There is NO such thing as Unlimmited/Unmettered

[.Andy]

** I thought this article would be of general use to people who are requesting hosting for the first time **
If you prefer audio or to see the pretty images included in the origional article Please Click here (http://www.hastyhost.com/overselling.php)
Over the years, the web hosting industry has taken several changes. One of these changes includes the introduction of unlimited space and/or bandwidth. These changes are a way for hosting companies to deceive it's customers, as a way to bring in more income. The sad truth is, you do not always get what you pay for, but these companies hope that you are unaware of this type of trickery.

So what exactly are the dangers of overselling Unlimited Space & Bandwidth?

"Overselling is a term used in the web hosting industry to describe a situation in which a company provides hosting plans that are unsustainable if every one of its customers uses the full extent of services advertised. The term is usually referred to the web space and bandwidth transfer allowance (source)."

That basically means, a web hosting company will sell you a service that it really cannot offer. This can be called false advertising, however, not one person has been able to prove a web hosting wrong because of three main factors:

The first reason why no one has successfully revealed a web host wrong that offers unlimited disk space is because the web host will suspend that individuals account as soon as it appears to be using more than the allocated space (usually 1GB) that web host may have set that you as a customer do not know about.


Secondly, all web host that provide unlimited space and bandwidth will have in their terms of service many restrictions that most customers simply bypass without paying any attention to. These restrictions usually include all types of websites that use up a large amount of space such as the following:


Backup websites
Warez or Illegal Content websites
Streaming videos or music
Downloading software, movies, music etc websites
Sites that offer free resources to the public
and the elongated list goes on...

Lastly, when it comes unlimited bandwidth you have to be careful about that as well. "Bandwidth refers to the amount of data that website visitors can download from a website (source)." Most unlimited bandwidth provides will claim they have unmetered bandwidth which can be true, but, the tricky part is, if your website consumes too many CPU resources your account will be suspended. Most host give your individual web hosting account a 10% CPU resource limit, but if you go over that limit your account will be suspended. Most customers have no idea how to prevent this from happening, and lack the knowledge of rather or not their type of website is suitable for such an shared environment.

As you know, you are sharing the server you are placed on with other individuals just like you. If one person uses too many CPU resources or creates a high server load at any given time, that effects your website as well, which causes downtime or slow response time to your website. Many web host that provide unlimited bandwidth will eventually face this horrible factor.
Andy Anderson, an individual currently involved in the web hosting market had this to say about overselling disk space and bandwidth:

"How much room do you actually need for a site? Looking through my server logs most people use 500MB (megabytes) of disk space and about 5GB (gigabytes) of bandwidth. That is plenty of room for the average person with only 1GB of disk space. But most people will not ever look at how much space they are using. They only look at storage space when they are looking for a host. The hosting market these days are very competitive. Web Hosts bank on your lack of knowledge and promise you TB (terabytes) of space and bandwidth. If you look at burst.net they have a terabyte hard drive for $400.00 a month per host. So think for a minute, how can a host offer you a $1.95 month web hosting plan for a terabyte of space? Mathematically they cannot possibly do it, and yet, they know about it and lie to your face that they can. They also hide behind their TOS (terms of service) saying you must have active sites ect. Do you think Google.com would pay for 1,000’s of servers if they could host at DreamHost, who oversells web space, for $7.95?"

The bottom line is, if you are serious about the future of your website, it is best to do your own research and actually pay for what you receive. If the offer looks too good to be true, more than likely it is.

Copyright : Robert Smith (CEO of HastyHost)

<mod note> I have permission to reproduce this article as I myself has contributed to this article.Copyright Robert Smith (CEO of HastyHost) (http://www.hastyhost.com)

[Dancer]

As a newbie I found this very helpful. Thank you.

[[AS]Richard]

Good article. Hopefully this will get some people to stop asking for/offering unlimited specs.

[Tracker]

This is a decent article and I think it makes a great point. However people will still goto those places because they do not know any better.

Oh well maybe someday they will all learn.

[.Andy]

Thanks I'm glad you enjoy mods feel free to sticky on the webhosting offers/requests forum. I feel the current post needs more explanation personally.

[TSO]

Thank you for posting. You are right - this is something so many people can benefit from. You have done a great service to the community here. +rep to you. :)

[~ServerPoint~]

One hand - there are lots of people which do aware of that, but newbies come everyday and do not start theyr search with reading

[iHubNet-Matt]

Yes it will be surely helpful for the newbies. Thanks for such an informative post.

[RU-Adam]

Dreamhost begs to differ... they are offering unlimited + 50GB. I agree you can't offer unlimited disk space, but you can offer unlimited bandwidth.

[AdamJ]

but you can offer unlimited bandwidth.

Shouldn't it be cannot? ;) I mean, every single company who offers "Unlimited Bandwidth!", has limits, like 100Mbps line's are 33,000gb etc etc etc


So unfortunitely it's not unlimited, always a cap on them.

[GlennBeforeTime]

I guess now is the time I stick out my neck and get it chopped off for my response.

In a technical term, unlimited is impossible however unmetered is possible to the limitation on the server connection, for example, 1MBPS dedicated line would give you 324GB of monthly transfer with the connection flawed 100% of the time.

So technically, there is no transfer limit set, but the limit lies with the hardware, thus Unmetered is allocatable. Listing Unmetered for shared hosting is impossible due to the fact that shared hosting cannot have dedicated hardware and thus cannot have a dedicated up/down link connection. VPS and Dedicated Servers can

Unmetered is obtainable as there is as the name suggests, a lack of limits to the allocation of the transfer. Unlimited or Unmetered Bandwidth is IMPOSSIBLE as bandwidth is not a measurement of allocation but a measurement of speed that data travels through a theoritical "band" in relation to Broad Band and Narrow Band, a given name to the speed of which data at a top connection can travel at.
56k or 56 Kilobits per second is a Narrow Band connection and uses a grand total of 56 Kilobits per second of a 56 Kilobit per second band on a narrow band connection.

Which begs the question, is unmetered narrow band obtainable, the answer is simply YES, I'm sure most of us here have a broad band connection of over 20GB per month downloads, dial up or 56k's unmetered downloads is only 18GB per month top theoretical.

None of these calculations take into account of priority usage, traffic in use by other services or the "band".

Hope you all enjoyed my long message, for those of you still reading, you've done a wonderful job at paying attention, for those of you who skimmed and want me to get to the point, no worries.

The point of this post is to prove that Unlimited transfer does not exist, but unmetered is 100% legit and is obtainable.
The second point of this post is to PROVE to those of you still using bandwidth as a measurement of how much data transfer per month should reword what you use bandwidth for before you rub shoulders with someone who actually knows just what bandwidth IS.

For reference purposes, don't hate me for responding, I have just written an essay with exact figures and calculations on how much transfer someone can actually use on a monthly basis with a dedicated connection.

Please also note that in technicality terms, bandwidth limits can be set using mod_bandwidth where you can make Unmetered 1Mbps shared hosting plans.

Hope you enjoyed my post, I'm sure that someone here will not like it and complain, and others will call me a complete nuff nuff who doesn't know what I am talking about, I would be more then happy to share my calculations with you guys here.

8Bits to a Byte
1024 Bytes to a KiloByte
1024 Kilobytes to a MegaByte
1024 Kilobits to a Megabit (0.12MB per second)
All calculations here are based on 365.25 days in a year 30.4375 days in a month and 86400 seconds in a day.
References; My own knowledge, wikipedia (http://wikipedia.org/) and http://web.forret.com/tools/bandwidth.asp

~Peace

[.Bobby]

Meaning, CWahi and Hostgator are bogus?

[engineerroy2008]

This days most of the hosts are really turning to the word "unmetered" rather than using the words " unlimited" since it has logical meaning, they dont ask you for overage charges but technically you cannot exceed a limit, for a 10 Mbps you can use upto 3 TB per month.

[SharedLayer]

Glenn;1053394']I guess now is the time I stick out my neck and get it chopped off for my response.

In a technical term, unlimited is impossible however unmetered is possible to the limitation on the server connection, for example, 1MBPS dedicated line would give you 324GB of monthly transfer with the connection flawed 100% of the time.

So technically, there is no transfer limit set, but the limit lies with the hardware, thus Unmetered is allocatable. Listing Unmetered for shared hosting is impossible due to the fact that shared hosting cannot have dedicated hardware and thus cannot have a dedicated up/down link connection. VPS and Dedicated Servers can

Unmetered is obtainable as there is as the name suggests, a lack of limits to the allocation of the transfer. Unlimited or Unmetered Bandwidth is IMPOSSIBLE as bandwidth is not a measurement of allocation but a measurement of speed that data travels through a theoritical "band" in relation to Broad Band and Narrow Band, a given name to the speed of which data at a top connection can travel at.
56k or 56 Kilobits per second is a Narrow Band connection and uses a grand total of 56 Kilobits per second of a 56 Kilobit per second band on a narrow band connection.

Which begs the question, is unmetered narrow band obtainable, the answer is simply YES, I'm sure most of us here have a broad band connection of over 20GB per month downloads, dial up or 56k's unmetered downloads is only 18GB per month top theoretical.

None of these calculations take into account of priority usage, traffic in use by other services or the "band".

Hope you all enjoyed my long message, for those of you still reading, you've done a wonderful job at paying attention, for those of you who skimmed and want me to get to the point, no worries.

The point of this post is to prove that Unlimited transfer does not exist, but unmetered is 100% legit and is obtainable.
The second point of this post is to PROVE to those of you still using bandwidth as a measurement of how much data transfer per month should reword what you use bandwidth for before you rub shoulders with someone who actually knows just what bandwidth IS.

For reference purposes, don't hate me for responding, I have just written an essay with exact figures and calculations on how much transfer someone can actually use on a monthly basis with a dedicated connection.

Please also note that in technicality terms, bandwidth limits can be set using mod_bandwidth where you can make Unmetered 1Mbps shared hosting plans.

Hope you enjoyed my post, I'm sure that someone here will not like it and complain, and others will call me a complete nuff nuff who doesn't know what I am talking about, I would be more then happy to share my calculations with you guys here.

8Bits to a Byte
1024 Bytes to a KiloByte
1024 Kilobytes to a MegaByte
1024 Kilobits to a Megabit (0.12MB per second)
All calculations here are based on 365.25 days in a year 30.4375 days in a month and 86400 seconds in a day.
References; My own knowledge, wikipedia (http://wikipedia.org/) and http://web.forret.com/tools/bandwidth.asp

~Peace

Finally some one who get's it :) and is willingly to explain it in a language people not that into hosting can understand it.

[DevilsHost]

Nice article, its just a shame so many people just wont use their common sense these days and will go for the biggest ammount of space for the lowest price they can possibly find without actually thinking about what they are really getting.

One of my friends had an account with hostgator or some similar host once and there was over 600 sites on the one server, so say they have a 1TB drive, 1TB to go between 600 sites....you do the math, they are working on the assumption that not everyone will use all their space and bandwidth but clearly it is impossible for any customer to get what they paid for.

[JLHC]

One of my friends had an account with hostgator or some similar host once and there was over 600 sites on the one server, so say they have a 1TB drive, 1TB to go between 600 sites....you do the math, they are working on the assumption that not everyone will use all their space and bandwidth but clearly it is impossible for any customer to get what they paid for.

I assume those are slow SATA drives? ;)

[heymrdj]

I get tired of "overselling" hard drives on dedicated servers. Why pay monthly for a drive upgraded one? Heck I'll go to newegg and ship them a new 1TB to put in it, AND pay a tech 100$ to install it, and I'll still be less than one month upgrade price, let alone the other 12. That's crazy.

[Dagan]

Yes , there is no unlimmited/unmettered web hosting.

[XFH-Jay]

There's none but people look for it - the competition nowadays has caused companies to raise their budgets and their allocations on their servers.

Comparing a company with unmetered space (overselling) with a company that offers 2GB space for the same price, 99% of people who see the ads would go with the overselling company.

Larger companies such as HostGator and LunarPages have fortunately been able to keep most of their servers up easily, but there are hundreds of other companies who offer unlimited features that are struggling at this point..

[GlennBeforeTime]

If there is no possibility for Unmetered or Unlimited Space or Transfer, then there is NO such thing as unlimited features such as FTP, MySQL and so on.

I'm not sticking up for these companies that offer Unlimited Space and Transfer, but If there is no such thing as unmetered transfer, there is no such thing as unlimited FTP accounts, or MySQL Databases. These take up a tiny amount of hard drive space, but never the less, they still do take up some hard drive space.

[heymrdj]

Glenn;1055251']If there is no possibility for Unmetered or Unlimited Space or Transfer, then there is NO such thing as unlimited features such as FTP, MySQL and so on.

I'm not sticking up for these companies that offer Unlimited Space and Transfer, but If there is no such thing as unmetered transfer, there is no such thing as unlimited FTP accounts, or MySQL Databases. These take up a tiny amount of hard drive space, but never the less, they still do take up some hard drive space.

These are virtual items and are in actuality capable of being unlimited. FTP is nothing but a speciality of file permissions, with a software already loaded on the system to track the credentials. While it's true they are unlimited, even with a 50MB account you would long run into software limitations of incrementing accounts before you filled it with blocks. So in terms people can understand, yes they are completely unlimited as you are allowed to create even 100,000 accounts if you wanted to on your server. (going by that their TOS has no rule against them that is, which would then fall under the same TOS discrimination as claiming free space and transfer.)

[GlennBeforeTime]

These are virtual items and are in actuality capable of being unlimited. FTP is nothing but a speciality of file permissions, with a software already loaded on the system to track the credentials. While it's true they are unlimited, even with a 50MB account you would long run into software limitations of incrementing accounts before you filled it with blocks. So in terms people can understand, yes they are completely unlimited as you are allowed to create even 100,000 accounts if you wanted to on your server. (going by that their TOS has no rule against them that is, which would then fall under the same TOS discrimination as claiming free space and transfer.)

Ah but an FTP account entry is roughly 1.5 - 2KB of space. So there is NO such thing as unlimited features either.

[heymrdj]

Glenn;1055258']Ah but an FTP account entry is roughly 1.5 - 2KB of space. So there is NO such thing as unlimited features either.

Ok so a 50MB account could say that you can have up to 25,600 FTP accounts, of course MySQL and other "accounts" would take up this space.

I think it's pretty clear that it means you can create unlimited accounts within your space constraints. You're making everything too technical. Space and transfer are your boundaries, you are free to do whatever you want in the constraints of your boundaries is what unlimited features means.

[SiberForum]

Ok so a 50MB account could say that you can have up to 25,600 FTP accounts, of course MySQL and other "accounts" would take up this space.
I suppose that should be named and spotlighted on the offers page if you are talking about shared host

[GlennBeforeTime]

Ok so a 50MB account could say that you can have up to 25,600 FTP accounts, of course MySQL and other "accounts" would take up this space.

I think it's pretty clear that it means you can create unlimited accounts within your space constraints. You're making everything too technical. Space and transfer are your boundaries, you are free to do whatever you want in the constraints of your boundaries is what unlimited features means.

That is the exact same for Unmetered Transfer. Your only restraint is your hardware.


I suppose that should be named and spotlighted on the offers page if you are talking about shared host

Truly pointed out. Thank You.

The purpose of this topic was to state that unlimited and unmetered do not exist.

Unlimited does not exist and is Impossible to obtain unless there was a hard drive and bandwidth as large as the universe (forgive the hidden pun, the universe has no size as it constantly grows hence, infinity or unlimited space)

However Unmetered refers to no restrictions but limitations based on hardware or allocation. For instance, being allocated 1Mbps bandwidth on shared hosting using mod_bandwidth would give you a physical limit of XXX but no restrictions on how much of the 1Mbps you use, and for how long, hence the term Unmetered (It makes no difference if you flaw a 1Mbps connection 100% of the time [which is impossible ;)] in the grand scheme of your hardware limitations.
Unmetered disk space is not obtainable as hard disk drives are measured by how much they can store.

I understand I am making this technical, because I have proven a point that unmetered transfer is obtainable and feasible whereas unlimited space is not. Your argument is that you can have unlimited features, no you cant. You can have as many as the server can handle. So if you want to call no allocatable limit on features unlimited, then you must accept that unmetered transfer is obtainable.

[heymrdj]

Glenn;1055304']That is the exact same for Unmetered Transfer. Your only restraint is your hardware.



Truly pointed out. Thank You.

The purpose of this topic was to state that unlimited and unmetered do not exist.

Unlimited does not exist and is Impossible to obtain unless there was a hard drive and bandwidth as large as the universe (forgive the hidden pun, the universe has no size as it constantly grows hence, infinity or unlimited space)

However Unmetered refers to no restrictions but limitations based on hardware or allocation. For instance, being allocated 1Mbps bandwidth on shared hosting using mod_bandwidth would give you a physical limit of XXX but no restrictions on how much of the 1Mbps you use, and for how long, hence the term Unmetered (It makes no difference if you flaw a 1Mbps connection 100% of the time [which is impossible ;)] in the grand scheme of your hardware limitations.
Unmetered disk space is not obtainable as hard disk drives are measured by how much they can store.

I understand I am making this technical, because I have proven a point that unmetered transfer is obtainable and feasible whereas unlimited space is not. Your argument is that you can have unlimited features, no you cant. You can have as many as the server can handle. So if you want to call no allocatable limit on features unlimited, then you must accept that unmetered transfer is obtainable.


I've always said that unmetered transfer was possible, just not unlimited. I guess a correct term (though hard to get used to) would be unmetered features on the accounts, meaning you can create as many as your physical constraints allow.

I still say you're being too technical. You're dumbing things down when people should be smart enough to know what this stuff means if their even THINKING of creating a website. I've long advocated that everyone should have to take a basic computer course that teaches more than turning it on and off, but teaches antivirus/antimalware, cleaning, damage smoking does around computers, getting cd's out of stuck cd drives with bobby pins, and all these other nit pick things that people with a computer should know before you're even allowed to own one. The same should go for websites. You need a course that teaches you the ins and outs, the DMCA, overselling loopholes, ect ect ect.

[GlennBeforeTime]

I still say you're being too technical. You're dumbing things down when people should be smart enough to know what this stuff means if their even THINKING of creating a website. I've long advocated that everyone should have to take a basic computer course that teaches more than turning it on and off, but teaches antivirus/antimalware, cleaning, damage smoking does around computers, getting cd's out of stuck cd drives with bobby pins, and all these other nit pick things that people with a computer should know before you're even allowed to own one. The same should go for websites. You need a course that teaches you the ins and outs, the DMCA, overselling loopholes, ect ect ect.

I agree, but then why is 99% of the Web hosting Industry listing Bandwidth as a unit of quota as apposed to a measurement of speed? Anyone who has taken a basic computer course knows the difference between the speed at which data can be transferred, and the data transfer quota. This is the reason why I am, as you so accurately described, "Dumbing it down" or taking it back to it's fundamental basics, because my point is, Transfer is the Data Transfer Quota, and Bandwidth is how much data can be transferred per second. My other point was to prove that Unmetered is an obtainable term where as Unlimited is not. (Which you agree with) And the only way to prove that is to take it back to it's most basic form and explain it, bit by bit, like a computer course leader does, so that anyone can understand it.

[dbbrock1]

Well said my friend!

Look at it this way: when is the last time you went into Best Buy to pick up a hard drive with unlimited disk space?

Never! So how can you believe a host can offer unlimited disk space? Eventually they are going to run out, especially if they are cramming 200 clients on a server.

[-jab-]

Just a small question i totally agree that Unlimited is not real, but how come all those companies have it and they are still alive or in business. My friend is with hostgator, and he have used around 120 GB worth of space so far, and they didn't suspend him.

[bariteau]

There is a new, recent thread about this...
http://freewebspace.net/forums/showthread.php?t=2222413

Can a mod lock this?

[Eclouds]

Although this is repeated over and over again, some people seem to not understand that concept.

[Darknight]

There is a new, recent thread about this...
http://freewebspace.net/forums/showthread.php?t=2222413

Can a mod lock this?

there is always a new thread about it, has been for the last 3 years I have been here anyway.
but yes prob would be good to lock this old one up.

[GeorgeB]

There are some hosts that are big and can provide unlimited/unmetered hosting. I know of two in particular of which I use one of them.

Yahoo hosting and Hostgator.com

[Wong]

There are some hosts that are big and can provide unlimited/unmetered hosting. I know of two in particular of which I use one of them.

Yahoo hosting and Hostgator.com

They might have a good reputation, but still I wouldn't touch them. Can you tell me how they can offer unlimited web hosting, seeing as there's no unlimited hard drive nor a network port that will never run out of bandwidth?

[bariteau]

"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former"
(Albert Einstein)

[heymrdj]

"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former"
(Albert Einstein)

/thread

[GeorgeB]

They might have a good reputation, but still I wouldn't touch them. Can you tell me how they can offer unlimited web hosting, seeing as there's no unlimited hard drive nor a network port that will never run out of bandwidth?

The same concept as to how Yahoo can offer unlimited email storage. You just keep buying more and more servers.

There was a guy on here who pretty much explained it very good, but not sure who he was.

Nothing is ever impossible once you put your mind to it.

[bariteau]

You could deploy clusters and SAN for the data but all in all, the companies that provide unlimited data rely on the fact that some use a lot and some use little. If everyone starts using a lot, you will hit limits and even if you deploy more servers, more clusters, more SANs, there are some limits, mainly networking, that cannot be overcome with today's technology

Unlimited is not part of this world (unfortunately) you can make it look like it's unlimited but reality is that it isn't and I cannot be.

[haylee]

unlimited Space & bandwidth

I will just pay with my unlimited money :lol: