Question : web hosting time outs

Hi,
I have been using shared hosting.

My site is .net

Over the last week I have noticed it doesn't load in properly.  So I used a hosting monitor service.  The first report came back with 98.25 uptime.  13min down (over 16 hours).

I get this sort of message every 15 or 20 min.
Toronto, ON, CA        5 min(s)        2        02:34:08        0.11 sec         /Ok         
Birmingham, UK       59 sec(s)       1       02:29:05       40.09 sec        /Unknown reason (e.g. unexpected eof, timeout)       
Erfurt, Germany 40.10 sec  Unknown reason (e.g. unexpected eof, timeout)       
Moscow, RU 42.18 sec        /Unknown reason (e.g. unexpected eof, timeout)       
Montreal, QC, CA 40.02 sec        /Unknown reason (e.g. unexpected eof, timeout)       
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia 40.35 sec /Unknown reason (e.g. unexpected eof, timeout)       
Dallas, TX, US 40.04 sec        /Unknown reason (e.g. unexpected eof, timeout)       
Dallas, TX, US  40.04 sec        /Unknown reason (e.g. unexpected eof, timeout)       
Birmingham, UK       9 min(s)       0       02:28:05       40.09 sec        /Unknown reason (e.g. unexpected eof, timeout)       

My questions are:
1.  What does this mean - why is it happening?
2.  They have offered to move my site to a new server to correct the problem.  Does that usually fix this sort of problem?

Thanks
Tania

Answer : web hosting time outs

Hi Tania!

1. This means that the server your site is hosted on is not reachable via certain networks. Basically put, this can be caused by 3 things - a) the server itself is experiencing problems - could be that resources are used up, misconfigured hardware or software, or there are too many connections for the web server to handle; b) your host is having network problems at their datacenter or the datacenter's bandwidth provider is having trouble; c) you (or your host) is experiencing a Denial of Service (DoS) attack - this would actually cause the a) scenario.

If the server is not reachable from any network, it often indicates the server might be down (the machine has crashed, shut itself down and failed to restart, or there's a service not running - e.g. Apache or IIS, etc.

2. This depends on the cause of the problem. If the issue is server related then yes, it should fix the issue. If it is network related, you might have same problem as before.

Hope this helps.

- Julian