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The Limits of Unlimited Bandwidth

When webhosting companies claim they're selling "unlimited bandwidth," what are they really providing? Members of the ISP-Webhosting list explain the fine print.

[July 18, 2000]

On the ISP-WebHosting list in June, SB requested a "straight answer on hosting:"

"I am finding that the common 'marketing' answer to my question has been, 'yes we can provide you a dedicated server for $199-$350/month and you can purchase the box for $1000 so it's yours!' And this includes unlimited bandwidth.' However, I've been told that there's no such thing as unlimited bandwidth. Help me out here, guys; many of my e-commerce clients fear the Christmas Rush will shut them down, hence the request for dedicated servers."

One respondent suggested a simple solution for getting to the bottom of this question:

[PF wrote] "You need to read the contract, only that document can tell you what unlimited means.

[BN disagreed] "If you are savvy enough, you can find the 'conditions;' look for the buried links on some of these providers' sites, they will have a short sentence in there terms of service. The funniest one I saw claimed to offer unlimited bandwidth but their TOS stated that 'unlimited = 35Gb/month, additional bandwidth will be charged at $xx/Mb.'"

Most of the respondents agreed that unlimited bandwidth is more urban myth than reality:

[SK wrote] "What 'unlimited' usually means is that they think you won't go over a certain amount of bandwidth, so the limit they set will be more than enough. However, rest assured that you will not get 1000-2000Gb per month for $199-350."

[GS wrote] "Everybody has a pipe and that pipe is only so big. A T-1 can only carry 1.44 Mbs, a T-3 can carry whatever and so on. This is properly called unmetered bandwidth, which means that is your traffic is not measured and charged. We charge $250 per month for colocation with metered bandwidth and $450 per month for unmetered bandwidth."

[BN chimed in] "Some of the ways that I've seen that companies can actually offer unlimited on a real dedicated machine. However, running a P200 with 32MB, 4GB drives that are not SCSI and no T1, that's unlimited what? Unlimited up to their maximum bandwidth of 256K?"

[JM added] "Even a provider that is in a facility with seemingly limitless bandwidth cannot offer this deal. While it's commonplace for a mega-host to advertise unlimited bandwidth for $29.95 a month, you run up against a number of factors that put very real limits on the bandwidth you can use, 1) On a shared server your site and its applications can only run so fast in this environment. 2) The 10 Mbps ethernet connection into their network is itself a bandwidth-limiter. 3) They've implemented bandwidth shaping software on the network connection to your servers."

One respondent pointed out that if a deal sounds too good to be true, it probably isn't:

[TG opined] "One thing is for sure, you get what you pay for. I seriously doubt than any provider would allow you to bury their dedicated lines when your contribution is only a fraction of their cost."

[AM agreed, adding this point] "A T1 equals approximately 500Gb per month and costs around $1200 per month. This is an unshakeable truth. There is just no way that any host is going to continue to offer the equivalent of 2 T1s for $250 per month."

—End