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Overselling Defined
| Posted by whtaddict, 05-15-2003, 05:54 PM |
| I've discovered that there are 2 meanings for "overselling".
1) The reseller is able to "use" more than his allocated amount of space/bandwidth, but will be charged overuse charges per MB/GB if he/she goes over his reseller plan limits.
2) The reseller is not able to "use" more than his allocated amount of space/bandwidth, but he is allowed to allocate a greater amount of resources among his client hosting accounts than he actually has. For example, say you have a 1GB webspace 10GB bandwidth reseller account that allows this option. You are allowed to create more than ten 100MB/webspace + 1GB/ bandwidth hosting accounts. You can create as many accounts as you want and allocate more resources than you have so long as the "actual" usage amount stays below your reseller account limits.
Usually, the cheap reseller account providers do not allow either of the 2 choices above. This means that with a 1GB webspace 10GB/bandwidth reseller account, you would only be able to create 10 client hosting accounts if each account is allocated 100MB webspace and 1GB bandwidth.
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| Posted by Melitaweb, 05-15-2003, 06:13 PM |
| Overselling at either level, in my opinion, is bad but if both host and customer oversell you could end up with the same bandwidth being sold many times over. Apart from the moral aspect of such (ie making someone pay for something you can't provide them with) you also have to consider that if everyone tries to use their oversold space/bandwidth at the same time it will all go horribly wrong. On WHT this is a highly controversial subject and I'm sure there'll be some interesting replies
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| Posted by Reddrake, 05-15-2003, 07:44 PM |
| Most users never use what they buy, its good to have extra. About 50% of most accounts bandwidth is usually taken.
Unless there a really popular website, which most really popular websites have there own systems, or are sponcered. Allowing resellers to sell more then they have is there issue. The host is not harmed by allowing them to go over. For 1, they won't go over the actual limit. Which in some ways is safe. You got to watch your self in the limits. Suggest only 10-20% over actual limit.
Thats just my opinion.
Thanks,
Reddrake
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| Posted by GridMaster, 05-15-2003, 08:56 PM |
| I agree Melitaweb... that things WOULD go very wrong in this scenario. It seems no different in concept, however, to why a health insurance company will charge the average cost of coverage to a premium rather than, say, the median cost. In other words, it's a gamble... a calculated (hopefully!) risk. Through experience, one can gauge the AVERAGE amount of resources, namely bandwidth and disk space, that a hostee uses. And so the hoster makes everyone pay accordingly.
I guess it can be quite an art as well as a science, though... because if you specialize in a particular type of customer (say low disk but high traffic, for example) then you can be more accurate in your estimates - and reduce the risk of the "worst case scenario". All part of the business plan, I guess. Assuming that one exists.
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| Posted by chicago, 05-15-2003, 09:48 PM |
| Not to beat a dead horse, but ... if an insurance company sold medical insurance policies with a $1,000,000 limit and wasn't allowed to oversell, wouldn't they have to charge each customer a premium of $1,000,000?
And if a state sold lottery tickets with a guaranteed minimum prize of $1,000,000 if you were to pick all 6 numbers correctly, wouldn't the tickets have to cost $1,000,000 each?
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| Posted by Andrew, 05-15-2003, 10:48 PM |
| Great, this will turn into another grandstanding episode where a bunch of hosts with 2 servers or less try and tell everyone how to run their business...
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| Posted by GridMaster, 05-15-2003, 10:57 PM |
| Does anyone know of a website/company/publication where these averages are given?
It would seem to be that sizing and allocating ones' resources based on some sort of benchmark or baseline has got to be better than simply wingin' it... n'est pas?
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