[ghshephard]

The thing I love about pricing from organizations like Amazon, is that there is zero pressure, incentive, or intent on their part to curb you from using their resources, or finding you in any way in violation of some implicit "Fair Use" restrictions.

For example, in Singapore, Bandwidth from EC2 to the Internet is $0.120 per GB for the first 10 TB. So, if I have a site that sends out 2 TB of data, my bandwidth charges are $240/month, and Amazon is 100% fine with me doing that every month, and I should have zero concern about any type of rate limiting, or restrictions.

On the other hand, Digital Ocean (who I do have a VPS with in Singapore) charges me $10/month for a VPS with 2 TB/Transfer. I have no idea what they would do if I actually started using all 2 TB every month, but I can't believe it would end well.

I'm curious though - has anyone played around with using the cheap bandwidth of these VPSs to do a "roll your own" CDN? I.E. for $500/month you could purchase 100 Digital Ocean VPS @$5/month and, in theory get 100 * 1 Terabyte, or 100 Terabytes of transfer to the internet a month.

I'm pretty sure Digital Ocean would frown on that, but I'm interested in whether anyone has done the obvious thing and tried.

[simoncion]

> On the other hand, Digital Ocean ... charges me $10/month for a VPS with 2 TB/Transfer. I have no idea what they would do if I actually started using all 2 TB every month...

What does your contract say? If you don't have a contract, then -because they're a US company- you go by the advertising, and take them to court if they don't deliver what they promised.

[glomph]

Here is the relevant point in their ToS:

3.3 You shall not: (i) take any action that imposes or may impose (as determined by us in our sole discretion) an unreasonable or disproportionately large load on our (or our third party providers’) infrastructure;

[jokergd]

Regarding DigitalOcean -- they would NOT frown on it

if you go over your usage, you are charged 0.02 cents per gigabyte over your limit

if you stay within your usage, nothing happens

(note, as of right now, there is no charges for overages. until your bandwidth transfer stats are available on the control panel, there will be no overage charges)

[ghshephard]

My suspicion is they would shut you down, or encourage you to move to a larger droplet. As is referenced by glomph later in this thread, their TOU states "3.3 You shall not: (i) take any action that imposes or may impose (as determined by us in our sole discretion) an unreasonable or disproportionately large load on our (or our third party providers’) infrastructure;"

Consistently using excessive bandwidth likely falls in the "unreasonable or disproportionately large load " category. And, regardless, $5 for 1 Terabyte is only $0.005/gigabyte, which can only be offered, as long as people don't actually use 1 Terabyte of bandwidth The cheapest price Amazon offers (after discounts) is $0.08/gigabyte, after 150 terabytes which you've paid them $12,800 for.

In comparison, if we were to take Digital Ocean at Face Value, we could get that same 150 Terabytes for $150 * 5 or $750.

Do you truly believe that Digital Ocean is able to offer bandwidth at such a Discount to Amazon? Particularly when the price Schedule for Amazon in Singapore is graduated as follows:

   First 1 GB / month	$0.000 per GB
   Up to 10 TB / month	$0.120 per GB
   Next 40 TB / month	$0.085 per GB
   Next 100 TB / month	$0.082 per GB
   Next 350 TB / month	$0.080 per GB

You get a sense that their is a structural price floor around $0.08/GB that is hard for them to sell bandwidth for less.

The point I'm trying to make, and hopefully succeeding at, is DO and Amazon are in different business models. DO is profitable as long as the majority of their customers don't use the services intensively. Amazon, on the other hand, is profitable regardless of how much of their services you use - as a result, each of the companies incentives regarding account termination, and rate limiting, will likewise be aligned.

Please note, of course, that I'm saying this as a thoroughly satisfied Digital Ocean Customer. I've ceased using Amazon EC2 for pretty much everything, and have DO droplets all around the world. I love their service, and an am extraordinarily satisfied with both the performance and quality of their offering.

[andrewvc]

If you've ever bought bandwidth at a colo you know the AWS rates have extremely high margins. I'd wager that DO can afford it, it just eats at their margins.

[jokergd]

I work for DigitalOcean.

We would not shut you down.

Only gray situation is if you are flooding; amazon will send you a [bandwidth] bill, we send you a ticket

[brightsize]

I have a DO VM that I use for a few hobby apps but mostly for a Tor relay. $10/mo plan. I've done my best to throttle the bandwidth usage within the plan bounds but can't say for sure whether or not I've been entirely successful at that. Nevertheless -> zero fuss from DO, nothing, not a single complaint or $.01 added to my bill. I don't think I (or the Tor user community) would have fared nearly was well with Amazon.

[computer]

0.02 cents and $0.02 are two different things. I was confused by your reply. See [1] for a very frustrating example where Verizon reps made the same mistake.

[1] http://verizonmath.blogspot.nl/2007/08/original-recording-of...

[glomph]

Bullshit. If you believe they don't oversell their VPSs you are living in a fantasy land.

[sschueller]

Linode is very clear, you get a certain pool amount and if you go over it is $0.10 for each GB over.

[ghshephard]

That is very reasonable. With DigitalOcean, All I could find was:

"Policy

Do you charge for bandwidth?

Yes. Plans start with 1TB per month and increase incrementally. Once the monthly transfer limit has been exceeded, the cost of bandwidth is $0.02 per GB over the limit."

I'm sure they have restrictions somewhere on "pooling droplets" in getting around the $0.02/per GB limit (which is already very reasonable - I wonder how they feel about customers that make a lot of use of that $0.02/GB? Amazon, even when you get to the 5 PB/month tier, still charges $.06/GB in the Singapore Region)

[adhipg]

Amazon has Billing Alerts that you can use to know if you are using any resources in an unexpected fashion: http://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2012/05/10/announc...