If I get a dedicated like with any of the following speeds, how much bandwidth do you suggest I use from each of them? How much can I safely rent out to my customers? Eg, if I have a 1.5Mbps line, can I get 400Gb bandwidth out of it safely?

160 Kbps?
416 Kbps?
784 Kbps?
1.04 Mbps?
1.5 Mbps?
10 Mbps?
100 Mbps?
144 Mbps?

your probably looking at about 340GB give or take on the 1.5Mbps, that’s assuming you max it out to about 95% for 30 days straight

The 160, 416, and 784 are usless in the hosting biz...the 160 is just above 128k ISDN speed...

IMO you shouldn't go with anything less than a 10Mbps line since that comes out to around 1MBps of transfer speed which would give you around 2,240GB per 30 days at around 95% max usage (if I'm doing my math right)

See, I've been looking at these prices for internet access, but it's to expensive, and I guess too slow for a hosting biz

Canadian Prices...
http://www.toolkit.ca/products/sdsl/index_sdsl.php3?section=det

Does anyone know of any good, cheap, fast and reliable lines that I could get near Toronto Ontario?

I've really been thinking of using rackshack, but I would love to have my servers at home.

Originally posted by mattschinkel
See, I've been looking at these prices for internet access, but it's to expensive, and I guess too slow for a hosting biz

Canadian Prices...
http://www.toolkit.ca/products/sdsl/index_sdsl.php3?section=det

Does anyone know of any good, cheap, fast and reliable lines that I could get near Toronto Ontario?

I've really been thinking of using rackshack, but I would love to have my servers at home.

We've been slowly building on our data center, which is almost complete and will allow us to move some servers back home. This has been a 2-year project for us, balancing out business and building and I'll tell you this right now, it's not as easy as running a T1 to your house. If you're serious about this, you'll know what I mean soon enough. While having our own data center is great, I often wonder if it was the right step forward at this time.

Basically if you run at a max usage you are looking at 40 Gigs/Month per 128KBPS of bandwidth.

But, I prefer to sell about 10 Gigs/Month for each 128KBPS of bandwidth. We have 30 MBPS of connections in fractional lines at the moment, and push out about 2500 Gigs/Month.

Originally posted by mattschinkel
Does anyone know of any good, cheap, fast and reliable lines that I could get near Toronto Ontario?

Where do you live? I'm in Oakville, and let me tell you, bandwidth is expensive. Some available providers in the GTA are: AT&T, WorldCom, Primus, Telus and a few more.

But trust me, servers in your house are not a good idea. Although it's appealing, and it will be a good experience, it's not worth it in the long run.

My suggestion to you, is to co-locate your servers in a data center in the GTA. Some reputable one's are, Q9.ca (Expensive) peer1.net, WorldCom (in Markham, I think...)

PM or email me, so we can discuss this issue in more detail because I'm in a rush right now...;)

You'd get 15.Mbit/s of bandwidth from !.5Mbps - But I assume you meant how much data transfer you'd get, which is soemthing different to bandwidth.

Originally posted by mattschinkel
See, I've been looking at these prices for internet access, but it's to expensive, and I guess too slow for a hosting biz

Canadian Prices...
http://www.toolkit.ca/products/sdsl/index_sdsl.php3?section=det

Does anyone know of any good, cheap, fast and reliable lines that I could get near Toronto Ontario?

I've really been thinking of using rackshack, but I would love to have my servers at home.

You're not likely going to get "good, cheap, fast, reliable" *lines*, you'll need to colocate equipment within a toronto data center (yes, i know when i started out, it was like "ick, i just want a server closet, i dont wanta fork out a few hundred bucks a month for something the size of my closet), but bandwidth is so much cheaper within facilities that are already lit compared to running out commercial lines.

We're moving some operations to Toronto around November, if you'd like, depending on your quantity, i can hook ya up with some of the people i've dealt with, but you're not gonna beat rackshack pricing, that much is for sure.

BTW, expect to pay around 3-5x more for lines that are run to your home, per mbps, then within a pre-lit facility, it really isn't worth it unless you can convince sympatico and rogers to pass off bgp4 routes and then make a massive network of like 50 cable/dsl providers in the area :D.

... come to think of it, theres a cheap dsl provider in the toronto area, almost 1mbps for < $100/mo, cant remember their name off hand though :).