There’s a thread on LowEndTalk about a user who apparently blew past his bandwidth allotment like a caffeinated ferret discovering the “download all” button on the Library of Congress.

He had a VPS with a 10Gbps uplink, with the expectation he’d use 800mbps with the ability to burst up to 10gbps.  At least, that’s what support says now.  That’s 800mbps is 253TB of bandwidth per month, which is…quite a bit.  And I’m skeptical that anyone is going to sell a VPS with what is essentially an unfettered 1gbps uplink for LowEnd prices.

It’s not clear what his exact package specs were, but this was said in a posted support response:

A correction your bandwidth package was in fact 800Mbps and not 1Gbps, also the reason for the 10Gbps port is that you are allowed to occasionally burst to 10Gbps as long as you keep the overall usage below that.

Somehow he grossly exceeded this allotment, to the tune of a surprise $800 bill.

The provider’s TOS says:

Unless agreed otherwise we will charge for bandwidth overages at the following rates. 20 NOK per TB for dedicated and virtual servers with a metered bandwidth limit, and 5 NOK per Mbps over the 95th% limit for servers with an unmetered plan. Pricing are excl VAT.

The user was charged “kr 7,862.84,” which is roughly $769 as of this writing.  I’m going to assume we’re talking about the Norwegian Krone throughout (Sweden’s currency, the Krona, is also abbreviated kr).  So it sounds like 5 NOK per Mbps is the operative rate.  7862.84 / 5 = 1572.568mbps over, which is a little shy of 500TB…

I’m not at all confident in these numbers, though worth noting that a 10gbps port can push 3PB per month, so they’re possible.

What Should Happen?

If you have, say, a 1TB monthly allotment, here’s now it works at most places:

• At about 80% or 90%, you get an email saying you’re close to exhausting your bandwidth.
• You get more emails as you get closer – 95%, perhaps, and 99%.
• Once you actually go over, your VPS is either suspended or throttled.  So if you were on a 1gbps uplink, they may move you to 10mbps.  Or they may simply suspend your VPS.
• At that point, you have a conversation with support about how you’d like to proceed.  Often you can purchase more bandwidth to get going again, or you can wait it out until the next monthly cycle comes around.

Having a credit card with infinitely chargeability seems like a very bad policy to me, because bandwidth is not entirely in my control.  I could have someone hack my VPS and start burning bandwidth like a demon, or be the victim of a DDoS attack.  There’s all kinds of ways where someone could start racking up your bill.

Stay tuned to see how this one turns out!

raindog308

Raindog308 is a longtime LowEndTalk community administrator, technical writer, and self-described techno polymath. With deep roots in the *nix world, he has a passion for systems both modern and vintage, ranging from Unix, Perl, Python, and Golang to shell scripting and mainframe-era operating systems like MVS. He’s equally comfortable with relational database systems, having spent years working with Oracle, PostgreSQL, and MySQL.

As an avid user of LowEndBox providers, Raindog runs an empire of LEBs, from tiny boxes for VPNs, to mid-sized instances for application hosting, and heavyweight servers for data storage and complex databases. He brings both technical rigor and real-world experience to every piece he writes.

Beyond the command line, Raindog is a lover of German Shepherds, high-quality knives, target shooting, theology, tabletop RPGs, and hiking in deep, quiet forests.

His goal with every article is to help users, from beginners to seasoned sysadmins, get more value, performance, and enjoyment out of their infrastructure.

You can find him daily in the forums at LowEndTalk under the handle @raindog308.