i have no idea how these people can claim unlimited hits, their shopping list of features says:
Hits Unlimited
Transfer 2000 MB
how the heck do you get unlimited hits and 2 gigs of transfer?
see for yourself
http://hosting.discountdomainregistry.com/compare_plans.php3

Steve

Now, anytime the word 'unlimited' is used, explainations don't make sense, but try to stay with me. As far as I have understood this, it means that you can get an 'unlimited' ( ::shudder:: ) amount of hits *within* that amount of transfer. What they mean to say, is that they don't set arbitrary limits on the number of hits, and that the number of hits are only limited by the amount of transfer you are given with your plan.

I guess that's a bit too much to cram into a table cell :)

You are right Chicken. I notice some hosts use "unmetered" though> I think unmetered would convey a clearer idea of what they are talking about.

How about unmetered bandwidth? :) Is that good or bad?

Unmetered bandwidth means they don't monitor its usage but it doesn't mean they don't/won't restrict its usage.

Which is the truth for the "unlimited bandwidth" crowd.

I think DanielP is right...they may will restrict you...as there is nothing specific about that
Cheers
sachin

unlimited bandwidth should mean exactly what it says. its simply misleading if it means something else...

Yannick
http://www.hosting24-7.com
Reseller Plans Starting at $3.95/mo
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Note that the thread wasn't about 'unlimted bandwidth' (we all know it is impossible and that hosts who state it lie like a rug.

I remember having a similar argument with someone over at the freewebspace.net paid hosting forums. Anyone remembers that one??

The hosts that state such things extremely sly and bigged liars then the ones who state 'everything unlimited' and I wouldnt trust them. Simply because they are setting a limit to the number of hits but yet claiming them to be unlimmited. They are restricting the bandwidth and thus restricting the hits one gets to the bandwidth used, and thus hits are not unlimited.

I hope i dint confuse anyone :)

Originally posted by Greg
How can they restrict the usage if they don't monitor it? How do they know how much your using if they don't monitor it?
They must monitor it somehow if they restrict it, right? wrong?[/B]Right. Unmetered doesn't mean they don't measure it. It means they don't charge for it. The "meter" isn't running. Until you reach the limit (which they'll know about because it's not unmeasured. Which means the meter really was running), where they either start charging for it or close your account.

Your forgetting that we aren't speaking English here, we're speaking Marketing.

Originally posted by JayC
[QUOTE]Your forgetting that we aren't speaking English here, we're speaking Marketing. That's right, "your." There are no contractions in Marketing.

Now this is a new one (Unthrottled Traffic) and it came with no explanation, has anyone ever seen that phrase used before, it was a first for me.

"Unthrottled" I think is clearer, not ambiguous at all because it's a technical term. At least as far as I know the marketing people haven't mutated its meaning. Some connections might be "throttled;" limited as to what the connection speed could be at any point: 128K for example. Unthrottled would basically be the same "burstable."

"Unlimited" maybe misleading, but I think those who end up in trouble -- get their accounts closed, are the naive ones, or those who try to hold the host to their word.

Unlimited can be viewed as a courtesy (when it means unmetered). If you are in a restaurant, and ask for some napkins, you will get them. Want some more? they will give you, free. There's no preset limit of 10 napkin per customer for example. However, if you ask for 5 cases of napkins :) That's different.

I think "Unmetered" is ethical. What do you think?

"Unmetered" is unethical and a blatent lie. Simply because if you are not checking the amount of bandwidth used by each account how can you close a account on the basis of too much bandwidth use?

Really the best thing to do is to state the amount of transfer you are willing to give the client for $xx/mo. Is this the best marketing? No. There are many people who only look for 'unlimited' hosts. Sad but true.

But if we are to follow this logic, we have to measure server resources and advertise that as well, no?
For example, I have never seen a host who limits cpu time in any defined terms. My question is: why is it ethical to leave cpu usage ambigious while insisting on limiting bandwidth to fixed terms?

When they say "Unlimited hits" they mean just that. They don't limit your hits. I don't really think it's that ambiguous. Look at it more in terms of "Not directly limited" rather than "infinitely large", or perhaps more correctly, "Indirectly limited".

Theoretically, the hits are unlimited, but practically they aren't due to the added bandwidth limitation. But the host can't put a value on the practical side of things.

Unthrottled and Unmetered are a little better, but that depends on the knowledge of the clients you're dealing with!




(PS: OK, theoretically the hits are indeed limited in a similar way to quantum energy states - because computer data can't be infinitely small - but lets not get TOO far into that. I just mean that you could argue that with 2 gig transfer, you could have unlimited "tiny" hits)

Wazeh,

Because it is extremely difficult to predict what kind of CPU/RAM usage you will get and thus it's quite difficult to impose limits (most hosts will say 'up to 20% of server resources' in their TOS - this particularly applies for most Alabanza sites). At the same time, the host doesn't have to pay for the CPU unless it fizzles out or you're upgrading. CPU/RAM usage depends highly on how many sites you're hosting, how many of them are running CGI/Perl scripts (in particular UBB forums), what scripting languages they're using, the traffic they're getting, etc.

However, bandwidth has a set $/GB so limits are more 'stringently' imposed if you like.

Also note that while I find claims of unlimted bandwidth and space to be just WRONG :), I'd also like to see limits set for things like email forwarders, pop boxes etc. If you are willing to offer someone 30,000 pop boxes, then fine state that. But really there is NO reason to use the term unlimted when it comes to web hosting.

*Somewhere* there *is* a limit, and if the host is thinking that 100 POPs is enough, then don't put unlimited. "More available upon request", is always a nice way of saying, "This is the limit, but if you need more we can assign you more -so long as it doesn't bring the server crawling to my office begging for mercy!"

Originally posted by kunal
"Unmetered" is unethical and a blatent lie. Simply because if you are not checking the amount of bandwidth used by each account how can you close a account on the basis of too much bandwidth use?

And for that matter, how does one receive unlimited bandwidth on a shared server without affecting everyone else with the same? It's not logical. They've got to monitor it. It's the only way to measure who's using what percentage of resources (esp. for purposes of abuse, spamming, etc.)

Perhaps the most straightforward way to look at this sometimes is to follow the dollars.

Hosts must pay for traffic. Most of them cost-average this expense, since relatively few sites use more than 1G a month or so.

Still, when it gets to the point where a client is using so much bandwidth that the bottom line for the host is being adversely affected, a host really has no choice but to impose limits -- or go out of business.

To purport to offer unlimited bandwidth is, really, either fraudulent or just plain bad business practice. No host can fulfil such a claim for any truly high-bandwidth client.