Project Imperial is connected to the Internet through 13 Gigabit Ethernet links from six separate backbone providers, who each run fiber optic cable into the data center through two separate entry points. As of November 2003, the facility is home to over 18,000 Windows and Linux servers, which makes Project Imperial the world's largest dedicated hosting data center.

13Gbit and they have 18.000 with average 700GB-1000GB (some 5Mbit/10Mbit)

So they would need somthing like 45Gbit or more right?

Sure they're overselling a lot, but they have that science down pretty well - Look at their network page at http://ev1servers.net/english/aboutus/networks.asp , they have good enough bandwidth to spare. They've had enough to avert packetloss when ALL of their Verio lines went down a few months ago.

-Josh

EV1Servers are overselling like a lot of other providers, but they have proven to be able to manage the network and not overselling with the result of downtime and slow connections.

I can’t remember the last time EV1Servers was completely down.

In most cases means overselling cheaper bandwidth for the customers. Even high bandwidth usage customers can get some great deals because the unused bandwidth is not just wasted.

The key to this whole thing is that almost nobody will use all the allowed bandwidth in one month. I recall that Headsurfer posted that they've had 20 servers or so that did actually push more then their allowed bandwidth in one month..

I have no idea what they are doing with their Gigabit lines, but when i look at the stats, their Time Warner line went down for 2 hours together with their Cogent line and one of the Allegiance and the Williams gigabit line.

After those lines (that's 4Gbit of their backbone that's offline for 2 hours we're talking about) are back up another Gbit line goes down for another 3,5 hours (their other Allegiance link) and it's offline right now again.

The funny thing is, every single time i check their stats (not daily, but regulary) at least one of their lines has to be offline, don't know why, but it's a fact..

So overselling is more like a standard than an exeption.

I got the impression that overselling 4x or more like this case was not appriciated.

When I see a reseller acount offering 5GB Space and 100Gb traffic for 40 a month. (overselling like 2x) they get alot of bad reactions.

I mean if someone offerd 5GB space and 50Gb traffic for 40 a month, people don't say anything. Yet if the same host claimed 5GB and 215Gb traffic for 40 a month, people would respond negativly about the overselling. While if you take the 1000Gb traffic a server and do it times 18.000 (they claim to have over 18.000) you end up with 56.25Gbit or 4.3x overselling and people find it normaal.

Strange to me.

So in reality if I get a server with 1000Gb (4.3x overselling so really 235GB) and then make 10 resellers with each 200GB (overselling 2x) In reallity I just sold them 23.5GB garentee and had them pay for 200GB! making it 8.5x overselling!

What if from the 18.000, 8.000 use 40% and the other 10.000 only 25% of 1000GB? This is a realistic situation. That would need 18Gbit, but they only have 13Gbit! Realistic right?

Or there overselling is extreem, or the 18000+ servers is b*lls*it

Overselling and the inherent risks vary widely at different levels.

For instance, if you are selling reseller accounts and have a 10 GB, 20 GB, 30GB, and 40GB plan, you better not oversell or do it on a very limited basis. The reason-the vast majority of people on each plan with use most of the plan. As an example, why would someone subscribe to the 40GB plan if they weren't going to use at least 30 GB.

Now for a data center the size of EV1, there is considerably less risk. The have a track record on the usage of their clients. They are fully aware of the requirements of bandwidth. Also, they could easily add additional lines if necessary.

Or there overselling is extreem, or the 18000+ servers is b*lls*it There is no call for that comment or language. First, I would not call their overselling extreme - it is well managed and controlled. Second, there is no doubt about them having the number of servers they say.

As mentioned, EV1 is a large datacenter and does keep track of their bandwidth usage and I wouldn't be surprised if they had 2-3 backup GigE lines incase of an emergency that they could get up in a matter of hours.

This pops up regularly around here, and yet the EV1 network speeds on.

Remember, overselling at this level is much easier than a single server. Here, for EV1 to get in a hole, not one or two servers need to spike, but hundreds if not thousands of servers would need to spike at the same time.

By the way the word is "extreme".

Chet

When overselling on 18000 servers, they know exactly how much total bandwidth they are using. I suspect the monthly change is within 3%. If one customer triples his usage, the impact on the total is tiny.
When overselling on a 10 GIG reseller account, if one customer triples his usage, you are in big trouble.

By the way, I have a EV1 server and I look at the bandwidth of my neighboring servers by just changing the number in their bandwidth monitoring script - I don't know what kind of server and what IP the neighboring server has, but I know they are servers located on EV1. I use about 15% of the 700GB allowed bandwidth. Most of my neighboring servers don't even use that. Only a couple are higher.

John

Telco companies can only profit by overselling. You would be happy when your cell phone company offer you 3000 minutes for $39.95/month (or lower), wouldn't you?

Also, remember, the bandwidth are duplex, you get 13Gbps incoming and 13Gbps outgoing ....

Originally posted by Donnie-D
13Gbit and they have 18.000 with average 700GB-1000GB (some 5Mbit/10Mbit)

So they would need somthing like 45Gbit or more right?

I have 14 servers there, the most I've ever used is 331 gigs, and that was a one time thing, other than that one time none of my servers use more than 200, and most of them use less than 100.

It'll be a very rare server that uses that 700-1000 gigs. Besides you can bet if EV1 starts to get anywhere NEAR capacity on those Gig-E's they'll get more.

Originally posted by Donnie-D
When I see a reseller acount offering 5GB Space and 100Gb traffic for 40 a month. (overselling like 2x) they get alot of bad reactions.

Or there overselling is extreem, or the 18000+ servers is b*lls*it

You're comparing apples and oranges, a reseller overselling a SINGLE server is bad, EV1 overselling is fine because if they get saturated on their bandwidth you can bet they can and WILL get more pipes. Besides it's hard as hell to use the old 400 gigs of transfer on one of those servers, much less 700 or 1000.

Also I toured their data center and I can tell you there is absolutely no lying, they have at least 18,000

Here are some pics and commentary from my recent trip to Houston to visit EV1:

http://www.mydixiesys.com/EV1/

Originally posted by Donnie-D
13Gbit and they have 18.000 with average 700GB-1000GB (some 5Mbit/10Mbit)

So they would need somthing like 45Gbit or more right? My answer would be not yet or no at this moment. And may I suggest that this is not a bad business practice. I do not think that this is overselling either.

You can say company A is overselling if it only provides 1Mbit pipe when the total usage of its clients is more than 1Mbit. Total usage is the key. If the customer does not use 100% of the allocated transfer limit, then it is not the company's fault. On the other hand, it becomes a saving which turns into profit for the company. As long as the client's need/usage is served, no overselling occurs.

In this case, overselling occurs if and only if EV1 can no longer provide the amount of bandwidth she promised to her clients, which is the proof of overselling.

What EV1 and many other companies are doing in this situation is simply a wise business practice regardless what customers think. In fact, many customers do not understand that this business model will safe them a lot of money, which is the reason why EV1 is able to offer very competitive price.

From the way it looks, the big guys such as Ev1 and Burst are able to handle what they oversell.

The small guys, however, are risking.

The Transit/Bandwidth market is all about overselling, there is a such thing as safe (and neccessary) overselling. Now keep in mind, it's also fairly popular now to get gigEs and the such, which should eliminate most overselling practices, it's not that much more expensive to purchase multiple gigEs and keep your commit low. Dependant on the provider.

Imagine if they oversolled like this in the housing markt.

Ad says

Big hous Rooms 200m2

You got to see ther house and it is only 50m2...

They give are argument... "if you had a 200m2, you would not use all the space would you"

Stupic of me but LOL

You're still comparing apples to oranges.

Originally posted by Donnie-D
Imagine if they oversolled like this in the housing markt.

Ad says

Big hous Rooms 200m2

You got to see ther house and it is only 50m2...

They give are argument... "if you had a 200m2, you would not use all the space would you"

Stupic of me but LOL This is a good illustration, but comparing service (hosting) and material (house) is like comparing apple to orange. It's like comparing house and the speed of a car. Some cars have in their speedometer a limit of 160mph. But I'm sure that less than 1% of the total consumer ever driven over 140mph. Hence, many cars are made with engine that can only go up to 140mph and we may never need to drive that fast (unless you're one of the 1%).

<Edit: typo>

Originally posted by jamesbk
You're still comparing apples to oranges. Ah, I got beaten :)

Originally posted by Donnie-D
Imagine if they oversolled like this in the housing markt.

Ad says

Big hous Rooms 200m2

You got to see ther house and it is only 50m2...

They give are argument... "if you had a 200m2, you would not use all the space would you"

Stupic of me but LOL

Bad analogy.

It's more like, you have a crate of apples to haul, so you rent a truck from someone and they say "you can use up to an 18 wheeler with a 56 foot trailer" and you say ok cool rock on and you tell them "ok send my truck over for this crate of apples" so they're like ok crate of apples and they send over a kid on a moped. Not an 18 wheeler but your apples get delivered. The problems arise when you have 200 crates of apples and they send the same kid on the moped (overselling and unable to deliver) or you have 1 crate and they send over a dead homing pigeon.

Originally posted by Joshua
Sure they're overselling a lot, but they have that science down pretty well - Look at their network page at http://ev1servers.net/english/aboutus/networks.asp , they have good enough bandwidth to spare. They've had enough to avert packetloss when ALL of their Verio lines went down a few months ago.

-Josh

That's pretty impressive, considering that Verio is providing about 38.5% (5/13 GigE Links, I didn't count the OC3 and DS3) of their total connectivity. Also, considering that on average, each GigE connection is over 75% used (if not more).

Personally, I do not oversell. Nonetheless, there isn't a problem with EV1 doing so as long as the circuits are kept uncluttered.

Originally posted by Dixiesys
You're comparing apples and oranges, a reseller overselling a SINGLE server is bad, EV1 overselling is fine because if they get saturated on their bandwidth you can bet they can and WILL get more pipes. Besides it's hard as hell to use the old 400 gigs of transfer on one of those servers, much less 700 or 1000.

Also I toured their data center and I can tell you there is absolutely no lying, they have at least 18,000

Here are some pics and commentary from my recent trip to Houston to visit EV1:

http://www.mydixiesys.com/EV1/

looks like timmys got it going on!

limos, sports, chairs, cracker jacks!

way to go timmy :)

ps how do you get a boy that age to behave, i HAVE to know!

You cannot compare hosting with housing....a better comparison is hosting and cell phone. Sure, everyone gets "unlimited night and weekend" minutes on their cell phone plan....how many people do you think would be able to get through if everyone try to use the phone all night long?

Overselling service is OK as long as you have enough data to know how to maintain the service level. Overselling product (like a house) is not since the product belongs to you, no pooling is involved.

John

Originally posted by riverpast
You cannot compare hosting with housing....a better comparison is hosting and cell phone. Sure, everyone gets "unlimited night and weekend" minutes on their cell phone plan....how many people do you think would be able to get through if everyone try to use the phone all night long?

Overselling service is OK as long as you have enough data to know how to maintain the service level. Overselling product (like a house) is not since the product belongs to you, no pooling is involved.

John

Good point, I tried placing some calls Xmas day on my cell phone to relatives in other places. Gave up, "all circuits are busy" so much for my 3000 anytime minutes, anytime but Xmas day!