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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

#281

Post by arghwhat »

whatshisface wrote: post #179
arghwhat wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is only fraud if it is intentional deception. In this case I suspect they assumed reasonable interpretation and customer interest: No realistic hosting provider can have the capacity to have every server utilize network 100%, but despite this the customer still benefits from increasing the uplink speed. In my opinion, their limits are perfectly reasonable, the configuration is in the interest of the customer, and…

So what you're saying is, if I offer 10,000 gallons of ice cream for $100, but deliver an ice cream cone, I can defend myself by saying that what I delivered was more in line with what a typical customer would want?

That's an absurd strawman.

If you really want to use this analogue, then the provider is getting upset after continuously providing 8000 gallons of ice cream every month to an individual who bought a single ice cream cone with "unlimited refills".

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

#282

Post by dark-star »

hengistbury wrote: post #258
dark-star wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-dispen…

Exactly. Hetzner doesn't sell you "850mbit/s for 24/7, 50€ a month". If they did, I agree with you that the OP should be rightfully annoyed about this letter.

Instead, Hetzner sells "unlimited bandwidth" the same way McDonalds sells "free refills". It's also understandably unreasonable for someone to start pushing data at the max rate for months non-stop, the same way it is unreasonable for people to fill 50 large cups with soda.

If people have accepted the "...within reason" argument for free refills and all-you-can-eat buffets, why not also accept it for data usage?

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

#283

Post by redeeman »

dale_glass wrote: post #219
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.

The argument is that there are no easily determinable limits. Let's say the provider has a 100 Gpbs upstream, 1000 clients, and offers a cheap plan where you pay for 1 Gbps with no limit. The provider obviously can't provide a sustained 1 Gbps to every client 24/7. Now, how do you honestly advertise that? Because you can give people 1 Gbps service so long not too many clients do that at the same time. And you can tol…

how about saying "limit: XGB/gbit/whatever, but IF we feel like it, you might be allowed more"

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

#284

Post by worldofmatthew »

dark-star wrote: post #282
hengistbury wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-dispen…

Exactly. Hetzner doesn't sell you "850mbit/s for 24/7, 50€ a month". If they did, I agree with you that the OP should be rightfully annoyed about this letter. Instead, Hetzner sells "unlimited bandwidth" the same way McDonalds sells "free refills". It's also understandably unreasonable for someone to start pushing data at the max rate for months non-stop, the same way it is unreasonable for people to fill 50 large cu…

You are wrong. The product he had was for unlimited traffic on a guaranteed 1Gbit/s port. There are no limits listed, just a provider who offered something too cheaply and wants out.

False Advertising. Simple as.

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

#285

Post by redeeman »

woojoo666 wrote: post #213
whatshisface wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what you're saying is, if I offer 10,000 gallons of ice cream for $100, but deliver an ice cream cone, I can defend myself by saying that what I delivered was more in line with what a typical customer would want?

> So what you're saying is, if I offer 10,000 gallons of ice cream for $100, but deliver an ice cream cone, I can defend myself by saying that what I delivered was more in line with what a typical customer would want? Yes, if that's truly what the typical customer would want. But I doubt a typical customer would want only an ice cream cone after seeing that offer. However, if you offer "unlimited* ice cream", adding…

that argument doesnt hold, I will give you a realworld example of why.

Some years ago I purchased a (what I thought to be) huge backpack from an ebay store. it said 200 liters. What I got, I estimate to generously be around 75 liters. (by measuring the outer dimensions)

I complained, and they refused to budge, even after I showed them photos of the measurements, and they responded with "we have sold 3597 of these backpacks and nobody else complained about the volume, you must be wrong!!!" (i dont recall exactly if it was 3597, but it was thousands, and a specific number).

Clearly most people got what they expected, a reasonably large backpack, but not a HUUGGEE backpack. Was this okay? Was it acceptable I had to argue countless times and in the end contact paypal to get my money back?

Why is it okay because its hosting services?

edit: and it wasnt just misprint on the listing, the 200L was embroided into the backpack itself, and similarly on their smaller models, with the smaller number

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

#286

Post by worldofmatthew »

gcbirzan wrote: post #216
nZUC2qDyxDA3Kpe wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doubt they have ever advertised that you can saturate your link 24/7 for multiple months.

No, they just advertised unlimited usage on 1Gbps

Guaranteed 1 Gbit/s

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

#287

Post by fl0id »

mdasen wrote: post #199
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.

It's hard to respond to stuff like this. I get the attitude: "I'm due what I paid for!" There are so many ways in our society where there's unwritten expectations. In this case, the unwritten expectation was that they weren't going to meter you and you didn't have to worry about overage charges, but that the 1Gbps should be thought of more as a burst rate than a 24/7 sustained rate. Likewise, I'd interpret it to mean…

This so much.

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

#288

Post by Volundr »

cthalupa wrote: post #273
Volundr wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is the normal operating mode of an internet connected server to send traffic to the internet - often even 100% of the time! It is? I've been admining servers for a long time and I've never run one using 100% of it's upload bandwidth 100% of the time. I've never even run one at 80%. Being that near capacity means your service is about to fall over. Frankly for most services it's probably flagging.

There are plenty of workloads where 20% slack in the workload would result in massive (both relative and in absolute terms) additional costs. In these sorts of workloads, it's incredibly common to run any individual server in the fleet very close to maximum capacity. And even if any individual workload isn't, virtualization and containers letting you bin-pack servers makes it even more common.

Such as? Sure if you are operating on massive scale or have a remarkably steady load that 20% margin might be feasible, but that's the exception not the rule. Especially for a lone piece of physical hardware that can't scale up/down.

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

#289

Post by dark-star »

worldofmatthew wrote: post #284
dark-star wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Hetzner doesn't sell you "850mbit/s for 24/7, 50€ a month". If they did, I agree with you that the OP should be rightfully annoyed about this letter. Instead, Hetzner sells "unlimited bandwidth" the same way McDonalds sells "free refills". It's also understandably unreasonable for someone to start pushing data at the max rate for months non-stop, the same way it is unreasonable for people to fill 50 large cu…

You are wrong. The product he had was for unlimited traffic on a guaranteed 1Gbit/s port. There are no limits listed, just a provider who offered something too cheaply and wants out. False Advertising. Simple as.

That still doesn't explain why this seems to be tolerated with "free refills" but not with "unlimited bandwidth".

And even if you were right, even if it's just a case of false advertising and the provider wanting to get out, there is nothing wrong (neither morally nor legally) for them to unilaterally terminate the contract, which they could have well done instead of writing that notification letter. They explicitly state this in their TOS. Most companies can still (luckily) decide which customers they serve and which they don't

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

#290

Post by nottorp »

themitigating wrote: post #108
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…

If some large American ISP did this people would be at pitchforks. Hetzner gets a defense

Actually all cheap "unlimited" hosting is like that. Someone just noticed it on Hetzner. Next month someone else will notice it on $LARGE_AMERICAN_ISP.

Although I bet $LARGE_AMERICAN_ISP will not warn you, but just shut down your site and lock you out of your data.

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