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This is a hidden price hike. It would be more reasonable if there was a corresponding decrease in server costs.

by grobbyy 3y ago

marcus0x62 3y ago
Their costs for delivering one service are increasing so they should lower their prices on another?
- ribosometronome 3y ago
  If they're separating out functionality from that service and charging for it, sure. Customers who don't pay extra are getting less service than they used to for the same money they used to pay.
  - ketralnis 3y ago
    > Customers who don't pay extra are getting less service than they used to for the same money they used to pay Sure, yeah. That's how price increases work. Nobody's arguing that it's not a price increase. But if your delivered pizza's costs are fuel+ingredients and the price of fuel goes up, well, the whole price goes up or you have to give on the amount of pizza. The price of the ingredients didn't go down, so yeah you're just going to have to pay more or get less pizza. Sorry. You can quibble on the pizzeria's margin I guess: AWS could just eat the increased price themselves, and probably have been until now. But apparently they don't want to so they're raising the price to compensate in frankly the most reasonable way possible. AWS has insane pricing for many of its services, especially bandwidth, but this isn't one of them.
ketralnis 3y ago
I don't think either of those is true? It's not hidden, they put it right up on their blog https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/new-aws-public-ipv4-address-charge-public-ip-insights/ https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/new-aws-public-ipv4-address... the opening line of which is "We are introducing a new charge for public IPv4 addresses" and when it starts and what the cost is. I assume like every other AWS charge it's broken out in great detail on their billing statements and even have APIs to query costs. Usually they send an email with these changes too so if they haven't I assume they will. It's a regular old price hike but it's not a hidden one. Secondly since "the cost to acquire a single public IPv4 address has risen more than 300% over the past 5 years", there's no accompanying decrease in server costs that would be "reasonable" to account for this. Charging for the IP itself makes total sense since that's the cost they're accounting for. If it were packed into the instance costs, then instances without a public IP would be paying for it too. This incentivises you to do exactly what they want you to do: use fewer public IPs where you don't need them. This is way more reasonable than an across-the-board instance cost bump which would be a hidden price hike. This is a bridge toll that covers the cost of the bridge by its users instead of raising taxes on everyone. I guess you're wanting to pay the same and just distribute the cost between the IP and the instance differently? And hey me too, I love not being charged more. But they want to account for their costs without eating into their margin and this is how they're going about it. You don't have to like it; I sure don't. You can wish AWS would just keep eating the cost for you; me too! But I don't think "hidden" or "unreasonable" is accurate.
- grobbyy 3y ago
  My back charged me a new fee advertised on new fine print in a web page somewhere I never saw. I changed banks. You can hide things in plain sight. No one has visited every page on Amazon.com. There has been a decrease in server costs. Prices of computers continue to fall. AWS hosting has become (relatively) more expensive over time.
whalesalad 3y ago
IPv4 is a finite resource. This is a forcing function to ensure that people who actually need IPv4 addresses are using them. Gotta pay to play. I guarantee there are a ton of unused IP's just sitting on accounts doing absolutely nothing.
- mark242 3y ago
  Addresses were already being charged if they weren't attached to an interface. Increase that charge if you're looking to churn unused IP addresses.
  - jeremyjh 3y ago
    That would not catch every public IP address that is actually unused, because it can be attached to an interface and yet not be needed or actually used by any client. But I don't agree with GP that this is an important reason for the price increase. They are increasing prices simply because costs have increased.
    - mark242 3y ago
      Anything that an IP address can be attached to is already accumulating a charge, just by existing and running. EC2, NAT gateway, ELB, etc. What's "actually unused" then? Minimum amount of traffic? I don't think it's in Amazon's purview to make those judgement calls.
      - jeremyjh 3y ago
        What I meant by unused is that there might not be a client that ever connects to that IP address, so the public IP address itself might not be used even if its attached to a resource. > I don't think it's in Amazon's purview to make those judgement calls. I already said I don't agree with GP that this is a motive for Amazon.
barryrandall 3y ago
The move may seem unreasonable, but it seems more unreasonable to expect anything different from the oligarchy.
- brickteacup 3y ago
  > but it seems more unreasonable to expect anything different from the oligarchy oh my god when the demand for a scarce resource outstrips supply, prices go up. this is high school microecon, not some conspiracy by tHe oLiGaRcHy

This is a hidden price hike. It would be more reasonable if there was a corresponding decrease in server costs.

marcus0x62 3y ago

Their costs for delivering one service are increasing so they should lower their prices on another?

ribosometronome 3y ago
If they're separating out functionality from that service and charging for it, sure. Customers who don't pay extra are getting less service than they used to for the same money they used to pay.
- ketralnis 3y ago
  > Customers who don't pay extra are getting less service than they used to for the same money they used to pay Sure, yeah. That's how price increases work. Nobody's arguing that it's not a price increase. But if your delivered pizza's costs are fuel+ingredients and the price of fuel goes up, well, the whole price goes up or you have to give on the amount of pizza. The price of the ingredients didn't go down, so yeah you're just going to have to pay more or get less pizza. Sorry. You can quibble on the pizzeria's margin I guess: AWS could just eat the increased price themselves, and probably have been until now. But apparently they don't want to so they're raising the price to compensate in frankly the most reasonable way possible. AWS has insane pricing for many of its services, especially bandwidth, but this isn't one of them.

ketralnis 3y ago

I don't think either of those is true? It's not hidden, they put it right up on their blog https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/new-aws-public-ipv4-address-charge-public-ip-insights/ https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/new-aws-public-ipv4-address... the opening line of which is "We are introducing a new charge for public IPv4 addresses" and when it starts and what the cost is. I assume like every other AWS charge it's broken out in great detail on their billing statements and even have APIs to query costs. Usually they send an email with these changes too so if they haven't I assume they will. It's a regular old price hike but it's not a hidden one. Secondly since "the cost to acquire a single public IPv4 address has risen more than 300% over the past 5 years", there's no accompanying decrease in server costs that would be "reasonable" to account for this. Charging for the IP itself makes total sense since that's the cost they're accounting for. If it were packed into the instance costs, then instances without a public IP would be paying for it too. This incentivises you to do exactly what they want you to do: use fewer public IPs where you don't need them. This is way more reasonable than an across-the-board instance cost bump which would be a hidden price hike. This is a bridge toll that covers the cost of the bridge by its users instead of raising taxes on everyone. I guess you're wanting to pay the same and just distribute the cost between the IP and the instance differently? And hey me too, I love not being charged more. But they want to account for their costs without eating into their margin and this is how they're going about it. You don't have to like it; I sure don't. You can wish AWS would just keep eating the cost for you; me too! But I don't think "hidden" or "unreasonable" is accurate.

grobbyy 3y ago
My back charged me a new fee advertised on new fine print in a web page somewhere I never saw. I changed banks. You can hide things in plain sight. No one has visited every page on Amazon.com. There has been a decrease in server costs. Prices of computers continue to fall. AWS hosting has become (relatively) more expensive over time.

whalesalad 3y ago

IPv4 is a finite resource. This is a forcing function to ensure that people who actually need IPv4 addresses are using them. Gotta pay to play. I guarantee there are a ton of unused IP's just sitting on accounts doing absolutely nothing.

mark242 3y ago
Addresses were already being charged if they weren't attached to an interface. Increase that charge if you're looking to churn unused IP addresses.
- jeremyjh 3y ago
  That would not catch every public IP address that is actually unused, because it can be attached to an interface and yet not be needed or actually used by any client. But I don't agree with GP that this is an important reason for the price increase. They are increasing prices simply because costs have increased.
  - mark242 3y ago
    Anything that an IP address can be attached to is already accumulating a charge, just by existing and running. EC2, NAT gateway, ELB, etc. What's "actually unused" then? Minimum amount of traffic? I don't think it's in Amazon's purview to make those judgement calls.
    - jeremyjh 3y ago
      What I meant by unused is that there might not be a client that ever connects to that IP address, so the public IP address itself might not be used even if its attached to a resource. > I don't think it's in Amazon's purview to make those judgement calls. I already said I don't agree with GP that this is a motive for Amazon.

barryrandall 3y ago

The move may seem unreasonable, but it seems more unreasonable to expect anything different from the oligarchy.

brickteacup 3y ago
> but it seems more unreasonable to expect anything different from the oligarchy oh my god when the demand for a scarce resource outstrips supply, prices go up. this is high school microecon, not some conspiracy by tHe oLiGaRcHy