I see the word "unlimited" on a lot of hosting providers. Give me access to the dd command and we'll see how long that theory lasts.
I honestly find it, always and everywhere, to be deceptive marketing. There is no such thing as unlimited resources.
I honestly find it, always and everywhere, to be deceptive marketing. There is no such thing as unlimited resources.
This approach let's the host plan capacity while giving users the illusion of unlimited bandwidth. Meanwhile customers that genuinely need the extra throughput can still get it at a premium.
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This is essentially what T-Mobile is doing, they're just not being transparent about it. You can have "unlimited" bandwidth at ~3.5Mbit/s (a 480p video stream), or you can pay a premium to saturate your link. They're just choosing to apply the throughput restriction to a specific class of traffic (HD streaming) because (A) it's a large fraction of their total traffic and (B) it's fairly easy to market to customers.
Of course there is no such thing as truly unlimited, but it can certainly be "unlimited" in one dimension. The issue here is that's not how T-Mobile is marketing it, they're marketing their network as "the fastest LTE network"[1] while also saying you have unlimited monthly bandwidth. The latter may be true, but it comes at the expense of throttling the throughput (for some fraction of subscribers); and once you throttle a subscriber you can no longer say you're providing them with access to "the fastest LTE network in America."
[1]: https://newsroom.t-mobile.com/news-and-blogs/lte-advanced.ht...
I understand that the word unlimited makes people feel good, but it shouldn't. Nothing is unlimited, ever. Just because they're not telling you what it is doesn't mean it isn't there.
Unmetered bandwidth that is capped at a gigabit or is physically incapable of going faster is not unlimited either. It's been throttled to only allow you to download a certain amount each month. It is also not unlimited, unless you consider a throttle to not be a limit.
Most cable modems, by the way, can go 3-5 times faster without the artificial throttles put on them by the providers. So even before Comcast started doing their stupid 1TB cap, they were already throttling your internet connection way below the possible speeds of the device.
That said, I do prefer to know my limits
"Unlimited" hosting plans are effectively geared for basic personal or small business websites only. And if you go over some soft limits they're almost certainly monitoring, they'll find an excuse in the TOS to disable your account.