It is our opinion that there have been far too many stories of hosts taking advantage of their customers by claiming absurdly high bandwidth transfers. The latest story to cross our desks of this kind is from a person running a simple on-line forum, who was charged for 13GB of bandwidth at the rate of $20 per GB over their 4GB limit! ALL FOR A TEXT BASED BBS!?!?!


Here is the mathematics of why this claim is so absurd:

Text based files are probably the smallest thing transferred on the Internet. A single character, a letter on a page is worth 1 byte. A page with 5,000 letters (a pretty hefty page of text) is therefore approximately 5k or 5 kilobytes (actually 1 k is 1028 bytes). 1000k = 1 Megabyte (That's one million bytes of information.) 1000 Megabytes = 1 Gigabyte (GB).

So how many 5k pages would need to be transferred to reach 13 GB (Gigabytes) per month?

Answer - 260 million pages per month! (2,600,000).

Knowing that forum messages are typically about one tenth the the size of the 5k page this calculation is based on. So with 13GB of monthly transfer we could very well have a range exceeding billions of pages of forum posts per month! NOW THAT'S ONE HOT ON-LINE FORUM!!!

The person who described this story said, "Well, you know us ladies, talk, talk, talk." My response was that absolutely no one group of people could take that much in a month, if even in a lifetime. I also said that the host making this claim should be seriously taken to task over this one.

Some of you charging for bandwidth should be ashamed of yourself.

Excuse me? Do you think everyone should just give it all away for free?

[Skipped another example of bad host behavior, which is so common that it would be laughable if it weren't so pervasive in this industry.]

How can you offer unlimited bandwidth?

Originally posted by Annette


Excuse me? Do you think everyone should just give it all away for free?

[Skipped another example of bad host behavior, which is so common that it would be laughable if it weren't so pervasive in this industry.]

(Huh!?!? Were did that come from? How exactly did charging astronomical and down right fraudulent amounts for drummed up, phony bandwidth changes, swing clear the other way into giving, "it all away for free"???)

Answer - No, not at all. In fact I would want every host in the world to charge mega rates for bandwidth. After that, just do me and your customers who object a favor and send them our way. :D

First off, most hosts don't rip off their customers by charging them absurd bandwidth prices.

If the person in question was told their site was using 13GB, the first thing that he/she should have said is: show me the stats. If the host can show webstats that say the site did indeed use 13GB of bandwidth, then it's very clear who's right. I've yet to hear of a host that's forged weblogs. HOWEVER - if the hosts refuses, it's a pretty safe bet the extra bandwidth claim is fake.

Simple, eh?

Originally posted by JoeM


(Huh!?!? Were did that come from? How exactly did charging astronomical and down right fraudulent amounts for drummed up, phony bandwidth changes, swing clear the other way into giving, "it all away for free"???)

Answer - No, not at all. In fact I would want every host in the world to charge mega rates for bandwidth. After that, just do me and your customers who object a favor and send them our way. :D

It came from your own subject line: "Some of you charging for bandwidth should be ashamed of yourself". We do charge for excess bandwidth, although we certainly don't charge outrageous rates for it.

While I agree with you in principle regarding unscrupulous actions by hosts, your calculations do not include other transfer that may be charged by whatever host described in your post. FTP? Mail? What else is counted? While $20/G overage is ludicrous, it is the responsiblity of the client to know that rate, and the responsibility of the host to make it clear what that rate is. Personally, if I were that client, I'd demand to see the transfer totals, inclusive of everything that is counted against the account, before I'd pay a dime.

Originally posted by JoeM
So how many 5k pages would need to be transferred to reach 13 GB (Gigabytes) per month?

Answer - 260 million pages per month! (2,600,000).

Well, a forum page does not consist of only test. There are also a lot of images (logos, buttons, etc) which would probably take more bandwidth than the actual HTML. Specially, if it's a forum like this one with tons of icons, smilies, avatars, etc.

I'm not saying that she actually used 17GB of bandwidth, because that is a lot! Actually, it sounds like she has been scamed. I have never seen a host charge $20/GB and then don't even warn the client when they have used up their monthly bandwidth in the first 7 days of the month.

That's bad!
:uzi:

Planet Z - What you say is logical, but only to a degree.

Certainly most of us who post here would know to ask for authentic stats. However, in a lot of these cases, the hosted customer does not know any better than to trust what the host provider says. Percentage wise, there is a huge range of both individual and business hosting customers that don't know a web log from a charcoal brickette. Besides that, when is the last time you have looked at a raw server traffic log and tried to make sence of it? 99% of us depend on the reports we get that come from,,, guess who?

By in large I think that hosts play it fair. But over the last five years I have seen more and more host providers take advantage of their customers in increasing numbers, in a very similar manner than those crooked mechanics who take advantage of people who don't know about cars.

It's bad enough that a lot of hosts, dare I say it, over-sell your servers like crazy, i.e. selling 10 GB of web accounts from 500 MB of rented server space, knowing damn well that very few who will ever get close to filling out that 50 MB account plans. And of course until they do, the unused part of those account plans just don't sit there with a "sold" sign on them. Am I right guys? (Wink, wink.)

Hands down, there has been a real need for some good, sharp consumer advocates in this area for a long, long time.

I'm not sure why some people took offense -- maybe I missed something? His subject and content (I thought) said: "Some of you charging for bandwidth should be ashamed of yourself."... "Some of", as in the one's that charge $20/GIG, I thought was what that was about?? As for an online forum moving 13 GIG's a month, it's not that impossible.

I'll use the amount of 1,000 in place of 1,024 as some stats and hosts count it this way: Basic HTML in web pages alone, are usually about that (5KB) alone, and the average forum page/post from what I've seen (for separate posts) (again, in my experience) is more like 10 KB each. However, assuming it is 5 KB a page, then; 10 page loads and that's 50 KB, 100 page loads would be a 500 KB, 200 page loads would be 1,000 KB (1 Meg), 10,000 hits would be 10 Megs, 100,000 hits would be 1 GIG. So, 1,300,000 (1.3 million) hits would be about 13 GIG's, not 260 million hits.

How many hits does this site get a day/month? If they get 45,000 page views a day (about, maybe less), then they could very well be moving 13 to 15 GIG's a month -- and that's not a huge amount of hits -- although it's decent. One of my chat sites had pages about 7 to 10 K each and at some low points, I was getting about 40,000 to 50,000 hits a day and I was moving about 12 GIG's of bandwidth a month. Maybe it was more like 70,000 hits on average, per day, but I don't recall. Anyway, it wouldn't take anywhere neat 260 million hits to get to 13 GIG's. That would be like 8.6 million hits a day over a month. That's about 350,000 hits an hour or something (like 6,000 hits a minute). I think though, that the web host should at least have a warning to the client if they are getting too close to their limit, if it's going to be $20/GIG for bandwidth overage.

Originally posted by JoeM

By in large I think that hosts play it fair. But over the last five years I have seen more and more host providers take advantage of their customers in increasing numbers, in a very similar manner than those crooked mechanics who take advantage of people who don't know about cars.


On a more philosophical note, do you believe (as I do) that this rise in such activity by hosts is the result of the ease with which many people not only get into this business but the "easy buck" mentality that seems to be more pervasive these days with the literal explosion of the number of hosts out there?

Originally posted by Tim_Greer
I'm not sure why some people took offense -- maybe I missed something? His subject and content (I thought) said: "Some of you charging for bandwidth should be ashamed of yourself."...

And how!

Tim, keep in mind this is was not a chat forum, which I know can amp up the bandwidth. And yeah there is more than pages of text involved, i.e. header text, lil icons, etc. Still however, one would have to admit, we would have to be talking about a gigantically popular forum here for these numbers to even come close to making sense, which in this case it clearly was not.

I guess, my main point was that this incident fits a case of abuse on the part of the host provider, the pattern of which I have been seeing more and more of here lately. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm no morality cop among host providers. It's just that ya gotta think at one point those few host provider rip-offs are going to give us all a bad name, if indeed this has not already started to happen.

We issue between 1gb-2gb-5gb-8gb transfer per month.
Yes, our pricing is high for extra bandwidth. We have to pay $10/gb and our charge is 15/gb for overage.
Weve had VERY FEW that ever went over their allotted BW amount on our plans.

Some hosts do charge absurd rates. However, it is the responsibility of each customer to know what the bandwidth charges are. Thus, if they are paying $20 per gb, it is with their knowledge. Presumably, there are logs that can verify how much was used.

17 gb of bandwidth for a forum is not difficult, much less impossible. Linear programs like UBB are grossly inefficient. As the pages get longer, they get bigger. If the forums have enough popularity, 17 gb can easily be reached, and surpassed. Your calculations are faulty and do not take several things into account.

I believe this forum does 20 or more. I know others that do as well.

I realize what you mean and yes, a forum doesn't usually generate the same amount of traffic and that would be a pretty popular one to reach that amount. This forum (WHT) is supposed to be moving like 15 to 25 GIG's a month (and I think it was more like 25) and that was perhaps even with mod_gzip (but maybe that was before mod_gzip was installed -- which would usually cut the data tramsfer in 1/2 for a lot of people with newer browsers -- and I see most pages here load at 10 KB for a large page and when I hit "back" and my browser loads the page from my cache, it'll report it at 75 kB... So you can imagine how much data can be transfered from a web board even. And, WHT might get a decent amount of hits, but judging by the posts and members, it's not really that much -- this is why I was wondering about how many hits this forum got.

As far as hosts, and even one's that have no ill intentions, many charge too much for things. It's just a fact of the business. Few web hosts are that good, and even the one's that are, often charge more than they should -- but some do also pay a lot more for better data center access and better connectivity as well -- so it's difficult to say. However, no one here will argue that $20/GIG is far, far too much. They should also have warned the user before this happened. $8/GIG is really pushing it and most web hosts don't enforce the overage fee's for sites that are only a few GIG's over in an entire month, as long as they have the bandwidth to spare. Another $80 for 4 GIG's, is just insane, I agree. 13 GIG's of not, you can get a _very_ nice plan from a very good web host for that and have more than a 13 GIG limit to use.

As far as morals of online services, including host providers, very few fit into the high mark rating. Of course, this is just speaking of the one's I know about and have had experience with and knowledge of, but most of us here know what I'm saying. There's simply too many people in this business that don't know enough to be qualified, if they know anything at all. It reminds me of hosts that say they are on their own NOC -- they say they give great prices and have multiple OC12 lines or higher -- yet they only sell you bandwidth at $3 to $4+ a GIG!!? You can get a T-1 and have it be a little less or around $3/GIG almost anywhere in the US.

Why can't these people that claim they have these huge lines afford to give it for $1 to $2 a GIG? Because it's more BS and more deception. Anyone with multiple lines that big, can afford to make enough of a profit to give deals at $2/GIG or less and not be charging $3, $4, or $5+ GIG for overage. Now, people having collocated or dedicated servers that have to be hosted with a NOC or datacenter have to pay the resold fee, even if they aren't technically a reseller -- and some collocate with people that collocate. I.e., a company on VDI selling dedicated servers or offering colotation. It's better to just go through VDI -- unless that company is buying in bulk and gets such a good deal that they can pas sit down, but that's unlikely. I find it odd that people with OC48 + lines can't beat or offer better deals than 99% of any other (even resold) of the many 2 bit hosts on the Net that really do give what they say even (I mean 2-bit as in small, not in a bad service way).

Now, most likely, your client paid a $15/mo. or something fee, I assume? I bet that the bandwidth overage for each 1 GIG over, was probably equal or more than their entire hosting plan that seems to have a 9 GIG/mo limit? People do this for a few reasons and one it to try and ensure the client's stay within their limits -- why? Because most hosts oversell and plan that certain client's won't go over, because as you and I and everyone else knows, they can't realistically afford to allow all the user's to consume their bandwidth limit. So, they try and deter people from wanting to and $20/GIG overage is a good way -- and _if_ they do go over, they make a killing. If I was that client, or anyone else, I'd _never_ sign up with _any_ web host that charges more than $4/GIG overage -- and that is not to say that host is bad at all if they do, but it can get expensive if this sort of thing happens.

$4 is not that bad, seeing how most hosts have to pay that (or around) for their bandwidth, but there's a lot of good hosts that charge < $4 GIG overage that you at least don't have to worry if you start going ober. Get a host that states they'll give you ample warning before you go over -- and by all means, make sure that host offers raw access logs -- I mean, come on, that's a 1 second job to add another log directive to the web server configuration for a host, even just one host in particular and no host should refuse this feature to any client. Then, you can check and run stats programs on your own log file and give yourself even more warning. Basically, any host that charges $20/GIG overage, you shouldn't be on anyway, and you're just asking for trouble.

Okay, to be fair, I'd say to not get on any host that charges over $8/GIG, but for me personally, I wouldn't if they charged over $4 and probably over $3, because I know how cheap decent quality bandwidth costs these days and no host is going to be paying over $4/GIG for bandwidth themselves. Anyway, that's just my thoughts on it, but I don't know why someone would have signed up with a host that had such steep overage -- people should wonder why they can get an account with 9 GIG's a month allowance, yet each 1 GIG over that would be $20/GIG? Yikes...

Originally posted by Martie
We issue between 1gb-2gb-5gb-8gb transfer per month.
Yes, our pricing is high for extra bandwidth. We have to pay $10/gb and our charge is 15/gb for overage.
Weve had VERY FEW that ever went over their allotted BW amount on our plans.

You as the host, (or you as a reseller or something?) are paying $10/GIG yourself??? Wow!!! That better be some _very_, _very_ stable and redundant connections. I don't believe anyone should just go for the cheapest, I wouldn't myself, but I don't see how you can make money when you're paying $10/GIG yourself??

Originally posted by Tim_Greer


You as the host, (or you as a reseller or something?) are paying $10/GIG yourself??? Wow!!! That better be some _very_, _very_ stable and redundant connections. I don't believe anyone should just go for the cheapest, I wouldn't myself, but I don't see how you can make money when you're paying $10/GIG yourself??



:o Ooops! Should have clarified that I guess.
I pay 10.00gb for overage over 50gb.

Oh, no problem.. I was busy ranting about various things, as usual... and I hadn't noticed this guy posted in the advertising forum offering unlimited bandwidth.. now I'm so disillusioned... I give up on this thread. *sob*

Yep. Another host trying to make people believe that sack of manure is really air freshener.:sickface: They have a spammer's mentality, thinking people are morons and will believe it. We know who the real morons are.

Originally posted by Martie




:o Ooops! Should have clarified that I guess.
I pay 10.00gb for overage over 50gb.


Whoaaaaa 10 per gb ? that is a LOT!
I pay around 2-4 per gb, 5 bucks tops and I will NEVER pay more than 5.

lol guys! I CAN'T STOP LAUGHING!!! This linksky guy is absurd! no offence.

JoeM I have a site that uses 5 gigs a day. May I get an account?

Originally posted by JoeM
The latest story to cross our desks of this kind is from a person running a simple on-line forum, who was charged for 13GB of bandwidth at the rate of $20 per GB over their 4GB limit! ALL FOR A TEXT BASED BBS!?!?!

JoeM:
Is this a made up story?

If not who was the host so others don't make the same mistake.

I would just like to say there are hosts out there that charge you for bandwidth even when you have used next to nothing, if they thing your a dumb wit they will try and take advantage of this.

I personally have only had it happen once (not about to name names)

With my own hosting company, I have web stats that let the customer see what files are using allot of bandwidth so if they can see why, when they can see what files are using allot of bandwidth they can pinpoint the problem and make them smaller or remove them etc...

Just my 2p

Luke Antins
:D

This page, up to and including the reply by HospExp (6/17/2001 6:28am EDT), as displayed on my browser took 99,679 bytes of bandwidth to download.

I suspect your calculations might not be on target.

Originally posted by eddie


JoeM:
Is this a made up story?

If not who was the host so others don't make the same mistake.

No made up story as far as I can tell. It came from a telephone call from a prospective customer. A friend of a friend kind of thing. When I get the full skoop, I will let you know.

Originally posted by venomx
JoeM I have a site that uses 5 gigs a day. May I get an account?


Yes of course. If you have that much traffic, I will also consider buying you a dedicated server and host you for free in exchange for us putting our banner on your home page. For us it would most likely be the deal of the year in terms of advertising exposure.

Indeed, we have struck an arrangement exactly like that for one of our customers who is a household name in auto parts manufacturing and is using upwards of 26GB per month.

You guys who bang your customers for big bucks in bandwidth without recognizing the true commodity of the internet are missing the boat in a very large way.

Originally posted by Tim_Greer


You as the host, (or you as a reseller or something?) are paying $10/GIG yourself??? Wow!!! That better be some _very_, _very_ stable and redundant connections. I don't believe anyone should just go for the cheapest, I wouldn't myself, but I don't see how you can make money when you're paying $10/GIG yourself??

Well .... $10/GB just does not make any sense, no matter how good/stable the NOC is ... Even above.net sells its bandwith much lower than that (yes, directly with above.net), which is around $600-$700/mbps ...
DI charges around $3/GB (average) and DI too is really good NOC...

I just can't imagine why one would want to pay $10/GB ... Are you a reseller of somebody who is a reseller of somebody else who turns out to be a reseller yet still for somebody else?


Having said all this, I may have carelessly take assumption that y ou are paying $10/GB for a connectivity in USA (and thus, consdidered very expensive). But you may also pay your connectivity in England (or somewhere else) in which case, your price can be relatively cheap if not relatively average... I don't know ... My apology if I jump into conclusion too fast ...



cheers,
:beer:

Originally posted by JoeM
If you have that much traffic, I will also consider buying you a dedicated server and host you for free in exchange for us putting our banner on your home page.

Is that also true for me? And for everyone on WHT?

You guys who bang your customers for big bucks in bandwidth without recognizing the true commodity of the internet are missing the boat in a very large way.

Of course, of course.

Originally posted by JoeM



Yes of course. If you have that much traffic, I will also consider buying you a dedicated server and host you for free in exchange for us putting our banner on your home page. For us it would most likely be the deal of the year in terms of advertising exposure.
...


Aren't you assuming that the amount of traffic is directly correlated with home page hits?

I have a site that has very few home page hits (i.e., "advertising exposure") yet still moves a lot of traffic.

JoeM, you can't win this race even though you seem like an honest guy, bandwidth must be paid for and sites do exploit bandwidth.

You don't offer unlimited bandwidth.

You actually offer unmetered data transfer limited by your terms and conditions, the connectivity of rackshack, the network card in your Cobalt RaQ.

You do penalise sites for being successful, if a large site hosted with you say a search engine with 350gb per month mainly static with low resource cgi scripts , you'd boot them under your terms and conditons. That would be penalising.

Sticking banner and buttons on popular sites might be gold in your mind, but site owners might not take so well, especially if you're not upfront about this. I'd consider this penalising.

"Oh by the way, you can have unlimited bandwidth, and we don't penalise you for being sucessful. Oh and I forgot to mention, you have to stick a button on your site to us that you could be earning X revenue per month on, may look out of place and is damn annoying." What if I don't want to stick your button on my site, what if I tell you to shove it because you told me I could have unlimited bandwidth (see defintion of unlimited below).

If you say unlimited bandwidth you should offer unlimited bandwidth, which you can't. I'm sure we'll revisit this topic when you have to boot clients because you couldn't offer them unlimited bandwidth or when you have to close-shop when rackshack bill you thousands for additional data transfer.

unlimited:
1) Having no restrictions or controls: an unlimited travel ticket.
2) Having or seeming to have no boundaries; infinite: an unlimited horizon
3) Without qualification or exception; absolute: unlimited self-confidence.

:rolleyes:

http://www.linksky.com/indexR.html

WE DO NOT pass your data off to other up-stream providers. We are not a "middle man". It is a fact that nearly all other hosting companies are.

This one always upsets me. You play the "we are better then other host because..." yet in fact you are no better. You are a middle man. Are those your pipes? Are you saying that LinkSky is a tier 1? You resell bandwidth. That makes you a middle man. This also makes unlimited bandwidth impossible.

Last I checked, www.ev1.net (RackShack) does not give your resold RAQ's (you are a middle man with hardware too) unlimited BW. So how can you offer it?

Our network operations center (NOC) is manned 24/7, not just monitored. Some hosts rely on pagers and e-mail alerts when problems arise.

Last I checked, this is how you need to do it from RackShack. Or did RS give you a Bat Phone and teleporting device because you are so huge?

When you post to a forum boasting your honesty and integrity, maybe you should look a little closer at your self before hand. I find numerous things on your site saying you do not do what other host do. That is BS. You do.

.......are missing the boat in a very large way.

When you basically say we are idiots, and you are not, I was really hoping to see the Holy Grail of web hosting. Instead I found a Cobalt RAQ reseller based out of Santa Rosa.

Originally posted by UmBillyCord
http://www.linksky.com/indexR.html
Last I checked, this is how you need to do it from RackShack. Or did RS give you a Bat Phone and teleporting device because you are so huge?


:emlaugh::laugh:



When you post to a forum boasting your honesty and integrity, maybe you should look a little closer at your self before hand. I find numerous things on your site saying you do not do what other host do. That is BS. You do.
When you basically say we are idiots, and you are not, I was really hoping to see the Holy Grail of web hosting. Instead I found a Cobalt RAQ reseller based out of Santa Rosa.

exactly! you can fool your customers BUT not the members here in WHT.
If you are really that HUGE? build your OWN NOC :)


my.02

And people wondered why I took offense to his title line of "Some of you charging for bandwidth should be ashamed of yourself"...

Yes of course. If you have that much traffic, I will also consider buying you a dedicated server and host you for free in exchange for us putting our banner on your home page. For us it would most likely be the deal of the year in terms of advertising exposure.

Only if the year was 1999.

You guys who bang your customers for big bucks in bandwidth without recognizing the true commodity of the internet are missing the boat in a very large way.

Yes, but that boat is the Titanic, and the band is singing Nearer my God to thee.

The cash value of a banner ad, even on the most popular sites is pretty minimal. A guy I know who runs a site that gets a tremendous amount of traffic can't give banner ads away.

anyone who thinks that giving away hosting in exchange for free advertising is the deal of the year should please contact brooklynbridge.com, they are looking for a buyer.


When you post to a forum boasting your honesty and integrity, maybe you should look a little closer at your self before hand. I find numerous things on your site saying you do not do what other host do. That is BS. You do.
When you basically say we are idiots, and you are not, I was really hoping to see the Holy Grail of web hosting. Instead I found a Cobalt RAQ reseller based out of Santa Rosa.

Or as the man said: Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.

Originally posted by Walter



Is that also true for me? And for everyone on WHT?



Walter, perhaps you should take a look at some old news reels from the '80s. Communism has fallen. The walls are down. Really! Check it out!
---------------------

This would of course entirely depend on the nature of your business, it's compatibility with our's and how such negotiations proceed.

Have you ever read that book, "You can negotiate anything!" It's very true, business structures are only in place as a starting point if you know how to see beyond them. On the other hand we do realize that some PEOPLE are not negotiable. Every deal we make is going to be different in that regard.

Originally posted by JoeM

Have you ever read that book, "You can negotiate anything!" It's very true...

Yes, I have. No, it isn't.

Yes, I have. No, it isn't.

lol. You go girl. :D

Joe,

You are so amusing. You truly have the mentality of a spammer. You post on one of the toughest forums with this particular lie, unlimited bandwidth, and think you can convince us that somehow it's not a lie because you are so sincere about it. When presented with facts, you avoid them, reassert your sincerity, and begin making snide and sarcastic remarks to us. You also insinuate that we are behind the times.

Instead of quitting, since you will never convince us that a lie has suddenly become the truth, you just go on and on. Frankly, I've seen some spam that is more convincing than you. Your intelligence is every bit a match for your ethics.

"A new concept in hosting.....

sheep manure instead of horse manure."

"A new concept in hosting.....

sheep manure instead of horse manure."


LOL! i can't help myself but to ROFL!
Originally posted by Duster
Joe,

You are so amusing. You truly have the mentality of a spammer. You post on one of the toughest forums with this particular lie, unlimited bandwidth, and think you can convince us that somehow it's not a lie because you are so sincere about it. When presented with facts, you avoid them, reassert your sincerity, and begin making snide and sarcastic remarks to us. You also insinuate that we are behind the times.

Instead of quitting, since you will never convince us that a lie has suddenly become the truth, you just go on and on. Frankly, I've seen some spam that is more convincing than you. Your intelligence is every bit a match for your ethics.

"A new concept in hosting.....

sheep manure instead of horse manure."

Originally posted by Duster
Joe,

You are so amusing. You truly have the mentality of a spammer. You post on one of the toughest forums with this particular lie, unlimited bandwidth, and think you can convince us that somehow it's not a lie because you are so sincere about it. When presented with facts, you avoid them, reassert your sincerity, and begin making snide and sarcastic remarks to us. You also insinuate that we are behind the times.

Instead of quitting, since you will never convince us that a lie has suddenly become the truth, you just go on and on. Frankly, I've seen some spam that is more convincing than you. Your intelligence is every bit a match for your ethics.

"A new concept in hosting.....

sheep manure instead of horse manure."


The only one that goes on and on is you, and the likes of you. Your baseless claims and insults only reveal your own character, or without a doubt, the major lack thereof.

Currently in another wing of this forum (and the ONLY reason I keep posting here for the moment), I keep getting asked by people stuff like, "Hey, I've got 150 GB of downloads per month. Let me sign up and pay only 10 bucks a month of a LinkSky account." And I keep saying in so many words, "Okay, lets talk." To that they just run back into the shadows from which they came, never to be heard from again.

Duster, perhaps one day you will grow up and see that character is built upon a certain amount of boldness, then the follow-up which is to stand squarly behind ones words and actions.

Originally posted by JoeM
Some of you charging for bandwidth should be ashamed of yourself.

It is our opinion that there have been far too many stories of hosts taking advantage of their customers by claiming absurdly high bandwidth transfers. The latest story to cross our desks of this kind is from a person running a simple on-line forum, who was charged for 13GB of bandwidth at the rate of $20 per GB over their 4GB limit! ALL FOR A TEXT BASED BBS!?!?!


This is the original post. I find the calculations to be flawed in the rest of the post, so I'm not going to repost them. This forum did/does over 20 gigs/mo so 13 gigs/mo isn't absurd for an online forum.

I believe the point of all this was, however, that they were charged $20/gig, which the author feels is too high. OLM charged this much for many years, and I'm sure some people pay more than this, some pay less. If you sign up for a host, know how much you'll be paying.

Frankly, the rest of this thread is ruining my vacation.