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Comment by ghshephard | Hacker News Reader

I don't get the 100tb.com model. Checking out their website, I see:

Intel E3-12303.2 GHz8GB2 x 1TB100 TB$201.15 1Gbit Dedicated Port

So, for $200/month, they'll give me 100 Terabytes/bandwidth on this server.

250 megabit/second at 30 days in terabytes = 81 Terabytes. A decently peered/connected Pipe costs, at this volume, around $5-$7/megabit @95th, or $1250.month.

So either:

  A) Their connectivity isn't hot.
  B) If you actually use that 100 Terabytes per server, 
     they start to curtail/rate limit/traffic shape you.
  C) Some other option I haven't considered?  Maybe they 
     just rely on the vast majority of their customers not 
     using that bandwidth, and subsidizing (significantly) 
     those that do?

blantonl, appreciate any insight you can provide - sounds like you've got great control over your environment. From the sounds of it, 100tb.com provides bandwidth @$0.33/megabit.

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Something that you want to keep in mind with 100TB is that they have pulled companies before, and left them in pretty dire straights.

http://gigaom.com/cloud/simplecdn-takedown-a-cautionary-tale...

I don't want to try to guess why they did that, but it's something that should never be forgotten.

So - that pretty much answers my question. If you actually start to use that 100TB, they drop you as a customer. TANSSAAFL, so, if it looks to good to be true ($0.33/mbit/second on Softlayer network) - then it probably is.

I'd be very interested though, in what people have been able to sustain per server at 100TB without getting dropped.

My guess is that it's somewhere around 32 Terabytes/month per server before 100TB gets a little angsty (100 mbits/second sustained), particularly if you have more than a dozen or so servers with them (filling out a GigE sustained)

They recently shut down all the servers of a Chinese reseller with 45 servers after a lot of their servers were the target of a DDOS. It's of course understandable to disable those servers in case of a big DDOS, but the problem was that they gave the reseller 24 hours (during the weekend) to backup the data.

It's pretty much impossible to do this in the weekend without even the passwords of the customers. Imagine receiving this email when you wake up (probably some time after it was sent) and having to get new servers immediately somewhere, emailing/phoning customers for their passwords and then also having to transfer potential TB's per server in the small remaining time frame. After posting on WHT (meaning after a PR disaster), 100TB did extend the deadline.

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1218922

I was considering them for a high-bandwidth project, but after reading these cases I changed my mind.

Does Tom ever reply in that thread?

blantonl, appreciate any insight you can provide - sounds like you've got great control over your environment. From the sounds of it, 100tb.com provides bandwidth @$0.33/megabit.

I suspect it is C) - the simple reality is that most Web hosting use cases don't consume bandwidth at rates that saturate an unmetered port, other than those that violate the TOS from 100TB.com (i.e. running a CDN reseller)

We've never, ever had a single issue with 100TB.com. The servers we have with them are solely in place to provide MP3 streaming capabilities, and we certainly do get our money's worth.

I haven't done a ton of work with 100tb.com, just a couple servers with them a few years back. It's great bandwidth. They're a SoftLayer reseller, so the nextwork blend is pretty good. I never got close to the 100tb cap, so am not sure if they'd impose some metering if you're doing it on a recurring basis. I feel like most of the people I've talked to about 100tb.com have gone in with the mentality that it's nearly unlimited, but end up using less than 1tb. If you aggregate across a ton of resold servers, I bet it's possible to make the model work pretty well.

Current bandwidth pricing: Level3 (quite good) about $3/Mbps, Cogent (not as good), 70 cents/Mbps. So $700 to $3000 for a 1Gbit pipe depending on quality, though usually they will charge you a bit more and you will have 1Gbps on a burstable 10Gbe connection.

However - most people don't use anywhere near this amount - really, they are selling you a server connected to a gigabit switch.

As soon as over-subscription kicks in (it does immediately, since you don't start using 250Mbps the day you have your server installed) their bandwidth costs go to a fraction of what you are paying monthly.

I don't know about 100tb specifically, but some general notes about the "hundreds of dollars for a dedicated port" market:

yes, the transit is not super. i wouldn't run voice on it, but i'd surely run bulk transfers off of it.

of course they're counting on underuse, that's why it's sold at port level instead of usage

they may not be shaping, but guaranteed you'll see primetime saturation pushing you (way) below port speed

this kind of bw costs them about $0.50/mbit when bought via 10g xc

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