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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.

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.
    - walrus01 4y ago
      no, this is more like running a buffet restaurant with an all you can eat buffet. 98% of your customers show up and eat three gargantuan heaping plates, are totally satisfied, and can barely walk back to their cars. the other 2% show up at 3 in the afternoon, stay for six hours, eat ten plates of crab legs and roast beef. maybe you notice those 2% of customers and say nothing. if the same person comes back every week and loads up on ten plates of crab legs, you nicely remind them of the socially acceptable use of an all you can eat buffet.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - kube-system 4y ago
        Honest all-you-can eat buffets do not cut people off, they post time-limits. https://blorg.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Bacchanal-buffet-caesars-las-vegas-5.jpg https://blorg.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Bacchanal-buffe...
        walrus01 4y ago
        to extend this analogy, the posted time limit at the entrance of the buffet is similar to what's in their TOS/AUP that the customer agreed to before ever starting the service in the first place.
        kube-system 4y ago
        I think the biggest difference is that "Please don't stay here more than 2 hours" clearly means that you can't sit around and eat all day. "[don't do things that] impairs the regular operating behavior or the security of our infrastructure or our product" doesn't make it very clear that there are data caps.
      - mbg721 4y ago
        This behavior leads me to disregard any advertising of "all you can eat" as a lie, and the speaker of that lie as a dishonest business. American Airlines dealt with this.
  - zmgsabst 4y ago
    Yes — the “lie” was before that, when they told the person untruthfully a cheap instance would have a certain bandwidth and unlimited traffic. Lying to close a deal is fraud: they should have disclosed the limits upfront. If they want to charge for high utilization of bandwidth, they should bill for traffic — like everyone else. I’ve also never had a buffet try to restrict “unlimited” in the way you’re suggesting — they’ve been quite upfront about their restrictions.
  - washadjeffmad 4y ago
    I guess their routers just run out of packets like buffets run out of crab legs, huh. There's a difference between saying "unlimited" and "up to n Mbps * t transfer per billing period". We don't know or care how our packets are being measured. If there's a limit to them beyond the physical link, then it's not unlimited. "Unlimited packets internally but we will reduce the egress rate after a certain amount" also isn't "unlimited".
  - johndough 4y ago
    > reaching out nicely to a customer Threatening termination for using what was advertised does not seem very nice to me - especially when they specifically removed traffic limitations: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18120500 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18120500
  - cbozeman 4y ago
    What part of, "Don't advertise something as 'unlimited' if it isn't unlimited" is difficult for you? It seems pretty damn simple. Hetzner used to have transfer limits. It was 20 TB for cheap servers when I was using them (2017-2019). It was bumped up to 50 TB in 2020. I don't disagree with you that a user consuming 250 TB of transfer should be paying for that transfer, though. I'm disagreeing with the marketing. It's deceptive, and it causes problems that are the genesis of this post. You know what's supremely simpler? Just commit to a hard limit on transfer and be done with it.
  - toast0 4y ago
    > 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. Well, they could put that in the policies or the offer. Or be more specific in the email. But 1G isn't really that much. I don't have a use for that much bandwidth at the moment, but it's not like you need that much compute to pump out 1G, so pick the offering with enough compute and enough bandwidth, and there you go. You don't always need an SLA, especially if you can load balance over multiple bottom of the barrel hosts. Unmetetered 1G for not a lot of money is a credible offer, so I'd take an established provider at their word; lots of hosting offers have a port speed and a traffic limit and overage fees listed.
- turtlebits 4y ago
  It's not a lie, it's marketing (.. well I guess that is a lie then). Unlimited plans exist because demand isn't consistent, and shared bandwidth provides a way to lower prices. If I was guaranteed max bandwidth on 5G all the time on my cellular plan, I'd pay a lot more than $40/month.
  - istinetz 4y ago
    >If I was guaranteed max bandwidth on 5G all the time on my cellular plan, I'd pay a lot more than $40/month. Okay, so the ISP expects that people won't use what they're sold. That sounds like their problem and their bad planning.
    - woojoo666 4y ago
      The actual limits are there and detailed in the terms and conditions, and often the marketing material will say that additional terms apply. It's the customers fault for assuming "unlimited" means actually unlimited, which is unrealistic and also not what a typical customer would think.
      - corrral 4y ago
        "We—on purpose—didn't mean what we said" is identical to "we lied".
- freemint 4y ago
  How does Hetzner lie here? They provided unlimited 1-ish GBit/s sustained for every month they were in contract. It is their right to choose to not do business with that user as laid out in the short ToS.
  - corrral 4y ago
    "I know I leased you this entire acre on an ongoing basis, and said you could plant on the whole thing, but now that I see you're actually planting the entire acre and not just a quarter-acre, I'm terminating your lease at the end of the current term—which is compliant with our lease agreement—because I didn't ever actually intend to let you plant on the whole thing even though I listed that, explicitly, on the advertisement for the land" That means a lie was told. The reason for not continuing the service means they lied. That it doesn't violate their ToS is beside the point—they offered something that they did not intend to let people actually use. The evidence is precisely the fact that they'll stop doing business with you if you actually use what they sold you (and don't agree to pay them more money).
    - freemint 4y ago
      As long as they didn't interfere with the plants that were planted, like throttling the connection, they offered exactly what they promised. Hetzner never offered unchanging contracts. Hetzner made a material claim. They fulfilled that claim from all i can see. You can get unlimited 1 Gbit/s traffic at Hetzner for a month at said price.
      - corrral 4y ago
        "Great, so I can sign up for the same plan again, since my use falls within what you're offering?" "Well, no, because now we know you'll actually use what we say we provide, and we don't really want to provide what we're offering—that part's a lie." It'd be different if they'd responded by discontinuing that kind of plan entirely. This seems pretty straightforward to me.
iMerNibor 4y ago
Thats how these unlimited offerings work though? The 99% pay for the 1% that actually uses the unlimited traffic Can't have your cake and eat it too.
vorpalhex 4y ago
If there's a limit, just post it. Don't lie and say unlimited. What's hard about that?
the_biot 4y ago
I have run an ISP network, and I feel their pain. But if they sell it as unlimited and have no fair use policy, they need to honor their contract. The part of the T&C they point to just says they can terminate any contract for any reason. That's a pretty lame way to resolve what is basically a marketing problem -- they want to sell a bandwidth-limited service as unlimited i.e. lie about it. Say what you will about fair use policies, but at least they spell it out.
- 300bps 4y ago
  But if they sell it as unlimited and have no fair use policy, they need to honor their contract. The part of the T&C they point to just says they can terminate any contract for any reason. First you say they need to honor their contract and then say they're honoring their contract. What's the problem? Similarly if someone runs a restaurant with an "All You Can Eat!" special and someone comes in with a 40 gallon drum and starts filling it up from the buffet, that person is going to be asked to leave immediately. There's no possible way that Hetzner could a) Predict every way someone could abuse their system and b) Put them all in their marketing materials. So they have that clause in their contract and they're using it.
  - 13415 4y ago
    It's not an abuse of a system to use it in the way it was advertised. If it says unlimited, then it's unlimited. "All you can eat" means all the individual customer can eat (usually within a time frame). If you offer it and then stop offering food when customers (in your opinion) eat too much, then that's fraud.
    - 300bps 4y ago
      If unlimited means unlimited then why doesn't "all you can eat" mean all you can eat? Why are you assuming unstated restrictions on "all you can eat" when you aren't allowing unstated restrictions on "unlimited"? You literally made up the restriction of, "usually within a timeframe".
hedora 4y ago
Assuming they are in the top 1%, that means 99 other customers are happy to overpay and subsidize them (and the provider pockets the difference). What's the problem, exactly?
helaoban 4y ago
Why does it matter? Lying is lying.
mytailorisrich 4y ago
That's quite irrelevant. The point is that advertising "unlimited 1Gbps" pretty much explicitly says that it is OK to continuously run at 1Gbps.
nojito 4y ago
> top 1% of bandwidth Closer to top .1% in all honesty
jackson1442 4y ago
Why not say that you guarantee 50TB of bandwidth and use above that is subject to AUP or throttling on the pricing page? If I buy "unlimited" something, I do expect to use it without limits. This is not to say that I don't think 250TB is excessive, but sales transparency is important.
marcosdumay 4y ago
That's easy to solve; just don't promise unlimited bandwidth. Don't lie and people won't complain that you lied. Yes, they provided a very good service for the money they received. One would be hard pressed trying to find a better deal. Yet, they did lie.
- freemint 4y ago
  How did Hetzner lie? They offered unlimited 1Gbit interconnect to this user every month they are subscribed. They did not offer "unlimited contract not subject to change you are entitled to the same conditions forever".
  - marcosdumay 4y ago
    They never had the intention of letting him use his unlimited bandwidth. So, claiming it's unlimited is a lie. Specifically, it's misleading publicity. AFAIK, that's an issue in Germany. They did the bare minimum to not get into any legal issues, but if they insist on the publicity message, they will very likely have problems. They really shouldn't try to mimic an US company.
sschueller 4y ago
Why can't we have some transparent unlimited traffic contracts? We give you unlimited depending on overall network saturation and conditions. Offer a live dashboard and prediction on where you are and how you may be throttled. Otherwise also offer pricing per GB transfered.
Handytinge 4y ago
I have, doing all 3. I agree, this person is for sure costing the company significantly more than they're worth. The correct solution is to fire the marketing team, and grandfather "unlimited" plans.

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.
  - walrus01 4y ago
    no, this is more like running a buffet restaurant with an all you can eat buffet. 98% of your customers show up and eat three gargantuan heaping plates, are totally satisfied, and can barely walk back to their cars. the other 2% show up at 3 in the afternoon, stay for six hours, eat ten plates of crab legs and roast beef. maybe you notice those 2% of customers and say nothing. if the same person comes back every week and loads up on ten plates of crab legs, you nicely remind them of the socially acceptable use of an all you can eat buffet.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - kube-system 4y ago
      Honest all-you-can eat buffets do not cut people off, they post time-limits. https://blorg.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Bacchanal-buffet-caesars-las-vegas-5.jpg https://blorg.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Bacchanal-buffe...
      - walrus01 4y ago
        to extend this analogy, the posted time limit at the entrance of the buffet is similar to what's in their TOS/AUP that the customer agreed to before ever starting the service in the first place.
        kube-system 4y ago
        I think the biggest difference is that "Please don't stay here more than 2 hours" clearly means that you can't sit around and eat all day. "[don't do things that] impairs the regular operating behavior or the security of our infrastructure or our product" doesn't make it very clear that there are data caps.
    - mbg721 4y ago
      This behavior leads me to disregard any advertising of "all you can eat" as a lie, and the speaker of that lie as a dishonest business. American Airlines dealt with this.
- zmgsabst 4y ago
  Yes — the “lie” was before that, when they told the person untruthfully a cheap instance would have a certain bandwidth and unlimited traffic. Lying to close a deal is fraud: they should have disclosed the limits upfront. If they want to charge for high utilization of bandwidth, they should bill for traffic — like everyone else. I’ve also never had a buffet try to restrict “unlimited” in the way you’re suggesting — they’ve been quite upfront about their restrictions.
- washadjeffmad 4y ago
  I guess their routers just run out of packets like buffets run out of crab legs, huh. There's a difference between saying "unlimited" and "up to n Mbps * t transfer per billing period". We don't know or care how our packets are being measured. If there's a limit to them beyond the physical link, then it's not unlimited. "Unlimited packets internally but we will reduce the egress rate after a certain amount" also isn't "unlimited".
- johndough 4y ago
  > reaching out nicely to a customer Threatening termination for using what was advertised does not seem very nice to me - especially when they specifically removed traffic limitations: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18120500 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18120500
- cbozeman 4y ago
  What part of, "Don't advertise something as 'unlimited' if it isn't unlimited" is difficult for you? It seems pretty damn simple. Hetzner used to have transfer limits. It was 20 TB for cheap servers when I was using them (2017-2019). It was bumped up to 50 TB in 2020. I don't disagree with you that a user consuming 250 TB of transfer should be paying for that transfer, though. I'm disagreeing with the marketing. It's deceptive, and it causes problems that are the genesis of this post. You know what's supremely simpler? Just commit to a hard limit on transfer and be done with it.
- toast0 4y ago
  > 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. Well, they could put that in the policies or the offer. Or be more specific in the email. But 1G isn't really that much. I don't have a use for that much bandwidth at the moment, but it's not like you need that much compute to pump out 1G, so pick the offering with enough compute and enough bandwidth, and there you go. You don't always need an SLA, especially if you can load balance over multiple bottom of the barrel hosts. Unmetetered 1G for not a lot of money is a credible offer, so I'd take an established provider at their word; lots of hosting offers have a port speed and a traffic limit and overage fees listed.
turtlebits 4y ago
It's not a lie, it's marketing (.. well I guess that is a lie then). Unlimited plans exist because demand isn't consistent, and shared bandwidth provides a way to lower prices. If I was guaranteed max bandwidth on 5G all the time on my cellular plan, I'd pay a lot more than $40/month.
- istinetz 4y ago
  >If I was guaranteed max bandwidth on 5G all the time on my cellular plan, I'd pay a lot more than $40/month. Okay, so the ISP expects that people won't use what they're sold. That sounds like their problem and their bad planning.
  - woojoo666 4y ago
    The actual limits are there and detailed in the terms and conditions, and often the marketing material will say that additional terms apply. It's the customers fault for assuming "unlimited" means actually unlimited, which is unrealistic and also not what a typical customer would think.
    - corrral 4y ago
      "We—on purpose—didn't mean what we said" is identical to "we lied".
freemint 4y ago
How does Hetzner lie here? They provided unlimited 1-ish GBit/s sustained for every month they were in contract. It is their right to choose to not do business with that user as laid out in the short ToS.
- corrral 4y ago
  "I know I leased you this entire acre on an ongoing basis, and said you could plant on the whole thing, but now that I see you're actually planting the entire acre and not just a quarter-acre, I'm terminating your lease at the end of the current term—which is compliant with our lease agreement—because I didn't ever actually intend to let you plant on the whole thing even though I listed that, explicitly, on the advertisement for the land" That means a lie was told. The reason for not continuing the service means they lied. That it doesn't violate their ToS is beside the point—they offered something that they did not intend to let people actually use. The evidence is precisely the fact that they'll stop doing business with you if you actually use what they sold you (and don't agree to pay them more money).
  - freemint 4y ago
    As long as they didn't interfere with the plants that were planted, like throttling the connection, they offered exactly what they promised. Hetzner never offered unchanging contracts. Hetzner made a material claim. They fulfilled that claim from all i can see. You can get unlimited 1 Gbit/s traffic at Hetzner for a month at said price.
    - corrral 4y ago
      "Great, so I can sign up for the same plan again, since my use falls within what you're offering?" "Well, no, because now we know you'll actually use what we say we provide, and we don't really want to provide what we're offering—that part's a lie." It'd be different if they'd responded by discontinuing that kind of plan entirely. This seems pretty straightforward to me.

iMerNibor 4y ago

Thats how these unlimited offerings work though? The 99% pay for the 1% that actually uses the unlimited traffic Can't have your cake and eat it too.

vorpalhex 4y ago

If there's a limit, just post it. Don't lie and say unlimited. What's hard about that?

the_biot 4y ago

I have run an ISP network, and I feel their pain. But if they sell it as unlimited and have no fair use policy, they need to honor their contract. The part of the T&C they point to just says they can terminate any contract for any reason. That's a pretty lame way to resolve what is basically a marketing problem -- they want to sell a bandwidth-limited service as unlimited i.e. lie about it. Say what you will about fair use policies, but at least they spell it out.

300bps 4y ago
But if they sell it as unlimited and have no fair use policy, they need to honor their contract. The part of the T&C they point to just says they can terminate any contract for any reason. First you say they need to honor their contract and then say they're honoring their contract. What's the problem? Similarly if someone runs a restaurant with an "All You Can Eat!" special and someone comes in with a 40 gallon drum and starts filling it up from the buffet, that person is going to be asked to leave immediately. There's no possible way that Hetzner could a) Predict every way someone could abuse their system and b) Put them all in their marketing materials. So they have that clause in their contract and they're using it.
- 13415 4y ago
  It's not an abuse of a system to use it in the way it was advertised. If it says unlimited, then it's unlimited. "All you can eat" means all the individual customer can eat (usually within a time frame). If you offer it and then stop offering food when customers (in your opinion) eat too much, then that's fraud.
  - 300bps 4y ago
    If unlimited means unlimited then why doesn't "all you can eat" mean all you can eat? Why are you assuming unstated restrictions on "all you can eat" when you aren't allowing unstated restrictions on "unlimited"? You literally made up the restriction of, "usually within a timeframe".

hedora 4y ago

Assuming they are in the top 1%, that means 99 other customers are happy to overpay and subsidize them (and the provider pockets the difference). What's the problem, exactly?

helaoban 4y ago

Why does it matter? Lying is lying.

mytailorisrich 4y ago

That's quite irrelevant. The point is that advertising "unlimited 1Gbps" pretty much explicitly says that it is OK to continuously run at 1Gbps.

nojito 4y ago

> top 1% of bandwidth Closer to top .1% in all honesty

jackson1442 4y ago

Why not say that you guarantee 50TB of bandwidth and use above that is subject to AUP or throttling on the pricing page? If I buy "unlimited" something, I do expect to use it without limits. This is not to say that I don't think 250TB is excessive, but sales transparency is important.

marcosdumay 4y ago

That's easy to solve; just don't promise unlimited bandwidth. Don't lie and people won't complain that you lied. Yes, they provided a very good service for the money they received. One would be hard pressed trying to find a better deal. Yet, they did lie.

freemint 4y ago
How did Hetzner lie? They offered unlimited 1Gbit interconnect to this user every month they are subscribed. They did not offer "unlimited contract not subject to change you are entitled to the same conditions forever".
- marcosdumay 4y ago
  They never had the intention of letting him use his unlimited bandwidth. So, claiming it's unlimited is a lie. Specifically, it's misleading publicity. AFAIK, that's an issue in Germany. They did the bare minimum to not get into any legal issues, but if they insist on the publicity message, they will very likely have problems. They really shouldn't try to mimic an US company.

sschueller 4y ago

Why can't we have some transparent unlimited traffic contracts? We give you unlimited depending on overall network saturation and conditions. Offer a live dashboard and prediction on where you are and how you may be throttled. Otherwise also offer pricing per GB transfered.

Handytinge 4y ago

I have, doing all 3. I agree, this person is for sure costing the company significantly more than they're worth. The correct solution is to fire the marketing team, and grandfather "unlimited" plans.