Projected Traffic Overage charges

[Shawn]

Dear Customer:

Our records indicate that your account is projected to exceed the traffic
allowance for the plan you are on with Hostway. Please see below for
information on this traffic overage. For more details, you can monitor
your traffic usage on a daily basis in SiteControl at
https://sitecontrol.hostway.com


Customer ID.................: shawn@neo-geo.com
Domain Name.................: neo-geo.com
Period Covering.............: 2000-10-1 to 2000-10-7

Plan Type...................: Platinum Plan
Allowed Traffic.............: 8000 MB
Projected Monthly Traffic...: 10922 MB

Projected Traffic Overage charges.....: $146

*Current rate for traffic overage: $5/100 MB

[Shawn]

I’m faced with potential charges > $150 in addition to my $30 per month hosting fee. The increased traffic to neo-geo.com has maxed out my available bandwidth with hostway. I’m already using the Platinum plan, and the next higher service plan is $100 per month (Platinum Plus plan), which will allow an additional 4 GB of bandwidth. However, this is starting to be quite expensive, and if the traffic increases another 20% from 10GB per month then I will exceed the $100 plan. I want to keep this site up and running 24-7 for everyone. Any recommendations, donations, or opinions? Dion, what hosting service are you using that supports your million hits per day?

[Shawn]

Available Hostway service plans for your reference: comparison chart (http://www.hostway.com/webhosting/comparisonchart.htm)

[Dreamh2o]

Shawn lets talk on ICQ, I can help you with this BIG time.

[DIY]

Well I guess we can all send you $1 or you can put up banners. But dont take away the forum, its great!

[lump505]

No banners!!!

That would kill the site.

[Master Terry Bogard]

Banner is not bad. Also, how about this? Those who donate some cash can go into somekind of lotto for something small, like a poster or some other prizes. Any thoughts?

[lump505]

How about a Neo Geo game instead?

[DIY]

a neo game wouldnt be bad but everyone would have to donate more then $1

[Master Terry Bogard]

But of course. I can pay by paypal.

[DIY]

Heres the problem though, alot of people on this forum arent reg's, they post 1 thing and then leave. I got no problem with that but they won't want to send money...

[Gambit]

Banners would probably be the most logical solution but please don't get the punching monkey one. I hate that damn monkey http://www.neo-geo.com/ubb/smile.gif

[Robi15]

I would not matter banners at all. Advertising from like gamemagz or shops- they would be perfect. Maybe Neo-Geo.com starts to earn some money! http://www.neo-geo.com/ubb/smile.gif

But the forum is a must. I would be very sad if Shawn has to put this down.

[Gambit]

We would have no where to go if it weren't for Shawn http://www.neo-geo.com/ubb/frown.gif

[SmokeYa]

Mabey you can join the GameSpy network of hosted webpages. Mabey they will let you form "Planet Neogeo".

The servers are very fast and they are free. They will also allow cgi access.

[Robi15]

So, Shawn, what direction are we looking at?
What's the plan?

[Dreamh2o]

Iv suggested, that he try my provider, who gives unlimited usage. Iv been using them for 3 years, and they are FAST. I hope Shawn goes with them, I think he will be very pleased.

[Gambit]

Hey Shawn I think you should delete members if they haven't posted with in at least 2 months.

[Shawn]

Thanks for the suggestions. I was joking about the donations part though. Concerning banners, I would prefer to leave them off. It’s annoying to visit sites with banners, so I would rather pay not to have banners than be paid to host them. The bandwidth limit should not be exceeded until around the end of the month, so I have a couple of weeks to make a decision. No worry, this site won’t be shutting down. Server performance and uptime are my main concerns. Finally, cost of running the site is an issue as well.

[Shawn]

Originally posted by Gambit:
Hey Shawn I think you should delete members if they haven't posted with in at least 2 months.

There are not any two month old members yet, much less a member who hasn’t posted for 2 months. The forums opened August 12th. So we have to wait a few more days before there will be a forum member who is 2 months old.

[JMKurtz]

Most of your bandwidth issues are most likely a result of all the images, etc that you have on your site. Maybe you could find a secondary storage for your images and adjust your image tags to pull from one of those free hosting sites?

Jeff

[SmokeYa]

Mabey if Gambit didn't post so much, then you wouldn't go over the traffic limit http://www.neo-geo.com/ubb/smile.gif


Hehe, sorry Gambit, I couldn't resist http://www.neo-geo.com/ubb/wink.gif

[Gambit]

haha thats funny http://www.neo-geo.com/ubb/smile.gif
I don't think I'm the cause though

[Dreamh2o]

yeah, atleast not you alone anyway

[Gambit]

Hell yeah Dream, we are a team http://www.neo-geo.com/ubb/smile.gif

[JRock917]

I would have suggested some kind of annuam membership dues, but since donations are out of the question, I guess that doesnt fly. Well, suppose I can suggest buying neo items from this site to help boost profits or cut down overhead; speaking from personal experience, I dont think anyone will be dissapointed with what they get.

[JRock917]

annual, not annuam, excuse me.

[Shawn]

Dear Customer:

Our records indicate that your account is projected to exceed the traffic
allowance for the plan you are on with Hostway. Please see below for
information on this traffic overage. For more details, you can monitor
your traffic usage on a daily basis in SiteControl at
https://sitecontrol.hostway.com


Customer ID.................: shawn@neo-geo.com
Domain Name.................: neo-geo.com
Period Covering.............: 2000-10-1 to 2000-10-14

Plan Type...................: Platinum Plan
Allowed Traffic.............: 8000 MB
Projected Monthly Traffic...: 15294 MB

Projected Traffic Overage charges.....: $364

*Current rate for traffic overage: $5/100 MB

[Shawn]

People are downloading 500 to 600 MB per day from neo-geo.com now. No way can I stay with Hostway any longer. No room for growth, and the overage charge is tremendous. I will keep everyone informed of the changes. I will do my best to prevent any downtime and provide fast download speed.

[Robi15]

Jeeesus, This place is realy getting BIG.

Robi15

[JRock917]

MAN, now they want more than double what they were originally asking! Yeah Robi, youre right, this place got really big really fast. Hell, its about the site I have ever seen, especially for one so dedicated to the neo geo.

[Shawn]

The search for a better hosting service is over. I have decided to go with www.webhosting.com (http://www.webhosting.com)

For $40 per month we will experience fast downloads, 99.9% uptime, and unlimited hits and data transfer.

[Gambit]

This is great news, I'm glad you don't have to shut the site down now. Thanks for keeping the REAL Neo Geo fans alive. Thanks Shawn

[Robi15]

http://smilecwm.tripod.com/monsieurboo/e.gif

Good. I can't understand how this "Hostway's" service cost's so much?
I mean 300 US in a month compared to 40 US...

[Shawn]

Back to the traffic problem again! I was on the phone with webhosting.com, in the process of transferring my site, when I mentioned that the whole reason I was leaving hostway was because of the darn bandwidth problem. I told them I needed at least 20GB per month and that I was happy to find a service that provides unlimited bandwidth. Then he said the limit was 10GB per month! I argued that webhosting.com advertises unlimited bandwidth, and then he explained that most clients don’t go over 10GB, so they just say unlimited.

Talk about false advertising. Then I asked if this was an industry problem, where services offer unlimited bandwidth when they actually have a limit set. He replied saying that I need to go with dedicated hosting, because virtual hosting is shared with other hosted sites on the same servers. So how much is dedicating hosting? It starts at $400 per month…

Until I find a service that offers 20GB of bandwidth per month or more, I’m just going to stay with hostway and pay out the ass. I upgraded to the Platinum Plus plan, which provides 500MB of storage and 12GB of bandwidth. The fee is $100 per month, but I anticipate paying hundreds. They will charge me $20 for each GB downloaded over the 12GB limit. Not only that, they will shut down the site once I break 20GB before the month is up. I may eventually go with dedicated hosting.

[VinylBoy]

I'm using FlySaturn for my web hosting. I currently have only 500MB of web page storage, however, my traffic is unlimited. I'm not sure just how much actual content is on Neo-Geo.com, however, if it's not 500MB then FlySaturn may be for you. If you did have over 500MB, it's probably due to posts on the forum so just archive a lot of the old topics and keep them as the "holy scriptures of Neo Geo" in one of those online storage sites.

They can have you up and going within a couple of hours... you can check out theri web page at http://www.flysaturn.com.

Hope this information is helpful to you in any fashion. http://www.neo-geo.com/ubb/smile.gif

"There is no judgement once you enter these doors. No judgement, no right from wrong... just the higher state of your consciousness." - Deep Dish: Renaissance Ibiza

[This message has been edited by VinylBoy (edited October 20, 2000).]

[VinylBoy]

DAMN!
I just checked out FlySaturn's web page... THEY CHANGED THEIR POLICY! Now, they only offer 10GB traffic! http://www.neo-geo.com/ubb/frown.gif

I'm sorry about that, Shawn. http://www.neo-geo.com/ubb/frown.gif

[Shawn]

That’s what I’m talking about! It’s like an industry wide conspiracy. If the hosting service offers unlimited bandwidth, somewhere in the fine print the limit is really around 10 GB. Thanks for checking, I know you had the best intentions.

[Neo Bomber Man]

So, whatever became of this?

[Shawn]

I decided to stay with hostway for hosting service. I pay an average of $150+ per month for hosting. This past week, neo-geo.com experienced the greatest amount of downloads and traffic to date. The best plan with hostway provides 12 GB of bandwidth, which is what I use. I pay $20 extra for each GB over 12. As of today, we are at 9.5 GB with 17 days left. http://www.neo-geo.com/webstats/weekly/1.html

[BioMotor_Unitron]

Know anyone at a local University that is wired for broadband? That is what I am doing for my website set-up, Shawn. I have an extra motherboard, and now I have an excuse to buy a new processor and put my "old" 800 mhz into the host machine. RAM is dirt cheap right now, so I can get 512 for a pittance. Since the motherboard is a RAID array, I can do data-striping across four hard-drives (25% written/read for each drive simultaneously, so it is 1/4 access time).

Anyway, once I finish the new machine, I have a friend that lives on campus year-round in student apartments, and all campus is wired for T1. I am just going to stick the machine in their place and boom, unlimited bandwith, and no charge (depending on your friends, you may have to bribe them to let you put the host machine in their place, but it is not anywhere near as expensive as dedicated hosting).

-BioMotor_Unitron

[This message has been edited by BioMotor_Unitron (edited January 14, 2001).]