Hello,

I see many host selling plans at unmetered dedicated server plans of 10Mbps, 25Mbps, 50Mbps, and 100Mbps. I was wondering if anyone could give me an estimate or stats of how many Mbps the customer actually uses of theie unmetered limit?

Thank you,
Kyle Leissner

it changes heavily on customer to customer, but generally i'd say very little.

i'd say 3 out of 4 cases they use like 10-25% of their allotment.

Is ths true for even the customers that pay over $1000 a month for dedicated with true unmetered service? I am not talking about those host who offer dedicated servers with a 100Mbps unmeterd port for $400, I am talking about the providers that actually charge 1000-2000 for a dedicated with 100Mbps unmetered line.

What about those who sell the 10Mbps unmetered ones, like ev1?

Thank you,
Kyle

It should be, even for those who pay 1000-2000$ are more concerned on the stability of the connection.

Those which cost more are afterall called 'Guaranteed' or 'Backed Up' :)

I'm no expert, but that's what i think...

Besides, 1k$ to 2k$ for 100mbps unmetered is cheap.
Here in Finland you got to pay as bulk 3500€ per month, or with VERY long contract you can get it for 1500€ per month.
so that's atleast 1890$ per month with long contract...
And that really is bulk & bulky connection. (it goes boom shakalak every now and then.)

We find the customers asking for 10Mb/s unmetered connection expect to and regularly do peak @ 10Mb/s, and *often* are preapred to pay the $1800+/month for it

We do see other hosts offering dedicated servers for £40 with "10mbs unmetered" connections - whether thats beacuse they're financially suicidal, or have magically found a supplier charging £2/mbs I'm not sure ...

Surprisingly, most of our unmetered customers, even those with 50Mbps, 100Mbps, 200Mbps, and higher unmetered servers actually do regularly max the connection, or come close to maxing the connection.

For whatever reason, most of our customers tend to be pretty savvy and know how much bandwidth they need. Just one reason why we don't oversell when it comes to our unmetered offerings (we'd be in trouble if we did).

Thanks,
Russell

Actually most of the customer desires an unmetred bandwidth without any prior calculation as per the actual need, and never use up to that maximum mark of extent.

In my case around one out of 500 to 1000 customers use all alloted bandwidth. Around 9 out of 10 use 1% or less.

Hello,

Actually most clients do not have any idea of how much bandwidth they need. They just want "the more the better", "oh, 1500 MB is not enough for me", "my website will be always down with such small bandwidth".........

In fact most of my client only use around 0.5 MB - 3 MB per month despite the plans offer at least 1500 MB.

And this is why hosting companies are able to oversell.

I have also noticed that you only have two types of bandwidth using clients: They either use it all or dont use any of it. I never see them in between, they are either running their account to the limit or just frankly not using anything at all. Very rarely do I see someone using ~1/4 or half.

In my previous hosting experience, I've never had a customer that actually needed to add extra bandwidth to their plan. I think customers generally buy alot more bandwidth than they need.

Yeah, they generally buy much more than they need, or is it just that hosts offer so much usually?

I have found that most people paying for an unmetered connection actually do use the bandwidth, though we do have a 100 mbit/sec server customer that has never pushed over 10 Mbit/sec as well. I would sy on average though that you can expect about 75% utilization.

it completely and totally depends on the type of clients you market to. If you market to the kiddie market, you drive the bottom line lowest dollar value, I think you'll find that very few people use it. Kids always think they "need" it, though rarely do. If you market to the high end, the people will use it. If you sell someone a 100mbps connection, and the next words out of their mouth are "ok, so what /30 did you allocate for our router, and do you need a route list of what we're going to announce before turning up our BGP session", you better pray you didn't bank on them utilizing < 50%.

As sad as it is, generally if you're an unknown, unreliable, or overall crappy host, customers will use less bandwidth (on the sustained plans). However if you're a high level, quality, and respected host, clients will use what they buy, its just part of the regular trend.

Theres a reason places that sell 1000GB have crappy service after all in most cases, and the people who have the higher end services dont bother selling 1000GB servers, because they get the higher end clients that will use it all, come back for more, and expect it to be reliable in the process.