Could Clients Abuse Unlimited Bandwidth and Disk Space?

The idea behind giving the clients that is much like the one in "all you can eat" buffets. Am I right?

 

I'm not sure. As for your question - could clients abuse unlimited bandwidth and disk space - is not simple to answer because it doesn't ask the right question.

Could the "bandwidth" and "diskspace" be abused - no. The host isn't placing limits on what you use so how can you abuse it?

If you widen the question to abusing other resources or the "hosting" then the answer is - yes. All hosts....ALL HOSTS. I'll repeat it again...ALL HOSTS have limits on the amount of CPU and RAM an individual customer/web site can use. Some, with better management tools also have limits on disk I/O and Network usage.

These limits have no direct bearing on the amount of diskspace or bandwidth you use, but it doesn't mean you can "go crazy" with unfettered and unrestricted hosting madness. Get too many visitors that uses up more than your fair share of ram, install badly written scripts of plugins that trash the CPU or Database and you'll be out on your ear...maybe with a warning first, maybe not.

Diskspace is cheap. I frankly couldn't care less if a client used up 1TB of data on a shared hosting plan because diskspace is not a limiting factor for us. I'd love to see how long it would take them to upload it (several months by most ADSL standard) and I'd be even more interested to see if it complied with our terms of all files being used directly by the web site. Bandwidth is cheap too. 100GB of transfer, 500GB of transfer - means just a few dollars, so who cares, really!.

The company I work for doesn't offer unlimited diskspace or bandwidth, and I'm no fan of the way it is offered, but I don't have anything against the priniciple of it as long as the person buying it knows what they are REALLY getting.

 

of course, there is no such thing as unlimited, all the thing in the world are limited

 

Unlimited Disk Space and Bandwidth is a sales gimmick and nothing more. THERE IS NO SUCH THING. It works on the people who want alot for a little.

The average person looking for a website is going to compare Provider A vs Provider B...

Provider A has xxxGB of space.
Provider B has unlimited.

Which do you pick?

And that's your answer. HOWEVER... If you read the providers TOS/AUP you will quickly find that if you are using more then XX% of resources, etc, that you will be forced to upgrade or pack-up your accounts and move elsewhere. So actually using anywhere close to unlimited, would get your account suspended.

 

Really? You know this for a fact? Prove it. As I've said many times before, it is possible (it's getting easier and easier) to provide a user with as much diskspace as they want or need - the same arguements apply to bandwidth too. If you don't place limits then you're providing unlimited amounts. You don't need to have drives of unlimited size (with the usual poor joke about where to find them because you want some!) to provide a user with no-limit diskspace.

And how is that different from EVERY OTHER HOST on the planet? It's not something that is exclusive to unlimited hosts so is a poor arguement and no excuse for not using them.

The restrictions on resources you mention apply to CPU and RAM, and sometimes disk I/O. None of these restrictions are directly related to the amount of diskspace or bandwidth being used. I'm not saying there is NO correlation but there is no direct correlation between the amount of diskspace that is filled up and CPU or RAM usage - it depends upon how the files stored on the diskspace are used, but that has nothing to do with the actual diskspace being consumed.

And why wouldn't they be asked to upgrade or leave if they were using too many of the restricted resources available? These people are on shared servers and it wouldn't be fair to let them have exclusive use of a CPU to the detriment of others.....which is why EVERY host has these restrictions on shared hosting. Diskspace is another element altogether because it can scale, and scale, and scale unlike CPUs which tend to be finite. Having one user use say 30 times more of one type of no-limit resource than another user makes no difference to these limited resources - I chose 30 times, but it could be 100 times, or even 1000 times, or any other figure you choose.

There are good arguements against unlimited web hosting offers, but the "move/shutdown if you use too many resources" and the "there's no such thing as unlimited size drives" reason are poor and lazy arguements that don't support much and certainly don't prove that unlimited offers might not be genuine.

 

You can set it up so that your clients can have unlimited account creation privlages but only with the alotted space that is given to them by root administrator

 

Ermm.. I didn't say anything about the size of hard drives. I'm talking about the theory behind overselling accounts with unlimited space. Almost all web hosting companies oversell, if you're not you're doing something wrong.

You seem to be confused about what overselling is. Just because I sell a client "unlimited" GB of disk space, does not mean I have to reserve or have "unlimited" disk space available to sell. I could sell 1000 accounts a plan with "unlimited" disk space but in reality I only have 500GB of usable space. It's unlikely that even 100 of the accounts will use 1GB. The bandwidth is usually a burstable limit, so even if it is reached, the server won't suddenly go offline. There are sufficient resources to provide the service, and the host will probably have the foresight to upgrade the servers as needed.

There is no such thing as an unlimited hard drive or unlimited bandwidth. Both are finite resources. Don't confuse unlimited with "infinite." They are two entirely different concepts that are being mashed together.

I didn't say unlimited offers are not genuine. I even sell them myself. I'm just saying if you signup onto an unlimited plan expecting unlimited resources... I will prove you wrong quite quickly. These plans are meant for the average PEBKAC users.

Try it yourself. Find a webhost with unlimited resources for $2 or something stupid per month. Upload 50-100GB+ of data and guaranteed you'll be suspended within 24 hours. Then come back and tell me where your "unlimited" resources went.

 

A much more measured and intelligent response than I was expecting. What I don't understand is why you used the old arguement, saying, "Unlimited Diskspace and Bandwidth is a sales gimmick and nothing more", yet you clearly understand the distinction between not providing a limit and the concept of infinite. It confuses me further for you to then admit you offer no limit diskspace plans (let's call it what it is for the easily confused) and then say it's a sales gimmick.

Don't you have faith in what you are offering? It reads as if you don't believe your own hype and that you clearly don't believe what you offer....some people could read that as being dishonest. I'm not attacking you, I'm genuinely intrigued. It seems clear to me that you're not among the perpetually deluded, but your two posts here are wildly contradictory.

I'd say we were both on the same page regarding the distinction between "unlimited" and infinite, and we both understand that the use of other resources (CPU, RAM etc) are the true limiting factors. Given that, why do you offer plans you then say can't be provided?

We don't offer any unlimited amounts of ANY hosting plan, but I can still understand (and agree with) how the concept of unlimited is entirely possible and how it can be supplied without guile or dishonesty. I don't believe that all hosts offering unlimited will stick by their stated bargain - I'm not THAT gullible (there's too many dishonest people and kids operating in the hosting industry) - but I do believe it is entirely possible to provide in most cases.

 

Most "unlimited storage" hosts offer unlimited space for a website only. Their TOS doesn't allow "backup" kind of storage or non-website related. If your website grows and has lots of files, it's fine in most cases, but if you install a backup software on your home computer and FTPing all your data for backup purposes then it will be a violation. Some hosts that I know run daily scripts that look for .ISO, .MP3, .MP4, .BKP, .ZIP and other files that might be considered as "backup storage" They don't remove it automatically but some sites with lots of those files will be alerted to system admin to check manually.

 

Of course. That makes perfect sense and I don't know why anyone would you expect it to be any different. People are purchasing HOSTING from the company, not online storage facilities. It's perfectly correct that hosts disallow anything to be uploaded that isn't used directly by web sites.