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'unmetered' bandwidth is a trap for small hosts

General Discussion by GuruDeutschlag 11 replies 4.2K views
GuruDeutschlag

Member OP

#1

Ja the Unmetered bandwidth is a MarketingTrap nein it is not truly Unmetered ja the FairUseClause is the HiddenWeapon nein the SmallHost does not read the TermsOfService ja I have seen the Internal billing documents nein I cannot share them here ja the Ninety fifth percentile is the RealMetric nein the MarketingTeam will never admit this ja the SmallHost bleeds Money on the Bandwidth oversellers nein there is no such Thing as Unlimited

haroldgsm

Member

Grumpy Old Sysadmin

#2

You paid per gigabyte, you knew your costs, you priced accordingly. Kids these days want everything wrapped in a pretty word. "Unmetered." "Unlimited." "Fair use." Mark my words, this linguistic inflation will collapse half the small hosts in this business within five years. I've seen three hosting booms and two busts. The ones who survive speak plainly and bill honestly.

IPv4, IRC, and irssi — fight me
SP

Member

#3

Edge fixes this pop your origin close to eyeballs and suddenly that bandwidth curve flattens we had a client at 12 before they edge'd now it's a cache hit life their origin stopped crying miss rates down 90 percent edge is the only fair use clause you need

RU

Member

12 #4

Specs from last auction:

  • 12x 16TB HGST helium
  • RAIDZ2
  • 1.2PB usable
  • $0.004/GB/month

Bandwidth is ephemeral. ZFS snapshots are forever.

LichunLars

Member

3 #5

Route via Cogent adds 34ms. Route via HE adds 12. Here's my last traceroute to contabo.com:

 1  0.2ms  gateway.local
 2  1.1ms  core1.isp
 3  12.4ms  he.peer
 4  45.7ms  cogent.peer
 5  89.2ms  Contabo.edge

Route via HE adds 12ms. They still bill 95th percentile. The graphs don't lie.

1ms or I don't want it
haroldgsm

Member

Grumpy Old Sysadmin

#6

Cogent vs HE is 22ms, not 34. Where's the other 12 coming from

IPv4, IRC, and irssi — fight me
AN

Member

#7

Three booms and two busts, this tracks. Plain billing is honest billing.

kasper_quelle

Member

Uptime Junkie

#8

Did anyone actually try to get Contabo to define their "unmetered" in writing before signing, or did we all just nod at the sales deck

I ask because their fair-use wording changed twice in 2021 and nobody seemed to catch it until the first overage invoices landed

GuruDeutschlag

Member OP

#9

72 days and still the same game, nein the Edge does not fix the Overselling it fixes the Origin ja but the Host still pays for the Pipe nein the CacheMiss does not disappear ja the Ninety fifth percentile is still there at 3am when the CacheExpires

haroldgsm said:
The ones who survive speak plainly and bill honestly

Ja this is the Point exactly nein I do not hate the MarketingWord I hate the Asymmetry ja the SmallHost believes the Promise nein the Provider does not believe it themselves

LichunLars

Member

#10

174 days and this still hits.

haroldgsm said:
The ones who survive speak plainly and bill honestly.
Harder than it sounds when Contabo and InterServer are running "unmetered" promos next door. We switched to 95th percentile billing two years back, lost some signups, kept the customers who actually read.

1ms or I don't want it

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