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>I never quite understood the love for premium vps like linode This is true now (Linode is a premium vps provider) but it was not always true. Linode started
by lsc 14y ago
>I never quite understood the love for premium vps like linode
This is true now (Linode is a premium vps provider) but it was not always true. Linode started out cheap, like almost everyone in our industry does. Linode was one of the first in the market; they've been selling VPSs longer even than I have.
>Its nice that they are now increasing the bandwidth cap, but it was on the low side to begin with. My takeaway from this is that "linode finally joins everyone else in network speed and bandwidth."
Eh, the way the industry works is that price pressure is applied by new entrants. Linode used to be that 'incredibly cheap provider' - but generally speaking? as you develop a reputation, you increase your resource allocations more slowly than moore's law would allow, and Linode has a pretty good reputation, so they get to charge substantially more than new entrants to the market.
So yeah, if the new entrants aren't a way better deal in terms of resources? something is terribly wrong (and that new entrant probably won't gain the traction they need to survive long enough to be able to let their prices rise to a higher margin level)
I mean, personally, I would think I have been letting my own prices rise (comparatively, I mean, by not increasing resource allocation) more than my reputation would allow me to... but I'm still gaining customers (though not at an awesome rate) - Linode announcing a network upgrade is putting /incredible/ pressure on me to upgrade my network. I can be okay with a new entrant flying below me, but Linode has a better reputation than I do; I have to provide more resources per dollar than they do.
Now, the big counterexample here is slicehost. Slicehost started out fairly expensive (compared to the industry standard at the time) and they went from zero to twenty thousand customers in like two years. It was incredible. I don't know exactly what they did, but they had a reputation for providing managed hosting level service for (premium) unmanaged hosting prices.
Now, how much of that reputation was marketing, and how much of that reputation was that their support really was that good, I don't know, but I do know that was their reputation.
- jnw2 14y agoIs linode announcing their own netblocks under their own ASN, though? My impression has been that you have more diversity of immediate upstreams than linode...
- lsc 14y agoNo idea. I'm on he.net and cogent right now; I'm working on getting more routes, but it's pretty irritating. I have been having some trouble reaching folks on comcast in the midwest, so I contacted comcast and asked about paid peering (they think they are hot shit, so there is no way they would settlement-free peer with me) They want three grand for a 1g peering link. And they aren't on any of the silicon valley peering exchanges (meaning I'd need to pay for a connection direct to them, on top of the three grand.) that is /per month/ He.net charges around $750-1000 per month for a gigabit of transit to the whole internet. It's pretty irritating. I mean, I'd pay a couple hundred bucks a month for reliable connectivity to comcast only, even though, traditionally, peering is free, and it would improve both my network and theirs. I mean, it was their customer who complained to my customer who complained to me.
- josephb 14y agoSounds like you would be better picking up a decent transit locally to you with a good blend of upstreams.
- lsc 14y agothat's what they say... but the first rule of business is that you will get fucked if it's hard for you to switch providers. I'm already in that position with datacentere space. I've been in that position with bandwidth, too, and it's super painful. Also, nobody is going to give a shit about your three customers way out in the middle of "nobody cares" that can't reach your stuff 'cause cogent and at&t refuse to upgrade a peering link that is also in the middle of "nobody cares" - If I'm controlling it, I at least have a chance of doing something about it. Also, the cost is 3x to 10x what you get direct from the super-low end big guys. Everyone fucks it up, and with two up-streams? It's my fault when it fucks up (and I can do something about it.) I guess having that preference is kinda stupid, but it is what it is; I am the network Engineer I've got... not the network Engineer I wish I had. (that, and in my experience? competency of tech support does not scale with price paid. Neither does quality of routes.)