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Has Global Internet Censorship Boosted the VPS Industry?
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Has Global Internet Censorship Boosted the VPS Industry?

sureiamsureiam Member
edited November 2017 in General

As I was preparing for a day of fun configuring and re-configuring my new very affordable and remarkably fast VPS I came to wonder how it is that I could even receive such a worthwhile VPS for this price.

At 1gb of ram, 20gb of HD, 1vcore, and 1TB of BW it should be at least 2-3x what I'm paying. It's not too long ago (2-3 years) you would be lucky to get 128mb of ram for the price I'm paying now.

So what's changed? The only thing I can conclude is that censorship of internet (which I'm fortunately not yet subjected to locally [at least that I know of!]) has resulted in an increase of users for wanting VPS/VPN solutions. Causing the industry to cater to this demand, along with new players entering the market. Furthermore I assume that increased capacity in a datacenter also generally results in having overbuilt for ones needs and eventually opening up resources for more users.

Not being on the backend provider side of this discussion I'm unsure as to the reason why prices have been driven further down (maybe it's unrelated to VPS/VPN and just cheaper bandwidth+hardware). But I thought it would be fun to discuss this topic with those that do and have been in the industry long enough to see the change (and adapt to it!).

Has Global Internet Censorship Boosted the VPS Industry?
  1. Why do you think the cost of VPS ownership has gone down so quickly the last 2-5 years?4 votes
    1. Increased Demand From VPS/VPN Ownership
      75.00%
    2. Increased Viability+Availability of Older Hardware at Affordable prices
        0.00%
    3. Increased Number of New or Expanding DataCenters
        0.00%
    4. All Of the Above.
      25.00%

Comments

  • @sureiam said:
    So why do you think the cost of VPS ownership has gone down so quickly the last 2-5 years?

    Older hardware getting retired/phased out. It's been deprecated to the point that it's not doing much but wasting a bit of space, but renting it is still a viable option. Hell, WSI still rents out Core2Duos.

    Also, I don't know if I feel people are using VPNs to be able to become a part of the propaganda system social media, or if it's just an attempt to be tracked less. Probably about half of that, and shoe proxies.

    Thanked by 1doughmanes
  • Hardware going from providers and sold on the used market is why.

    I'm still surprised people are renting and even doing rent to own from Dacentec when a L5420 can be shipped in the US to your door for less than $150-200 on eBay. 10 used replacement L5420 CPUs - $60.

  • rm_rm_ IPv6 Advocate, Veteran

    sureiam said: At 1gb of ram, 20gb of HD, 1vcore, and 1TB of BW it should be at least 2-3x what I'm paying. It's not too long ago (2-3 years) you would be lucky to get 128mb of ram for the price I'm paying now.

    Likely you're thinking not 2-3, but 5-10 years. Time flies.

    And what changed is simply hardware getting more powerful for the price, now it is not uncommon to have 128-256 GB of RAM servers, something unheard of and impossible "before".

    As for censorship, I don't think using a VPS for censorship avoidance is that popular to play much of a role in anything. "Regular people" are still going to buy a "VPN", if anything -- not a VPS.

    Thanked by 1doughmanes
  • doughmanesdoughmanes Member
    edited November 2017

    I remember 128mb RAM, 5GB hdd, and 1-5Mbps connection from KIREnet was $20+/mo.

    Looks like they retired it back in 2010 and went back to doing IRC shells.

  • sureiamsureiam Member
    edited November 2017

    @rm_ said:

    [sureiam said]It's not too long ago (2-3 years) you would be lucky to get 128mb of ram for the price I'm paying now.

    Likely you're thinking not 2-3, but 5-10 years. Time flies.

    And what changed is simply hardware getting more powerful for the price, now it is not uncommon to have 128-256 GB of RAM servers, something unheard of and impossible "before".

    Perhaps your right. Ram (and CPU Core) capacities have grown greatly indeed!

    @WSS said:

    @sureiam said:
    So why do you think the cost of VPS ownership has gone down so quickly the last 2-5 years?

    Older hardware getting retired/phased out. It's been deprecated to the point that it's not doing much but wasting a bit of space, but renting it is still a viable option. Hell, WSI still rents out Core2Duos.
    @doughmanes said:
    Hardware going from providers and sold on the used market is why.

    I'm still surprised people are renting and even doing rent to own from Dacentec when a L5420 can be shipped in the US to your door for less than $150-200 on eBay. 10 used replacement L5420 CPUs - $60.

    Well the CPU in my setup is 4 years old. I'd still consider that within it's typical lifecycle. But another VPS is from 2011 and it's the same darn CPU since then!

    With that said I believe it's still very relevant in shared hosting environments. A provider here proudly displays the use of CPUs from 2010 on their shared hosting platform (a great platform at that!).

    I believe this argument might have more to do with how little the requirements for many tasks has advanced along with the hardware that it runs on.

    BUT, I will note that AMD's new EyPC processor with built in secure memory management for VMs is something that would interest me even at an increased cost! Will any providers pick up on this feature though is another questions.

  • FranciscoFrancisco Top Host, Host Rep, Veteran

    Yes No.

    Francisco

  • deankdeank Member, Troll
    edited November 2017

    My CPU is dual E5-2683v3 (14 cores each, 28 cores / 56 threads, non-ES). I got the CPUs off Ebay for 250 USD each some years ago. They are still good now.

    Hardware has become a lot cheaper as long as you aren't one of those who must have the newest at its release day.

  • @deank said:
    My CPU is dual E5-2683v3 (14 cores each, 28 cores / 56 threads, non-ES). I got the CPUs off Ebay for 250 USD each some years ago. They are still good now.

    Hardware has become a lot cheaper as long as you aren't one of those who must have the newest at its release day.

    http://developer.amd.com/amd-secure-memory-encryption-sme-amd-secure-encrypted-virtualization-sev/

    Seems like something I would appreciate on a VM... But requires a new AMD EYPC processor.

  • @Francisco said:
    Yes No.

    Francisco

    Thanked by 2MichaelCee Francisco
  • @sureiam said:
    With that said I believe it's still very relevant in shared hosting environments. A provider here proudly displays the use of CPUs from 2010 on their shared hosting platform (a great platform at that!). So it seems a lot of that hardware is also finding it's way into the shared hosting environments. VPS I believe still gets some of the newer hardware.

    I disgree. Good threading hardware has likely made it better for basic shared hosting.

    Bizarre hardware builds like Dacentec' Opteron 1385 which is very limited hardware in 2017 (need BIOS monkeying to get newer kernels working with it), but has 6 ports so you can get 2x2TB+4x(750GB)1TB drives for $25/mo, well, it makes a decent software-backed backup which ensures you will have this crappy hardware with functional hardware replacement which won't cost you the mental anguish when it shits within a year or two is great for crappy backups.

    1U Hardware which has decent CPU and RAM available with fairly-speedy SATA and hardware supported Gig-E NICs (not Realtek) will be a cheap and simple slice which, as mentioned, can be bought for dollars and rented for pennies.

  • deankdeank Member, Troll
    edited November 2017

    Too expensive for my taste. It's overrated crap that I will probably try out after 3 years or so when price drops to a reasonable level. Those CPUs of mine were acquired like 2 or 3 years ago.

  • Traffic price was always our main problem.
    I can remember the time that we were offering unmetered traffic for vps on a server with 5-10 TB traffic (Giga datecenter in Germany I think) and at the end of each month we had to pay from our pocket :))

    Now you can get cheaper server with even 100TB traffic!

  • deankdeank Member, Troll

    Wait for the right moment and some idiot running a summer/winter host will give you 100TB bandwidth for a dollar.

  • @deank said:
    Wait for the right moment and some idiot running a summer/winter host will give you 100TB bandwidth for a dollar.

    Hey. Asshole. Black Friday is coming up soon. Might want to change your post.

    Thanked by 2MrH lion
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