95 three year plan, you’re going to jump to $8.99/month or $107.88/year. Of course, we have no idea what the pricing will be in three years, but you get the idea.

While $2.95 or even $4.95/mo isn’t a bad price for basic hosting, the fact is, your price will jump by more than triple what you paid when you signed up. I talked a lot about lock-in and switching costs in my How to create a website: The 2021 step-by-step guide overview. Read it, because Bluehost (and many other hosting providers) have business models that count on the switching costs being so painful that you’ll suck up a huge upcharge simply to avoid moving your site.

I focus on these pricing gimmicks in my reviews because it can be really unpleasant to suddenly get a bill that’s hundreds or even thousands of dollars (depending on the plan) more than you expected. Second, switching from one hosting provider to another hosting provider can be a very time-consuming and possibly expensive job, fraught with hassles and potential points of failure.

At least half of the hosting vendors I’ve looked at over the years do these promo deals, with big jumps in renewal fees, so Bluehost isn’t alone in this somewhat predatory practice.

What the Basic plan includes

Most bottom-end plans are for one website, and Bluehost is no different.

Before we move into the details, let’s spend a moment talking about what a base plan really is. All websites are not created equal. While you might be able to pay under three bucks a month to run your website, I pay about a hundred bucks each month to run my small fleet of sites.

A base site is designed for a business or individual who wants a basic online presence. That’s a bunch of pages, some product or service images, and a lot of text. If you want to run complex web applications, or you expect a lot of traffic, a basic site is not for you.

If you’re just trying to get started with an online presence, starting simply is a good way to go. In this series, we’re reviewing the least expensive program each hosting provider offers. That’s going to be what the majority of buyers will want, and it will give us a good insight into the company.

Bluehost offers a number of pretty solid features in their Basic plan. The base plan includes 50GB website space (maxing out at a whopping 200,000 files), five email accounts, 100MB of email storage (which is pretty low if you’re active), up to 500 emails sent per hour, one free domain registration (for a year), 25 subdomains, a basic SSL certificate, and what they describe as unmetered bandwidth.

Be careful, though. In practice, if you push your account near the limits, or use an excessive amount of bandwidth, it’s likely that the service will throttle you back. Bluehost was one of the earliest providers to institute server throttling when “unlimited” resource usage got to be too much.

There are some wins, most notably that even the basic plan is hosted on SSDs. Even if a site is using caching (which reduces the load on a server), having fast drives is always a plus.

The company does have 24/7 chat and phone support, and Bluehost offers a 30-day money-back guarantee. It’s not as long as some of the company’s competitors, but it is a fair amount of time for you to get a simple site up and running and see how things work.

Getting started

Once your account is created and you log in, you’re presented with this screen:

I like this. While I always like to go it on my own, I’ve gotten panicked calls from too many friends who log into their hosting providers for the first time and have no idea what to do. I was a little surprise to find that even though I hit “No help needed,” I was presented with a choice:

Again, though, I can’t really complain about guidance. After all, I didn’t hit “Skip this step” on the first screen. I did now. I’m still in a wizard, even though I did select “Skip this step.”

I hit “Skip this step” again, and once again I’m presented with a wizard. However, once again for basic users, I like that there are helper choices and even a solid FAQ for folks not sure what to do next. 

I have to admit that I’m getting a little impatient. I want to see the dashboard so I can see what I can do with this service. That said, I hit the “Limitless customization” option. From this point on, there were more selection options. I just kept hitting “Skip this step.” Finally, I reached a page with some more options. Most important to me, initially, is checking out the Advanced tab.

Yes! We finally have cPanel. I did a little happy dance (in my mind — I don’t actually dance, jump, or run, but I can celebrate running the gauntlet in my head, can’t I?).

Dashboard access

The first thing I like to do when looking at a new hosting provider is exploring their dashboard. Is it an old friend, like cPanel? Is it some sort of janky, barely configured open source or homegrown mess? Or is it a carefully crafted custom dashboard? These are often the ones that worry me the most because they almost always hide restrictions that I’m going to have to work around somehow.

I got rid of the welcome message and started to look around. I like how Bluehost has the normal cPanel interface, but also provides access to Bluehost services on the left. That’s convenient.

Basic WordPress access

I thought about nuking WordPress and installing it myself, but I wanted to see what most users would be presented with when they started the service. So I hit the My Sites button with the WordPress logo icon — and was presented with upsell city:

To be fair, the upsells don’t seem nearly as intrusive as Bluehost’s sister vendor, Hostgator. Once logged in, the WordPress dashboard is filled with a lot of stuff that’s not traditional to the WordPress dashboard, but it seems more helpful than egregious.

Ooh, this is interesting. Bluehost provides a staging site, even in the base plan. They get some big points for that. It’s always nice to having a staging site, and many more expensive plans don’t come with one. Granted, this is a staging site managed inside the main WordPress install (which can be a bit dicey when things go waaaay bad), but it’s still a great feature for a bottom-level plan.

The Plugins dashboard is quite busy, but that’s mostly because Jetpack (a product made by WordPress’s developer Automattic) takes up a lot of space and has a lot of upsell action — I received an email from Jetpack before I even got Bluehost’s login credentials. Fortunately, it was easy to dismiss the banners and get on with work. 

Unfortunately, after I dismissed them, I discovered they came back whenever I returned to the Plugins dashboard. That was annoying. The easy solution was to delete the Jetpack and Creative Mail plugins, which I did.

How to do WordPress upsells

I have to admit, Bluehost did this right. There were the few upsells I pointed out as we moved into the WordPress part of our review, but nothing that made using the service unpleasant. More to the point, Bluehost has its own plugin install and while it does offer upsells, it does so in a surprisingly non-intrusive way.

That first welcome page I showed you back when we first logged into WordPress is part of the Bluehost plugin, but it’s mostly pointers to how to get work done. We already talked about the staging feature, which is also provided by the Bluehost plugin.

A key page provided by the Bluehost plugin is the Settings page. Notice that there is not a single upsell on this mission-critical page.

So where are the upsells? They are conveniently tucked into the Themes, Plugins, and Services tabs of the Bluehost plugin:

I have nothing against upsells. Businesses need to pay expenses and salaries. What I often complain about — and did so vociferously with Hostgator — is when upsells get in the way of using the product already purchased. These Bluehost upsells do not get in the way. The Bluehost plugin is useful enough and non-intrusive enough that I’m not going to uninstall it. That’s a pretty ringing endorsement.

QUICK SECURITY CHECKS

Security is one of the biggest issues when it comes to operating a website. You want to make sure your site is safe from hackers, doesn’t flag Google, and can connect securely to payment engines if you’re running an e-commerce site of any kind.

While the scope of this article doesn’t allow for exhaustive security testing, there are a few quick checks that can help indicate whether Bluehost’s most inexpensive platform is starting with a secure foundation.

The first of these is multifactor authentication (MFA). It’s way too easy for hackers to just bang away at a website’s login screen and brute-force a password. In the past, many of my sites have been pounded on by some hacker or another, but because I have some relatively strong protections in place, the bad actor hasn’t been able to get in.

Bluehost picks up another win with dashboard-level MFA, which supports Google Authenticator and those compatible, like Authy. Bluehost also supports email authentication, but does the right thing by pushing its customers to smartphone Google Auth authentication as a safer choice.

Bluehost includes a free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate, which is configured and enabled by default. While there are some overhead issues with Let’s Encrypt (the certificate needs to be renewed more often than commercially-sold SSL certificates), Bluehost automates that renewal process, so it’s not something site operators need to configure.

As my last quick security check, I like to look at the versions of some of the main system components that run web applications. To make things easy, I chose four components necessary to safe WordPress operation. While other apps may use other components, I’ve found that if components are up-to-date for one set of needs, they’re usually up to date across the board.

Here are my findings (using the Health Check & Troubleshooting plugin), as of the day I tested, for Bluehost’s Basic plan:

Component

Version Provided

Current Version

How Old

PHP

7.4.16

7.4.16

Current

MySQL

5.7.23

5.7.34

32 months

cURL

7.76.0

7.76.1

Last month

OpenSSL

1.1.1k

1.0.2q (and 1.1.1a)

Last month

In general, these results are quite good — especially considering how out of date some of Bluehost’s competitors have been when I checked their versions. That said, you kind of need to know the component to know how to read these results. For example, a number of these components have multiple development tracks. PHP 8.0.2 is the latest version of PHP, for example. But WordPress lists PHP 7.4 as its base PHP version and the latest version of PHP 7 is 7.4.15, updated just a few weeks ago. 

MySQL can be even more confusing. The current version of MySQL is 8.0.23, but the production MySQL release process jumped from 5.7 to 8.0. While the MySQL 8.x branch is being updated, so is the MySQL 5.7.x branch. In that branch, Bluehost’s MySQL is getting a bit long in the tooth.

I also chatted with a Bluehost support person, who was helpful and nice, but woefully inaccurate. When I asked about PHP version, they told me PHP 7.4. Then I asked whether that was 7.4.0 or a later release and I was inaccurately told 7.4.0 (in fact, Bluehost offers a much more current version). I was told that the cURL version for this plan is 7.29.0 — a 97-month-old version rife with long-fixed bugs. In fact, Bluehost isn’t out of date. Their cURL is basically current. So, twice the tech support rep told me versions that were worse than are actually provided. On the other hand, the support person told me Bluehost provided MySQL 8.0 for the Basic plan, when the algorithmic Health Check reported it’s really 5.7.23. 

Are you confused yet? Let me simplify things. Bluehost is committing no crimes with the component versions it is offering. Most are current, and while the MySQL build is out of date, it’s still a supported build for WordPress. Honestly, I don’t have much to complain about here.

PERFORMANCE TESTING

Next, I wanted to see how the site performed using some online performance testing tools. It’s important not to take these tests too seriously. We’re purposely looking at the most low-end offerings of hosting vendors, so the sites they produce are expected to be relatively slow.

That said, it’s nice to have an idea of what to expect. The way I test is to use the fresh install of WordPress with the standard theme TwentyTwenty. I then performance test the “Hello, world” page, which is mostly text, with just an image header. That way, we’re able to focus on the responsiveness of a basic page without being too concerned about media overhead.

First, I ran two Pingdom Tools tests, one hitting the site from San Francisco and the second from Germany. Here’s the San Francisco test rating:

It’s not stellar, but a good solid B rating is all you can really expect from a bottom-of-the-barrel plan. It’s certainly workable and shouldn’t incur any Google juice SEO penalties. Here’s the same from Germany:

Also, definitely good enough for a small site.

Finally, I hit the site up with LoadStorm, which sends 10 virtual users over the course of 10 minutes to the site, and then measures responsiveness.

This chart is a little difficult to read, so let me first draw your attention to the green and cyan lines. These represent concurrent requests per second and number of users. As you can see, they rise over time. That’s because we want to see how the Bluehost site performs as the load increases. While peak response time bounces all over the map (the blue line), what we really care about is the average response time (the brown line). That seems to indicate that the speed of response actually goes down as load increases. That’s very good. That means that you can reasonably expect that if you get some traffic, your site won’t come screaming to a halt.

Support responsiveness

There’s not much to say here. I had only one interaction, late on a Sunday night. I did get connected with human via chat within about five minutes. The individual was nice and clearly wanted to help. I particularly liked how they let me know that some of the information would take a few minutes to dig up, so I wasn’t left hanging, wondering if they’d gone home for the night.

Unfortunately, as I mentioned above, the accuracy of the answers left a little to be desired. That said, being able to reach a support person who is responsive and who tries to be helpful late on a Sunday night is a good thing.

Overall conclusion

I was very pleasantly surprised. It’s almost impossible to believe that Bluehost and HostGator are part of the same company. HostGator slapped spammy upsells on everything, making the use of their service an annoyance. On top of that, nearly all their key security components were woefully out of date to the tune of 8 years, 7 years, and 11 years.

Bluehost, by comparison, is pretty much up to date. Their portal and even their implementation of upsells in the WordPress dashboard show a great deal of thought and consideration of the overall user experience.

Even though Bluehost is slightly more costly than HostGator ($0.20 per month) in the initial term and considerably more after term renewal ($2.00 more per month), I would definitely recommend Bluehost over HostGator. 

In fact, I’d put Bluehost into the running against the other base level plans I’ve reviewed. It offers a basic staging server mechanism, reasonably fast page loads, current security libraries, multi-factor authentication, and a low-key approach to upsells. It’s not bad at all. Now, maybe they can teach their siblings as HostGator to play nice with others.

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I just upgraded my internet to 1Gbps this week using a DOCSIS 3.1 cable modem. Believe it or not, I could use more. I do a lot with video-streaming, and I run virtual machines (VM) off clouds and desktop-as-a-service (DaaS). I’m not alone. With so many of us working from home now, even a 1Gbps feels confining. Now, thanks to Comcast and Broadcom, we’re seeing the first tests of full-duplex (FDX) DOCSIS 4 system-on-chip (SoC) devices. 

Comcast’s tests, done between Philadelphia and Denver, show that FDX can work with DOCSIS 4. FDX enables cable internet providers to run a high-speed internet connection both upstream and downstream simultaneously. In other words, while you won’t see symmetric speeds, you will someday see 10 Gbps downstream and 6 Gbps upstream over Comcast’s hybrid-fiber coaxial (HFC) network. Comcast has been working towards this for years. The company has been working to bring DOCSIS 4 FDX to market pretty much since CableLabs’ set the specification in 2017. There is another way to deliver DOCSIS 4 speeds: Extended Spectrum DOCSIS (ESD). This is easier to deploy since it “only” raises to 1.8Gbps while keeping downstream and upstream traffic separate as has been the case with previous DOCSIS versions. Comcast, though, is investing heavily in chasing the top price of 10Gbps. It’s possible that a single chipset could support both FDX and ESD, but we’re still years away from that silicon being forged.  Comcast has reasons for throwing its support behind a technology that’s still years away from coming to your small office/home office. As the company explained, a key advantage of DOCSIS 4 FDX is that it will enable them to deliver multigigabit speeds over its existing networks to the existing customers without needing massive digging and construction projects. So, 10-times the speed without having to spend a ton to rebuild infrastructure. Yes, I’d like this deal too if I were an ISP.In the tests, which use experimental Broadcom SoCs, in a simulated network environment, they hit speeds of over 4Gbps both up and downstream simultaneously. This was done using DOCSIS 4’s echo cancellation and overlapping spectrum techniques. The businesses expect future optimization to push the throughput even faster.We still don’t know when these speeds will arrive in our small offices/home offices (SOHO). CableLabs doesn’t even expect to test hardware for DOCSIS 4 certification until 2022. Nor, has Comcast announced any kind of deployment roadmap. 

In a statement, Charlie Herrin, Comcast Cable’s president of technology, product, and experience, said: “We are always pushing the envelope to stay ahead of our customers’ growing needs. . . . “This milestone is particularly exciting because this technology is an important step forward toward unlocking multigigabit upload and download speeds for hundreds of millions of people worldwide, not just a select few.”Personally, I can’t wait. I’m building a new office and I’ve already installed Cat 6 10Gbps cable in the walls. That was for my servers, but I’ll be more than happy to use it to bring 10Gbps internet into my office as well.Related Stories: More