Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Hetzner cuts traffic on US VPSs, raises prices

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

441–450 of 712 posts

Re: Hetzner cuts traffic on US VPSs, raises prices

#441

Post by animex »

TZubiri wrote: post #374

This has nothing to do with Hetzner. It's because of the US tariffs. "I’ve been a big fan of Hetzner. Unfortunately they’ve made a feeble attempt to dress this change up in the name of “fairness”." Hetzner is a company know for it's precise pricing structure. An increase in prices would be correlated to an increase in costs, and in fact the next paragraph Hetzner writes: "With the new tariff structure, we want to mak…

Sorry, is Hetzner a company from Canada, China, or Mexico? Are digital goods & services indicated to be under tariff as well?

Re: Hetzner cuts traffic on US VPSs, raises prices

#442

Post by haolez »

Filligree wrote: post #417
haolez wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same with me a few years ago. Their support told me that they didn't want me as a customer. It was my first interaction with them. I swear I'm just a regular nerd with a credit card :D They are bizarre.

A credit card? That... makes some sense, then. I'd be wary if anyone trying to pay with one of those as well; they're much too rare, and I've heard it's easy to unilaterally reverse charges. Hetzner is a German company. Credit cards may be common in the USA, but they're not anywhere else.

Never had an issue with credit cards on AWS, Azure, GCP, Digital Ocean, Vultr and Scaleway.

Re: Hetzner cuts traffic on US VPSs, raises prices

#443

Post by 9cb14c1ec0 »

thisiscrazy2k wrote: post #438

I know it's a very simple question but what is the cost of bandwidth? I appreciate that a server is a machine with parts that degrade. I also appreciate that lines need to be laid for the most part and there is a need for a return on digging up the streets to lay cable. So is bandwidth going to the cable? I am asking that because I never quite understood 3g/4g/5g costs. In my youth it was $0.10US for a text message.…

On a Hetzner level, you don't quite know, as bandwidth deals between large hosting companies and IP transit providers like Hurricane Electric, Cogent, Zayo, etc, are typically protected by non-disclosure agreements.

Unless you are a big enough fish (FAANG size) in the internet pond to do free peering with all the big boys, the contract with be negotiated for a certain amount of dedicated bandwidth (specified in megabits or gigabits per second), not like the terabyte like in the consumer LTE context.

Re: Hetzner cuts traffic on US VPSs, raises prices

#444

Post by andix »

lordofgibbons wrote: post #295

I created an account with Hetzner earlier this year, and confirmed my Credit Card with them, but a few second later, they auto-suspended my account before I could log in. I emailed support, and they bluntly told me to create a new account and this time use real information... Needless to say, I bought compute elsewhere. I don't know how they're still in business.

Did you sign up as a private individual or was it a company account? I think they are extremely strict with private accounts, especially outside of EU. Most individuals only get a few resources for a few bucks per month, which probably isn't worth the business at all.

I know a few people who use Hetzner, smaller EU registered companies, zero issues. Also extending limits is just one click and gets approved after a few minutes.

And I totally get why they have to be strict. Blocked IPs are becoming an epidemic, I stopped using Digital Ocean, because I always got bad IPs, that were blocked everywhere. Also Hetzner is suffering from that. People are renting servers for little money and do bad things with the 20 TB traffic they get.

Re: Hetzner cuts traffic on US VPSs, raises prices

#445

Post by cameronh90 »

lxgr wrote: post #389
cameronh90 wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's British English. Tariff is used to mean import duties, business prices (e.g. "phone tariff") and also prison sentences (e.g. "whole life tariff"). Though given the political context, it would probably have made sense to use a different word.

It's most likely imprecise wording due to a linguistic false friend from German (Hetzner is a German company); see also my other comment.

It's not a false friend, it is the same word.

Not only do they share an etymology (the word "tariff" in English and "tarif" in German both come from the same Arabic word), they also mean the exact same thing. It's also used in a bunch of other European languages in essentially the same way, with either a similar or identical spelling.

It's only US English where some of the meanings that are still common elsewhere are no longer used. It's actually kind of amusing that Americans would struggle to understand the meaning of an English word, but a French or Italian speaker would understand it. I wonder if there are any other words like this.

Re: Hetzner cuts traffic on US VPSs, raises prices

#446

Post by tyingq »

markvdb wrote: post #433
fastily wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use OVH (VPS’s specifically), which offers unlimited bandwidth. In my experience they’ve been both reliable and affordable which is a rarity. I run a few applications that require high amounts of bandwidth, so silly caps like the ones that Hetzner are imposing are a non-starter for me

OVH and reliable, in the same sentence? They're cheap, so suitable for projects you don't mind going poof. Personal anecdote. A few years ago, I lost a lot of sleep on a domain renewal at OVH. Their incompetence was mind-boggling. A less common tld was the only slightly challenging bit. After a week of calling and emailing, and on the verge of the domain lapsing, I gave up and sent someone to the tld registry with ca…

They can be terrible. But it is dirt cheap. So if you use their stuff in a way that you can recover somewhere else if they have issues, you save a lot.

As you mentioned I would stay away from them for things like domain hosting. Just use them for cheap compute, etc.

Re: Hetzner cuts traffic on US VPSs, raises prices

#447

Post by Aachen »

9cb14c1ec0 wrote: post #431
themgt wrote: post #322

As a Hetzner bandwidth enjoyer affected by this, this is why ( HN cough ) multi-cloud/dedi k3s is great, because if you get rug pulled you just migrate to another provider with better prices. That said, $1/TB for bandwidth overage seems pretty fair. I empathize with the complaining but if the new price is such a ripoff everyone should be recommending what cloud VM provider they're migrating to for a better deal.

Shout-out to Microtronixdc, my colocation provider. For their $55/month/U colocation package, they provide unmetered gigabit for no additional cost. https://microtronixdc.com/

I see terms for hosting and domain registration and managed databases, but not colocation. Do you know if they really not care if you actually use that connection to the stated allowance?

Re: Hetzner cuts traffic on US VPSs, raises prices

#448

Post by kadoban »

8n4vidtmkvmk wrote: post #439
ndjdjddjsjj wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does feel like a case of the Costco hotdog going up to $2 followed by "grrrr. Thats it! I'm..... going to keep buying it because it is still damn cheap!"

Wait what? Did they actually raise the hotdog price? I never buy the hotdog but a price raise is indicative of bad times to come.

Costco hotdogs have been underpriced for decades. It's an intentional choice, a loss leader. It raising would be mostly meaningless.

But no, last I looked a week ago or so it was still the same price.

Re: Hetzner cuts traffic on US VPSs, raises prices

#449

Post by Aachen »

noirscape wrote: post #370
Buttons840 wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right. But unfortunately this mindset moves us closer and closer to having algorithms exclude people from society and life. And as the stories already told here show, it can happen to any of us for no apparent reason. It's like, imagine a magic wand that, if waved, would make life a little better for 99% of society, but much worse for 1%. Would it be moral to wave that wand?

Well you got a human answering the support hotline. I think that alone kinda nullifies the threat of an algorithm. The entire reason why they're such a massive problem is because Google et al. refuse to operate proper support hotlines to help people and even if they do have a support line (Facebook infamously doesn't have one and wants you to go through the courts to contact them), the support staff aren't actually e…

How does that human nullify anything if they don't unlock the account? Presuming GP entered real information, which we can only assume at this point

Re: Hetzner cuts traffic on US VPSs, raises prices

#450

Post by duskwuff »

danpalmer wrote: post #344
consumer451 wrote: post #313

Is anyone old enough to remember 1and1? Similar arc?

Maybe I'm too young to remember the good times, but to me 1and1 were just the European GoDaddy. Mostly targeting small businesses who didn't know any better and ripping them off with bad services at inflated prices, through a lot of well targeted marketing. Selling things like email with a 250MB inbox and 2MB attachment limit far beyond the time when that was a reasonable offering, and at a far higher price than that…

1and1 were also notorious for aggressively trying to collect on "debts" - more than one person I know had 1and1 send debt collection letters to their parents over renewal fees for hosting plans they didn't even want.
Post reply on HN