15 ms·

Hetzner appears to impose unlisted “fair use” on traffic

174 points by worldofmatthew 4y ago

AinderS 4y ago
By not specifying a limit, not even in the warning letter, buyers are encouraged (or threatened) to overprovision, and then not use the excess capacity they paid for, lining Hetzner's pockets with the difference.
- worldofmatthew 4y ago
  Claiming "Guaranteed bandwidth" and no extra charges. In fact Hetzner listed a generic we may cancel at any time clause, not a fair use one. Scammers.
yread 4y ago
250TB/month is about 770 Mbps sustained. And you still only get a strongly worded letter!
- worldofmatthew 4y ago
  Does not matter. Hetzner say Unlimited and Guaranteed traffic at 1Gbit/s with no fair use policy mentioned for that port speed.
  - dvfjsdhgfv 4y ago
    Although I agree, when you look around, and especially when you look at AWS, Hetzner's offer is still excellent in terms of value for money.
    - iMerNibor 4y ago
      cloud traffic pricing is a massive ripoff, especially in europe where bandwidth is cheap
  - cmdli 4y ago
    True, but Hetzner has no obligation to serve every customer. I would say this customer has gotten more than their money's worth and Hetzner is well within their rights to no longer provide service. Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1499/ https://xkcd.com/1499/
    - mort96 4y ago
      But they also have a responsibility not to lie in their marketing, don't they?
      - freemint 4y ago
        Did or did Hertzner not offer this person an unthrottled 1 GBit/s every month they were an user.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - dark-star 4y ago
    have you ever used a "free refill", or an "all you can eat" buffet? You cannot fill up your car's tank with soda at a "free refills" place, neither can you camp and eat 24/7 inside an "all-you-can-eat" buffet. I don't think it's unreasonable to still call those services "unlimited" and let the restaurant/internet provider decide when to drop a customer that they don't want in their premises/on their infrastructure...
    - hengistbury 4y ago
      I suppose the difference is that it would be understandably unreasonable for someone to start filling extra containers at an unlimited soda refill, they would probably understand that they are pushing their luck. If the restaurant sold 'Unlimited Soda, 2 liters per minute, £50/month' I would expect them to deliver on the very specific quantities they promised at the price they offered. If they tell me I'm over-dispensing, I think I'd be rightfully annoyed that they have over-promised.
      - dark-star 4y ago
        Exactly. Hetzner doesn't sell you "850mbit/s for 24/7, 50€ a month". If they did, I agree with you that the OP should be rightfully annoyed about this letter. Instead, Hetzner sells "unlimited bandwidth" the same way McDonalds sells "free refills". It's also understandably unreasonable for someone to start pushing data at the max rate for months non-stop, the same way it is unreasonable for people to fill 50 large cups with soda. If people have accepted the "...within reason" argument for free refills and all-you-can-eat buffets, why not also accept it for data usage?
        worldofmatthew 4y ago
        You are wrong. The product he had was for unlimited traffic on a guaranteed 1Gbit/s port. There are no limits listed, just a provider who offered something too cheaply and wants out. False Advertising. Simple as.
        4y ago
- switch007 4y ago
  250TB/month is still way, way below "unlimited" though.
  - mlyle 4y ago
    It's not "way, way" below when pegging the link is 320TB/month.
    - yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
      I feel fairly comfortably describing 250TB as far, far below 350TB.
      - nZUC2qDyxDA3Kpe 4y ago
        Go get a 1Gbps link and try to download 24/7 for a month. See what you get. Averaged, it'll probably be around 800Mbps, or 260TB. Latency exists. (If you're really lucky, you might be able to get 900Mbps or so, but that's not likely: the max throughput on 1Gb Ethernet is below 950Mbps, even if you had packets flowing continuously!) They also said the use averages above 250TB.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - dubbel 4y ago
    The supposed quote says "We’re writing to you today because of your traffic use, which currently averages above 250 TB/month on some of your servers." It averages on multiple of their servers, which indicates to me that the average was taken over the course of some months (?). They may well have reached 320TB in some months on some servers. I'm not surprised by this. For me, unlimited traffic (with 1 gbps) means i can spike in some months without having to worry about costs exploding, but if I'm maxing it out consistently, then I might be asked to move to a different service or upgrade.
EarlKing 4y ago
For those of you working at companies with "unlimited" vacation time... pay close attention. :D
- thfuran 4y ago
  Well, I'd be satisfied with only being able to be on vacation about 75% of the time.
mdasen 4y ago
To hit 250TB in a month, the person would need to do 809Mbps (assuming a 30 day month). I personally would assume that "unlimited 1Gbps" wouldn't include using 80% of the link's capacity, but I also agree that stated limits are better. That would be $16,691 worth of transfer from AWS (US East pricing for 250TB to the internet). I'm not arguing that AWS isn't overcharging, just putting up a comparison. Even at $0.01/GB, that would be $2,560. They should probably just say 50TB with overages at $0.005/GB or something like that. They are offering 20TB on their cloud servers so 50TB on the dedicated seems reasonable and $0.005/GB for overages is less than you'll get almost anywhere else while still probably enough for Hetzner to make a profit.
- thexa4 4y ago
  They did have traffic caps a while back but explicitly abolished them.
  - thegeekpirate 4y ago
    Yep, it was 20TB from what I recall.
- worldofmatthew 4y ago
  AWS pricing is a rip-off.
  - contingencies 4y ago
    ... and their systems are designed to make controlling it difficult to impossible while locking people in to their ecosystem.
    - comprev 4y ago
      Free/cheap to get in, expensive to get out. Your data is held at ransom to some degree.
    - booi 4y ago
      How are their systems designed to make controlling cost difficult? I've found it exceptionally easy to find places where things are suboptimal and it's always quite clear to me how much something will cost before I do it.
mjevans 4y ago
"Unlimited" really should mean fully unlimited. I also take issue with "up to" and other vagueness. There should be clear metrics and sizes that are precise and not abbreviated in all ads and offers; and offers should also be public and non-discriminatory. A 'service check' for an address should also constitute a 'binding offer' (I.E. the ISP had better be very sure service can be provided at that address!)
- pixl97 4y ago
  Not using 'up to' is opening up all kinds of other cans of worms. Ok, 100mbps.... to where? The switch you're plugged into? The router at the data center? Some other random host in the network? Some other random host outside the network? So yea, everything on almost every network without a dedicated circuit is 'up to' simply because you can make no other guarantees.
  - kazen44 4y ago
    also, what do you count as bandwith? Simply sending packets down a wire usually limits one to the physical speed of the interface, but even then some kind of packets might get dropped by various filters/mechanisms along the way. For instance, should i be able to use my full bandwith of my connection by sending purely BUM traffic down the link? Somewhere in the network, some policer is going to start dropping BUM traffic to protect the network against flooding.
    - pixl97 4y ago
      I remember years ago working with ISPs and many of their monitoring systems assumed that packet = 1500 bytes as a fixed measure. Running a DNS server at full throttle could lead to a situation where you'd get bandwidth charges for amounts higher than could be served at line rate. I'm assuming modern systems do this better, but I've learned never to make assumptions when they benefit the billing party more.
      - kazen44 4y ago
googlryas 4y ago
Do usage limitations actually affect the bottom line vs throttling? Maybe I'm wrong, but I imagine it doesn't cost much more to run a network that is 80% saturated vs a network that is 5% saturated? Basically, why can't they just fairly throttle high usage users when utilization ramps up, and then unthrottle them when usage lowers? Edit: I'm not talking about them reneging on their guarantees, which they've already done by asking the user to cut their usage.
- worldofmatthew 4y ago
  They claim the bandwidth is guaranteed on servers costing less than 50 euros a month. They appear to have simply got caught out by people actually using what they paid for.
  - googlryas 4y ago
    Sure, I just mean regardless of their guarantees, why network operators don't seem to operate like this, instead they look at total transfer over a period of time, and cut you off or charge more, even if the bytes you're sending were essentially free and didn't affect other users.
- dvfjsdhgfv 4y ago
  And this would be fair to your customers how? Where you draw the line who is who? How would you feel if your services started to be less responsive for no apparent reason, even though you paid for them and did nothing wrong?
  - foobiekr 4y ago
    Imagine the AWS EBS bursting/credits applied to networking. It would be awful. (It's also awful with EBS)
    - banana_giraffe 4y ago
      Many do, https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/ec2-instance-network-bandwidth.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/ec2-inst... : > Typically, instances with 16 vCPUs or fewer (size 4xlarge and smaller) are documented as having "up to" a specified bandwidth; for example, "up to 10 Gbps". These instances have a baseline bandwidth. To meet additional demand, they can use a network I/O credit mechanism to burst beyond their baseline bandwidth. Instances can use burst bandwidth for a limited time, typically from 5 to 60 minutes, depending on the instance size.
preinheimer 4y ago
We avoid "unlimited" if we possibly can. The moment it comes up that provider generally flips from being "a good deal" to "the most expensive in the region". Then you're stuck looking for alternatives while you're in a bad situation. You don't always get an email, sometimes you're just suspended and they'll let you know if you email them. (We work with >200 different hosting providers around the world)
cglan 4y ago
I don't get it. If you're paying for 1Gbps then why does it matter how much you use up to that amount? If they're overselling their capacity then they should just stop doing that. If they can only handle 80% of the sustained capacity, only sell up to that amount. You pay for pipe capacity, you don't pay for usage according to sales page. If they want to change their business model they can. It's not my fault that I'm using what I bought to its full capacity
- walrus01 4y ago
  every isp ever since the dawn of the commercial internet oversells its capacity, you rely on 98% of the users not actually trying to max out their circuit at near line rate 24x7. if they did not do this an ordinary residential last mile connection would be $250/mo not $50/mo.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
    An entire (sub)industry being predicated on fraud doesn't make it not fraud, and doesn't make it okay. If you can't actually sell that capacity, just say up front what you're actually selling people.
    - walrus01 4y ago
      there are plenty of much more expensive dedicated hosting companies that are totally upfront about real costs. heztner and OVH and other bottom of the barrel pricing hosting companies are their own special breed of thing. you're not going to get for $40-50/mo what you would get for $250/mo. their TOS/AUP almost certainly covers this (you think that a company the size of hetzner didn't run this by real legal experts first?). it's not fraud.
      - NullPrefix 4y ago
        Blessing from legal team doesn't mean it's not fraud. Blessing from legal team means they are willing to defend this position in court
andix 4y ago
It’s probably their right to end the contract (with a one month notice). A company is not forced to do business with anyone. And I’m quite sure they will gladly offer a package with some additional traffic for an extra charge.
walrus01 4y ago
I'd like to see how many people in this thread saying "but they promised UNLIMITED..." have ever actually worked in network engineering for a colo/hosting ISP. This person is probably paying like 50 bucks a month or less and is in the top 1% of bandwidth users as measured by individual ethernet ports from a top of rack aggregation switch or similar.
- corrral 4y ago
  > I'd like to see how many people in this thread saying "but they promised UNLIMITED..." have ever actually worked in network engineering for a colo/hosting ISP. Raises hand The fact that these kinds of lies are normal doesn't make them OK. Instead, just... don't lie.
  - walrus01 4y ago
    reaching out nicely to a customer that's probably in the top 0.02% of your bandwidth users for their package/plan and asking them to move to a more serious/expensive service is not a lie... i should also note that a very common reason for a dedicated hosting company's server to go wild on upstream bandwidth is something misconfigured or compromised, and being used maliciously by some external 3rd party. not actual bandwidth usage from the paying customer. this is mentioned in a nicer way in the email. they probably could have just cut them off arbitrarily. nothing obligates them to keep a customer. this is actually really nice on the part of the hosting ISP in my opinion. If you have a sustained near 800 Mbps of outbound traffic you should be doing it from something much more serious than an absolute bottom of the barrel lowest cost no-SLA dedicated server. this is "unlimited" in the same way that an all you can eat buffet restaurant is unlimited, with some caveats.
    - corrral 4y ago
      Of course advertising one thing then saying, "well, actually, no" means you lied. Even if you're "nice" about it. It's not that big a deal. People lie tons. It's not murder. But it's still a lie.
Havoc 4y ago
This feels a bit like a case of "this is why we can't have nice things".
- zdragnar 4y ago
  It's the same reason why one of my jobs switched from unlimited PTO to limited PTO. 98% of employees took sane amounts of time off. 2% (if that) abused it rather extensively. It might just be a tale as old as time.
berkas1 4y ago
But why they want to cancel the contract and won't offer the customer to pay for the traffic?
- Kaze404 4y ago
  The customer is already paying for the traffic.
- killingtime74 4y ago
  They have many options where they allow you to do that and its very reasonably priced https://docs.hetzner.com/robot/general/traffic/ https://docs.hetzner.com/robot/general/traffic/
r3trohack3r 4y ago
If I’m doing my math right, Hetzner advertised approximately 298TB/month on a 1Gbps link (1Gbps * 30.4 days = X Tebibyte). This user is only at 250TB/month.
filleokus 4y ago
Slightly OT: Suppose you want to deliver a couple of 100’s Mbps to people in EU on the cheap, how would you do it? Assume it’s static files, so the server doesn’t need to be that beefy. Hetzner would probably be my first choice. Even though I’ve hade some strangely slow connections there sometimes. Other more enterprisey providers like Datapacket seem to be significantly more expensive.
- edmundsauto 4y ago
  Cloudflare is an option, unless there’s a reason that it’s a bad idea in the EU? I front my Hetzner instance w/ then, works great.
- sitzkrieg 4y ago
  cheap vps , there are many good options including hetzner i suppose
- jeroenhd 4y ago
  I rent a VPS with Leaseweb. Their prices aren't the lowest, but their performance is better than many cheaper alternatives. There is no unlimited data. Either data centers are lying to you, or they're going to end your contract the month after you start sending hundreds of TB. Their data plans clearly state the traffic limits and their terms state the overcharge you can expect. If you need more network traffic than the 15TB they offer VPS servers, you can probably just ask, set up some dedicated , or set up a CDN (listing price: "contact us", though Cloudflare is likely cheaper) or rent yourself a full colo rack. Other VPS providers are similar, but always check the uplink speed (I've noticed German and French providers tend to stick to only 100mbps) and the data limits; anything that sounds like "unlimited" isn't and should be avoided if you're worried about data cost. Your only real option is to avoid the cheap market and go midrange or high end because data is expensive, especially at over 800mbps consistently.
  - filleokus 4y ago
    I mean FDC offers 1Gbs unmetered[1] (and I do think they actually mean unmetered), dedicated for $199 / month . While being ≈ 4 times more expensive than a cheap Hetzner dedicated box mentioned in OP, I don't think OP would have gotten an email from them. I was thinking that maybe some provider basically was reselling ≈FDC dedicated boxes with VPS's that tailored to high bandwidth usage. Of course being more expensive than run of the mill VPS's. But maybe the server performance per price, and bandwidth price equation doesn't make it so attractive. Even if you're just pushing static files, you need some CPU to saturate it (especially considering tls termination) [1]: https://www.fdcservers.net/budget-server-1 https://www.fdcservers.net/budget-server-1
bilsbie 4y ago
I wonder at what point an all you can eat buffet would kick you out? And how does this situation compare.
- christophilus 4y ago
  They absolutely do kick you out. Some have time limits. Others have managers who just stand awkwardly over your table and calmly ask you to leave and not be an asshole. I know this because I know two guys who were once very hungry teenagers and who also don’t have the genes that allow them to pick up on social cues.
jebronie 4y ago
The autobahn also has no general speed limit. That does not mean you are welcome to go 300 km/h all the time. Unfortunately some peoples stupidity makes it necessary to impose fixed rules for everyone.
- cypress66 4y ago
  Sorry but that's a really bad analogy. Autobahn speed limit is related to safety and a lot of factors. Here it's simply a matter of money. If more than 200TB/month triggers an angry email, then just state they have a limit of 200TB instead of stating unlimited. It's not so complex.
  - qeternity 4y ago
    > Here it's simply a matter of money. Lol, as if that is unimportant. > then just state they have a limit of 200TB They don't have a limit of 200TB. They take issue with sustained saturation over a long period of time. > It's not so complex. Can you imagine how complex it would be to publish a schedule of every single consideration? They certainly won't take issue with 250TB of internal traffic. So now they need to start differentiating egress. Would they take issue with 250TB of ingress? It's less likely, but they would probably have higher tolerance for that. So now you have another schedule. What about cross-datacenter traffic? Boom, another policy. Have you seen AWS bandwidth pricing? How in the world is that less complex than just addressing abuse on a case-by-case basis.
Aulig 4y ago
On the bright side: if this was Google, I wouldn't be surprised to see his account terminated immediately without giving an exact reason.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
de6u99er 4y ago
It looks to me as if they know that the content is violating their terms and conditions. >... We will routinely check your traffic use. If we continue to see such a high amount, we may choose to cancel your contract. (Please see 2.7 of our Terms and conditions ... >2.7. Furthermore, we reserve the right to terminate the contractual relationship without notice for good cause. Such good cause is deemed to exist, among other reasons, if the Customer fails to meet its payment obligations or violates other important customer obligations. A further important reason which may result in us locking or terminating the Customer’s services or account without notice is if the Customer uses content that impairs the regular operating behavior or the security of our infrastructure or our product, or violates paragraphs 8.1. - 8.3. of these Terms and Conditions. >8.1. The Customer is obligated to check and comply with the legal provisions arising from the use of the contractually agreed services, in particular the Telecommunications Act, the Telemedia Act, as well as national and international industrial and intellectual property rights, personal rights, and the requirements of competition and data protection laws on their own. The Customer indemnifies us against all claims of third parties arising from infringements of these obligations. >8.2. The Customer is obligated not to publish any content that infringes on the rights of third parties or otherwise violates applicable law. This includes in particular, but is not limited to, pornographic or obscene material, extremist content or content that offends common decency, gambling, material that could seriously endanger the morals of children or young people or violate the rights of third parties (copyrights, name rights, trademark rights and data protection rights). This also includes the publication of defamatory content, insults or disparagement of persons or groups of persons. >8.3. The transmission of spam mail is prohibited. This includes in particular the sending of unauthorized, unsolicited advertising to third parties. When sending emails, it is also prohibited to provide false sender data or to disguise the identity of the sender in any other way. The operation of applications for mining cryptocurrencies remains prohibited. These include, but are not limited to, mining, farming and plotting of cryptocurrencies. We are entitled to lock the Customer’s access to their Hetzner services or account in the event of non-compliance.
- braingenious 4y ago
  Wait, what? You’re confident that this person is engaged in spamming? Or wait no, copyright infringement? Or wait no, illegal content? Are there any legitimate use cases that might use a lot of bandwidth? I could imagine hosting 4k video. Or a software archive. Or image hosting. Or hosting podcasts, ML models, backup services, OS images, high traffic forums, public domain archives, adult content (which is not disallowed by Hetzner), etc. I’ve noticed a lot of people starting with the premise that “It’s okay for Hetzner to lie to customers” and working backwards to enumerate reasons why it’s not only acceptable, but good and necessary. It’s a strange phenomenon.
Seattle3503 4y ago
If there were a government enforcement action woukd it fall under the FTC as a contract issue, or the FCC as an internet thing?
purplerabbit 4y ago
I don't understand why everyone in this thread is being so pedantic, accusing Hetzner of "lying", etc. If you are subscribing to something and the subscription price changes, that's not "lying", that's one party renegotiating. Furthermore, Hetzner's legal agreement allows them to do this. Sure, Hetzner could publish "up to X TB / month" (and it sounds like it should considering their apparent audience). But let's have a little empathy here, sheesh.
- snoopy_telex 4y ago
  What is being renegotiated? The contact isn’t being rewritten. It still states they have unlimited bandwidth. They’re just being told to not make use of contracted resource or the contract will be terminated. That’s not a renegotiation.
  - walrus01 4y ago
    they're not obligated to keep anyone as a customer. saying "we don't want your money anymore" is a form of renegotiation.
- zootboy 4y ago
  I think part of the frustration is the asymmetry of the situation. Good luck telling Hetzner that you'll be paying "up to $20 per month" for your server. The moment you under-pay, they drop you. But somehow it's OK that they can arbitrarily cut back on the service they promised and you just have to accept it? Whether or not something is technically allowed in the fine print is different from whether or not it's a shitty thing to do. Having secret, unpublished limits on a supposedly-unlimited service is shitty. They'll be getting no empathy from me.
  - qeternity 4y ago
    > and you just have to accept it? No, just as you said with your underpaying hypothetical, the customer is free to drop Hetzner. A rolling term contract protects both parties. If this person pushing 250TB/mo can find a better provider, then they should move. If they can't find a provider willing to offer cheaper bandwidth than Hetzner...well, that tells you everything you need to know about this situation.
tuetuopay 4y ago
I work for a cloud provider (not hetzner), and sorry, but this is normal behaviour for them. Every infrastructure is based on the principle that nobody will use all of their ability at the same time. Road network? Good luck with a whole city in their cars at the exact same time. Power distribution? Tell that to the british grid when all of britain turns on their kettles at the same time during sports events (live broadcasts are out of phase from regions to the next to alleviate this issue). Or to their sewage system, where all toilets flush at the same time once the human byproduct of said kettles is produced. So yes, this is a hosting provider where the bandwidth is shared, they overcommit it, otherwise they would not be able to do them for that cheap (in case of hetzner), or at all at a profit (for other providers that are not bottom-end). Here they tell it is unlimited, because there is no data cap. The same goes for virtual machines in a cloud environment, those too are overcommitted, and I can guarantee you that if you spawn AWS instances and use 80% flat of CPU 24/7/365 you'll get the same kind of email directing you to the cpu dedicated instances. Actually, they even did you a favor for not kicking you out due to "trust and safety" flagging you as fraud (like sending spam or ddos, which they 100% should have btw).
- lazide 4y ago
  For 1Gbps? That’s bullshit.
- secondcoming 4y ago
  Some of our GCP machines use far more than 80% CPU 24/7/365 on both preemptible and non-preemptible instances. We've yet to be asked to move to dedicated machines. It was pretty much the same when we were on AWS. I don't see how a cloud provider can complain about high CPU-usage if they bill by the machine and by the minute. Otherwise 20% of your bill is for idle CPUs.
  - tuetuopay 4y ago
    It really depends how wide your impact is. When you have a lot of instances with this behaviour, you generate a lot of CPU steal for the neighbors on the same hypervisor (depending on the mitigations they put in place). If you happen to impact too many customers (many performance issue tickets), then the CSP will be more than happy to reach out to you to "upgrade" you. It really boils down to the business impact you have on them. Sure, you pay for the resource, but they are not guaranteed. And it is up to their discretion to de-prioritize your VMs on the HV, so that you're the last to get scheduled when the host's CPU is starved. This is the whole 'CPU credits' thing on AWS that they document in [0] where you can burst above the baseline. Interestingly, note that the baseline is in the 30% ballpark in their illustration on the bottom of the page :) [0]: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/burstable-credits-baseline-concepts.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/burstabl...
dietrichepp 4y ago
Whenever I see that some resource is "unlimited", my take is that the company either doesn't know what the limit is, the company is gambling that users won't run into the limit, or they are just pretending that the limit does not exist. Oversubscription is normal and I am happy to pay for a service that is oversubscribed. I just want to know what I am paying for. Am I paying for "guaranteed X GB/month, up to X+Y GB/month"? Cool, I love it. Are you gambling that enough users will sign up and pay you to subsidize unlimited bandwidth / unlimited storage / unlimited anything? I want to know. A normal business relationship with a vendor should be profitable for the vendor. Yes, I have an interest in paying less money for services--but being able to use those services at all is usually more important than squeezing a few bucks in discounts out of the vendor. If my deal with a vendor is unprofitable for the vendor, it creates a risk that the vendor will in the future terminate the relationship, discontinue the service, or even go out of business. It's up to the company to figure out what the right SLOs/SLAs/SLIs are. That's actually a core part of what I am paying for when I sign up for cloud services or colo services or whatever. There's a delicate balance where you figure out an SLO that is possible for the company to support, while still looking good in marketing materials, and understandable by technical end-users. If your company provides infrastructure without SLOs, or if key SLOs are missing, then I'm going to be a bit hesitant. A missing SLO is a sign that your company hasn't done the work of figuring out how supportable a particular feature is (like "unlimited bandwidth").
nZUC2qDyxDA3Kpe 4y ago
250TB/month means this person is, basically, saturating a 1Gbps link 24/7. It's 761Mbps, which probably accounts for some overhead/latencies (f.e. downloading many pieces of a torrent or many articles of an NZB). This is blatantly NOT fair use. I doubt that they in fact have a specific limit (having worked for large hosting companies with "fair use" policies in the past, it was "you'll know it when you see it"), but whatever limit you might choose is frankly well below this. Yes, calling it unlimited is a bit misleading, but they truly can't compete with everyone else (who do the same thing!) if they don't. At this point, with how widespread it is, you should frankly assume that unlimited = fair use, and be working for it to change politically, not getting mad at companies. I would also note that it sounds like their use has been consistently high over several months, which (IMHO anyway) lends some credence to calling it unlimited (as opposed to f.e. AT&T where "unlimited" means a set number of GB each month...).
- MallocVoidstar 4y ago
  >It's 761Mbps, which probably accounts for some overhead/latencies (f.e. downloading many pieces of a torrent or many articles of an NZB). Hetzner tracks outbound bandwidth only, the relevant servers are uploading, not downloading, >250TB/mo.
password4321 4y ago
It's interesting to read semi-permanent HN comments recording how well individuals adapt to practical realities.
coder543 4y ago
As interesting as this discussion has been, I want to point out that we have no proof of any of this. - The link says "my friend got this", so even the person who authored that post isn't claiming to have received this notice. This is a second hand report, at best. For all we know, their friend received this notice years ago, and mentioned it to the OP, who didn't realize it was old news. - We don't even have a screenshot of an email like this (which could also be easily faked, but it would be more credible than that zero-effort text post), nor do we have any public statement from Hetzner. - It's not like a flood of people are reporting this happening to them... I haven't seen a single person in this HN discussion mention receiving a similar notice from Hetzner. I didn't read the entire thread that was linked, but I also didn't see anyone there claiming to have personally received this notice either. - The phrase "we’re writing to you today because of your traffic use" does not appear on any google results other than the linked thread, so this could be the first and only time that Hetzner has reached out to anyone about this, if it is even real, and even then... they might be motivated to cancel their contract with the customer for real reasons that they don't want to discuss with the customer, in hopes of lessening the drama. Companies do that sometimes, as crappy as it may be, so this whole thing could be a red herring if it only happens to one account. If anyone does have additional evidence or anecdotes to contribute related to Hetzner getting upset at "unlimited" traffic usage, that would be nice to see. If this is a pattern that can be confirmed, then all of this discussion is absolutely warranted. Hetzner might have sent this notice, but I've seen people get similarly flustered about other things on the internet that turned out to be fake. Can we gather some more evidence before raising our pitchforks? Literally anyone could have made up a story like this about any company, and people do make stories like this up. Those are just my thoughts, but now that everyone has their pitchforks out, I doubt they are willing to provide benefit of the doubt to the accused party and wait for more evidence to show up.
- MallocVoidstar 4y ago
  >The link says "my friend got this", so even the person who authored that post isn't claiming to have received this notice. This is a second hand report, at best. For all we know, their friend received this notice years ago, and mentioned it to the OP, who didn't realize it was old news. There are at least two other posters in the linked thread that say they've received the same notice today (page 7). From the post history, one of them appears to work for a provider that I'd bet is reselling Hetzner boxes/slots on their boxes.

By not specifying a limit, not even in the warning letter, buyers are encouraged (or threatened) to overprovision, and then not use the excess capacity they paid for, lining Hetzner's pockets with the difference.

worldofmatthew 4y ago
Claiming "Guaranteed bandwidth" and no extra charges. In fact Hetzner listed a generic we may cancel at any time clause, not a fair use one. Scammers.

yread 4y ago

250TB/month is about 770 Mbps sustained. And you still only get a strongly worded letter!

worldofmatthew 4y ago
Does not matter. Hetzner say Unlimited and Guaranteed traffic at 1Gbit/s with no fair use policy mentioned for that port speed.
- dvfjsdhgfv 4y ago
  Although I agree, when you look around, and especially when you look at AWS, Hetzner's offer is still excellent in terms of value for money.
  - iMerNibor 4y ago
    cloud traffic pricing is a massive ripoff, especially in europe where bandwidth is cheap
- cmdli 4y ago
  True, but Hetzner has no obligation to serve every customer. I would say this customer has gotten more than their money's worth and Hetzner is well within their rights to no longer provide service. Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1499/ https://xkcd.com/1499/
  - mort96 4y ago
    But they also have a responsibility not to lie in their marketing, don't they?
    - freemint 4y ago
      Did or did Hertzner not offer this person an unthrottled 1 GBit/s every month they were an user.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- dark-star 4y ago
  have you ever used a "free refill", or an "all you can eat" buffet? You cannot fill up your car's tank with soda at a "free refills" place, neither can you camp and eat 24/7 inside an "all-you-can-eat" buffet. I don't think it's unreasonable to still call those services "unlimited" and let the restaurant/internet provider decide when to drop a customer that they don't want in their premises/on their infrastructure...
  - hengistbury 4y ago
    I suppose the difference is that it would be understandably unreasonable for someone to start filling extra containers at an unlimited soda refill, they would probably understand that they are pushing their luck. If the restaurant sold 'Unlimited Soda, 2 liters per minute, £50/month' I would expect them to deliver on the very specific quantities they promised at the price they offered. If they tell me I'm over-dispensing, I think I'd be rightfully annoyed that they have over-promised.
    - dark-star 4y ago
      Exactly. Hetzner doesn't sell you "850mbit/s for 24/7, 50€ a month". If they did, I agree with you that the OP should be rightfully annoyed about this letter. Instead, Hetzner sells "unlimited bandwidth" the same way McDonalds sells "free refills". It's also understandably unreasonable for someone to start pushing data at the max rate for months non-stop, the same way it is unreasonable for people to fill 50 large cups with soda. If people have accepted the "...within reason" argument for free refills and all-you-can-eat buffets, why not also accept it for data usage?
      - worldofmatthew 4y ago
        You are wrong. The product he had was for unlimited traffic on a guaranteed 1Gbit/s port. There are no limits listed, just a provider who offered something too cheaply and wants out. False Advertising. Simple as.
        4y ago
switch007 4y ago
250TB/month is still way, way below "unlimited" though.
- mlyle 4y ago
  It's not "way, way" below when pegging the link is 320TB/month.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
    I feel fairly comfortably describing 250TB as far, far below 350TB.
    - nZUC2qDyxDA3Kpe 4y ago
      Go get a 1Gbps link and try to download 24/7 for a month. See what you get. Averaged, it'll probably be around 800Mbps, or 260TB. Latency exists. (If you're really lucky, you might be able to get 900Mbps or so, but that's not likely: the max throughput on 1Gb Ethernet is below 950Mbps, even if you had packets flowing continuously!) They also said the use averages above 250TB.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- dubbel 4y ago
  The supposed quote says "We’re writing to you today because of your traffic use, which currently averages above 250 TB/month on some of your servers." It averages on multiple of their servers, which indicates to me that the average was taken over the course of some months (?). They may well have reached 320TB in some months on some servers. I'm not surprised by this. For me, unlimited traffic (with 1 gbps) means i can spike in some months without having to worry about costs exploding, but if I'm maxing it out consistently, then I might be asked to move to a different service or upgrade.

EarlKing 4y ago

For those of you working at companies with "unlimited" vacation time... pay close attention. :D

thfuran 4y ago
Well, I'd be satisfied with only being able to be on vacation about 75% of the time.

mdasen 4y ago

To hit 250TB in a month, the person would need to do 809Mbps (assuming a 30 day month). I personally would assume that "unlimited 1Gbps" wouldn't include using 80% of the link's capacity, but I also agree that stated limits are better. That would be $16,691 worth of transfer from AWS (US East pricing for 250TB to the internet). I'm not arguing that AWS isn't overcharging, just putting up a comparison. Even at $0.01/GB, that would be $2,560. They should probably just say 50TB with overages at $0.005/GB or something like that. They are offering 20TB on their cloud servers so 50TB on the dedicated seems reasonable and $0.005/GB for overages is less than you'll get almost anywhere else while still probably enough for Hetzner to make a profit.

thexa4 4y ago
They did have traffic caps a while back but explicitly abolished them.
- thegeekpirate 4y ago
  Yep, it was 20TB from what I recall.
worldofmatthew 4y ago
AWS pricing is a rip-off.
- contingencies 4y ago
  ... and their systems are designed to make controlling it difficult to impossible while locking people in to their ecosystem.
  - comprev 4y ago
    Free/cheap to get in, expensive to get out. Your data is held at ransom to some degree.
  - booi 4y ago
    How are their systems designed to make controlling cost difficult? I've found it exceptionally easy to find places where things are suboptimal and it's always quite clear to me how much something will cost before I do it.

mjevans 4y ago

"Unlimited" really should mean fully unlimited. I also take issue with "up to" and other vagueness. There should be clear metrics and sizes that are precise and not abbreviated in all ads and offers; and offers should also be public and non-discriminatory. A 'service check' for an address should also constitute a 'binding offer' (I.E. the ISP had better be very sure service can be provided at that address!)

pixl97 4y ago
Not using 'up to' is opening up all kinds of other cans of worms. Ok, 100mbps.... to where? The switch you're plugged into? The router at the data center? Some other random host in the network? Some other random host outside the network? So yea, everything on almost every network without a dedicated circuit is 'up to' simply because you can make no other guarantees.
- kazen44 4y ago
  also, what do you count as bandwith? Simply sending packets down a wire usually limits one to the physical speed of the interface, but even then some kind of packets might get dropped by various filters/mechanisms along the way. For instance, should i be able to use my full bandwith of my connection by sending purely BUM traffic down the link? Somewhere in the network, some policer is going to start dropping BUM traffic to protect the network against flooding.
  - pixl97 4y ago
    I remember years ago working with ISPs and many of their monitoring systems assumed that packet = 1500 bytes as a fixed measure. Running a DNS server at full throttle could lead to a situation where you'd get bandwidth charges for amounts higher than could be served at line rate. I'm assuming modern systems do this better, but I've learned never to make assumptions when they benefit the billing party more.
    - kazen44 4y ago

googlryas 4y ago

Do usage limitations actually affect the bottom line vs throttling? Maybe I'm wrong, but I imagine it doesn't cost much more to run a network that is 80% saturated vs a network that is 5% saturated? Basically, why can't they just fairly throttle high usage users when utilization ramps up, and then unthrottle them when usage lowers? Edit: I'm not talking about them reneging on their guarantees, which they've already done by asking the user to cut their usage.

worldofmatthew 4y ago
They claim the bandwidth is guaranteed on servers costing less than 50 euros a month. They appear to have simply got caught out by people actually using what they paid for.
- googlryas 4y ago
  Sure, I just mean regardless of their guarantees, why network operators don't seem to operate like this, instead they look at total transfer over a period of time, and cut you off or charge more, even if the bytes you're sending were essentially free and didn't affect other users.
dvfjsdhgfv 4y ago
And this would be fair to your customers how? Where you draw the line who is who? How would you feel if your services started to be less responsive for no apparent reason, even though you paid for them and did nothing wrong?
- foobiekr 4y ago
  Imagine the AWS EBS bursting/credits applied to networking. It would be awful. (It's also awful with EBS)
  - banana_giraffe 4y ago
    Many do, https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/ec2-instance-network-bandwidth.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/ec2-inst... : > Typically, instances with 16 vCPUs or fewer (size 4xlarge and smaller) are documented as having "up to" a specified bandwidth; for example, "up to 10 Gbps". These instances have a baseline bandwidth. To meet additional demand, they can use a network I/O credit mechanism to burst beyond their baseline bandwidth. Instances can use burst bandwidth for a limited time, typically from 5 to 60 minutes, depending on the instance size.

preinheimer 4y ago

We avoid "unlimited" if we possibly can. The moment it comes up that provider generally flips from being "a good deal" to "the most expensive in the region". Then you're stuck looking for alternatives while you're in a bad situation. You don't always get an email, sometimes you're just suspended and they'll let you know if you email them. (We work with >200 different hosting providers around the world)

cglan 4y ago

I don't get it. If you're paying for 1Gbps then why does it matter how much you use up to that amount? If they're overselling their capacity then they should just stop doing that. If they can only handle 80% of the sustained capacity, only sell up to that amount. You pay for pipe capacity, you don't pay for usage according to sales page. If they want to change their business model they can. It's not my fault that I'm using what I bought to its full capacity

walrus01 4y ago
every isp ever since the dawn of the commercial internet oversells its capacity, you rely on 98% of the users not actually trying to max out their circuit at near line rate 24x7. if they did not do this an ordinary residential last mile connection would be $250/mo not $50/mo.
- yjftsjthsd-h 4y ago
  An entire (sub)industry being predicated on fraud doesn't make it not fraud, and doesn't make it okay. If you can't actually sell that capacity, just say up front what you're actually selling people.
  - walrus01 4y ago
    there are plenty of much more expensive dedicated hosting companies that are totally upfront about real costs. heztner and OVH and other bottom of the barrel pricing hosting companies are their own special breed of thing. you're not going to get for $40-50/mo what you would get for $250/mo. their TOS/AUP almost certainly covers this (you think that a company the size of hetzner didn't run this by real legal experts first?). it's not fraud.
    - NullPrefix 4y ago
      Blessing from legal team doesn't mean it's not fraud. Blessing from legal team means they are willing to defend this position in court

andix 4y ago

It’s probably their right to end the contract (with a one month notice). A company is not forced to do business with anyone. And I’m quite sure they will gladly offer a package with some additional traffic for an extra charge.

walrus01 4y ago

I'd like to see how many people in this thread saying "but they promised UNLIMITED..." have ever actually worked in network engineering for a colo/hosting ISP. This person is probably paying like 50 bucks a month or less and is in the top 1% of bandwidth users as measured by individual ethernet ports from a top of rack aggregation switch or similar.

corrral 4y ago
> I'd like to see how many people in this thread saying "but they promised UNLIMITED..." have ever actually worked in network engineering for a colo/hosting ISP. Raises hand The fact that these kinds of lies are normal doesn't make them OK. Instead, just... don't lie.
- walrus01 4y ago
  reaching out nicely to a customer that's probably in the top 0.02% of your bandwidth users for their package/plan and asking them to move to a more serious/expensive service is not a lie... i should also note that a very common reason for a dedicated hosting company's server to go wild on upstream bandwidth is something misconfigured or compromised, and being used maliciously by some external 3rd party. not actual bandwidth usage from the paying customer. this is mentioned in a nicer way in the email. they probably could have just cut them off arbitrarily. nothing obligates them to keep a customer. this is actually really nice on the part of the hosting ISP in my opinion. If you have a sustained near 800 Mbps of outbound traffic you should be doing it from something much more serious than an absolute bottom of the barrel lowest cost no-SLA dedicated server. this is "unlimited" in the same way that an all you can eat buffet restaurant is unlimited, with some caveats.
  - corrral 4y ago
    Of course advertising one thing then saying, "well, actually, no" means you lied. Even if you're "nice" about it. It's not that big a deal. People lie tons. It's not murder. But it's still a lie.

Havoc 4y ago

This feels a bit like a case of "this is why we can't have nice things".

zdragnar 4y ago
It's the same reason why one of my jobs switched from unlimited PTO to limited PTO. 98% of employees took sane amounts of time off. 2% (if that) abused it rather extensively. It might just be a tale as old as time.

berkas1 4y ago

But why they want to cancel the contract and won't offer the customer to pay for the traffic?

Kaze404 4y ago
The customer is already paying for the traffic.
killingtime74 4y ago
They have many options where they allow you to do that and its very reasonably priced https://docs.hetzner.com/robot/general/traffic/ https://docs.hetzner.com/robot/general/traffic/

r3trohack3r 4y ago

If I’m doing my math right, Hetzner advertised approximately 298TB/month on a 1Gbps link (1Gbps * 30.4 days = X Tebibyte). This user is only at 250TB/month.

filleokus 4y ago

Slightly OT: Suppose you want to deliver a couple of 100’s Mbps to people in EU on the cheap, how would you do it? Assume it’s static files, so the server doesn’t need to be that beefy. Hetzner would probably be my first choice. Even though I’ve hade some strangely slow connections there sometimes. Other more enterprisey providers like Datapacket seem to be significantly more expensive.

edmundsauto 4y ago
Cloudflare is an option, unless there’s a reason that it’s a bad idea in the EU? I front my Hetzner instance w/ then, works great.
sitzkrieg 4y ago
cheap vps , there are many good options including hetzner i suppose
jeroenhd 4y ago
I rent a VPS with Leaseweb. Their prices aren't the lowest, but their performance is better than many cheaper alternatives. There is no unlimited data. Either data centers are lying to you, or they're going to end your contract the month after you start sending hundreds of TB. Their data plans clearly state the traffic limits and their terms state the overcharge you can expect. If you need more network traffic than the 15TB they offer VPS servers, you can probably just ask, set up some dedicated , or set up a CDN (listing price: "contact us", though Cloudflare is likely cheaper) or rent yourself a full colo rack. Other VPS providers are similar, but always check the uplink speed (I've noticed German and French providers tend to stick to only 100mbps) and the data limits; anything that sounds like "unlimited" isn't and should be avoided if you're worried about data cost. Your only real option is to avoid the cheap market and go midrange or high end because data is expensive, especially at over 800mbps consistently.
- filleokus 4y ago
  I mean FDC offers 1Gbs unmetered[1] (and I do think they actually mean unmetered), dedicated for $199 / month . While being ≈ 4 times more expensive than a cheap Hetzner dedicated box mentioned in OP, I don't think OP would have gotten an email from them. I was thinking that maybe some provider basically was reselling ≈FDC dedicated boxes with VPS's that tailored to high bandwidth usage. Of course being more expensive than run of the mill VPS's. But maybe the server performance per price, and bandwidth price equation doesn't make it so attractive. Even if you're just pushing static files, you need some CPU to saturate it (especially considering tls termination) [1]: https://www.fdcservers.net/budget-server-1 https://www.fdcservers.net/budget-server-1

bilsbie 4y ago

I wonder at what point an all you can eat buffet would kick you out? And how does this situation compare.

christophilus 4y ago
They absolutely do kick you out. Some have time limits. Others have managers who just stand awkwardly over your table and calmly ask you to leave and not be an asshole. I know this because I know two guys who were once very hungry teenagers and who also don’t have the genes that allow them to pick up on social cues.

jebronie 4y ago

The autobahn also has no general speed limit. That does not mean you are welcome to go 300 km/h all the time. Unfortunately some peoples stupidity makes it necessary to impose fixed rules for everyone.

cypress66 4y ago
Sorry but that's a really bad analogy. Autobahn speed limit is related to safety and a lot of factors. Here it's simply a matter of money. If more than 200TB/month triggers an angry email, then just state they have a limit of 200TB instead of stating unlimited. It's not so complex.
- qeternity 4y ago
  > Here it's simply a matter of money. Lol, as if that is unimportant. > then just state they have a limit of 200TB They don't have a limit of 200TB. They take issue with sustained saturation over a long period of time. > It's not so complex. Can you imagine how complex it would be to publish a schedule of every single consideration? They certainly won't take issue with 250TB of internal traffic. So now they need to start differentiating egress. Would they take issue with 250TB of ingress? It's less likely, but they would probably have higher tolerance for that. So now you have another schedule. What about cross-datacenter traffic? Boom, another policy. Have you seen AWS bandwidth pricing? How in the world is that less complex than just addressing abuse on a case-by-case basis.

Aulig 4y ago

On the bright side: if this was Google, I wouldn't be surprised to see his account terminated immediately without giving an exact reason.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

de6u99er 4y ago

It looks to me as if they know that the content is violating their terms and conditions. >... We will routinely check your traffic use. If we continue to see such a high amount, we may choose to cancel your contract. (Please see 2.7 of our Terms and conditions ... >2.7. Furthermore, we reserve the right to terminate the contractual relationship without notice for good cause. Such good cause is deemed to exist, among other reasons, if the Customer fails to meet its payment obligations or violates other important customer obligations. A further important reason which may result in us locking or terminating the Customer’s services or account without notice is if the Customer uses content that impairs the regular operating behavior or the security of our infrastructure or our product, or violates paragraphs 8.1. - 8.3. of these Terms and Conditions. >8.1. The Customer is obligated to check and comply with the legal provisions arising from the use of the contractually agreed services, in particular the Telecommunications Act, the Telemedia Act, as well as national and international industrial and intellectual property rights, personal rights, and the requirements of competition and data protection laws on their own. The Customer indemnifies us against all claims of third parties arising from infringements of these obligations. >8.2. The Customer is obligated not to publish any content that infringes on the rights of third parties or otherwise violates applicable law. This includes in particular, but is not limited to, pornographic or obscene material, extremist content or content that offends common decency, gambling, material that could seriously endanger the morals of children or young people or violate the rights of third parties (copyrights, name rights, trademark rights and data protection rights). This also includes the publication of defamatory content, insults or disparagement of persons or groups of persons. >8.3. The transmission of spam mail is prohibited. This includes in particular the sending of unauthorized, unsolicited advertising to third parties. When sending emails, it is also prohibited to provide false sender data or to disguise the identity of the sender in any other way. The operation of applications for mining cryptocurrencies remains prohibited. These include, but are not limited to, mining, farming and plotting of cryptocurrencies. We are entitled to lock the Customer’s access to their Hetzner services or account in the event of non-compliance.

braingenious 4y ago
Wait, what? You’re confident that this person is engaged in spamming? Or wait no, copyright infringement? Or wait no, illegal content? Are there any legitimate use cases that might use a lot of bandwidth? I could imagine hosting 4k video. Or a software archive. Or image hosting. Or hosting podcasts, ML models, backup services, OS images, high traffic forums, public domain archives, adult content (which is not disallowed by Hetzner), etc. I’ve noticed a lot of people starting with the premise that “It’s okay for Hetzner to lie to customers” and working backwards to enumerate reasons why it’s not only acceptable, but good and necessary. It’s a strange phenomenon.

Seattle3503 4y ago

If there were a government enforcement action woukd it fall under the FTC as a contract issue, or the FCC as an internet thing?

purplerabbit 4y ago

I don't understand why everyone in this thread is being so pedantic, accusing Hetzner of "lying", etc. If you are subscribing to something and the subscription price changes, that's not "lying", that's one party renegotiating. Furthermore, Hetzner's legal agreement allows them to do this. Sure, Hetzner could publish "up to X TB / month" (and it sounds like it should considering their apparent audience). But let's have a little empathy here, sheesh.

snoopy_telex 4y ago
What is being renegotiated? The contact isn’t being rewritten. It still states they have unlimited bandwidth. They’re just being told to not make use of contracted resource or the contract will be terminated. That’s not a renegotiation.
- walrus01 4y ago
  they're not obligated to keep anyone as a customer. saying "we don't want your money anymore" is a form of renegotiation.
zootboy 4y ago
I think part of the frustration is the asymmetry of the situation. Good luck telling Hetzner that you'll be paying "up to $20 per month" for your server. The moment you under-pay, they drop you. But somehow it's OK that they can arbitrarily cut back on the service they promised and you just have to accept it? Whether or not something is technically allowed in the fine print is different from whether or not it's a shitty thing to do. Having secret, unpublished limits on a supposedly-unlimited service is shitty. They'll be getting no empathy from me.
- qeternity 4y ago
  > and you just have to accept it? No, just as you said with your underpaying hypothetical, the customer is free to drop Hetzner. A rolling term contract protects both parties. If this person pushing 250TB/mo can find a better provider, then they should move. If they can't find a provider willing to offer cheaper bandwidth than Hetzner...well, that tells you everything you need to know about this situation.

tuetuopay 4y ago

I work for a cloud provider (not hetzner), and sorry, but this is normal behaviour for them. Every infrastructure is based on the principle that nobody will use all of their ability at the same time. Road network? Good luck with a whole city in their cars at the exact same time. Power distribution? Tell that to the british grid when all of britain turns on their kettles at the same time during sports events (live broadcasts are out of phase from regions to the next to alleviate this issue). Or to their sewage system, where all toilets flush at the same time once the human byproduct of said kettles is produced. So yes, this is a hosting provider where the bandwidth is shared, they overcommit it, otherwise they would not be able to do them for that cheap (in case of hetzner), or at all at a profit (for other providers that are not bottom-end). Here they tell it is unlimited, because there is no data cap. The same goes for virtual machines in a cloud environment, those too are overcommitted, and I can guarantee you that if you spawn AWS instances and use 80% flat of CPU 24/7/365 you'll get the same kind of email directing you to the cpu dedicated instances. Actually, they even did you a favor for not kicking you out due to "trust and safety" flagging you as fraud (like sending spam or ddos, which they 100% should have btw).

lazide 4y ago
For 1Gbps? That’s bullshit.
secondcoming 4y ago
Some of our GCP machines use far more than 80% CPU 24/7/365 on both preemptible and non-preemptible instances. We've yet to be asked to move to dedicated machines. It was pretty much the same when we were on AWS. I don't see how a cloud provider can complain about high CPU-usage if they bill by the machine and by the minute. Otherwise 20% of your bill is for idle CPUs.
- tuetuopay 4y ago
  It really depends how wide your impact is. When you have a lot of instances with this behaviour, you generate a lot of CPU steal for the neighbors on the same hypervisor (depending on the mitigations they put in place). If you happen to impact too many customers (many performance issue tickets), then the CSP will be more than happy to reach out to you to "upgrade" you. It really boils down to the business impact you have on them. Sure, you pay for the resource, but they are not guaranteed. And it is up to their discretion to de-prioritize your VMs on the HV, so that you're the last to get scheduled when the host's CPU is starved. This is the whole 'CPU credits' thing on AWS that they document in [0] where you can burst above the baseline. Interestingly, note that the baseline is in the 30% ballpark in their illustration on the bottom of the page :) [0]: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/burstable-credits-baseline-concepts.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/burstabl...

dietrichepp 4y ago

Whenever I see that some resource is "unlimited", my take is that the company either doesn't know what the limit is, the company is gambling that users won't run into the limit, or they are just pretending that the limit does not exist. Oversubscription is normal and I am happy to pay for a service that is oversubscribed. I just want to know what I am paying for. Am I paying for "guaranteed X GB/month, up to X+Y GB/month"? Cool, I love it. Are you gambling that enough users will sign up and pay you to subsidize unlimited bandwidth / unlimited storage / unlimited anything? I want to know. A normal business relationship with a vendor should be profitable for the vendor. Yes, I have an interest in paying less money for services--but being able to use those services at all is usually more important than squeezing a few bucks in discounts out of the vendor. If my deal with a vendor is unprofitable for the vendor, it creates a risk that the vendor will in the future terminate the relationship, discontinue the service, or even go out of business. It's up to the company to figure out what the right SLOs/SLAs/SLIs are. That's actually a core part of what I am paying for when I sign up for cloud services or colo services or whatever. There's a delicate balance where you figure out an SLO that is possible for the company to support, while still looking good in marketing materials, and understandable by technical end-users. If your company provides infrastructure without SLOs, or if key SLOs are missing, then I'm going to be a bit hesitant. A missing SLO is a sign that your company hasn't done the work of figuring out how supportable a particular feature is (like "unlimited bandwidth").

nZUC2qDyxDA3Kpe 4y ago

250TB/month means this person is, basically, saturating a 1Gbps link 24/7. It's 761Mbps, which probably accounts for some overhead/latencies (f.e. downloading many pieces of a torrent or many articles of an NZB). This is blatantly NOT fair use. I doubt that they in fact have a specific limit (having worked for large hosting companies with "fair use" policies in the past, it was "you'll know it when you see it"), but whatever limit you might choose is frankly well below this. Yes, calling it unlimited is a bit misleading, but they truly can't compete with everyone else (who do the same thing!) if they don't. At this point, with how widespread it is, you should frankly assume that unlimited = fair use, and be working for it to change politically, not getting mad at companies. I would also note that it sounds like their use has been consistently high over several months, which (IMHO anyway) lends some credence to calling it unlimited (as opposed to f.e. AT&T where "unlimited" means a set number of GB each month...).

MallocVoidstar 4y ago
>It's 761Mbps, which probably accounts for some overhead/latencies (f.e. downloading many pieces of a torrent or many articles of an NZB). Hetzner tracks outbound bandwidth only, the relevant servers are uploading, not downloading, >250TB/mo.

password4321 4y ago

It's interesting to read semi-permanent HN comments recording how well individuals adapt to practical realities.

coder543 4y ago

As interesting as this discussion has been, I want to point out that we have no proof of any of this. - The link says "my friend got this", so even the person who authored that post isn't claiming to have received this notice. This is a second hand report, at best. For all we know, their friend received this notice years ago, and mentioned it to the OP, who didn't realize it was old news. - We don't even have a screenshot of an email like this (which could also be easily faked, but it would be more credible than that zero-effort text post), nor do we have any public statement from Hetzner. - It's not like a flood of people are reporting this happening to them... I haven't seen a single person in this HN discussion mention receiving a similar notice from Hetzner. I didn't read the entire thread that was linked, but I also didn't see anyone there claiming to have personally received this notice either. - The phrase "we’re writing to you today because of your traffic use" does not appear on any google results other than the linked thread, so this could be the first and only time that Hetzner has reached out to anyone about this, if it is even real, and even then... they might be motivated to cancel their contract with the customer for real reasons that they don't want to discuss with the customer, in hopes of lessening the drama. Companies do that sometimes, as crappy as it may be, so this whole thing could be a red herring if it only happens to one account. If anyone does have additional evidence or anecdotes to contribute related to Hetzner getting upset at "unlimited" traffic usage, that would be nice to see. If this is a pattern that can be confirmed, then all of this discussion is absolutely warranted. Hetzner might have sent this notice, but I've seen people get similarly flustered about other things on the internet that turned out to be fake. Can we gather some more evidence before raising our pitchforks? Literally anyone could have made up a story like this about any company, and people do make stories like this up. Those are just my thoughts, but now that everyone has their pitchforks out, I doubt they are willing to provide benefit of the doubt to the accused party and wait for more evidence to show up.

MallocVoidstar 4y ago
>The link says "my friend got this", so even the person who authored that post isn't claiming to have received this notice. This is a second hand report, at best. For all we know, their friend received this notice years ago, and mentioned it to the OP, who didn't realize it was old news. There are at least two other posters in the linked thread that say they've received the same notice today (page 7). From the post history, one of them appears to work for a provider that I'd bet is reselling Hetzner boxes/slots on their boxes.