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

451–460 of 712 posts

Re: Hetzner cuts traffic on US VPSs, raises prices

#451

Post by Aachen »

dpkirchner wrote: post #436
Filligree wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I haven't done business in Germany or used German banks -- is it hard to get them to reverse charges?

Well yes, you go to court if you can't agree with the merchant on anything. They're the competent authority to settle disputes

When I pay for something, now the other party has the money, that's how money works. If I trust them that little, I should probably be using escrow but this costs extra and so it imo doesn't make sense to pay that fee for every transaction - as one does with this chargeback guarantee thing. Probabilistic societies where you're excluded based on bad odds or credit scores is what you get with that system (I've been on the losing end of that, not because I've ever had any debt (too little money) but precisely because they had no positive data because I never needed a loan, and so you can't pay for stuff in certain countries because they require a credit card)

Re: Hetzner cuts traffic on US VPSs, raises prices

#452

Post by Phil_Latio »

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.…

Cloud providers make their money with the high bandwith costs. I can get 10 gbit/s line for ~$3,000 a month with a dedicated server. That's 3 PB of data and according to AWS cloudfront calculator it would cost ~$90,000 with them...

So yeah, people get ripped off, just like with SMS in the past. Most don't know this or think it's fine, because "cloud" has benefits that justify the costs in the end ("I don't have to pay for sys admin!").

Re: Hetzner cuts traffic on US VPSs, raises prices

#453

Post by tredre3 »

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…

OVH's infrastructure is absolutely very reliable.

The pain begins when you need support. Just like you, I have lost a lot of sleep over domains held hostage by their incompetence (for almost a year in one instance). Lesson learned, never use OVH for domains.

The support for their dedicated servers is just as bad, mind you, but short of a hardware failure you really don't need them. I have several years of uptime on all my current services.

So for personal projects their vps/dedicated is still a fantastic value.

Re: Hetzner cuts traffic on US VPSs, raises prices

#454

Post by 9cb14c1ec0 »

Aachen wrote: post #447
9cb14c1ec0 wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

https://microtronixdc.com/products/colocation

Their big selling point is that they truly provide unmetered connections.

Re: Hetzner cuts traffic on US VPSs, raises prices

#455

Post by consumer451 »

princevegeta89 wrote: post #429
consumer451 wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am very ignorant here, so my apologies, but... When someone runs a dedicated server these days, does this mean a one-off linux install? Or is this more likely to be a docker install so that it's portable?

It's an actual entire machine given to you. I remember there were a few options for me from Ubuntu, Debian to Red Hat to choose from, but all of them would also have preconfigured system users and some level of administration done by the provider. But other than that, it's an actual bare metal machine and I installed Ubuntu on it and threw in a giant heap of services that have been running on it for more than a year…

If you could rewind the clock, would you have started setting it up any differently, like in a container?

I am just curious what your options would be now if you wanted to migrate. Would you just copy your bash history to a local text file for reference, and then repeat the steps on a new server?

Re: Hetzner cuts traffic on US VPSs, raises prices

#456

Post by Aachen »

qwertox wrote: post #318
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.

When I ordered a VPS at Netcup (a Hetzner alternative) they called me and asked me for the name of the hotel next to my place to check if I really lived at the address I provided. I guess that if i would have needed to look it up, that is, struggled a bit with the answer, they would have denied me as a customer.

Just today, a remote colleague mentioned staying at whatever hotel near the office. I had never heard of it: as a local, I don't tend to use the hotels here!

Seems like a really weird choice of question. Thinking of germans, a bakery seems more likely something they'd know of; perhaps a supermarket works more internationally (I'm sure there's exceptions to that as well). Maybe the distance in driving, cycling, or public transport minutes to surrounding cities could be a universal question to ask

Re: Hetzner cuts traffic on US VPSs, raises prices

#457

Post by lxgr »

cameronh90 wrote: post #445
lxgr wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Having the same etymology and even having the exact same spelling in two languages does not disqualify a word from being a false friend at all!

Take "gift", for example: "Gift" means "poison" in German, despite both the English and German word deriving from the same Proto-Germanic root, meaning "to give".

> (the word "tariff" in English and "tarif" in German both come from the same Arabic word), they also mean the exact same thing

In this very thread you can find a pretty good counterexample to that proposition, at least in American English.

Re: Hetzner cuts traffic on US VPSs, raises prices

#458

Post by BrutalCoding »

consumer451 wrote: post #358
princevegeta89 wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who's already using the dedicated server for a ton of things, I have been really grateful. But now, I have a new question, are they going to do this to their dedicated servers as well?

I am very ignorant here, so my apologies, but... When someone runs a dedicated server these days, does this mean a one-off linux install? Or is this more likely to be a docker install so that it's portable?

Yeah, it's a one-off install. In my case, I did Proxmox[1] for a while with VM's and LXC's, with some of my VM's and unprivileged LXC's running Docker (compose) too because it made the installation of said software easier. It's great, but I'm moving over to switch to Debian with Incus[2] instead of Proxmox. Just for fun mostly.

[1] https://www.proxmox.com/en/ [2] https://linuxcontainers.org/incus/introduction/

Re: Hetzner cuts traffic on US VPSs, raises prices

#459

Post by jsheard »

tredre3 wrote: post #453
markvdb wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

OVH's infrastructure is absolutely very reliable. The pain begins when you need support. Just like you, I have lost a lot of sleep over domains held hostage by their incompetence (for almost a year in one instance). Lesson learned, never use OVH for domains. The support for their dedicated servers is just as bad, mind you, but short of a hardware failure you really don't need them. I have several years of uptime on a…

> OVH's infrastructure is absolutely very reliable.

Well except that time one of their datacenters burned down, likely due to insufficient fire suppression, and the data backups were also lost because they kept them in the same building as the originals.

https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/ovhcloud-ordered-...

These reports criticize OVHcloud for having no fire prevention system and no power cut-off on the site, for using wooden floors, and for a free-cooling design that created airflows that spread the fire. The reports also say that water was detected near electrical systems before the fire broke out.

It takes quite a while to regain trust after shitting the bed that badly.

Post reply on HN