5 ms·

AWS Price Reductions and Free Inbound Data Transfer

24 points by jeffbarr 17y ago

chrischen 17y ago
Free inbound transfer! Wow just as I was about to start using AWS. Thank you Jebus.
ryanwaggoner 17y ago
Making inbound data transfer free really makes sense if they're charging you to store it and every time you access it.
- tlrobinson 17y ago
  It's across all services though, not just S3. Right?
pierrefar 17y ago
The free inbound transfer is NOT permanent. From the post: "Finally, we are waiving the inbound data transfer fee across the board (for all services) through the end of June 2010." It's nice, but let's not kid ourselves about its awesomeness. Prediction: at the end of June, they'll magically realize that they can do this permanently and they fix the free inbound traffic, or at least have a healthy free amount before payment is started. This means there will be another round of news for them.
- felixmar 17y ago
  The free inbound transfer is obviously a reaction to Microsoft's pricing. Windows Azure has free inbound transfer during off-peak hours until June 30 (see http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/faq/#pricing http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/faq/#pricing).
aristus 17y ago
Just a friendly word of caution: such a huge price differential (0 cents in vs ~15 cents out per GB) is a kind of lockin.
dnsworks 17y ago
At any reasonable scale, S3 bandwidth is still a magnitude more expensive than you would pay at an aggressive dedicated server company like ServerBeach, ThePlanet, 10tb.com, or SoftLayer. It's also even worse when you compare it to discount bandwidth offerings like Cogent's $1,500 for a GigE (which comes out to $0.0075/GB) or Hurricane Electric's $3k price for a GigE connection. What Amazon is really doing here is the classic ISP inbound/outbound juggling act amongst public peers. In order to maintain a peering relationship, especially at the scales that Amazon must see with it's cloud services, providers really need to maintain an equitable inbound/outbound ratio, otherwise agreements become void and they actually start charging each other.
- diegomsana 17y ago
  Indeed, Amazon bandwidth prices are quite right compared to most of their competitors. And by the way, Softlayer has permanently free inbound traffic for all their servers, including cloudlayer ones.
scootklein 17y ago
i guess free inbound is cool if you're using S3 as just a huge backup dump for all of your stuff, but it would seem that running any sort of web app that serves as a public customer interface wouldn't benefit much at all from free inbound
- blantonl 17y ago
  I run an online streaming service for public safety communications, and our inbound traffic is close to 4TB/m - this saves me over $1000 a month.
PanMan 17y ago
I guess they buy their bandwidth symmetrically. Thus, as long as they have more outgoing traffic they can charge for, giving incoming away for free doesn't really 'cost' them much (off-course the do lose income on this, but not real costs). It's still nice tho! :)
simon_kun 17y ago
It would be nice if they included PUT's into this equation too. Many large datasets are not one big file, but billions of smaller ones. I realise it raises the offering out of the bandwidth arena and into actual server capacity to handle the PUT's, but offering free bandwidth in and still charging per PUT action is kinda misleading (and could really ruin someones day if they read it wrong)

24 points by jeffbarr 17y ago

chrischen 17y ago

Free inbound transfer! Wow just as I was about to start using AWS. Thank you Jebus.

ryanwaggoner 17y ago

Making inbound data transfer free really makes sense if they're charging you to store it and every time you access it.

tlrobinson 17y ago
It's across all services though, not just S3. Right?

pierrefar 17y ago

The free inbound transfer is NOT permanent. From the post: "Finally, we are waiving the inbound data transfer fee across the board (for all services) through the end of June 2010." It's nice, but let's not kid ourselves about its awesomeness. Prediction: at the end of June, they'll magically realize that they can do this permanently and they fix the free inbound traffic, or at least have a healthy free amount before payment is started. This means there will be another round of news for them.

felixmar 17y ago
The free inbound transfer is obviously a reaction to Microsoft's pricing. Windows Azure has free inbound transfer during off-peak hours until June 30 (see http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/faq/#pricing http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/faq/#pricing).

aristus 17y ago

Just a friendly word of caution: such a huge price differential (0 cents in vs ~15 cents out per GB) is a kind of lockin.

dnsworks 17y ago

At any reasonable scale, S3 bandwidth is still a magnitude more expensive than you would pay at an aggressive dedicated server company like ServerBeach, ThePlanet, 10tb.com, or SoftLayer. It's also even worse when you compare it to discount bandwidth offerings like Cogent's $1,500 for a GigE (which comes out to $0.0075/GB) or Hurricane Electric's $3k price for a GigE connection. What Amazon is really doing here is the classic ISP inbound/outbound juggling act amongst public peers. In order to maintain a peering relationship, especially at the scales that Amazon must see with it's cloud services, providers really need to maintain an equitable inbound/outbound ratio, otherwise agreements become void and they actually start charging each other.

diegomsana 17y ago
Indeed, Amazon bandwidth prices are quite right compared to most of their competitors. And by the way, Softlayer has permanently free inbound traffic for all their servers, including cloudlayer ones.

scootklein 17y ago

i guess free inbound is cool if you're using S3 as just a huge backup dump for all of your stuff, but it would seem that running any sort of web app that serves as a public customer interface wouldn't benefit much at all from free inbound

blantonl 17y ago
I run an online streaming service for public safety communications, and our inbound traffic is close to 4TB/m - this saves me over $1000 a month.

PanMan 17y ago

I guess they buy their bandwidth symmetrically. Thus, as long as they have more outgoing traffic they can charge for, giving incoming away for free doesn't really 'cost' them much (off-course the do lose income on this, but not real costs). It's still nice tho! :)

simon_kun 17y ago

It would be nice if they included PUT's into this equation too. Many large datasets are not one big file, but billions of smaller ones. I realise it raises the offering out of the bandwidth arena and into actual server capacity to handle the PUT's, but offering free bandwidth in and still charging per PUT action is kinda misleading (and could really ruin someones day if they read it wrong)