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Hetzner appears to impose unlisted “fair use” on traffic

lowendtalk.com

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Re: Hetzner appears to impose unlisted “fair use” on traffic

#11
post #8
post #6

To hit 250TB in a month, the person would need to do 809Mbps (assuming a 30 day month). I personally would assume that "unlimited 1Gbps" wouldn't include using 80% of the link's capacity, but I also agree that stated limits are better. That would be $16,691 worth of transfer from AWS (US East pricing for 250TB to the internet). I'm not arguing that AWS isn't overcharging, just putting up a comparison. Even at $0.01/G…

They did have traffic caps a while back but explicitly abolished them.

Yep, it was 20TB from what I recall.

Re: Hetzner appears to impose unlisted “fair use” on traffic

#12
Do usage limitations actually affect the bottom line vs throttling?

Maybe I'm wrong, but I imagine it doesn't cost much more to run a network that is 80% saturated vs a network that is 5% saturated?

Basically, why can't they just fairly throttle high usage users when utilization ramps up, and then unthrottle them when usage lowers?

Edit: I'm not talking about them reneging on their guarantees, which they've already done by asking the user to cut their usage.

Re: Hetzner appears to impose unlisted “fair use” on traffic

#13
post #6

To hit 250TB in a month, the person would need to do 809Mbps (assuming a 30 day month). I personally would assume that "unlimited 1Gbps" wouldn't include using 80% of the link's capacity, but I also agree that stated limits are better. That would be $16,691 worth of transfer from AWS (US East pricing for 250TB to the internet). I'm not arguing that AWS isn't overcharging, just putting up a comparison. Even at $0.01/G…

> They should probably just say 50TB with overages at $0.005/GB or something like that.

I fully agree. People use more and more bandwidth. It was just a question of time before someone started to use a petabyte a month. "Unlimited" makes no sense unless they are really ready to allow 100% usage of 1Gbps uplink all the time.

Re: Hetzner appears to impose unlisted “fair use” on traffic

#15

Do usage limitations actually affect the bottom line vs throttling? Maybe I'm wrong, but I imagine it doesn't cost much more to run a network that is 80% saturated vs a network that is 5% saturated? Basically, why can't they just fairly throttle high usage users when utilization ramps up, and then unthrottle them when usage lowers? Edit: I'm not talking about them reneging on their guarantees, which they've already d…

They claim the bandwidth is guaranteed on servers costing less than 50 euros a month. They appear to have simply got caught out by people actually using what they paid for.

Re: Hetzner appears to impose unlisted “fair use” on traffic

#17

Do usage limitations actually affect the bottom line vs throttling? Maybe I'm wrong, but I imagine it doesn't cost much more to run a network that is 80% saturated vs a network that is 5% saturated? Basically, why can't they just fairly throttle high usage users when utilization ramps up, and then unthrottle them when usage lowers? Edit: I'm not talking about them reneging on their guarantees, which they've already d…

They claim the bandwidth is guaranteed on servers costing less than 50 euros a month. They appear to have simply got caught out by people actually using what they paid for.

Sure, I just mean regardless of their guarantees, why network operators don't seem to operate like this, instead they look at total transfer over a period of time, and cut you off or charge more, even if the bytes you're sending were essentially free and didn't affect other users.

Re: Hetzner appears to impose unlisted “fair use” on traffic

#18
post #6

To hit 250TB in a month, the person would need to do 809Mbps (assuming a 30 day month). I personally would assume that "unlimited 1Gbps" wouldn't include using 80% of the link's capacity, but I also agree that stated limits are better. That would be $16,691 worth of transfer from AWS (US East pricing for 250TB to the internet). I'm not arguing that AWS isn't overcharging, just putting up a comparison. Even at $0.01/G…

AWS pricing is a rip-off.

... and their systems are designed to make controlling it difficult to impossible while locking people in to their ecosystem.

Re: Hetzner appears to impose unlisted “fair use” on traffic

#19

Do usage limitations actually affect the bottom line vs throttling? Maybe I'm wrong, but I imagine it doesn't cost much more to run a network that is 80% saturated vs a network that is 5% saturated? Basically, why can't they just fairly throttle high usage users when utilization ramps up, and then unthrottle them when usage lowers? Edit: I'm not talking about them reneging on their guarantees, which they've already d…

And this would be fair to your customers how? Where you draw the line who is who? How would you feel if your services started to be less responsive for no apparent reason, even though you paid for them and did nothing wrong?

Re: Hetzner appears to impose unlisted “fair use” on traffic

#20
We avoid "unlimited" if we possibly can. The moment it comes up that provider generally flips from being "a good deal" to "the most expensive in the region". Then you're stuck looking for alternatives while you're in a bad situation. You don't always get an email, sometimes you're just suspended and they'll let you know if you email them.

(We work with >200 different hosting providers around the world)

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