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I assume it’s to discourage people from architecting designs that abuse the network. A good example would be collecting every single metric, every second, acros

I assume it’s to discourage people from architecting designs that abuse the network. A good example would be collecting every single metric, every second, across every instance for no real business reason.

thayne 2y ago
Or maybe it is price discrimination. A way to extract more money from customers that need higher availability and probably have higher budgets.
- hipadev23 2y ago
  Price discrimination is when you charge different amounts for the same thing to different customers. And usually the difference in those prices are not made apparent. Like when travel websites quote iOS users more than Android because they generally can afford to pay more. This is just regular ole pricing.
  - thayne 2y ago
    So what is the correct term for "charge an extremely high markup for a feature that some, but not all, of your customers need"?
    - spondylosaurus 2y ago
      Price gouging?
    - jchanimal 2y ago
      I came here to say the same thing. When you’re selling cloud services, the hardest thing to do is segment your customers by willingness to pay. Cross AZ traffic is exactly the sort of thing companies with budgets need, that small projects don’t.
    - mcmcmc 2y ago
      Supply and demand
  - hansvm 2y ago
    It's a bit of a mix, but price discrimination isn't far off. It's like the SSO tax; all organizations are paying for effectively the same service, but the provider has found a minor way to cripple the service that selectively targets people who can afford to pay more. If we want to call this just regular ole pricing, it's not a leap to call most textbook cases of price discrimination "regular ole pricing" as well. An online game charges more if your IP is from a certain geography? That's not discrimination; we've simply priced the product differently if you live in Silicon Valley; don't buy it it you don't want it.
    - hipadev23 2y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination Price discrimination has a clear definition. It’s not illegal in the US (when consumers are the victims anyway) but it has a clear meaning and you’re blurring the lines for I’m not sure what reason. Your example of a video game doing regional pricing is a perfect example of textbook price discrimination. Pricing a good or service at a level that inherently excludes those unwilling or unable to pay is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excludability https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excludability
      - hansvm 2y ago
        Alright, let's take a look at that first link as if it's gospel. AWS charging excessively for inter-AZ networking is: 1. a microeconomic pricing strategy 2. where largely similar goods (AWS with or without substantial inter-AZ bandwidth) 3. are sold at different prices (excessive inter-AZ networking fees) to different buyers 4. based on perceived market segments (most customers don't need (or don't know they need till they're locked in) much inter-AZ bandwidth, but larger, richer corporations likely do) I'm not trying to blur the lines. On top of any juggling of our favorite sources of definitions, that particular pricing strategy has all the qualitative hallmarks of price discrimination. Everyone still buys AWS, most customers are unaffected by the lack of bulk inter-AZ bandwidth, and AWS can successfully charge much more to those who can afford to pay.
      - thayne 2y ago
- cowsandmilk 2y ago
  Sending traffic between AZs doesn’t necessarily improve availability and can decrease it. Each of your services can be multi-az, but have hosts that talk just to other endpoints in their AZ.
  - thayne 2y ago
    Unless your app is completely stateless, you will need some level of communication across AZs. And you often want cross-zone routing on your load balancers so that if you lose all the instances in one AZ traffic will still get routed to healthy instances.
- KaiserPro 2y ago
  > Or maybe it is price discrimination. It very much is, because scaling bandwidth between phyical datacenters which are not located next to each other is very expensive. So pricing it means that people don't use it as much as if it was free.
  - mcmcmc 2y ago
    That’s not what price discrimination is
koolba 2y ago
You can still do that if you buffer it and push it to S3. Any AZ to S3 is free and the net result is the same.

thayne 2y ago

Or maybe it is price discrimination. A way to extract more money from customers that need higher availability and probably have higher budgets.

hipadev23 2y ago
Price discrimination is when you charge different amounts for the same thing to different customers. And usually the difference in those prices are not made apparent. Like when travel websites quote iOS users more than Android because they generally can afford to pay more. This is just regular ole pricing.
- thayne 2y ago
  So what is the correct term for "charge an extremely high markup for a feature that some, but not all, of your customers need"?
  - spondylosaurus 2y ago
    Price gouging?
  - jchanimal 2y ago
    I came here to say the same thing. When you’re selling cloud services, the hardest thing to do is segment your customers by willingness to pay. Cross AZ traffic is exactly the sort of thing companies with budgets need, that small projects don’t.
  - mcmcmc 2y ago
    Supply and demand
- hansvm 2y ago
  It's a bit of a mix, but price discrimination isn't far off. It's like the SSO tax; all organizations are paying for effectively the same service, but the provider has found a minor way to cripple the service that selectively targets people who can afford to pay more. If we want to call this just regular ole pricing, it's not a leap to call most textbook cases of price discrimination "regular ole pricing" as well. An online game charges more if your IP is from a certain geography? That's not discrimination; we've simply priced the product differently if you live in Silicon Valley; don't buy it it you don't want it.
  - hipadev23 2y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination Price discrimination has a clear definition. It’s not illegal in the US (when consumers are the victims anyway) but it has a clear meaning and you’re blurring the lines for I’m not sure what reason. Your example of a video game doing regional pricing is a perfect example of textbook price discrimination. Pricing a good or service at a level that inherently excludes those unwilling or unable to pay is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excludability https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excludability
    - hansvm 2y ago
      Alright, let's take a look at that first link as if it's gospel. AWS charging excessively for inter-AZ networking is: 1. a microeconomic pricing strategy 2. where largely similar goods (AWS with or without substantial inter-AZ bandwidth) 3. are sold at different prices (excessive inter-AZ networking fees) to different buyers 4. based on perceived market segments (most customers don't need (or don't know they need till they're locked in) much inter-AZ bandwidth, but larger, richer corporations likely do) I'm not trying to blur the lines. On top of any juggling of our favorite sources of definitions, that particular pricing strategy has all the qualitative hallmarks of price discrimination. Everyone still buys AWS, most customers are unaffected by the lack of bulk inter-AZ bandwidth, and AWS can successfully charge much more to those who can afford to pay.
    - thayne 2y ago
cowsandmilk 2y ago
Sending traffic between AZs doesn’t necessarily improve availability and can decrease it. Each of your services can be multi-az, but have hosts that talk just to other endpoints in their AZ.
- thayne 2y ago
  Unless your app is completely stateless, you will need some level of communication across AZs. And you often want cross-zone routing on your load balancers so that if you lose all the instances in one AZ traffic will still get routed to healthy instances.
KaiserPro 2y ago
> Or maybe it is price discrimination. It very much is, because scaling bandwidth between phyical datacenters which are not located next to each other is very expensive. So pricing it means that people don't use it as much as if it was free.
- mcmcmc 2y ago
  That’s not what price discrimination is

koolba 2y ago

You can still do that if you buffer it and push it to S3. Any AZ to S3 is free and the net result is the same.