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How truly Unlimited and/or Unmetered is Bandwidth?

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stingray

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2011
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Hello wjunction people

I am seeing providers here offering vps with Unlimited - unmetered Bandwidth whereas others with the same money offering Premium Bandwidth of 200 GB, 500 GB, 1 TB etc.
Why would someone opt for the ones who offer restricted bandwidth and not the others who offer unlimited and/or unmetered?
What exactly is meant by Unlimited or unmetered? is there a catch behind it ?
Maybe this is a noob question to most of you, but a clarification, especially by server providers, would assist the newcomers to make better desicions when renting a service and don't fall in a trap ending up paying huge bandwidth bills

Thank you for reading this and I hope I get some feedback about the subject
 
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@Jesse Thank you for your response.
Going through the thread you suggested, I came across another issue (related to this subject), I do not fully understand
You will NEVER or shouldn't get overcharged unless your in the 95% percentile.
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What does that also mean?
Before anyone asks, I am telling you that I rent a vps on a 1 Gbps port and I use it for downloading/seeding torrents. The provider advertises Unmetered bandwidth. Is there a chance I get charged for bandwidth because of this 95% percentile (which I do not know what it means and how to avoid it) or any other scenario?
 
foxman said:
There is always limitation even if the the Host says unlimited bandwidth.
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This is exactly what I am worried about. Hidden charges or caps or ....
That's why I opened this thread, so people can share their thoughts or (bad) experience
 
There is always limitation even if the the Host says unlimited bandwidth.
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Correct, but for the sake of a normal website being hosted on shared hosting server, if the hosts bandwidth limit is 1000TB amonth no normal site is going to use that so yes you can have unlimited bandwidth within 1000TB across 20 sites say! Always check the hosts TOS this will normally tell you where there unlimited limit stops.

VPS unlimited bandwidth i wouldnt touch personally, but thats my view on it all! id see unlimited vps bandwidth as crap bandwidth and lots of it but i like limited bandwidth which i no is of a good quality
 
Even if it is unmetered, you are still limited by the speed of your connection.

For example, with a 100mbit line, if you managed to push at full speed for a whole month, the maximum data you could use is approximately 32 terabytes. On a gigabit connection, it is about 300 terabytes.
 
stingray said:
@Jesse Thank you for your response.
Going through the thread you suggested, I came across another issue (related to this subject), I do not fully understand

What does that also mean?
Before anyone asks, I am telling you that I rent a vps on a 1 Gbps port and I use it for downloading/seeding torrents. The provider advertises Unmetered bandwidth. Is there a chance I get charged for bandwidth because of this 95% percentile (which I do not know what it means and how to avoid it) or any other scenario?
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No, you cannot get billed for more bandwidth or overage because it is unmetered. 95th percentile does not apply to unmetered, they are both different things.

In 95th percentile, take example of 1000Mbps bandwidth commit on 10-gigabit port. You can go more than your commit limit, 1000Mbps for 36 hours in a month and you will not get billed for it, so that means you are able to use over 1000Mbps for 36 hours in a month (5%) without paying overage.
 
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I want to thank you all for your responses on behalf of all of us who are just joining the world of web hosting .
@ H-Abdullah ... you were brief and to the point. many thanks
 
"Unlimited" is not appropriate to offer/use despite that many overselling Shared Hosting providers claim to offer it. "Unmetered" is different. it means that a certain VPS or physical server is tapped at some limitation. The most popular unmetered bandwidth service is "100 Mbps". It mean that the server is plugged in to 100 Mbps port and the host does not meter customer's traffic consumption. As Abdullah mentioned above you do not get burstable bandwidth and you'd not expect overage on unmetered bandwidth, because as customer you are tapped at the highest possible bandwidth port speed negotiated with the web host.

In metered bandwidth you are allowed to transmit a certain amount of bandwidth for a certain period of time (lets say 1 month). If you have used all of it, you need to purchase more!
 
There may be Unmetered bandwidth in case the Host is getting Unmetered bandwidth from the datacenter !

But in most cases, Hosts purchase high traffic servers from DC instead of unmetered and sell them as unmetered.

Most of the time, it doesn't affect the enduser until the servers are heavily oversold.

Sometimes, clients gets confused by the word Unmetered. So, Hosts use unlimited word for the ease of clients. ;)
 
HostColor said:
......As Abdullah mentioned above you do not get burstable bandwidth and you'd not expect overage on unmetered bandwidth, because as customer you are tapped at the highest possible bandwidth port speed negotiated with the web host.
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.... so , when someone rents an unmetered vps service on a 1 Gbps port , he/she should expect some form of capping from the provider so as not to push willingly or accidently high traffic as far as I can understand . This makes a lot of sense now .
 
stingray said:
.... so , when someone rents an unmetered vps service on a 1 Gbps port , he/she should expect some form of capping from the provider so as not to push willingly or accidently high traffic as far as I can understand . This makes a lot of sense now .
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No. If a provider does this unless told when you are signing up, they are doing wrong with the client and should be avoided. If a provider is selling unmetered on 1Gbps port, they should give you access to that 1Gbps port, without any limitations, without any capping or anything.
 
vikassaini01 said:
There may be Unmetered bandwidth in case the Host is getting Unmetered bandwidth from the datacenter !

But in most cases, Hosts purchase high traffic servers from DC instead of unmetered and sell them as unmetered.

Most of the time, it doesn't affect the enduser until the servers are heavily oversold.

Sometimes, clients gets confused by the word Unmetered. So, Hosts use unlimited word for the ease of clients. ;)
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I have never heard of a datacenter or ANY network for that matter to sell "unmetered" bandwidth...it's always 95th percentile.

"unmetered" doesn't get mixed in the equation until 3rd tier hosting and below.
 
moneyman,

Maybe you should check again. Almost all the carriers and datacenters which offer bandwidth also offer unmetered ports. Unmetered and 95th percentile are two different things. 95th percentile allows you burst up to a certain speed for a certain amount of time in a month (36 hours) while on an unmetered port, you cannot burst.

Say you get a 10Gbps unmetered port from Cogent, they cannot bill you for extra bandwidth, right? You're committing to 10Gbps on a 10Gbps port, how can you burst more than 10Gbps? So even if you're using 10Gbps all times, you don't get billed for it because it is "unmetered". But if you're getting 1000Mbps commit on 10Gbps port being billed by 95th percentile method, you can use 1000Mbps all times, but you can "burst" more than 1000Mbps when required for 36 hours in a month, so it's called 95th percentile.
 
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