We see a lot of offers here for 300GB/mo with a dedicated server and the like. But it seems the big boys (read: experts) offer MUCH less traffic and go for what seems to me bigger clients.

Example 1-1: Verio (dn.net) charges what appears to be $100/mo for 50GB.

Example 1-2: Rackspace.com offers 30GB with their $195/mo base 650 MHz machine.

Example 1-3: Pair.com offers 30GB with their $249/mo QuickServe.

Now, we've been in business since 1996, when Pair.com itself had ONE T1 line. So we've watched this thing grow like crazy. But the phenomenal thing is that bandwidth usage of our Cobalt and dedicated clients really has not grown so fast. Just sheer numbers of servers rather than bandwidth per sever.

Example 2-1: One 24 port switch with 23 Cobalt servers connected does an aggregate of 600 kbps on the uplink port. That's less than 30 kbps average per server. 30 Kbps is about 10GB per server per month.

Example 2-2: Another 24 port switch with 23 servers non-Cobalt does less than 200 kbps average. That's less than 3 GB / mo / server.

So, my question is: WHO uses anything much over 50GB/mo/server? I don't want to hear from porn sites or media sites. I mean pure web pages & shared hosting. /me is curious.

Drew

Originally posted by drewnick
So, my question is: WHO uses anything much over 50GB/mo/server? I don't want to hear from porn sites or media sites. I mean pure web pages & shared hosting. /me is curious.
One of our servers is pushing about 300kbit/s average right now (daily graph, in and out) on a sunday.

In my own opinion, I think the 300GB/mo is a big marketing ploy. People see they can have 300GB/mo PLUS a rented server for $99/mo at one place, and only 30GB with a rented server for $249/mo at another place. Guess which one they're going to lean towards? It's the same anywhere with anything. If you don't care about quality, you'll go for the cheapest you can find. If you do care about quality, you'll go with a more reasonable price. Think cars, houses, watches, TVs, computers, camcorders, anything... it almost always applies.

The definition of "quality" is highly debatable, but I have very high standards so it means a lot to me.

I agree that 300GB is a ploy and indeed few people use it. In fact, I know of two servers at Rackshack (ours outsourced) that are using less than 10 kbps average each.

Given that is is a ploy, we are looking for ways to dispell it and offer quality service.

While I'm plugged in, let me just say that these guys offering 10 Mbps for $39 are screwed. That pricing model takes for granted staffing, real estate, ***Insurance***, and the occasional screw up with expesive routing equipment. I mark insurance because I wonder how many hosts have it on the equipment in their centers.

Drew

Given that is is a ploy, we are looking for ways to dispell it and offer quality service.
If you figure anything out, do let the rest of us know. :) I've been thinking for a while, but may not be thinking outside the box. I'm just waiting for something to slip somewhere and taking advantage of it...

I agree that something MAJOR is going to slip somewhere.

Drew

Originally posted by drewnick
WHO uses anything much over 50GB/mo/server?Just may be an interesting data for those of you who is trying to figure out how much you can oversubscribe your customers ;)

I have 28 servers with RackShack and theoretically can use 300 GB x 28 = 8,400 GB a month. In reality all together the servers used about 1,700 GB in January 2002, or approximately 60 GB per server. Interesting thing though that 600+ GB of that was used by one site, and if not that site, per server average for the remaining 27 servers would be about 40 GB.

However beware that RackShack does not sum up bandwidth allocation if you have more than one server with them, i.e. if you transferred 600 GB with one server and 0 GB with another, you will have to pay for the extra 300 GB for the first server.

Simple math shows that RackShack does not seem to oversell its bandwith at the moment: its connections now are in the region of 2.3-2.4 GBps and, with 2,500 servers, it gives us almost 1 Mbps per server, or 300 GB a month. RackShack's network usage (http://rackshack.net/aboutus/networks.asp) is far below 30%.

Simple math shows that RackShack does not seem to oversell its bandwith at the moment: its connections now are in the region of 2.3-2.4 GBps and, with 2,500 servers, it gives us almost 1 Mbps per server, or 300 GB a month. RackShack's network usage is far below 30%.Don't forget about their dial-ups. Dial-ups are not all incoming bandwidth :)

I think RackShack is a unique situation. As a dial-up company, they have a lot of incoming trafffic. Because of this they have a surplus of outgoing bandwidth (Telcos only charge for incoming or outgoing, not both). So, anything they make on the outgoing is nice cheese :)

Something to think about.

Originally posted by RackMy.com

Something to think about.

Its funny because that is almost the opposite reason most companies got into the dial up business. Sprint, UUNET and before them General Electric and Compuserve all had these business networks that used a lot of bandwidth during the day, but nothing at night, so they decided to make full use of their available bandwidth by starting dial networks.

It appears that RackShack said: Wow, we have all this extra bandwidth because of our dial users...how can we take advatage of that.

dabystru, Thanks for the info regarding rackshack usage. That is surprising to me.

I've learned one thing: I have the best clients in the world.

If we were to start showing such usage we'd have to increase bandwidth drastically (not a problem logistically since we have a 100 Mbps port to 3xOC-3). That would mean less butter for us.

Drew

From a hosting customer's point of view as I try to pay for 25 GB of bandwidth on a shared server with very low advertising revenue now (and without plastering ads all over my site)...

I agree that something MAJOR is going to slip somewhere.not a problem logistically since we have a 100 Mbps port to 3xOC- 3). That would mean less butter for us. Hopefully what will slip is overly high prices as more competition and more customers and more bandwidth use means lower bulk pricing for everyone :D

Originally posted by drewnick
Now, we've been in business since 1996, when Pair.com itself had ONE T1 line.


We upgraded to DS-3 on Oct 4, 1996, thanks for asking :)


So, my question is: WHO uses anything much over 50GB/mo/server? I don't want to hear from porn sites or media sites. I mean pure web pages & shared hosting. /me is curious.


Many of our dedicated customers have usage above 50GB/month. Some of our shared customers are at that level, and their natural upgrade path is to the dedicated service. I shouldn't name names, but we have some sites pushing over 100GB/day.

I suppose we're serving somewhat different markets, although certainly we have plenty of low-usage sites as well.

Kevin

We upgraded to DS-3 on Oct 4, 1996, thanks for asking


...at which point you had 4 Mbps. :) I was surprised to even hear that they would do a fractional DS3 at 4 Mbps.

See http://web.archive.org/web/19961113100507/pair.com/pair/ds3.html
if you think I am pulling these numbers from the air.

Now, I'm going to go courting those high bandwidth users!

Drew

Originally posted by drewnick

...at which point you had 4 Mbps. :) I was surprised to even hear that they would do a fractional DS3 at 4 Mbps.


Yes, SMDS offered data rates of 4, 10, 25, and 34 Mbps. There might be a rate between 10 and 25, I forget. This was the most economical way to jump from 1.5 Mbps at the time. Later we added DS-3 to UUnet, at which point both were around 10 Mbps.

This was 1996, remember, so 4 Mbps was a lot.

Kevin

Kevin,

That was my point exactly. That a leader in hosting could run on a T1 when middle school kids get that kind of bandwidth these days. Hands down, your connection today is pretty good.

We feel lucky to be on a shared Oc-3 to UUNET, Genuity, and AT&T.

Drew

Hi friends,

I have just graduated to a dedicated server buyer and after what I consider to be a scientific evaluation I have chosen to pay 130$/mo for a 35GB/mo server without control panel [and I may need a full year to even reach 20GB]

And I understand fully your concern about high bandwidth offers eating into your market. I have a suggestion, what you should all get together and do is collect metrics [measurements like what you are talking now - as Lord Kelvin said" if we dont understand something in numbers we dont understand it!"]

Start an unbiased and independent site or forum which will keep publishing these numbers without any attempt at interpreting and as the numbers start telling their stories, you wil find it easier to convince prospective customers that there are a lot of hidden and extra costs to managing a data center than just the pipe and box cost

You should typically take scenarios like a provider having 1 rack and whatever pipe and housing n boxes... and try and get some tangible numbers on how many servers can a tech support, what is the cost of a "good" tech, what is the cost of power, insurance [as you said], spares, admin costs and ofcourse pipes and boxes..

I dont see a disaster recovery plan from most ded server providers and that scares me

The only way to sell at a premiuim against a price war is to educate the customer on why pricey is pricey.. If all components of cost are transparent to a customer then he/she can make an informed decision and will also feel good about the $ that goes out every month

Just a fool's opinion though! ;)

Cheers
Balaji

Balaji,
It sounds like you are precisely the kind of buyer we are looking for. Your ideas are very good. I'm going to mull them over while I take a smoke.

Drew:angry: <--Smoking?:confused: