If you know a bit about webhosting you will probably get bored reading this and then flame me for wasting your time at the end of it so stop reading now! ...lol - for everyone else who is looking in to webhosting but doesn't want uncalculable costs then you MAY find some helpful advice here.

I was reading a thread where someone pointed to this page (http://www.unlimband.com/) - normally I have just been a quiet reader here, but this page really pi**es me off, so I feel the need to rant a little! Here is why:

They make no definition between unlimited bandwidth and unlimited traffic. They don't even seem to realize that there is a difference!

Offering unlimited bandwidth is, as they quite truthfully say, absolutely impossible - there is no such thing. Bandwidth has nothing to with the amount of data that can be transferred, only the speed with which a given number of packets can get from A to B. A bog-standard Ethernet Card has a Bandwidth of 10MBit/s meaning you can squeeze ten-million bits of Data through it each second (i.e. approx. 1,2 MB) - a Fast Ethernet card (100MBit/s) can cope with ten times as much - there are even Gigabit Ethernet Cards now (1000MBit/s) which can do 100 times that - but anyway - that's not the problem here.

The thing is that the providers offering "unlimited bandwidth" don't usually mean that (how much bandwidth does a person need for a website?! Most people have a Modem/ISDN/DSL/Cable account, and any Webspace-Provider should be able to cope with downloads of lets say max. 150kb/s).
What they mean is unlimited traffic. This is how costs are metered on the web. Webhosters pay a certain amount of cash per GB of data the transfer (be it incoming or outgoing) and these costs have to be covered by the amount they charge their customers, naturally.
However I see no harm whatsoever in webhosters offering "unlimited" traffic to their customers as they will normally have experience with the average amount of usage per customer and so can calculate their costs accordingly - sure it means that some people will get more out of it than others, but most people who are looking for "unlimited" traffic just want to be absolutely certain that they will not be confronted with unforseen costs at the end of the month.
I think unlimited bandwidth in combination with an easily accessible "acceptable use policy" (i.e. no whopping-gread downloads and no ftp-mirrors etc...) is a good and fair marketing gimmick.

Besides - the people who actually own sites that generate the kind of traffic that would cause these firms to either shut them down or go bust are normally experienced webmasters who KNOW that these offers aren't without their limitations and would probably leave their hands off these offers to begin with... And the 1% that aren't small users and DO have a high-traffic website but still go for these offers thinking they will get something for nothing are - well - umm - idiots - and usually it is them complaing that they got their account cancelled.

Just for those who aren't sure whether their site is likely to generate lots of traffic: Our clanpage www.ut-mrc.de is relatively well visited (maybe 50 people per day) for a hobby-site and uses php, a mysql database, and even some more-or-less heavy grafix in places. We still only total on about 80 - 150 MB of traffic each Month. So - if you have a small business or wanna host a private website (maybe even one simelar to ours) then you might aswell go for an unlimited traffic account if you want to make sure that you don't get a nasty surprise. They won't cut you off cause of that kind of traffic - and if they do then they are frauds and you can sue them!

<<snip>>

..back to what I started off to say. The website http://www.unlimband.com/ contains (dis-)information that is directed at newbie-webmasters (cause experienced ones know it all, anyway) and really should get its definitions right because it is ruining plenty of business' chances to offer this kind of package without being under suspicion of fraudulant behaviour.

...I think I have said - errr typed - enough. More than enough!
I'd be interested to hear your view on this matter and especially whether you share my opinion that the website in question is a bit, well, misleading and should have its concept rethought?!

Sick of typing, now.

Greetz.
BrAiN.