On Thu, Nov 17, 2016 at 09:57:01PM +0000, Mick wrote:
Now Tor operators tend to be a suspicious, sometimes paranoid, bunch, but given that DO now has a substantial proportion of the Tor network on its ASs that suspicion may, just may, be justified. I still use DO because I get huge bandwidth for bugger all money (15 dollars a month, compared to the 12 quid I (happily) pay Bytemark for my mail/webserver). But I would not, and do not, use DO for anything I care about in personal terms (such as mail, or XMPP messaging).
I've got a single VM with DO that handles my parents' email (so running exim/dovecot/roundcube and little else). Not had any issues with them (and in terms of the traffic stuff you mentioned and I snipped I suspect that people like me hardly using their allowance are averaging out with people like you using a lot. Bandwidth in well connected datacentres has got scarily cheap). Like you my personal stuff (such as the machine which hosts this list) is with Bytemark.
Most importantly from my (admittedly somewhat paranoid viewpoint) the VM allows me to choose my own kernel to go with the OS of my choice. DO don't do that. You get to "choose" one of their kernels underneath your installed OS.
This has changed; when I started I was limited to the DO provided kernels, but my Debian VM with them is now using Debian provided kernels I installed - they've got a "grub" option in the web interface now which then boots a kernel from the VM image.
J.
On Fri, 18 Nov 2016 09:45:21 +0000 Jonathan McDowell noodles@earth.li allegedly wrote:
On Thu, Nov 17, 2016 at 09:57:01PM +0000, Mick wrote:
Now Tor operators tend to be a suspicious, sometimes paranoid, bunch, but given that DO now has a substantial proportion of the Tor network on its ASs that suspicion may, just may, be justified. I still use DO because I get huge bandwidth for bugger all money (15 dollars a month, compared to the 12 quid I (happily) pay Bytemark for my mail/webserver). But I would not, and do not, use DO for anything I care about in personal terms (such as mail, or XMPP messaging).
I've got a single VM with DO that handles my parents' email (so running exim/dovecot/roundcube and little else). Not had any issues with them (and in terms of the traffic stuff you mentioned and I snipped I suspect that people like me hardly using their allowance are averaging out with people like you using a lot. Bandwidth in well connected datacentres has got scarily cheap). Like you my personal stuff (such as the machine which hosts this list) is with Bytemark.
I don't think that would work. Consider, I alone am using the total network allowance of about 10 other $5.00 VM users. And there are a lot of users like me who have signed up to DO simply because of the high bandwidth available. And if bandwidth is /really/ that cheap a commodity, why don't other VM providers offer it? Bytemark for example give me 1TB of transfer on my VM. They would charge me £20 for each additional 1TB of transfer. That means that the service I get at DO for $15 (about the same as the 12 quid I pay bytemark) would cost me £192 pcm (9 * £20 plus the original £12) with bytemark. Other VM suppliers are the same. I have used a lot of different suppliers over the past 8-10 years and all have used a model of charging for additional bandwidth over and above the base level. Sure, the base allowance has crept up over the years, but no-one other than DO has this weird model where they don't seem to care if you chew up a lot of bandwidth.
I would /love/ to use bytemark for all my VMs. I can't afford that.
Most importantly from my (admittedly somewhat paranoid viewpoint) the VM allows me to choose my own kernel to go with the OS of my choice. DO don't do that. You get to "choose" one of their kernels underneath your installed OS.
This has changed; when I started I was limited to the DO provided kernels, but my Debian VM with them is now using Debian provided kernels I installed - they've got a "grub" option in the web interface now which then boots a kernel from the VM image.
Ah. I hadn't spotted that option (right down at the bottom of the kernel list). Thanks. I'll give it a try.
Mick
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On Sat, Nov 19, 2016 at 06:31:54PM +0000, mick wrote:
On Fri, 18 Nov 2016 09:45:21 +0000 Jonathan McDowell noodles@earth.li allegedly wrote:
I've got a single VM with DO that handles my parents' email (so running exim/dovecot/roundcube and little else). Not had any issues with them (and in terms of the traffic stuff you mentioned and I snipped I suspect that people like me hardly using their allowance are averaging out with people like you using a lot. Bandwidth in well connected datacentres has got scarily cheap). Like you my personal stuff (such as the machine which hosts this list) is with Bytemark.
I don't think that would work. Consider, I alone am using the total network allowance of about 10 other $5.00 VM users. And there are a lot of users like me who have signed up to DO simply because of the high bandwidth available. And if bandwidth is /really/ that cheap a commodity, why don't other VM providers offer it? Bytemark for example give me 1TB of transfer on my VM. They would charge me £20 for each additional 1TB of transfer. That means that the service I get at DO for $15 (about the same as the 12 quid I pay bytemark) would cost me £192 pcm (9 * £20 plus the original £12) with bytemark. Other VM suppliers are the same. I have used a lot of different suppliers over the past 8-10 years and all have used a model of charging for additional bandwidth over and above the base level. Sure, the base allowance has crept up over the years, but no-one other than DO has this weird model where they don't seem to care if you chew up a lot of bandwidth.
A $5 DO VM comes with 1TB/month of traffic allowance. That's about 3.2Mb/s assuming continuous usage, which is about £1.60 at current global transit rates. I note they're also at LINX and various other peering points so there's a good chance their actual cost is lower than this. Yes, your particular usage will potentially end up costing more than you pay but I'm assuming DO have calculated that there are few enough people who have been grandfathered in that it's worth doing (and I'm sure if it was causing them a problem they would terminate your contract).
DO are concentrating on VMs AFAICT, whereas Bytemark are a much more full featured ISP and as such have found it worthwhile to build their own data centre in York and arrange for transit to there. I've also found the quality of their support and offering to be superior to DO for the things I use them for (for example, DO do not appear to offer phone support by default). Additionally I suspect DO are a much bigger organisation, which will give them potential advantages when negotiating things like transit pricing and peering arrangements.
J.
On Sun, 20 Nov 2016 16:54:20 +0000 Jonathan McDowell noodles@earth.li allegedly wrote:
(Please don't cc me on mails to the list; I am subscribed.)
"reply-all" - My bad. Apologies.
A $5 DO VM comes with 1TB/month of traffic allowance. That's about 3.2Mb/s assuming continuous usage, which is about £1.60 at current global transit rates. I note they're also at LINX and various other peering points so there's a good chance their actual cost is lower than this.
My Tor node averages 25Mb/s. My tails mirror averages 11Mb/s (my whonix mirror used to do about 8 or 9). Even at your £0.50 per Mb/s estimate I'm getting a bargain.
(BTW. Where did you get those transit rate costs? Everything I can find suggests transit costs are subject to NDAs so there seem to be lots of "finger in the air" estimates and not a lot of trustworthy hard facts. Most commentators also note that transit costs vary hugely by geographic location. US costs are the lowest, Australia's the highest.)
Yes, your particular usage will potentially end up costing more than you pay but I'm assuming DO have calculated that there are few enough people who have been grandfathered in that it's worth doing (and I'm sure if it was causing them a problem they would terminate your contract).
I noted earlier that currently it is not just the grandfathered accounts which have uncapped bandwidth, but /all/ accounts. That may change of course, and you are probably right to assume that DO will kick me off if they find me completely uneconomic in future.
--------------------------------------------------------------------- Mick Morgan gpg fingerprint: FC23 3338 F664 5E66 876B 72C0 0A1F E60B 5BAD D312 http://baldric.net
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Jonathan McDowell -
mick