I don't get it.. I see people asking for insane amounts like 250-400GB/mo. Assume a T1 working at full speed, for a whole month.. it can do no more than about 480GB in bandwidth per month. So I'm assuming the hosting providers making offers have T3 lines.

But I suppose the real question is, why would someone want 300GB/mo? The only two things I can think of are: 1) adult site. 2) they want to use the space to host their own clients

However, I see dozens of requests for this amount of bandwidth. Is everyone & their brother running an adult site, or running a one-man hosting firm off one dedicated server??

Thanks

Sam

Originally posted by OtherMDesign

However, I see dozens of requests for this amount of bandwidth. Is everyone & their brother running an adult site, or running a one-man hosting firm off one dedicated server??



That's exactly the impression that I get. Don't forget gaming servers, too (do they use that kind of bw?).

well, most providers are running much more than just T3s AND alot of the people wanting that much are running one man hosting companies or adult sites.

some just run very busy forum sites and/or specialized sites that get a ton of bandwidth or they want the room to grow (which they feel they'll need).

the rash of people asking for 400gb/month for $89 is certainly not reasonable. but, still there seems to be a large amount of people asking lately. did rackshack/wht have some new ads out lately?

My gaming network uses 1TB of transfer a month (tgnetwk.com) without downloads or adult stuff. That's why we need it:D

I honestly think it's just people trying to get as much as they can out of hosting companies. I know if I didn't run a hosting operation myself, and wanted to get a dedicated server, I'd ask for as much bandwidth as I could get. I hate paying for over usage. But, are they using it? 60% probably aren't, but there are a hand full of us who are.

Yeah I agree i think it is people that want to see what they can get for their money, heck when i go to buy a car i want the most for my money, so why not hosting.

Derrick

if you have decent site with 40K users/day and 1M of page hits/day you will not ask about it then... i could easly eat 540GB of traffic per month, unfortunately not much of hosting providers supply each plan with that amount.

I've found that most looking for that type of BW are trying to get the most value for their $, and want to develop a business model being competitive with those offering similar plans. Hosting is an extremely competitive market, and your going to have to keep up with the jones's to stay on top, seems to be the general consensus. Also, for anyone who has ever been hit, or heard about those hosting companies being hit with a few hundred to a few thousand dollars a month in bandwidth overages, it's also a nice security blanket that some unforeseen spike in bw won't disrupt your cash flow either.

Originally posted by skylab
well, most providers are running much more than just T3s AND alot of the people wanting that much are running one man hosting companies or adult sites.

some just run very busy forum sites and/or specialized sites that get a ton of bandwidth or they want the room to grow (which they feel they'll need).

the rash of people asking for 400gb/month for $89 is certainly not reasonable. but, still there seems to be a large amount of people asking lately. did rackshack/wht have some new ads out lately?

Rackshack and a handful of other providers are all offering servers accross the board with 400 GB BW/month ... the price point for dedicated servers seems to be dropping rapidly .. I have a server with Rackshack and there are hundreds of one-man hosting providers ...

Rackshack gets a lot of Cogent bandwidth over fiber optic .. I am no networking expert so please excuse me if I mispeak but I have seen them mention that often .. so they have much more than T3 capacity ... I think there is another thread on the dedicated host topic with a lengthy discussion of the number of providers who are getting "cheap" fiber optic bandwidth these days ...

Rackshack says they get at least some significant portion of their servers from 'dot-bombs' ... so they have many $99-$129 offers ...
and they periodically combine the $99 servers with $1 setup specials ... hard to resist deals.

I imagine this is where many other providers get their cheaper servers from as well.

I am not pushing Rackshack, just relating my experiences as they relate to this thread :) ... Rackshack is the first dedicated provider I found to go with as it is the first I could afford that I found a lot of positive feedback about .. I am on a thread of a shoe-string budget .. always it seems ;).

Originally posted by zappp
if you have decent site with 40K users/day and 1M of page hits/day you will not ask about it then... i could easly eat 540GB of traffic per month, unfortunately not much of hosting providers supply each plan with that amount. True a site that big can use up that much bandwidth.

However, I would assume most people receiving that sort of traffic are in the top 5,000 web sites according to Alexa. For most of those I would take a good guess that they are running more then 1 dedicated / co-located web server between mail, dns, web server, dynamic content, site statistics, firewall, database, etc.

I too don't understand. Its gotta be gaming servers and adult sites. Why else?

Quite simple really!

If you were offered 50 GB or 400 GB for the same price, which one would you take? Assuming everything else is the same!

i run game servers one 32 player game server can use in excess of 300Gb per month. there are other things out there besides adult sites and file hosting.

The hosting industy is notorious for doing the "one up" thing.

Host2
"Host1 offers 100GB, I have to offer 200GB."

Host1
"Host2 is not offering 200GB, I need to offer 300GB"

Host3
"I am going to do better than Host1 or Host2 and offer 400GB"

And round and round we go :)

Originally posted by Rebies
I too don't understand. Its gotta be gaming servers and adult sites. Why else?

sites that provides users with text files could eat that amount of traffic too (ie, lyrics sites or guitar/bass tabs site and so on...)

tgps is all it is =]

on a serious note, i have a client who runs a gaming-related site (no downloads). he has his own dedicated box and only hosts the layout graphics on our servers, and they alone do about 100gb a month. i can only imagine how much the site itself is doing.

I've had a site that was doing like 4-5 gbs of bandwidth a day. Thats about 150 a month and it wasn't adult related. So its posible. Just not smart.

Because someone on WHT will provide it for under $10... and then the next guy "can do it better" for $9...

People will always try to get something for nothing... and the more the better... regardless of if they need it.

Thanks for listening,

If every client who signed up for a 300+ gig package actually uses that much, I wonder if the majority of hosts that offer it can deliver. Rackshack obviously could, or they wouldn't have offered unlimited as well hehe.

People are asking for it because it's the new reality. There are several hosts offering 400GB per month for $99.00/.

This then becomes the standard that customers expect for their dedicated servers, and it you don't adapt to that standard, you might not expect to survive.

It's the hosting game (business.) It's all about competition, and clients want the best price for their money, and if company A is offering it for X amount of money they just assume company B can wither they can or not.

Originally posted by GeorgeC
If every client who signed up for a 300+ gig package actually uses that much, I wonder if the majority of hosts that offer it can deliver. Rackshack obviously could, or they wouldn't have offered unlimited as well hehe.

I doubt that! Not without adding more lines!

Most of our servers use more than 300-400GB month..That's just virtual hosting accounts.

We received many requests for our unmanaged servers.... most were for game servers or small web hosting companies.

Originally posted by sphere2
People are asking for it because it's the new reality. There are several hosts offering 400GB per month for $99.00/.

Can you tell me how these hosting providers can afford to do this? T3 lines are expensive as hell. How can they charge only $100/mo for dedicated servers, and offer 400GB/mo??

But more and more of them are popping up. I think they have found some secret source that the rest of us don't know about.

and dont forget the packetting issue, a botnet can easilly boost up the incoming traffic to 300/400megs /sec, i even saw a attack of a total of 900meg on a box,

It's easy to go over 400gb/month in those cases

The reason why companies can afford this much bandwidth (400GB) is they count on the client not to use that much. And most people don't. That is where they make their money - if all the clients actually used the full 400GB per month any company would go out of business - even Rackshack. They sell it at a discount price because the majority of users don't actually use up even 100GB of that 400. It the amount of bandwidth that the client doesn't use which determines how much they make.

>I too don't understand. Its gotta be gaming servers and adult sites. Why else?

I run 5 dedicated servers currently, cumlatively doing approx 1.5 TB / month. It's not porn, it's digital video serving.... in the past I sent out DVDR's by mail (& still do, but moving more online lately), and have shipped approx 12 TB of content since July 2001 when I started this whole crazy venture. I have no clue how many coloc'd servers my partner has, but I do know he sometimes pushes as much as 1 TB per day! (what he does could be construed as porn, although it is more "alternative")... so yes, it is possible....

imagination is our only limitation.

-D.

When the economy in the US picks up, you will see these bandwidth offers disappear.

The hosting companies are using it as a sales ploy and are rolling the dice that most people will never use that bandwidth.

Some companies use Yipes for their connection which don't use Sonet technology. which makes the operation costs less, allowing bandwidth to be cheaper. I think.

I use providers who give me 400gb for each server. I just use them because I don't have to worry about going over on my allocated bandwidth. My servers probably don't go over 100gb.

My friend wanted a dedicated box for a site he was making, since he thought that it would need it. Turns out he never used more than 5GB bandwidth a month ;)

People just like to have the feeling of "no limits" or "limits that rarely are achieved" :)

Originally posted by Rebies
True a site that big can use up that much bandwidth.

However, I would assume most people receiving that sort of traffic are in the top 5,000 web sites according to Alexa. For most of those I would take a good guess that they are running more then 1 dedicated / co-located web server between mail, dns, web server, dynamic content, site statistics, firewall, database, etc.

I too don't understand. Its gotta be gaming servers and adult sites. Why else?


Hmm how about a popular humor site that has a lot of downloads or a popular affiliate program. I know some greeting card sites that are very popular that use a lot of bandwith.

eh, i have a site in my gaming network which uses up to 100gb bandwidth alone per month, then i have another which can use up to 80gb on days they release a new file.

sure i don't -need- the 300gb bandwidth monthly, buts its nice to have it, especially since i get new sites applying every week which are needing high bandwidth. ;)

Curiously... any server providers out there offering "roll over" bandwidth? Meaning that the amount you don't use from last month is added to your current month, rinse, repeat.

Funny story:

2 years ago I got a call from a guy who said he need lots of bandwidth (100GB + per month)
I asked him what he needed it for and he said it was lots of
photographs.

Alarm bells started ringing!!
So I asked him what sort of photos.
His reply:
"crop circles of course"
Its the way he said it that make sit funny.
It was like, "what elese would you have photos of on a web site"

He pushes 240GB per month in the peak months of the year
and even last month he did 135GB
Its a frightening amount of bandwidth.
When he came to us he had been paying £20 per GB ($30 USD)
and needed to reduce his bills.

http://www.cropcircleconnector.com/


Gordon

People ask for 300+ GB because they 90% come from rackshack.net and they want the same servers for $50/mo. w/ $1 setup - or they try to get a quote close to that..

I've taken to asking the people in the request form why they need XXX amount of bandwidth, so far everyone has reposted saying "Well, 100 gb would be fine."

It's a bandwidth conspiracy!!

I don't get it.. I see people asking for insane amounts like 250-400GB/mo. Assume a T1 working at full speed, for a whole month.. it can do no more than about 480GB in bandwidth per month. So I'm assuming the hosting providers making offers have T3 lines.

But I suppose the real question is, why would someone want 300GB/mo? The only two things I can think of are: 1) adult site. 2) they want to use the space to host their own clients

However, I see dozens of requests for this amount of bandwidth. Is everyone & their brother running an adult site, or running a one-man hosting firm off one dedicated server??

Thanks

Sam
I wanted to get a server with lots of spare bandwidth so I wouldn't be faced with huge overage charges if my site got featured somewhere (the slashdot effect) in a particular month. Even though on average I use 30-40 GB/month, I like having 600 GB/month because that way I don't have to worry about overages and can concentrate on building my site and increasing my traffic. The same reason I wouldn't go with a host who had only a single T1 line - I want the reserve capacity just in case so i don't have to always worry "am I close to the limit - do I need to make other plans". It's nice having plenty of reserve.

I started off on a provider paying 150-200 a month and had only 30gb bandwidth. I ended up at rackshack paying less for more and I'm very happy I made that move.

Originally posted by GordonH

He pushes 240GB per month in the peak months of the year
and even last month he did 135GB
Its a frightening amount of bandwidth.
When he came to us he had been paying £20 per GB ($30 USD)
and needed to reduce his bills.

http://www.cropcircleconnector.com/


Gordon

That is a good story. I checked out his site and it's no wonder he's pushing lots of data with his pages being so heavy. The 2002 page is almost 500kB. The index page is over 200 kB.

Hey... DOn't you think Bandwidth is something like power? Something like... Hey Guys... I got a 10Mbit Cable connection to the web... but if you start your kazaa and download 10GB's a day... you cannot keep track all the stuffs you have on you HD?

To be honest... showing off.. like... WOWWIIEEE got an amazing 500GB's of transfer...!!! :)

i myself even see that i want to have the biggest server for the least money... so that i can begin all these big ideas i always had!

I applyed for a nice shared hosting package at Dominet.Net (superb support they have) for 10 dollars a month... at 18GB's of tranfser.... and i only use 3 or 4 gb's!

Safety, Power... I donno what you all wanna call it else... But to me it looks still like... Boys with Toys!

I run a site that isn't porn related and pushes 70-100+ gigs a month; it's not even back to full capacity. Give me another 2 or 3 months to develop the other sections to it and I'm sure it will push well over 250 or 300 gigs per month.

Of course, it is an archive/forum but none the less, 300 gigs a month isn't much for any popular website that offers downloads, or gets 10,000+ hits a day and has a decently image-based layout with a lot of dynamic content (that makes the pages larger when more things are added or whatever)

I have a few friends who run sites that push 60-150 gigs a month also, not porn, not gaming.

Hosts offer it because they know 95% of people are only going to use a max of 150GIG
& Users ask for 400GIG because they can :)