I want to have your opinion on this matter once more (yes, please bare with me). Through this forum, I learn that unlimited bandwith is a non sense... however, sometimes I feel we need to consider this matter carefully.

For example, many hosts outside of USA offer unlimited transfer (for example, in Japan, China, etc). If you want to be a web host in these regions, how would you be able to compete with other hosts when you are not offering unlimited transfer as do others?

I know unlimited bandwith is never real, however I can think of a way that it can become realistic. I have a friend who is now residing in Papua New Guinea (PNG). All the web hosting companies there offer unlimited transfer in their package. How can they do that? Well, most of the web host companies have their servers in USA, so all the access to the server has to be done through the pipe connecting PNG to the external world... And do you know how big is this pipe? I heard it's only 1mbps bandwith! Yes, only 1mbps! The whole country's internet conenction to the external world is connected to only this 1 mbps pipe... That means all the data transfer goin into/out of PNG is only limited to 320GB/mo... Af first I don't believe it.. So I asked my friend to download a 388kb picture (http://216.74.122.43/MaxLinuxPenguin.jpg). It only took me 7 seconds to download it with my 512kbps cable modem (well... 20 seconds when at peak hours). How long did it take my friend to download it, ya know? 15 minutes! Now you know what I am talking about....

In this case, offering an unlimited transfer is realistic, since no way your clients will be able to pull even 20GB of bandwith where the whole country can only transfer 320GB into/out of PNG (Remeber, the the servers are located in USA). Well... I don't think this is unacceptable and I don't think this is a lie... (well, offering an unlimited email accounts is also a lie since you know your HD space is limited). Same case here with many other countries in Asia.

Anyway... many people here are so allergic with this word. I can understand that if the hosts are offering accounts to US market (where the total bandwith here in US are practically "unlimited"). But... what do you think in the case of some other countries where their outgoing pipes are really small, if not punny?

cheers,
:beer:

It doesn't matter where a server is located, there is no such thing as unlimited transfer. It does not exist in any country or in any language.

In the example you gave, a practical limit is set by the puny pipeline. That's not the same as unlimited.

I think part of the problem is that too many hosts look for one word adjectives to describe certain services and they just aren't accurate.

You can't make unlimited transfer into anything but a lie. You might try explaining the limits and where they are (in the country's connection). It would be honest which I should think would be welcome anywhere.

Originally posted by Duster
You can't make unlimited transfer into anything but a lie. You might try explaining the limits and where they are (in the country's connection). It would be honest which I should think would be welcome anywhere.

I know "unlimited transfer" does not exist, but are those hosts really limiting their clients' transfer? Hell no... sicen what can their individual clients do with only 320GB of traffic total (in/out) to the whole country?

Speaking about honesty, how about "Unlimited pop3 email?", "Unlimited internet access", etc. None of them exist, right? The word "unlimited" though can mean "infinite", it can also be translated to "un-limited", or "not-limited". Whys should those host limit their clients bandwith charges (though they clearly know the whole countries traffic is limited only to $320GB/mo--heck, they can pay for the whole country's bandwith, if they need too) and loss the competition?

See Duster, you are a typical person who will just condemn this word no matter what the reality is. Speaking this word for US market is totally different than speaking it for PNG market, for example... Try to offer web hosting in PNG where all other hosts are offering unlimited bandwith transfer, then you know what I mean...

PS: I am not really like this word either, especially for web hosts here in US offering service to US market where they know one client can make them go bankrupt if they don't limit its transfer. On the other hand, I see the reason why I should be more relaxed about it....

cheers,
:beer:

dek, your forgetting one important thing.

I'll use an example.

Lets say I'm some rich guy with a page that eats 500gb of bandwidth a month. I decide to move to PNG. Just because *I* live there does not mean *I* am using that 500gb bandwidth. Maybe I just live there but all my visitors are in europe and the USA....

That blows your theory out of the water. Just because a site's owner lives in a country with a small i-net connection does not mean that his visitors all will reside in the same country.

Originally posted by DanielP
That blows your theory out of the water. Just because a site's owner lives in a country with a small i-net connection does not mean that his visitors all will reside in the same country.


Ah... very good point, makes much better sense with better explanation! I do agree with you, Dan :agree:

So if you want to do business there, it will now come down to this.
1. Offer unlimited bandwith in hoping that 95% of your clients' access to your server will be originated from that country (PNG, for example).
2. Limit your client's bandwith in hoping that you won't loss 95% of your potential client to your competitor.

which one is beter (speaking in context, of course) :D The reason I ask is because I have a plan to offer webhosting service in these regions, and I am not sure what is the best way to get it out straight without losing any potential customers.... would the word "un-metered" be better?

BTW: it's not my theory, it's the fact that almost 99.9% hosts in these countries won't limit bandwith traffic. I just want to know how... that's all :D

cheers,
:beer:

Originally posted by dektong
See Duster, you are a typical person who will just condemn this word no matter what the reality is.
Unlimited Internet access can be true. Excepting the occasional technical difficulties, I have it with my ADSL line. The term has been misused for dial up accounts for years where the real limit is usually half of the hours in a month. Since we have to sleep, eat, and do other things, it ends up as unlimited for practical purposes, even if inaccurate by definition.
Originally posted by dektong
Speaking this word for US market is totally different than speaking it for PNG market, for example.
Not true and it is still a lie in any country. Read what I wrote above (earlier message) and you may understand. A lie does not become the truth because you change the country it is spoken in, at least not this lie.

I don't use one word adjectives when doing so would make something untrue. Here's how I list some of the services on my site (only with no emphasis):

"e-mail addresses (aliasing) and forwarding, POP3 accounts, (anynames@yourdomain), as many as you need"
It's short, it's truthful, and requires no explanation.

"As many as you need" is 5 words instead of 1 and 15 letters instead of 9. It doesn't take up much more space, requires no explanation or footnotes, and is accurate and honest. I suspect it would work in any language.

The fact is that the small to medium size businesses I deal with only use 1-3 e-mail addresses for the most part. There is a practical limit to how many they will have and I don't have to be concerned with limits as practicality will take care if it. However, if one wanted 50 POP 3 accounts, they could have them.

In the PNG case you cited, I would mention the pipeline limit and that it, and not the hosting company, was the limiting factor.

Or you can go on lying because everyone else lies.

Well I can promise you 1 thing.

They *say* they don't limit it, but go signup with them and let me use about 40gig and see how fast they remove the account.

I'd just put an explination on my page and offer high numbers. I would definately suggest straying from the unlimited, because in short, its false advertising and illegal in many places *not legal advice* :), if I only had the $ there would be so much less competition *lol*.

But instead of unlimited, just offer high #'s of things.

You could advertise unlimited and maybe get more sales but somebody's gotta stand out and break the tradition right?

The same thing started to happen about 3 years ago here in the US. 4 years ago almost everybody was doing the unlimited thing, and slowly people started using the unlimited and getting kicked and host's attitudes changed.

A typical lie.
http://www.hosthelp.com/mnm.php

The transfer is not unlimited since they one can use only so much per minute or per hour or per month.
Unlimited transfer means that someone can transfer as many GB as they want per second (or month).
It does not matter if it is an economical or technical reason, if the user can not use an infinite amount of BANDWIDTH and TRANSFER at any given moment, it is not unlimited.

This is the same as getting a 1 MB capped line from a web host and offering unlimited transfer.

I think "as many as you need" is a good idea.

It's just not possible, as you said a 1mbps link can only support 320gb monthly. Therefore you proved that it's impossible.

Originally posted by JTY
It's just not possible, as you said a 1mbps link can only support 320gb monthly. Therefore you proved that it's impossible.

in the same sense unlimited internet access is not possible, right? :D

As I said in my post, i know unlimited transfer does not exist (clearly aware of it), but that's not the issue I am bringing up, isn't it?

cheers,
:beer:

Wrong. Unlimited Internet access is possible. Some of us even have it. I do.

Yep, unlimited internet is possible, I can be online as much as I want, when I want.

Well, in my simple research (-+one year ago) , if you are offering webhosting packages with limited bandwith in advance to 3rd world countries (for examples: Indonesia, Vietnam, Philipine), you will not be able to compete with other host company there.

I remember that I ever talked with a person who said: "wah..if we got 500MB disk storage and only got 5000MB data transfer means that with that price we only could serve 10 people per month. And recently my site receive about 500 visitors per month. I'm sorry, I have to find another webhost company that offering unlimited bandwith with the same price"

:emlaugh:

See?

Why? In fact that in majority they are newbie and not well educated (and did not want to know?) how to measure bandwith usage for their sites.

They didn't know that in fact 1000 megs data transfer could handle about 30K to 40K normal page views and that's more than enough for their sites
If every user use up to 500MB for their files for only about $10/mo, the webhost company will go bankrupt as well.

Most of them only "eat" under 1 gigs data transfer per month and they have a very limited budget.

They really like "unlimited bandwith & no hidden fee" words :D

Also, a lot of webhost companies which offering huge amount of bandwith lie.
I see so many companies offering 500MB disk storage with 30 Gigs bandwith for only $24.95

In fact if our site only serve HTML docs and use more than 5-10 gigs they will close our site simply by saying: "Hey, your site take a lot of CPU resources. Go away..find another webhost company or buy our dedicated packages"
That's only a bulls**t reason.

So personally I think it's fair enough for webhost company to offer "unlimited bandwith".
Because what I believe that their market are newbies. (In fact there are tons of newbie in this world).

It's a business, and it's fair using business tricks to market your products.
How good your products if you can not market it, it's useless.

[Edited by SodaPopinski on 02-22-2001 at 05:29 AM]

Originally posted by Duster
Wrong. Unlimited Internet access is possible. Some of us even have it. I do.

my cable modem access is only limited to 86400 seconds of usage per day... I can't even get it to 86401 seconds of usage per day :D :D just a terminology :)

cheers,
:beer:

Smiles asides, it's not the same thing and is not just a question of terminology. My ADSL, as you cable modem, allows continual and unlimited access to the Internet. We need not mark time on it as it just stays on as long as we have our computers on. That can be up to 24 hours a day (or 86400 seconds if you prefer) 7 days a week, 365 1/4 days a year.

There is no deception or misuse of the word unlimited when applied to always on Internet access.

Originally posted by DanielP
I would definately suggest straying from the unlimited, because in short, its false advertising and illegal in many places *not legal advice*

Daniel... you also use that word for your hosting package, though.... ("unlimited pop3", "unlimited email forwarding", etc)... :D

Originally posted by DanielP
You could advertise unlimited and maybe get more sales but somebody's gotta stand out and break the tradition right?
[/B]

Hmm... I like the challenge ;) thanks for the advice... :)

cheers,
:beer:

Dusters right, if there were that one more second in a day you bet that unlimited internet access would include that one second. We cant bend time here. Also if you did have unlimited traffic and tried to use that countries 1mbp all the time, how long before they close you down?

"Unlimited Internet access"
There is no such thing either.
When YOU say unlimited Internet transfer you are referring to have access all the time while unlimited really means being able to use as much as you want.
For example you can not go above a certain speed on your cable or ADSL. Furthermore, if you were to use your internet access all the time or even a few hours a day downloading and uploading huge files (mp3s, music videos, software and other stuff ;) ) you would very soon get a warning from your internet provider about using too much transfer, I know a few people who did.

Conclusion : for you unlimited internet is having access all the time while unlimited really means being able to use as much transfer and bandwidth as you want and since no ISP in the world gets it for free/unlimited, no one can offer unlimited.

"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity,
and I'm not sure about the former." --Albert Einstein

Originally posted by energy

Conclusion : for you unlimited internet is having access all the time while unlimited really means being able to use as much transfer and bandwidth as you want and since no ISP in the world gets it for free/unlimited, no one can offer unlimited.


Agree... Unlimited internet access = unlimited bandwith transfer since each internet acess will result in data being transfered. If I can have unlimited internet access, then I will just get a business DSL account, set up my server at home and have my server access at all time. Then I will get a capped bandwith, 256 or 512 kbps (though not reliable) with the ability to transfer 80-160 GB of data transfer for only $79-$100/mo.... Gee... I guess my ISP will shut my account down too since how could they possible afford that price?

If unlimited internet access is meant "the ability/potentiality to have acess" then of course unlimited bandwith is right since heck... total bandwith is always practically unlimited... If unlimited internet access meant the ability to connect to the internet all day long, then unlimited bandwith is the same thing... the ability to be connected to a server through the NOC backbone at all time.
Unlimited bandwith is not equal to unlimited transfer (the size of the pipe does not tell you how much water is flowing each second... it just tells you how much water can flow each second).

Anyway... the word unlimited is not a reality, not in unlimited bandwith, not in unlimited data transfer, not in unlimited pop3 mail, not in unlimited email forwarding, not in unlimited internet access, not in everything...

My apology, I just don't feel comfortable seeing how people will say unlimited bandwith is not OK, yet they accept that unlimited internet access (hence, unlimited data transfer) is OK... Don't see how it goes...

cheers,
:beer:

[Edited by dektong on 02-22-2001 at 12:41 PM]

Originally posted by DanielP
Lets say I'm some rich guy with a page that eats 500gb of bandwidth a month. I decide to move to PNG. Just because *I* live there does not mean *I* am using that 500gb bandwidth. Maybe I just live there but all my visitors are in europe and the USA....


So does it mean it's okay for hosts to offer unlimited transfer if I they cap their bandwiths at, say, 1mbps? If not, why? Though their total transfer/mo is limited, are they limiting the transfer for their clients?

cheers,
:beer:

You're both wrong. Access does not mean transfer. It does not mean bandwidth. It means access, being able to access the Internet. Unlimited Internet access does exist.

Originally posted by Duster
You're both wrong. Access does not mean transfer. It does not mean bandwidth. It means access, being able to access the Internet. Unlimited Internet access does exist.

If we are to play words, then the same here. Unlimited bandwith does not mean unlimited data transfered. The ability to access a server through humongous pipe (big bandwith) does not mean the permission to transfer big data (it just makes it faster, that's all).

So Duster... what about the case that some people get warning due to their big traffic, eventhough they are using the "always on" DSL/cable modem?

cheers,
:beer:

We're not playing with words. You're just trying to change the meaning of them.

In another discussion, someone pointed out that bandwidth does not mean the same thing as transfer and that when many hosts say unlimited bandwidth, they mean unlimited transfer. They are playing with words. It is actually unlimited transfer which does not exist although one could argue that unlimited bandwidth at no additional charge does not exist either.

In the strictly technical sense, unlimited bandwidth does exist on many servers whose data lines are not capped. There will be a charge for it, though it does exist.

Unfortunately, for practical purposes, the distinction between unlimited bandwidth and unlimited transfer has been lost due to misuse, much like the difference between hackers and crackers.

As far as a transfer limitation, even if it is with DSL or cable modems (and that was not specified), it would not affect the definition of unlimited access. There are many things related to the Internet that have conditions. You can send e-mail though, you can't send unsolicited bulk email or anything illegal in the countries involved.

A transfer limit is separate from access.

[Edited by Duster on 02-22-2001 at 01:07 PM]