This is probably a reasonable assumption coming from the world of ISP "all-you-can-eat" packages where they're saying "unlimited" but in reality it's not, because unlimited starts affecting other customer so it's "unlimited (T&C's apply)"
This is a completely different scenario though:
* Transferring stuff to linode isn't generally an end in and of itself. There are far fewer use cases for it. At the end fo the day you probably need to get data back out of it.
* The vast majority of cloud hosting and hosting providers in general's bandwidth is outbound. People download from the web. These hosting companies provide a lot of the web's main infrastructure. You're probably looking at a ratio of 20:1 or 30:1 here.
* Linode doesn't pay for uploads and downloads with it's carriers / ISPs. It pays for circuits capable of synchronous upload and download speeds. Using the ratios above, if they, for example, have 300Mbps of traffic outbound, then they have a lot of spare inbound capacity.
* Abuse here is difficult. Downloading movies, music etc. are consumed at home. It's difficult to imagine so many usage scenarios where huge data volumes would be consumed so easily on a linode server without having to be downloaded again. Maybe someone can come up with some creative suggestions here though? :)
* Bandwidth allocation and contention is very different within a hosting providers access network than an ISPs access network. ISP last miles, local DSLAMs, AP's etc. are huge points of contention. Inside the data center, I imagine most hosting providers "last mile" are 100Mb or Gig/E here straight to the servers with gig or 10gig/e uplinks from access switches.
The basic crux really is though, they have shedloads of free inbound bandwidth and why not give it away for another USP.
Creative use of unlimited BW - downloading the internet for data-mining purposes. You can't store it (as Linode's disks are pricy), but who cares? You can just download it again if you need to re-do your calculations.
Totally agree with you on all your points - but "shedloads" is different from "unlimited."
All I'm really trying to do is catch the attention of the HN'er who read the article on "Unlimited Upload" to linode, came up with a great idea (for example) for a remote telemetry application that required little back end processing, would be installed on millions of systems, and would upload 100 mbit/second aggregate to the linode environment.
If I managed to get that person's attention, and cause them to consider the possibility that the "unlimited" wasn't really "Unlimited" - then I'll have accomplished what I set out to do.
This is a completely different scenario though:
* Transferring stuff to linode isn't generally an end in and of itself. There are far fewer use cases for it. At the end fo the day you probably need to get data back out of it.
* The vast majority of cloud hosting and hosting providers in general's bandwidth is outbound. People download from the web. These hosting companies provide a lot of the web's main infrastructure. You're probably looking at a ratio of 20:1 or 30:1 here.
* Linode doesn't pay for uploads and downloads with it's carriers / ISPs. It pays for circuits capable of synchronous upload and download speeds. Using the ratios above, if they, for example, have 300Mbps of traffic outbound, then they have a lot of spare inbound capacity.
* Abuse here is difficult. Downloading movies, music etc. are consumed at home. It's difficult to imagine so many usage scenarios where huge data volumes would be consumed so easily on a linode server without having to be downloaded again. Maybe someone can come up with some creative suggestions here though? :)
* Bandwidth allocation and contention is very different within a hosting providers access network than an ISPs access network. ISP last miles, local DSLAMs, AP's etc. are huge points of contention. Inside the data center, I imagine most hosting providers "last mile" are 100Mb or Gig/E here straight to the servers with gig or 10gig/e uplinks from access switches.
The basic crux really is though, they have shedloads of free inbound bandwidth and why not give it away for another USP.