5 ms·

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 ju

by 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
  - blowski 4y ago
    More explicitly stating the limits would be good, but declaring “fraud” is rather exaggerating. You go with Hetzner knowing you’re getting bargain prices, so they’re cutting corners somewhere. This would be like saying Walmart are committing fraud when it turns out their ham is not “finest quality”.
    - walrus01 4y ago
      Not even Walmart, hetzner is the ABSOLUTE bottom of the barrel on pricing for no-SLA dedicated servers, this is more like buying a kitchen knife from Dollar General for $1.75 and then complaining it doesn't stay sharp very long.
      - SahAssar 4y ago
        While they are very cheap I have never had a problem with the quality of their service. Just saying that comparing with dollar general cutlery might not be fair.
      - hengistbury 4y ago
        You're forgetting the true bottom, OVH
    - hombre_fatal 4y ago
      Eh, the customer should get to know where they are cutting corners aka what they are paying for. A better example is a Walmart selling spam as ham. How does your example make false advertisement okay? “We’ll of course they are cutting corners!” doesn’t seem like a defense at all to me.
      - blowski 4y ago
        If you buy ham from a bargain supermarket, you are effectively buying spam. I’m ok with that, yes. As a consumer, I should my use my judgement as to why the price is what it is.
        4y ago
  - macspoofing 4y ago
    >An entire (sub)industry being predicated on fraud doesn't make it not fraud 'Fraud' is too strong of word. Almost everything in the world has some level of over-subscription. I don't know for sure BUT if every person and business turned all their water taps on full blast, I think we may have a problem.
    - short_sells_poo 4y ago
      That just means that almost everything in world has a level of dishonesty and fraud. And just because it happens, it doesn't mean we should just accept it.
      - macspoofing 4y ago
        >That just means that almost everything in world has a level of dishonesty and fraud. Words are tools to convey information, if you label everything as fraud, that 'tool' is no longer useful.
        short_sells_poo 4y ago
        Yes words are tools to convey information. If by default all information is dishonest, the entire purpose of using words is no longer useful.
    - NullPrefix 4y ago
      Water is metered in many parts of the world. Leave it full blast and you're footing the bill
  - kjeetgill 4y ago
    It's not fraud. Even slightly. Overselling capacity is perfectly fine if most of the time* you go to use the capacity it's there for you. If 95% of users under use capacity and you have the stats for it, it's perfectly reasonable to oversell sell with respect to the expected capacity usage. If those stats change, sure - they should adjust how much they oversell or what they advertise. It's the same way a bank can't handle everyone pulling their money out all at once. It's perfectly reasonable to plan around practical scenarios. Now if you rarely get what you paid for, sure, go for their heads over it. * for some definition of most of the time aka get SLAs
- Shank 4y ago
  > if they did not do this an ordinary residential last mile connection would be $250/mo not $50/mo. At least in my experience, gigabit fiber is usually $100/mo in fiber markets. I would definitely pay $250/mo if it meant I had a guaranteed line rate, but I can’t. I think a lot of people would take $250 for guaranteed truly unlimited continuously saturated gigabit, actually.
  - walrus01 4y ago
    unless you are on an active ethernet fiber last mile circuit, an ISP can't really sell "dedicated" business 1:1 capacity on a GPON circuit. if you found yourself operating a small regional bank branch or similar and wanted a business circuit in some suburb of a major city you'd more realistically be looking at $700-800/mo for a 1Gbps dedicated business DIA circuit on a 36-60 mo term.
- danaris 4y ago
  It wouldn't be that hard for them to sell connections as something like "guaranteed 20Mbps, peak 100Mbps" and, if they have to impose limits, impose them at the point where the "guaranteed" would be running constantly. The problem is they don't want to do that, because it's much snazzier to just market the peak speed.
  - kazen44 4y ago
    that is the problem with oversubscribing though. making it possible to say "you have a guaranteed bandwith of X% of the total capacity" is a hard problem to solve, especially inside the core layers of the network, where traffic gets aggregated. How are you going to make sure every tenant gets its share of bandwith equally? It requires traffic engineering (like RSVP-TE, which in term requires an MPLS network.) and a proper QoS setup. both of which are not trivial to implement at scale. Going further down the network towards to aggregate layer is far more doable (between switches etc), but doing it across core links it is actually quite difficult to guarantee bandwith.
  - jabbany 4y ago
    To be fair most, residential ISPs I've used do only advertise something like "up to X Mbps" [https://imgur.com/a/Qvp8i61 https://imgur.com/a/Qvp8i61] and some will have asterisks that further lead to documentation about things like "soft data caps" after a certain amount of TB transferred per month etc. Also residential ISPs generally don't even have SLAs so you could have days without Internet... probably also why they do not try to even hint at any guaranteed bandwidth. Depending on the situation, you might have none :)
    - NullPrefix 4y ago
      "up to X Mbps" would imply "up to $y"
      - jabbany 4y ago
        Hah. If only corporations were that nice lol.
- altairprime 4y ago
  And we would term the users who did max out their circuit at near line rate 24/7. If you bring a world eating champion to an all-you-can-eat buffet, they'll end up being refused service and banned from eating there after a few visits. Attempting to apply a dictionary-literal reading of 'Unlimited' to a business advertisement of 'Unlimited' is unlikely to get very far in a court of law: such a literal interpretation attempts to create and exploit a loophole for one's own benefit at extreme cost to the provider, by refusing a common sense interpretation of 'Unlimited within reason'. Saturating 1G ethernet continuously for a month exceeds what I consider reasonable, and I would not expect a court to be convinced otherwise.
  - walrus01 4y ago
    plenty of hosting companies WILL sell you 1G dedicated to saturate and will be totally happy about doing so, if you're up front about what you intend to do and pay for it accordingly. it's a very common thing these days to buy something like a 1.5 Gbps average commit of traffic on a 10G 1310 LR hand off port to the ISP, and move traffic in a daily sine wave pattern that varies anywhere between 500 Mbps at 0300 in the morning and 1.5 to 2.5 Gbps in the evening peak.
    - altairprime 4y ago
      Correct, but "1G saturated commit" and "1.5 Gbps average commit" are not marketed as "unlimited", since they are quite specific and offered without the human judgment call about whether the "unlimited" usage is reasonable.
      - walrus01 4y ago
        also absolutely correct, serious DIA business internet services are negotiated in detail well in advance of a sales order being signed, unlike something such as a $40/mo hetnzer service marketed as "unlimited".
  - istinetz 4y ago
    > such a literal interpretation attempts to create and exploit a loophole for one's own benefit at extreme cost to the provider, by refusing a common sense interpretation of 'Unlimited within reason'. It's not a "loophole" to use 80% of the capacity that was advertised and sold to you. If they want to sell "unlimited within reason" capacity, they should advertise "unlimited within reason", instead of "unlimited". I really don't understand your viewpoint.
- williamscales 4y ago
  > if they did not do this an ordinary residential last mile connection would be $250/mo not $50/mo. Sure? I want stuff that works, damn if it’s cheap lol.
- cthalupa 4y ago
  You can oversell capacity in two ways: 1) You have enough slack that your edge case top-end users can utilize what you advertise, and there are enough people not needing it that this is all fine 2) You do not have enough slack that your edge case top-end users can't utilize what you advertise, in which case you are, at best, being deceptive in your advertising practices. No one cares about the former, and even though the latter is common place, that doesn't mean that it isn't a shitty advertising practice nor should someone making use of a provider have to know that this is common place. You should be able to reasonably expect to get what a commercial entity is advertising itself as giving as part of your payment to them. Just because this industry has been garbage about it doesn't mean that it should always be garbage about it.
  - walrus01 4y ago
    Complaining that ovh or hetzner is garbage is like complaining that a $19 coffee maker you bought at Walmart is kind of crap. You bought the absolute cheapest product on the market that claims to do the job. It's like buying a Nissan micra and then complaining about the compromises inherent in a subcompact economy car.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
renewiltord 4y ago
Ultimately, it's because you're not paying for 1 Gbps. You're paying for 1 Gbps with an arbitrary cut-off switch held by someone else. If you want them to not have the cut-off switch, you have to pay more.

by cglan 4y ago

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
- blowski 4y ago
  More explicitly stating the limits would be good, but declaring “fraud” is rather exaggerating. You go with Hetzner knowing you’re getting bargain prices, so they’re cutting corners somewhere. This would be like saying Walmart are committing fraud when it turns out their ham is not “finest quality”.
  - walrus01 4y ago
    Not even Walmart, hetzner is the ABSOLUTE bottom of the barrel on pricing for no-SLA dedicated servers, this is more like buying a kitchen knife from Dollar General for $1.75 and then complaining it doesn't stay sharp very long.
    - SahAssar 4y ago
      While they are very cheap I have never had a problem with the quality of their service. Just saying that comparing with dollar general cutlery might not be fair.
    - hengistbury 4y ago
      You're forgetting the true bottom, OVH
  - hombre_fatal 4y ago
    Eh, the customer should get to know where they are cutting corners aka what they are paying for. A better example is a Walmart selling spam as ham. How does your example make false advertisement okay? “We’ll of course they are cutting corners!” doesn’t seem like a defense at all to me.
    - blowski 4y ago
      If you buy ham from a bargain supermarket, you are effectively buying spam. I’m ok with that, yes. As a consumer, I should my use my judgement as to why the price is what it is.
      - 4y ago
- macspoofing 4y ago
  >An entire (sub)industry being predicated on fraud doesn't make it not fraud 'Fraud' is too strong of word. Almost everything in the world has some level of over-subscription. I don't know for sure BUT if every person and business turned all their water taps on full blast, I think we may have a problem.
  - short_sells_poo 4y ago
    That just means that almost everything in world has a level of dishonesty and fraud. And just because it happens, it doesn't mean we should just accept it.
    - macspoofing 4y ago
      >That just means that almost everything in world has a level of dishonesty and fraud. Words are tools to convey information, if you label everything as fraud, that 'tool' is no longer useful.
      - short_sells_poo 4y ago
        Yes words are tools to convey information. If by default all information is dishonest, the entire purpose of using words is no longer useful.
  - NullPrefix 4y ago
    Water is metered in many parts of the world. Leave it full blast and you're footing the bill
- kjeetgill 4y ago
  It's not fraud. Even slightly. Overselling capacity is perfectly fine if most of the time* you go to use the capacity it's there for you. If 95% of users under use capacity and you have the stats for it, it's perfectly reasonable to oversell sell with respect to the expected capacity usage. If those stats change, sure - they should adjust how much they oversell or what they advertise. It's the same way a bank can't handle everyone pulling their money out all at once. It's perfectly reasonable to plan around practical scenarios. Now if you rarely get what you paid for, sure, go for their heads over it. * for some definition of most of the time aka get SLAs
Shank 4y ago
> if they did not do this an ordinary residential last mile connection would be $250/mo not $50/mo. At least in my experience, gigabit fiber is usually $100/mo in fiber markets. I would definitely pay $250/mo if it meant I had a guaranteed line rate, but I can’t. I think a lot of people would take $250 for guaranteed truly unlimited continuously saturated gigabit, actually.
- walrus01 4y ago
  unless you are on an active ethernet fiber last mile circuit, an ISP can't really sell "dedicated" business 1:1 capacity on a GPON circuit. if you found yourself operating a small regional bank branch or similar and wanted a business circuit in some suburb of a major city you'd more realistically be looking at $700-800/mo for a 1Gbps dedicated business DIA circuit on a 36-60 mo term.
danaris 4y ago
It wouldn't be that hard for them to sell connections as something like "guaranteed 20Mbps, peak 100Mbps" and, if they have to impose limits, impose them at the point where the "guaranteed" would be running constantly. The problem is they don't want to do that, because it's much snazzier to just market the peak speed.
- kazen44 4y ago
  that is the problem with oversubscribing though. making it possible to say "you have a guaranteed bandwith of X% of the total capacity" is a hard problem to solve, especially inside the core layers of the network, where traffic gets aggregated. How are you going to make sure every tenant gets its share of bandwith equally? It requires traffic engineering (like RSVP-TE, which in term requires an MPLS network.) and a proper QoS setup. both of which are not trivial to implement at scale. Going further down the network towards to aggregate layer is far more doable (between switches etc), but doing it across core links it is actually quite difficult to guarantee bandwith.
- jabbany 4y ago
  To be fair most, residential ISPs I've used do only advertise something like "up to X Mbps" [https://imgur.com/a/Qvp8i61 https://imgur.com/a/Qvp8i61] and some will have asterisks that further lead to documentation about things like "soft data caps" after a certain amount of TB transferred per month etc. Also residential ISPs generally don't even have SLAs so you could have days without Internet... probably also why they do not try to even hint at any guaranteed bandwidth. Depending on the situation, you might have none :)
  - NullPrefix 4y ago
    "up to X Mbps" would imply "up to $y"
    - jabbany 4y ago
      Hah. If only corporations were that nice lol.
altairprime 4y ago
And we would term the users who did max out their circuit at near line rate 24/7. If you bring a world eating champion to an all-you-can-eat buffet, they'll end up being refused service and banned from eating there after a few visits. Attempting to apply a dictionary-literal reading of 'Unlimited' to a business advertisement of 'Unlimited' is unlikely to get very far in a court of law: such a literal interpretation attempts to create and exploit a loophole for one's own benefit at extreme cost to the provider, by refusing a common sense interpretation of 'Unlimited within reason'. Saturating 1G ethernet continuously for a month exceeds what I consider reasonable, and I would not expect a court to be convinced otherwise.
- walrus01 4y ago
  plenty of hosting companies WILL sell you 1G dedicated to saturate and will be totally happy about doing so, if you're up front about what you intend to do and pay for it accordingly. it's a very common thing these days to buy something like a 1.5 Gbps average commit of traffic on a 10G 1310 LR hand off port to the ISP, and move traffic in a daily sine wave pattern that varies anywhere between 500 Mbps at 0300 in the morning and 1.5 to 2.5 Gbps in the evening peak.
  - altairprime 4y ago
    Correct, but "1G saturated commit" and "1.5 Gbps average commit" are not marketed as "unlimited", since they are quite specific and offered without the human judgment call about whether the "unlimited" usage is reasonable.
    - walrus01 4y ago
      also absolutely correct, serious DIA business internet services are negotiated in detail well in advance of a sales order being signed, unlike something such as a $40/mo hetnzer service marketed as "unlimited".
- istinetz 4y ago
  > such a literal interpretation attempts to create and exploit a loophole for one's own benefit at extreme cost to the provider, by refusing a common sense interpretation of 'Unlimited within reason'. It's not a "loophole" to use 80% of the capacity that was advertised and sold to you. If they want to sell "unlimited within reason" capacity, they should advertise "unlimited within reason", instead of "unlimited". I really don't understand your viewpoint.
williamscales 4y ago
> if they did not do this an ordinary residential last mile connection would be $250/mo not $50/mo. Sure? I want stuff that works, damn if it’s cheap lol.
cthalupa 4y ago
You can oversell capacity in two ways: 1) You have enough slack that your edge case top-end users can utilize what you advertise, and there are enough people not needing it that this is all fine 2) You do not have enough slack that your edge case top-end users can't utilize what you advertise, in which case you are, at best, being deceptive in your advertising practices. No one cares about the former, and even though the latter is common place, that doesn't mean that it isn't a shitty advertising practice nor should someone making use of a provider have to know that this is common place. You should be able to reasonably expect to get what a commercial entity is advertising itself as giving as part of your payment to them. Just because this industry has been garbage about it doesn't mean that it should always be garbage about it.
- walrus01 4y ago
  Complaining that ovh or hetzner is garbage is like complaining that a $19 coffee maker you bought at Walmart is kind of crap. You bought the absolute cheapest product on the market that claims to do the job. It's like buying a Nissan micra and then complaining about the compromises inherent in a subcompact economy car.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

renewiltord 4y ago

Ultimately, it's because you're not paying for 1 Gbps. You're paying for 1 Gbps with an arbitrary cut-off switch held by someone else. If you want them to not have the cut-off switch, you have to pay more.