3 - Ping! Zine Web Tech Magazine

Overselling
Offers by web hosting companies of quantitative features that begin with exciting adjectives like "unlimited" beg the simple
question: how can a company offer unlimited space, bandwidth and (insert your favorite feature here)? Let's explore this
question by taking a look at some of the features of a typical high-end web hosting server, as shown in Table 1 (Softlayer , n.d.):
C
Item
Server
Public Bandwith
Hard Drives
Details
Quad Processor Quad Core Intel 7320 - 4x4MB cache
2000 GB Bandwidth
4 x 1.00TB SATA II
M
Y
CM
MY
CY
Looking at the selected server, we note that the bandwidth is limited to 2000GB per month, with 4 Terabytes of disk space
(some of which will be used by the platform), and four processors. This is a fairly expensive machine to rent or purchase,
and has more server capacity than many hosting companies currently use. Web hosting companies will often put 50-
1000+ websites on each shared server (Ratemyhost, n.d.) depending on the resource needs of their customers and the
specifications of their servers. Simple math shows that none of the customers can truly use much (let alone unlimited)
bandwidth or space, or the server will run out of resources. For example, if the Web Server has 500 customers on it, and
the average bandwidth usage is 5GB at any time, the server will go over its limit since the aggregate usage at this point is
2500GB. Limits can be expanded, of course, but this costs additional money, and when shared hosting accounts are selling
for less money per month than a premium cup of coffee, hosting providers may not be able to afford the additional expenses.
CMY
K
We could argue about whether Web Host A uses even more powerful servers than this, or Web Host B owns their own
datacenter, etc., but the point remains - there is a finite limit to the available space and bandwidth for any given server,
aggregated group of servers (e.g. grid ), or datacenter. It's pretty obvious, therefore, that many hosting companies are
selling resources that they don't actually have, i.e. they are overselling.
The Core Dilemma
Given the vast amount of overselling in the hosting industry, the question arises as to whether the practice is ethical. Before
making a snap judgment, however, one should consider other analogous industries. For example, electrical utility companies
typically oversell their product of electricity. They will typically determine potential peak use, in combination with growth rates
and other factors, decide how much risk of running out of capacity they (or the regulating agencies) are willing to accept,
and implement the infrastructure necessary to support the chosen capacity. The risk of this approach is that customers will,
at times (e.g. during exceptionally hot weather), use enough electricity to cause brownouts or even blackouts. To prevent
these outages completely would require sufficient infrastructure to support a worst-case scenario - all customers using their
maximum amount at the same time. The cost of this infrastructure would greatly increase the fees that consumers pay for
service. So the trade-off is clear: choose the lesser evil among "higher prices" and "overselling risks."
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