Overselling

DragonEye · 05-03-2005, 04:51 AM

hey there,

I was wondering if you guys oversell bandwith, and how much overselling you would advise.

DragonEye

Jonathan VanSchaack · 05-03-2005, 09:21 PM

marginal

no more then 70% of the available bandwidth your server can push

DragonEye · 05-04-2005, 02:59 AM

wow,

that much? I was thinking something like 20%

well thanks for the information

DragonEye

Jonathan VanSchaack · 05-04-2005, 03:47 PM

bandwidth is a hard thing to put down, my servers can push 300 mbit/s with the 3 nics but wheather or not they can handle that many hits, ect.. is the key

when I say 70% Thats the max, No matter if every customer uses all there available bandwidth and output my servers will never push more then 70% of there abilities. of course its probably like 4 out of 7 websites use a fraction of there available resources

in the world of the cheap host, overselling happens more and more.
to stay competitive and in business with the prices these days, you pretty much have to, or establish yourself enough that people dont mind to pay the prices it costs to actually stay in business.

and for resellers, its easier for them to oversell because they can always grow easier. Add to there reseller account, get multiple accounts, ect.

etech-peter · 11-18-2005, 03:38 AM

Overselling can be proper if you do it carefully based on your experience, make it meaningful with some statistical data. You will find a lot of customers who will not come close to using all their alloted webspace and bandwidth. As long as they remain uneducated about the industry they leave themselves open to be taken advantage of. Overselling may also result in poor performance and ultimately a bad experience for the customer.

John Scott · 11-18-2005, 09:11 AM

For most people, "overselling" of bandwidth doesn't refer to selling more bandwidth than your pipes can handle. It refers to selling more bandwidth than the package pays for.

If you sell a hosting package that includes 1,000 GB of transfer for just $7.95 a month, that's overselling, because if they actually used 1,000 GB of transfer it would cost a lot more than $7.95.

But the fact is, most people never use anywhere near that, and web hosts know it so they advertise rediculously high b/w transfer limits.

**South** · 11-20-2005, 11:52 AM

I try not to run anyone over about 60%. If you run them too tight and they buy some ads somewhere and get a traffic spike you've got the "bandwidth exceeded" page and a annoyed client.

Sabeur · 12-05-2005, 12:53 PM

But it wont look good most people will give bad comments about people "overselling". People dout The host will stay alive if they offer 1,000GB BW to each clients. I would never go above 120 ish

webhostinguk · 04-04-2006, 01:49 AM

Yep, overselling is not good. Overselling cant help in developing companies image. Customers may think about companies stability.

eukhost · 04-05-2006, 03:45 AM

My opinion is that overselling is OK if it's being done carefully.Experience shows that many customers not even use 25MB space yet they want lot of space and bandwidth.

John Scott · 04-05-2006, 07:58 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by eukhost

My opinion is that overselling is OK if it's being done carefully.

Yup. Overselling is a fact of life and many, many web hosts do it without problems.

Antonio · 04-05-2006, 05:44 PM

As most customers will not use over all over the bandwidth

Konrad · 04-06-2006, 03:17 PM

If you don't oversell too much, you shouldn't have problems.

Ashish · 04-07-2006, 12:51 AM

yea well you cant really do too much about this.. even if you dont want to oversell, you sort of have to.. a lot of customers want 'More' bandwidth, it sort of acts as a security blanket for them....
the host knows that they are never gonna use up that much bandwidth, so there is no harm in doing a bit of overselling if you monitor your servers and so on....

**ToddW** · 04-10-2006, 11:14 PM

I don't think there is a set % of "Safe" overselling, you need to keep a close eye on your server and decide when is a good time to stop adding new accounts.

krakrazor · 04-13-2006, 01:14 PM

Anyone have epxrience with Aplus.net?

Ashish · 04-17-2006, 08:41 PM

no not really, but i did seem them as featured hosts on a lot of well known sites like cnet etc. maybe they paid to get that status. dont really know..
search around on google for reviews about them...

Hostingpuppy · 04-29-2007, 08:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by John Scott

If you sell a hosting package that includes 1,000 GB of transfer for just $7.95 a month, that's overselling, because if they actually used 1,000 GB of transfer it would cost a lot more than $7.95.

I disagree with that statement. Selling transfer for $7.95 per TB might be a bad business decision, but it doesn't necessarily reflect overselling.

I don't believe a server is oversold until that exact moment when a customer attempts to use the resources that they have purchased and cannot because they are not available. Until that time, no overselling has occurred.

For instance, if I commission a server with a 500GB drive, but have a 1TB NAS standing by in the corner, I can then sell 1500GB of disk space long before I actually have to plug the NAS in (or at a stretch, long before I even have to own the NAS or have it ready). When my clients approach the 500GB of the server, I can plug the NAS in before any of them need it and all is good.

That's a crappy analogy for all sorts of reasons, I know, but you get my drift. Overselling only occurs when a client cannot access the resources they have purchased. It is therefore not possible to speculate when a particular server will become oversold from the outside. Only the company itself knows how many resources have been committed on that server and how many resources are in use at any given moment. The price point alone of any resource is not a valid indicator of overselling.

Having said that I, too, am surprised at the 70% number being bandied about. We're not angels, but I wouldn't dare go that high.

John Scott · 04-29-2007, 08:54 PM

Quote:

I disagree with that statement. Selling transfer for $7.95 per TB might be a bad business decision, but it doesn't necessarily reflect overselling.

You totally miss any of my posts in this thread?

Overselling is selling what you cannot afford to back up.

But that doesn't mean overselling is bad. I oversell. I've oversold for years, without a problem. The simple fact is that I could oversell bandwidth by xxx GB and it would be fine, because people simply don't have the traffic to push out the bandwidth. And I could oversell storage space too, because people don't use it.

Admitting that it is overselling isn't the same as saying that it is wrong. It's just being honest.

Hostingpuppy · 04-29-2007, 08:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by John Scott

Overselling is selling what you cannot afford to back up.

OK, but you still can't state that selling 1 TB of bandwidth for $7.95 is overselling. I might be selling Toyota trucks for $1 million dollars apiece and throwing in 1TB of bandwidth for $7.95 just because. That's totally affordable for me. My point is that you don't know what someone can or cannot back up without inside knowledge. You can speculate and bring experience into the mix and make a judgment call, but you can't *know*.

Just because it costs more than $7.95 for a TB of bandwidth doesn't mean someone is overselling if they choose to ditch it at that price. It's a non-sequitur.