Unlimited bandwidth for VDS?

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stickz
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Unlimited bandwidth for VDS?

Post by stickz »

Will NFO ever have unlimited bandwidth on VDSs? It would be epic to use them as a seeding box for torrents. The problem is when you're seeing at 100mbps, even in premium locations that have additional bandwidth; the transfer cap approaches very quickly, sometimes in just a few days. This is only 0.1% of the claimed 110gps bandwidth in Chicago. Would NFO even start to feel the impacts if a few hundred people did this Chicago and used up 3% of the bandwidth? Would it be feasible to add a $5 feature to Chicago/Seattle VDSs to throttle upstream bandwidth to 100mbps after reaching the transfer cap? And not charge any overage fees?
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Vanderburg
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Re: Unlimited bandwidth for VDS?

Post by Vanderburg »

I'm not sure if this is a serious question or not, but bandwidth is not free, and we pay for it using the 95th percentile. It would not make financial sense to offer unlimited bandwidth on VDSs, especially at the price we provide them. There are VDS configurations that would allow you to maintain 100Mbps for an entire month, which would use about 31.5TB of data, as long as that usage is legitimate and doesn't violate our Terms of Service (Which running a seed box could potentially do).
stickz

Re: Unlimited bandwidth for VDS?

Post by stickz »

It doesn't make financial sense for a customer to purchase six HT cores to run a Utorrent web server either. Resources are being allocated they need don't need. Putting the same memory and bandwidth on two HT cores also costs more.
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Edge100x
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Re: Unlimited bandwidth for VDS?

Post by Edge100x »

100 Mbps of bandwidth costs us lot more than $5, or even $39.99. We can only afford to include the amount that we do with our VDSes because customers use only a small percentage of it, and the numbers average out. Incentivizing clients to use a large amount at all times with a cheap add-on unlimited option would not be financially prudent for us, nor would it be prudent for us to encourage illegal activity through our services.

You won't be able to find a 100 Mbps unlimited plan for $5, but you may be able to find other hosts who are willing to offer unlimited transit on a 100 Mbps or 1 Gbps link for some amount of money. With the application you are describing, you would not require the type of high-quality bandwidth that we use.
stickz

Re: Unlimited bandwidth for VDS?

Post by stickz »

Is it intentional that it cost more money to get the same amount of memory and bandwidth with a lower core count? It's cheaper to allocate 3 times as many HT cores than to upgrade memory and bandwidth to an equivalent amount. This pricing model seems like a lose-lose scenario that doesn't make sense for the customer or the seller. It supplies the customer with more resources than they want, at a higher cost; and raises hardware and datacenter expenditures for the seller.
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Re: Unlimited bandwidth for VDS?

Post by Edge100x »

Upgrading by adding 1 GB of memory costs less than upgrading the entire package (with another processor core and more memory). This is in line with the fact that our machines have some (limited) extra memory in them that customers who want just more memory can put to use.

Customers can also upgrade the included bandwidth at a discounted rate -- less than upgrading the entire package. Arguably, we should get rid of this option, since we lose money at those prices.

The nature of having packages is that customers may choose to upgrade the entire package even if they only need one or more components of it (the memory, CPU, bandwidth, or hard drive space). That is not perfectly optimal at a large scale -- it means that few people will have exactly the minimum resources that they need -- but it is simpler for everyone than breaking everything out separately, and allows us to better plan and roll out hardware. If we broke everything out, the extra overhead and complication would make it unlikely that prices would be lower, overall, or that satisfaction would be higher.
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