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What do providers really mean by "unmetered bandwidth"?
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What do providers really mean by "unmetered bandwidth"?

I want to buy a VPS to host some .mp4 files and I will use something around ~10TB/month.
I'm searching here on LET and I found many providers saying that their packages have unmetered bandwidth, but we all know that unmetered does not really exist.

So, in your personal experience, what does "unmetered bandwidth" really mean on DigitalOcean, BuyVM, HostSolutions, OVH, Scaleway, BlazingFast.io, etc.?

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Comments

  • God, not this debate again.

    Thanked by 3Ole_Juul d1m4s netomx
  • FredQcFredQc Member
    edited April 2017

    It means don't be a dick and everything will be alright.

  • @FredQc said:
    It means don't be a dick and everything will be alright.

  • TWoTWo Member
    edited April 2017

    The first two on your list do not offer what you are asking for.

    Why should "unmetered bandwidth" not exist?

  • @TWo said:
    The first two on your list do not offer what you are asking for.

    DigitalOcean does not measure the bandwidth yet (and they didn't announce plans to do it).
    Regarding BuyVM, @Francisco.

  • PepeSilviaPepeSilvia Member
    edited April 2017

    Honestly providers that offer "unlimited" or "unmetered" traffic should be expected to outline and define those terms in an easily accessible page/section.

    I just went to BlazingFast.io and couldn't find anything on their TOS/AUP on the terms of their 100mbps unlimited transfer offer. So logically one, especially someone who's not a frequenter in hosting communities, should expect to crank that pipe to 100 mbps 24x7.

    Phrases like "Don't be a dick" or "Be considerate of your neighbors" are vague and ambiguous, and their meaning can vary from place to place.

  • FranciscoFrancisco Top Host, Host Rep, Veteran

    I haven't had a chance to explain things better on the site, but in our case the server is linked at a 1Gbit/sec. The more of the server you buy the more you can use up to the port limit.

    10TB is just fine if you want a 4GB or 8GB, but if you want to do it on a 2GB it may be an issue in the future. Probably not though, in our case most nodes are < 10% utilization.

    Francisco

    Thanked by 1JoaoCAM
  • jvnadrjvnadr Member
    edited April 2017

    JoaoCAM said: their packages have unmetered bandwidth

    Read the TOS of the providers you want. Unmetered does not mean "eat all of the bandwidth a port has". If you read the terms carefully, you will find to all of providers that the traffic is offered on a fair-share and the unmetered-unlimited thing is valid until you start abusing the server.
    So, to answer your question: You should open a pre-sales ticket with any provider you are interested to buy his services. 10TB traffic is not little, is not huge either. There are a lot of providers that can allow a 10TB, even a 33TB traffic per month, as long as you don;t eati all of the 1Gbps bandwidth the server's port offer.

    • OVH and online.net is such a case. You could use 10TB per month with them, but you should not allow extreme use of the port traffic for long time in their vps (and long time means more than an hour constantly). This does not apply to scaleway.

    • Digital Ocean and BuyVm, does not offer unmetered traffic. They have certain traffic allowed depending on the plan you buy.

    • Blazingfast do not allow CDN or Media Streaming.

    • Scaleway do offer unlimited traffic, but the port is capped at 200Mbps maximum, usually works at 120-140Mbps. Though, you are allowed to use 10TB of bandwidth each month.

    Thanked by 1JoaoCAM
  • JoaoCAM said: DigitalOcean does not measure the bandwidth yet

  • PepeSilviaPepeSilvia Member
    edited April 2017

    @jvnadr said:

    JoaoCAM said: their packages have unmetered bandwidth

    Read the TOS of the providers you want. Unmetered does not mean "eat all of the bandwidth a port has". If you read the terms carefully, you will find to all of providers that the traffic is offered on a fair-share and the unmetered-unlimited thing is valid until you start abusing the server.
    So, to answer your question: You should open a pre-sales ticket with any provider you are interested to buy his services. 10TB traffic is not little, is not huge either. There are a log of providers that can allow a 10TB, even a 33TB traffic per month, as long as you don;t eati all of the 1Gbps bandwidth the server's port offer. Scaleway / online.net is such a case. You could use 10TB per month with them, but you should not allow extreme use of the port traffic for long time (and long time means more than an hour constantly).
    Last but not least:

    • Digital Ocean and BuyVm, does not offer unmetered traffic. They have certain traffic allowed depending on the plan you buy.

    • Blazingfast do not allow CDN or Media Streaming.

    • Scaleway do offer unlimited traffic, but the port is capped at 200Mbps maximum, usually works at 120-140Mbps. Though, you are allowed to use 10TB of bandwidth each month.

    That's perfectly fine, but the providers should be expected to outline the terms of use clearly. Instead almost all of them use words like "fair share" or "reasonable" to define a quantifiable resource.

    Like they can say you can only burst to 1gbps for no more than 5 minutes in a 60 minute period. Or you can only use up to 1TB every 3 days. There are many ways to define what they think is "fair use", and they should be expected to define them so you, the user don't have to try and guess what's on their mind.

    The norm should be to list those constraints on a page Instead of ticketing or asking in live chat.

    Thanked by 2saf31 darkimmortal
  • NeoonNeoon Community Contributor, Veteran

    It depends, at OVZ you may run into issues, we had 1Gbit 333TB OVZ for 3$, which is obviously a offer you can never use, since if you would do that, you would impact the hole node which is against the TOS.

    But with KVM/Dedi, if someone comes and drops "unmetered" 100Mbit, I gonna burn it.

    Everything for cheap which says 100Mbit should be fine, but everything for cheap which says Gbit is only burst.

    Thanked by 1d1m4s
  • PepeSilvia said: There are many ways to define what they think is "fair use", and they should be expected to define them so you, the user don't have to try to guess what's on their mind.

    I prefer this as a wide area. I have a lot of hosting plans from a lot of providers and I never got a suspension or warning on using traffic. In contrast with a certain provider that, in any month I had even 1MB more than what was clearly allowed, I got suspended till the next month (I do not complain, that's what I signed for).
    We all know what "being a dick" really is. And we can use our own limits. 10GB up, 10GB down will not ever be an issue to those providers. And if it does, then, there are more serious reasons not to trust them than the grey area on capping the traffic.
    And, if you really want to know what "don't be a dick" means, you can always open a pre-sales ticket and ask to clarify this for you.

  • @jvnadr said:
    I prefer this as a wide area. I have a lot of hosting plans from a lot of providers and I never got a suspension or warning on using traffic. In contrast with a certain provider that, in any month I had even 1MB more than what was clearly allowed, I got suspended till the next month (I do not complain, that's what I signed for).

    We all know what "being a dick" really is. And we can use our own limits. 10GB up, 10GB down will not ever be an issue to those providers. And if it does, then, there are more serious reasons not to trust them than the grey area on capping the traffic.

    As consumers we shouldn't be advocating for that kind of a system. A contract should be as clearly defined as possible. Settling for undefined "fair use" leaves a lot of power to the provider and leaves consumers, especially the not so experienced or in touch with the community to be exposed to potential shutdowns.

    What I'm basically saying is since the providers know what they consider to be fair use, they should disclose that in their TOS/AUP or on any other, clearly accessible page. Eliminates any confusion, guesswork and saves everyone some time.

    @jvnadr said:
    And, if you really want to know what "don't be a dick" means, you can always open a pre-sales ticket and ask to clarify this for you.

    Like I said in that post:

    The norm should be to list those constraints on a page Instead of ticketing or asking in live chat.

    Thanked by 2bugrakoc chrisp
  • My personal real world formula/assumption is: About 5-10Mb/s per 3$/mo spent on a VPS.

    Of course, due to the way VPSs and shared resources work, you will sometimes actually be able to use up to some 100 Mb/s but if you often and/or over longer periods use more than 50 or max 100 Mb/s don't be surprised if people get unhappy.

    The thing is, no matter how nicely marketing talks, that an 8 core node typically has 20 - 50 VPSs on it and is connected to a 1Gb/s pipe. Assume that the law of scaling applies and a provider will prefer nodes with dual processors and you arrive at 50 - 100 VPSs on a node. Now, divide 1000 Mb/s by the number of VPSs...

    That said, by far more than 90% of all websites are sufficiently equipped with 5 - 10 Mb/s. Same for email and most other stuff.

  • FranciscoFrancisco Top Host, Host Rep, Veteran

    jvnadr said: BuyVm, does not offer unmetered traffic

    We do actually :) Came with the global slice roll out.

    Francisco

    Thanked by 1jvnadr
  • jvnadrjvnadr Member

    Francisco said: We do actually :) Came with the global slice roll out.

    Nice of you. I was not aware!

  • PepeSilviaPepeSilvia Member
    edited May 2017

    Here's my chat transcript with Blazingfast.io

    The rep ended my chat after that. I don't see the live chat popup anymore on the page, but it's Sunday evening and they're probably offline.

    I was talking about €5/m KVM SSD VPS, but I think the rep thought I was talking about €5/m web hosting plan. I should have made it clear in the beginning of the chat.

    I'm surprised that he agreed that I can crank that to 100mbps 24x7, but disagreed when I put out what that means in actual numbers.

    Even in the case of web hosting, I think it's very shitty to claim Unlimited Transfer on the plan page when it's 1000GB transfer in reality. We should not be encouraging this practice. They should be expected to change "Unlimited Transfer" to "1000GB Transfer"

  • J1021J1021 Member

    @jvnadr said:

    JoaoCAM said: DigitalOcean does not measure the bandwidth yet

    Plans are advertised with a transfer limit but nowhere within their control panel is data transfer monitored/reported. I've asked Jarland a few times and I don't think they have any interest in monitoring transfer use soon.

    I work for an ISP that advertises data transfer quotas, but it's rarely enforced. We push 1.3Tb/s+ globally, a user a few TB or 100Mb/s over a quota here and there is a drop in the ocean. Obviously if we see a user pushing Gbit more than they should be, we become interested in billing for it.

  • jvnadrjvnadr Member

    kcaj said: Plans are advertised with a transfer limit but nowhere within their control panel is data transfer monitored/reported

    I have seen that, but they advertise limits, so, it is better to stay in the safe lane :)
    @Jarland could drop some light in it, though

  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran
    edited May 2017

    @jvnadr said:

    kcaj said: Plans are advertised with a transfer limit but nowhere within their control panel is data transfer monitored/reported

    I have seen that, but they advertise limits, so, it is better to stay in the safe lane :)
    @Jarland could drop some light in it, though

    I remember @miTgiB's #1 rule at Hostigation, "don't be a dick."

    I've always found that to be a good rule to follow wherever you are. I find that most people don't want to build walls around you and tell you what not to do in strict terms, they just want to live in a world where we're all friendly enough to not take advantage of each other in ways that we know negatively impact the other person.

    That's my philosophy. I hate being gate keeper, the builder of the wall. All I ask is, don't make me build walls. Don't find a way to force me into a situation where building it is the only way I can sustain myself.

    In that, I believe you will find your answer :)

    Thanked by 2jvnadr netomx
  • jvnadrjvnadr Member

    @jarland Couldn't agree more! (after all, that's what I said before)

    Thanked by 1jar
  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran
    edited May 2017

    For real though, to think unmetered and unlimited mean the same thing is at best unintelligent. Unmetered means no one is watching to see how much total you use, doesn't mean they're not responding to you saturating a port and causing packet loss for other customers. Unmetered literally means not fitted with a meter, a meter in this is used to determine the total amount of consumption.

    It's like if my water company told me they were no longer going to check my meter. In some small towns that happens, they just charge what they need and everyone pays a little less than would if they read the meter. The water company isn't greedy in some small towns. But that doesn't mean I can halt the water flow to my neighbors by creating a water park in my back yard. That's called being a dick, and it makes service worse for EVERYONE if I do it, when the reality is that I had a pretty sweet deal until I taught them not to trust people anymore.

    Unmetered and unlimited have two entirely different meanings. Know what you're buying, and use a dictionary if you have trouble understanding words ;)

    Thanked by 1netomx
  • VirMachVirMach Member, Patron Provider

    It's basically all marketing.

    Best case scenario: you can use more than the provider guesstimated, possibly lose them money but they let you stay and you can continue physically using it because no one else is using the 1Gbit port.

    Worst case scenario: you either physically can't use anywhere close to 1Gbit because it's so oversold and everyone's using it, or provider asks you to leave quietly, and/or limits you in some way to where you basically get (based on your share) what they intended you to get but didn't clearly label.

    My rule of thumb: assuming they actually have 1Gbps unmetered on their servers, probably expect no more than 5TB per 1GB RAM or per $3.

    Out of all the providers you mentioned, I dislike how OVH does it the least. Meaning, they at least try to label most their products as something like "1Gbps, 500Mbps guaranteed" or they have unmetered 100Mbps which is more realistic. So that's close to a provider, for example, selling "2 out of 8 physical cores fair use" rather than "8 out of 8 physical cores fair use."

    The best way a provider should do unmetered for a VPS is giving an "estimated" range you can expect before there's problems or let you know with how many people you're sharing the "unmetered" 1Gbps port.

    Thanked by 1saf31
  • jarland said: "don't be a dick."

    It seems to me that some of these recent threads are from people who are really asking because they don't know what it means to "be a dick". Perhaps someone could devise a test that would allow people to diagnose themselves.

    Thanked by 1willie
  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran
    edited May 2017

    @Ole_Juul said:

    jarland said: "don't be a dick."

    It seems to me that some of these recent threads are from people who are really asking because they don't know what it means to "be a dick". Perhaps someone could devise a test that would allow people to diagnose themselves.

    It's simple. Depriving others of viable service by your consumption. If people can't handle the technical understanding of that, they probably shouldn't be purchasing self managed services.

    Thanked by 1netomx
  • PepeSilviaPepeSilvia Member
    edited May 2017

    @jarland said:

    I remember @miTgiB's #1 rule at Hostigation, "don't be a dick."

    I've always found that to be a good rule to follow wherever you are. I find that most people don't want to build walls around you and tell you what not to do in strict terms, they just want to live in a world where we're all friendly enough to not take advantage of each other in ways that we know negatively impact the other person.

    Well, that attitude is certainly lovely, but I think the way DO handles this is the way to go, rather than how most other providers do it.

    Want to offer an "unlimited", fair use service? Sure, set some clear and concise terms and limitations and then choose not to enforce them unless it's disrupting everyone else.

    This way the customers actually know what "fair use" means to this host, and when/if they go over it's a pleasant surprise rather than a cold hard disconnect.

  • williewillie Member

    Ole_Juul said: Perhaps someone could devise a test that would allow people to diagnose themselves.

    The test is: "if you have to ask...".

    Thanked by 1netomx
  • williewillie Member

    PepeSilvia said: I think the way DO handles this is the way to go

    Jarland would know better than me, but I thought DO's current approach didn't reflect a DO policy decision. Rather, they advertise limits that they intend to really be limits, but implementing actual enforcement mechanisms is still on their todo list, so at the moment the advertised limits happen to not be enforced.

    Thanked by 2PepeSilvia jar
  • @willie said:

    PepeSilvia said: I think the way DO handles this is the way to go

    Jarland would know better than me, but I thought DO's current approach didn't reflect a DO policy decision. Rather, they advertise limits that they intend to really be limits, but implementing actual enforcement mechanisms is still on their todo list, so at the moment the advertised limits happen to not be enforced.

    I meant as in their implementation, whether it was intentional or not.

  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran
    edited May 2017

    @willie said:

    PepeSilvia said: I think the way DO handles this is the way to go

    Jarland would know better than me, but I thought DO's current approach didn't reflect a DO policy decision. Rather, they advertise limits that they intend to really be limits, but implementing actual enforcement mechanisms is still on their todo list, so at the moment the advertised limits happen to not be enforced.

    There's a chance it runs a little deeper, but this is a good way for customers or potential customers to think about it, and that's why we continue to advertise it that way. We'd like you to consider the limits but, right now, sleep with the comfort of "I know what my bill is this month, and it's not going to change based on something I didn't realize was happening."

    That's really all anyone wanted with unmetered at a provider level, I would propose, is that their customers just use what they need for their services and not fear that circumstances beyond their control would increase their bill.

    It's a customer's biggest fear, an unknown variable with dollar signs.

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