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Hetzner cuts traffic on US VPSs, raises prices

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Re: Hetzner cuts traffic on US VPSs, raises prices

#81

Post by atwrk »

jpalomaki wrote: post #14

Am I calculating right that 20TB per month means around ~60Mbits per second for 24/7? Not a network expert, but it is hard to see how this could be sustainable for less than €5/month. Sounds a bit like the usual case where company is able to give a generous offering because most customers utilize just a small portion of it. Maybe with the attention they have been getting, they have attracted more bandwidth hungry cus…

Is that much? I use a German competitor, Contabo, and they offer 32TB even with their entry-level VPS for 4.5€ plus taxes.

Re: Hetzner cuts traffic on US VPSs, raises prices

#82

Post by locallost »

jsnell wrote: post #27
andrewcamel wrote: post #3

Are tariffs already in place or is this just a thinly-veiled scapegoat for haircutting traffic allocation by 95%? To a customer, it certainly feels like a bait and switch to sell a subscription product and once customers are embedded materially change the economic trade.

It's the language barrier. The German word Tarif doesn't mean the same as the English word tariff.

Yes, that's really funny. But even funnier, I can't think of a 1-1 English word, and even Google translate gives me tariff. It's actually just "price", but in the context of these kinds of services, could be also something like "tier" (but not to be confused with the German Tier :-)).

Re: Hetzner cuts traffic on US VPSs, raises prices

#83

Post by nottorp »

So, do bandwidth limited (instead of traffic metering limited) VPSes still exist?

I mean, to pull numbers out of ass, instead of $5 for 1.5 Tb of metered traffic on a 10 Gbps pipe, the $5 pays for 10 mpbs without metering.

I know protecting the client from extra unforeseen charges isn't predatory enough, but maybe some offerings like that still exist.

Re: Hetzner cuts traffic on US VPSs, raises prices

#84

Post by machinekob »

jsheard wrote: post #41
fabian2k wrote: post #30

Is traffic generally much more expensive in the US than in Germany? This seems to be a US-only change and I'm wondering a bit about the reasoning here and whether to expect this to also change in other regions.

Not really, CDNs with regional pricing usually charge almost if not exactly the same amount for NA and EU traffic. It's the other regions that tend to be more expensive. I wonder if this has anything to do with how Hetzner operates in each region, they run their own EU datacenters but AFAIK they just rent rack space in the US, so they're more at the mercy of upstream providers.

From Cloudflare blog about why EU prices are lower (around 50% cheaper than US at least according to cloudflare)

The value of an exchange depends on the number of networks that are a part of it. The Amsterdam Internet Exchange (AMS-IX), Frankfurt Internet Exchange (DE-CIX), and the London Internet Exchange (LINX) are three of the largest exchanges in the world.

In Europe, and most other regions outside North America, these and other exchanges are generally run as non-profit collectives set up to benefit their member networks. In North America, while there are Internet exchanges, they are typically run by for-profit companies. The largest of these for-profit exchanges in North America are run by Equinix, a data center company, which uses exchanges in its facilities to increase the value of locating equipment there. Since they are run with a profit motive, pricing to join North American exchanges is typically higher than exchanges in the rest of the world.

Re: Hetzner cuts traffic on US VPSs, raises prices

#85

Post by sokoloff »

marcinzm wrote: post #59
machinekob wrote: post #25

So it seems that trying to compete with duopoly isn't working. Can we assume it is cause there is only few big corporations dominating internet infrastructure in US compared to EU with tons of medium sized and even small business that do it? I would love some good read about US infrastructure, especially why costs are so high compared to EU?

The per capita GDP of Germany is $52,745.76. The US is $81,695.19. The EU as a whole is $43,194. Median household income is $38,971 in Germany and $80,610 in the US. When people cost twice in one place versus another companies will focus on more expensive but less people intensive approaches.

> Median household income is $38,971 in Germany

That is a median "disposable income" (after taxes and transfers), which is not directly comparable to the US figure you cited (which is gross [before taxes]).

Re: Hetzner cuts traffic on US VPSs, raises prices

#86

Post by nh2 »

WolfOliver wrote: post #70

"Until this change, customers who have used fewer resources have covered the costs, in a way, for other customers who have used much more resources." ... This argument does not make sense. I use very few resources but have to pay more.

The argument would make sense if the prices of any Hetzner service decreased (no longer necessary to substitute high traffic users).

But all prices in this message increase.

Re: Hetzner cuts traffic on US VPSs, raises prices

#88

Post by rsynnott »

atwrk wrote: post #81
jpalomaki wrote: post #14

Am I calculating right that 20TB per month means around ~60Mbits per second for 24/7? Not a network expert, but it is hard to see how this could be sustainable for less than €5/month. Sounds a bit like the usual case where company is able to give a generous offering because most customers utilize just a small portion of it. Maybe with the attention they have been getting, they have attracted more bandwidth hungry cus…

Is that much? I use a German competitor, Contabo, and they offer 32TB even with their entry-level VPS for 4.5€ plus taxes.

IIRC a while back one of the CDNs had a post about their transit costs; they worked out _way_ lower in Europe than in the US. I don’t think Hetzner Germany is increasing prices here, just the US one?

Re: Hetzner cuts traffic on US VPSs, raises prices

#89

Post by sokoloff »

jsnell wrote: post #27
andrewcamel wrote: post #3

Are tariffs already in place or is this just a thinly-veiled scapegoat for haircutting traffic allocation by 95%? To a customer, it certainly feels like a bait and switch to sell a subscription product and once customers are embedded materially change the economic trade.

It's the language barrier. The German word Tarif doesn't mean the same as the English word tariff.

It's also used in that sense in English (in telecom/utilities, airlines, etc.), just that the political/taxation usage is more heavily covered, especially lately.

Re: Hetzner cuts traffic on US VPSs, raises prices

#90

Post by esskay »

isoprophlex wrote: post #54

I run a dedicated server with them that does about 1 TB inbound / 50 GB outbound daily. If they start fucking people over on the dedicated servers as well, this product is basically dead because I can't find anywhere else that allows me to do this at the current price point... Unless of course I slap a box under my desk and hook it up to my fiber internet.

Pretty clear this is only affecting US cloud services so you arent affected.
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