Need fast reliable hosting for a specific application

[mark.roper]

I need a fast reliable web host for a specific application. My company is developing a web based application using PHP / MySQL that will be accessed by remote workers on an Internet enabled PDA.

Due to the nature of PDA browsing (slow GPRS connection) the site will be optimised for the intended platform (very small pages, using gzip compression etc.).

Bandwidth is not likely to be excessive, pages are small and the site will only be used by employees of my company. However performance is the key issue. I need a host that can provide fast reliable hosting with a fast reliable database server. We expect we'll need a dedicated server and are willing to pay more for quality.

We currently have a dedicated server from 1and1.co.uk (£99 per month) but it's hosted in Berlin and is not particularly fast or reliable. I'm looking for a fast reliable UK host.

Any ideas?

[euk-roger]

How much space/bandwidth/RAM do you need?

[mark.roper]

Our current 1and1.co.uk server has 100Gb webspace but we don't need anyhthing like that much. We do have a collection of documents (PDF mainly) that will need a few Gb I guess, so pretty much any hard drive you can buy today would suffice. (if I had to put my finger on it say 10Gb).

Our MySQL database currently holds 60Mb of data, which is approx. 1.5 years worth of transactions for this particular application. I'd estimate 100 - 150 Mb would suffice as we don't intend to store too much (transactional history is used for reference, but there's no need to go further back than 2 years max.). We do however back up the main database into another one overnight via a cron job, so that would be 2 x 150Mb databases required.

Bandwidth, we have 40 remote workers with a 10Mb monthly allowance on our network carrier contract, which I doubt they'll even get close to, so that would be 400Mb per month max.

As you can see, bandwidth, storage etc. are minimal by normal webhost standards, where 1and1.co.uk let us down is raw performance of their servers and the fact they're in Germany and we're in the UK. GPRS is effectively dial-up speed with not particularly good latency, so we need to serve up the data as fast as we can.

edit: I should point out we'd need PHP with gzip configured, as server side compression makes a lot of difference.