Re:[OT?] [cobalt-users] Am I being Robbed:? - IP's and Gigabytes

[Brent Sims <brent@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, 12 Apr 2001, Nico Meijer wrote:

} While on the subject, if you require 50Gb when not distributing software,
} you have a badly designed site. Or porn. ;-)

	This is misleading. I'm not looking for a fight, or trying
to start another war, I'm just trying to save the less technically
orientated amongst us from taking this as the gospel. 50gb is
nothing for a popular high traffic web site. For example, we manage
(we don't host it here) a site for a celebrity which is heavily
promoted on National basis and upon which hundreds of mbs of
streaming content (none of which contains anything even remotely
resembling porn) is in almost constant use and is replaced each and
every week.

	Based on constant througlput, 50gb a month translates into a
clear channel connection capable of flowing roughly 166 kb/s. Truth
be told, if you read the fine print on the contracts of most of the
providers who offer this kind of thing that's pretty much what they
are offering - 166kb/s, with various clauses that state how you are
going to get it and how often you can use all of it. I've read a
whole bunch of them and my personal experience is that they pretty
much state exactly what one is going to get but that people tend to
focus on the 50gb rather than on the througlput, sustained rate
and/or burst rate limits and those tend to be what usually sneak up
and bite you on the butt when you start pushing the limits.

	The reality is that you get what you pay for. Bandwidth is
expensive. You're simply not going to get much bandwidth for a
hundred bucks a month - but you'll more than likely get a hundred
bucks worth of bandwidth for a hundred bucks.

	brent