customer wants "unlimited" transfer

Note that's 16Gb of data storage on a 512; the transfer is 200Gb per month. Additional transfer is $10 per 100Gb, monthly.

Many "unlimited transfer" services actually provide this by providing slower service; eg 100Gb of transfer at 100Mbit/s or umlimited transfer at 5Mbit/s. The slower speeds will make your site slower for the average user, especially if you're doing a lot of downloads 'cos the web browsing will compete with the file transfers for the same bandwidth.

FWIW, speed tests at linode show linode hosts have a very fast internet connection. eg I was able to download http://cachefly.cachefly.net/100mb.test at around 380mbit/s (it took 47seconds to download a 100Mbyte file).

The only vps's that are unlimited charge based on your pipe speed (and not a strict quote), but I doubt many of them actually guarantee the bandwidth - you are usually sharing with other machines.

The others aren't vps offerings, and I hear many suspicious "violation of fair usage" happening when, well, it's offered as unlimited. It's just a convenient way to say "for normal usage, you won't pay more."

Maybe though, you could tell him about the entire 200gb of transfer that comes with the plan, rather than the 16 you wrote in the post?

@sweh:

FWIW, speed tests at linode show linode hosts have a very fast internet connection. eg I was able to download http://cachefly.cachefly.net/100mb.test at around 380mbit/s (it took 47seconds to download a 100Mbyte file).

That math doesn't seem right at all…

If you download at 380 Mbit/s it would take about 2 seconds to download 100 MByte, not 47 seconds.

You're right; I mis-read my own file which said

   My linode at fremont: 47.42 MB/s => 379.36 Mbit/s ping av= 1.609ms

I didn't record the time, just the speed. Silly me!

FWIW, a test just now was even faster

linode.pts/0% wget -O/dev/null http://cachefly.cachefly.net/100mb.test
--16:51:55--  http://cachefly.cachefly.net/100mb.test
           => `/dev/null'
Resolving cachefly.cachefly.net... 205.234.175.175
Connecting to cachefly.cachefly.net|205.234.175.175|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 104,857,600 (100M) [application/octet-stream]

100%[====================================>] 104,857,600   62.58M/s

16:51:57 (62.52 MB/s) - `/dev/null' saved [104857600/104857600]

The limit is 200GB, not 16GB.

Give the client "unlimited transfer". If the client ever actually reaches 200GB/mo, tell him he needs a bigger server because his website is so popular, and bill him for an upgrade to 768. Make sure you write down "hardware upgrade" rather than "excess bandwidth" on the bill. After all, you'll need an unlimited amount of CPU and RAM to serve an unlimited number of web pages, but the client only purchased unlimited transfer, not unlimited CPU and RAM. 8)

Of course, this works best if the site uses a heavyweight web application such as WordPress, which won't be able to push anywhere near 200GB without a much more powerful server. Bad luck, though, if the site is audio/video heavy. YMMV.

If, however, you're an ethical person, perhaps not…

Tell them "TANSTAAFL"

If they don't get it - either run away or add another zero or two to your invoice.

@vonskippy:

Tell them "TANSTAAFL"

If they don't get it - either run away or add another zero or two to your invoice. Throw moon-rocks at them

Yes, I got mixed up in the post, but I did put the correct limit in the contract.

The client is not comparing my proposals to other VPS's… he's comparing it to hosting providers.

In case it matters, it's not just hosting I'm proposing… it's mostly website development, but I want to host it here because of the freedom to install whatever ends up being needed.

@holdOnCowboy:

Yes, I got mixed up in the post, but I did put the correct limit in the contract.

The client is not comparing my proposals to other VPS's… he's comparing it to hosting providers.

In case it matters, it's not just hosting I'm proposing… it's mostly website development, but I want to host it here because of the freedom to install whatever ends up being needed.

Ugh. Best of luck explaining to him that any hosting provider promising that is full of shit.

What I do is let them chose their own hosting provider after I've told them not to, then when something goes wrong say "I told you so" and move them to somewhere decent.

Alternatively point your customer to somebody like Hostgator and highlight their "unlimited" ToS, where I believe they've even got a get-out clause for their "unlimted" offerings if a weekday ends with a 'y'….

You could also point your customer to HostGators VPS offering and Reseller account. Their limits are actual values there. The VPS in particular are very similar to Linodes.

Linode's limits overall are very similar to the few quality providers I have found. But none of them provide the control panel and flexibility that you find here.

Bottom line, bandwidth and storage space cost money. It can never be unlimited anywhere but in a sales pitch.

Jeff

May I resell resources? Is it allowed here?

Of course. You can even resell entire Linodes if you'd like. In fact, there are people who do exactly that.

Heck, if you wanted, you could even develop your own AWS-style service. Linode might bill by the day rather than the hour, but if you had a bunch of linodes that you were selling out AWS-style, you could sell them by the hour.

Anyhow, that's getting off-topic, but the answer is yes, you can do anything that doesn't violate the terms of service.

@Guspaz:

Linode might bill by the day rather than the hour,

They don't, they prorate lower than that. Not sure if it's to the hour or minute or second or what. I know because I setup a linode once and decided to go a different route on the software packages partway through, so I decided to just delete and start over. The credit was a couple cents less than the original amount and when I started another an hour or so later after getting sidetracked, that one also cost a couple cents less.

This makes some sense, as it takes more code to prorate to the day than to the second/millisecond/whatever the smallest time your language uses, so why not just prorate down that low.

@glg:

This makes some sense, as it takes more code to prorate to the day than to the second/millisecond/whatever the smallest time your language uses, so why not just prorate down that low.

Why would it take any more code to prorate by the day compared to by the hour? Last time I checked you just divide by a different number.

@carmp3fan:

@glg:

This makes some sense, as it takes more code to prorate to the day than to the second/millisecond/whatever the smallest time your language uses, so why not just prorate down that low.

Why would it take any more code to prorate by the day compared to by the hour? Last time I checked you just divide by a different number.

I guess it's still just one line with some rounding to the nearest hour, but still just a little more. The lazy man would just do it to the smallest unit in the system.

@glg:

@carmp3fan:

@glg:

This makes some sense, as it takes more code to prorate to the day than to the second/millisecond/whatever the smallest time your language uses, so why not just prorate down that low.

Why would it take any more code to prorate by the day compared to by the hour? Last time I checked you just divide by a different number.

I guess it's still just one line with some rounding to the nearest hour, but still just a little more. The lazy man would just do it to the smallest unit in the system.

It's already rounded to the full day.

Yes, it is. My point was that if you had a pool of linodes that you were selling to somebody else, you could prorate to the hour. Someone could build the equivalent of AWS on top of Linode. Linode is a great platform for all sorts of stuff.

@carmp3fan:

@glg:

@carmp3fan:

Why would it take any more code to prorate by the day compared to by the hour? Last time I checked you just divide by a different number.

I guess it's still just one line with some rounding to the nearest hour, but still just a little more. The lazy man would just do it to the smallest unit in the system.

It's already rounded to the full day.

Huh? where?

@glg:

@carmp3fan:

@glg:

I guess it's still just one line with some rounding to the nearest hour, but still just a little more. The lazy man would just do it to the smallest unit in the system.

It's already rounded to the full day.

Huh? where?

I could be wrong, but I was fairly certain Linode rounded to the full day.

Hmm, upon further inspection, it might be a faulty assumption. I see some references from Caker about stuff being prorated to the second, perhaps there is a one-day minimum if you create/destroy a linode, and time after that is pro-rated to the second?

@carmp3fan:

I could be wrong, but I was fairly certain Linode rounded to the full day.

You missed my earlier post (top of page 2 of the thread). From experience, I can state that it is NOT to the day.

@Guspaz:

Hmm, upon further inspection, it might be a faulty assumption. I see some references from Caker about stuff being prorated to the second, perhaps there is a one-day minimum if you create/destroy a linode, and time after that is pro-rated to the second?

Again, I did NOT hit any kind of minimum.