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Hetzner appears to impose unlisted “fair use” on traffic

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

#251

Post by hengistbury »

walrus01 wrote: post #83
blowski wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More explicitly stating the limits would be good, but declaring “fraud” is rather exaggerating. You go with Hetzner knowing you’re getting bargain prices, so they’re cutting corners somewhere. This would be like saying Walmart are committing fraud when it turns out their ham is not “finest quality”.

Not even Walmart, hetzner is the ABSOLUTE bottom of the barrel on pricing for no-SLA dedicated servers, this is more like buying a kitchen knife from Dollar General for $1.75 and then complaining it doesn't stay sharp very long.

You're forgetting the true bottom, OVH

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

#252

Post by wumpus »

krn wrote: post #194
mort96 wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does this have to do with anything? If the user if paying for a service, they should be getting that service. If the operator is offering a service which they can't afford to offer, that's not the user's problem.

A private operator can choose to stop providing any service to any customer at any time. Especially, if it finds it to be economically unsustainable for their business. For instance, OVH has previously terminated accounts of paying customers simply because it didn't want to do any business with people from an occupied territory[1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29680251

That case possibly looks like obeying sanctions, although they have failed to explain why they think this customer is in Crimea. For example, OVH may have discovered that the Russian ISP involved was putting fake data into geoip, and if you're aware you can't just pretend you don't know.

BTW, if it was just "we don't want to do business with you any more", that depends on what your contract says. Most consumer ISP contracts allow an ISP to drop a customer for any reason without explanation.

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

#253

Post by hengistbury »

blowski wrote: post #102
hombre_fatal wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, the customer should get to know where they are cutting corners aka what they are paying for. A better example is a Walmart selling spam as ham. How does your example make false advertisement okay? “We’ll of course they are cutting corners!” doesn’t seem like a defense at all to me.

If you buy ham from a bargain supermarket, you are effectively buying spam. I’m ok with that, yes. As a consumer, I should my use my judgement as to why the price is what it is.

I find it bizarre that you are okay with misleading sales, so long as the price is low. The only judgement you should need when making a purchase is what the product claims to be. If it claims to be one thing, but turns out to be another, then that is fraud. It's not okay to lie to your customers because you're not asking for as much money as your competitors.

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

#254

Post by krn »

mort96 wrote: post #215
krn wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A private operator can choose to stop providing any service to any customer at any time. Especially, if it finds it to be economically unsustainable for their business. For instance, OVH has previously terminated accounts of paying customers simply because it didn't want to do any business with people from an occupied territory[1]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29680251

But what does that have to do with anything? Why can't operators just not lie to their customers? Just don't call the plan "unlimited". Have well-defined limits. They don't have to be hard limits, they can be a gradual speed reduction after some amount of data per month. Just don't lie. I don't understand why you think this is a difficult concept.

Again, the limits are not fixed, and therefore cannot be clearly defined. If a customer is spending $5K / month on dedicated servers, Hetzner might earn enough from renting hardware to cover truly unlimited usage of bandwidth. If a customer is spending only $50 / month, that's a completely different case. Such a customer might simply be not valuable enough to keep.

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

#255

Post by labster »

13415 wrote: post #67
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.

That's more than a feeling. It's literally bait and switch.

I see my Marianne walking away from this deal.

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

#256

Post by MallocVoidstar »

nZUC2qDyxDA3Kpe wrote: post #165

250TB/month means this person is, basically, saturating a 1Gbps link 24/7. It's 761Mbps, which probably accounts for some overhead/latencies (f.e. downloading many pieces of a torrent or many articles of an NZB). This is blatantly NOT fair use. I doubt that they in fact have a specific limit (having worked for large hosting companies with "fair use" policies in the past, it was "you'll know it when you see it"), but…

>It's 761Mbps, which probably accounts for some overhead/latencies (f.e. downloading many pieces of a torrent or many articles of an NZB).

Hetzner tracks outbound bandwidth only, the relevant servers are uploading, not downloading, >250TB/mo.

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

#257

Post by MallocVoidstar »

coder543 wrote: post #203

As interesting as this discussion has been, I want to point out that we have no proof of any of this. - The link says "my friend got this", so even the person who authored that post isn't claiming to have received this notice. This is a second hand report, at best. For all we know, their friend received this notice years ago, and mentioned it to the OP, who didn't realize it was old news. - We don't even have a scree…

>The link says "my friend got this", so even the person who authored that post isn't claiming to have received this notice. This is a second hand report, at best. For all we know, their friend received this notice years ago, and mentioned it to the OP, who didn't realize it was old news.

There are at least two other posters in the linked thread that say they've received the same notice today (page 7). From the post history, one of them appears to work for a provider that I'd bet is reselling Hetzner boxes/slots on their boxes.

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

#258

Post by hengistbury »

dark-star wrote: post #187
worldofmatthew wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

I suppose the difference is that it would be understandably unreasonable for someone to start filling extra containers at an unlimited soda refill, they would probably understand that they are pushing their luck.

If the restaurant sold 'Unlimited Soda, 2 liters per minute, £50/month' I would expect them to deliver on the very specific quantities they promised at the price they offered. If they tell me I'm over-dispensing, I think I'd be rightfully annoyed that they have over-promised.

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

#259

Post by coder543 »

MallocVoidstar wrote: post #257
coder543 wrote: post #203

As interesting as this discussion has been, I want to point out that we have no proof of any of this. - The link says "my friend got this", so even the person who authored that post isn't claiming to have received this notice. This is a second hand report, at best. For all we know, their friend received this notice years ago, and mentioned it to the OP, who didn't realize it was old news. - We don't even have a scree…

>The link says "my friend got this", so even the person who authored that post isn't claiming to have received this notice. This is a second hand report, at best. For all we know, their friend received this notice years ago, and mentioned it to the OP, who didn't realize it was old news. There are at least two other posters in the linked thread that say they've received the same notice today (page 7). From the post h…

I definitely hadn't made it all the way to page 7 on that thread, so that is good to know, and it lends more credibility to the OP's claim. It would be nice if Hetzner would release a statement about this apparent policy change.

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

#260

Post by deadbunny »

purplerabbit wrote: post #101

I don't understand why everyone in this thread is being so pedantic, accusing Hetzner of "lying", etc. If you are subscribing to something and the subscription price changes, that's not "lying", that's one party renegotiating. Furthermore, Hetzner's legal agreement allows them to do this. Sure, Hetzner could publish "up to X TB / month" (and it sounds like it should considering their apparent audience). But let's hav…

Sympathy for a company misrepresenting their offerings and cutting people off for using what was sold to them?

Pull the other one.

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