Hetzner appears to impose unlisted “fair use” on traffic • Hacker News Board

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

#181

Post by beaugunderson » Tue, Jul 26, 2022, 9:50 PM UTC

mdasen wrote: 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…

I used to work for a visual effects studio in Los Angeles, we setup a Canadian office and wanted to do offsite backups from Canada to LA and from LA to Canada for redundancy. We found a provider who would give us dedicated unmetered 1gbps and then setup a simple rsync. It worked great, we hit 800mbps (the theoretical maximum with TCP overhead) and then 5 days later we got a call from the provider who was absolutely floored that we wanted to actually use the bandwidth we had paid for. Since we had signed a contract they were f'ed but we did come to some agreement in the end. They told us we were affecting all of their other customers.

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

#182

Post by qeternity » Tue, Jul 26, 2022, 9:50 PM UTC

mjevans wrote: post #9

"Unlimited" really should mean fully unlimited. I also take issue with "up to" and other vagueness. There should be clear metrics and sizes that are precise and not abbreviated in all ads and offers; and offers should also be public and non-discriminatory. A 'service check' for an address should also constitute a 'binding offer' (I.E. the ISP had better be very sure service can be provided at that address!)

Please understand you are in the minority. We have been very happy Hetzner customers for years. I don't want any of what you advocate. I know very well that "unlimited" doesn't mean unlimited. But for us, it is unlimited for all intents and purposes. When we deploy new jobs, or change backup routines, and burst tons of traffic one month, I don't have to worry about it because over the long run we are using a totally reasonable amount of traffic.

And that's the thing: most people don't want to worry about this stuff. It's a minuscule fraction of people who care. And you just need to recognize that you're in the minority.

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

#183

Post by pixl97 » Tue, Jul 26, 2022, 9:50 PM UTC

kazen44 wrote: post #110

pixl97 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not using 'up to' is opening up all kinds of other cans of worms. Ok, 100mbps.... to where? The switch you're plugged into? The router at the data center? Some other random host in the network? Some other random host outside the network? So yea, everything on almost every network without a dedicated circuit is 'up to' simply because you can make no other guarantees.

also, what do you count as bandwith? Simply sending packets down a wire usually limits one to the physical speed of the interface, but even then some kind of packets might get dropped by various filters/mechanisms along the way. For instance, should i be able to use my full bandwith of my connection by sending purely BUM traffic down the link? Somewhere in the network, some policer is going to start dropping BUM traf…

I remember years ago working with ISPs and many of their monitoring systems assumed that packet = 1500 bytes as a fixed measure. Running a DNS server at full throttle could lead to a situation where you'd get bandwidth charges for amounts higher than could be served at line rate.

I'm assuming modern systems do this better, but I've learned never to make assumptions when they benefit the billing party more.

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

#184

Post by whatshisface » Tue, Jul 26, 2022, 9:51 PM UTC

pixl97 wrote: post #171

zdragnar wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The previous post didn't say a script got caught in a loop overnight, it was that the engineer didn't understand the difference between stopped and terminated. Even so, I don't think it is AWS's fault that buggy code was left to run unattended overnight in the example you give.

Right, it's not AWS's fault that buggy code ran overnight. It is absolutely 100% Amazon's decision to give you little to no tooling to prevent this in many scenarios other than going to their billing department and beg for a correction. I do not use any service that can proceed to bankrupt me for personal use for what could be considered a normal use case. At work I'd pass the issue off to my manager who'd pass it of…

AWS has a reasonable defense for charging for that - it costs them money whether you meant to run it or not.

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

#185

Post by cthalupa » Tue, Jul 26, 2022, 9:51 PM UTC

gernb wrote: post #161

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I personally would assume that "unlimited 1Gbps" wouldn't include using 80% of the link's capacity Why ever not? If you sell someone something but only let them use less than 80% of it, that feels like fraud.

You should try that at your local fast food place that has free unlimited refills. Drive up a tanker trunk and trying filling it up with unlimited soda.

This is a horrible analogy.

At a fast food places they advertise unlimited refills on the cup they sold you as part of the meal.

Here you are being advertised unlimited traffic on the port they sold you as part of the server.

Trying to liken using the port you are being sold as part of the server to driving up a tanker trunk to a fast food place is silly.

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

#186

Post by freemint » Tue, Jul 26, 2022, 9:52 PM UTC

mort96 wrote: post #159

cmdli wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but Hetzner has no obligation to serve every customer. I would say this customer has gotten more than their money's worth and Hetzner is well within their rights to no longer provide service. Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1499/

But they also have a responsibility not to lie in their marketing, don't they?

Did or did Hertzner not offer this person an unthrottled 1 GBit/s every month they were an user.

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

#187

Post by dark-star » Tue, Jul 26, 2022, 9:52 PM UTC

worldofmatthew wrote: post #7

yread wrote: post #4

250TB/month is about 770 Mbps sustained. And you still only get a strongly worded letter!

Does not matter. Hetzner say Unlimited and Guaranteed traffic at 1Gbit/s with no fair use policy mentioned for that port speed.

have you ever used a "free refill", or an "all you can eat" buffet?

You cannot fill up your car's tank with soda at a "free refills" place, neither can you camp and eat 24/7 inside an "all-you-can-eat" buffet.

I don't think it's unreasonable to still call those services "unlimited" and let the restaurant/internet provider decide when to drop a customer that they don't want in their premises/on their infrastructure...

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

#188

Post by NavinF » Tue, Jul 26, 2022, 9:53 PM UTC

tomjen3 wrote: post #131

mdasen wrote: 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 is overcharging badly . I wouldn't even take them seriously if you want to do something with e.g video. Charging per GB is a joke in a world where my (expensive) ISP doesn't even offer anything less than 30/30mb. IMHO Hertzer is the only hosting company that get what business it is in. AWS makes a ton of sense if you need to rent serious iron to do OCR on 100+ GB of scans of corporate documents, you need GPU powe…

> AWS makes a ton of sense if […] you need GPU power to train your AI model,

Breakeven time between paying for GPUs, servers, and colo vs GCP was 3 months when I last checked. AWS was even worse. For training, cloud GPUs only make sense if you don’t have anyone on your team that’s familiar with physical infra or if you have a ton of free credits which is fairly common for startups with VC funding.

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

#189

Post by nZUC2qDyxDA3Kpe » Tue, Jul 26, 2022, 9:54 PM UTC

icehawk wrote: post #147

walrus01 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> have no fair use policy you think an ISP the size of hetzner or OVH or similar has no TOS/AUP that they put a lot of time and thought into before publishing, and putting in the customer new-order workflow?!??!

There are terms and conditions and, there's no "fair use" clauses for bandwidth in the terms and conditions. It feels a bad-faith interpretation of the "Customer uses content that impairs the regular operating behavior or the security of our infrastructure or our product" portion of section 2.7.

It feels like the plain meaning of that sentence, to me. They are "using content" (downloading it), and it probably "impairs the regular operating behavior ... of [their] infrastructure" (how many 1Gbps servers do you think are sharing a switch? how fast do you think that switch's uplink is? now double the first and half the second because it's Hetzner :P).

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

#190

Post by londons_explore » Tue, Jul 26, 2022, 9:54 PM UTC

mdasen wrote: 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…

A better way to do it is to simply prioritize traffic in order of whoever has used least traffic this month.

So if a link is congested and a packet has to be dropped, then it is dropped from whichever user has sent the most packets in the last 30 days.

The end result is light users will get great service. Heavy users will start to see congestion at busy times, but will still be able to download as much as they like, contending with other heavy users at busy times.

Actual implementation can consist of say 10 QOS queues, where each customer is assigned a queue based on their decile of traffic sent in the last 30 days. Ideally you'd do strict priority on the queues, but I actually find it works better to say each queue has 2 packets delivered for each one of the queue below. That ensures that if a low use customer has a big burst of traffic, other clients still get a few packets delivered, which helps flow control adapt better. Also, rather than just ranking on 30 day traffic volumes, it works better to rank on 30 day traffic, plus 7 day traffic, plus 24 hour traffic, plus 1 hour traffic. That effectively means traffic sent in the last hour is counted 4x. That means users get faster feedback.

Do this and your company gets better utilization of network hardware too - every link will be 95+% full all the time. Thats better than the traditional model of building for peak usage and having links sit idle at 3am. There are plenty of customers who would love to use that cheap 3am capacity!