MegaRouter's unmetered bandwidth plan takes the guesswork out of bandwidth commitments and pricing. You can now use all you want, when you want, and don't worry about incurring extra costs!

In the hosting world the word "unmetered" has its share of fans. When discussing the use of the word "unlimited" versus "unmetered", people have argued that it's just a matter of semantics. That it must be obvious to anyone that unlimited hosting can't be really taken at face value, so there's no harm done when hosts use it in relation with bandwidth or space. Unlimited, in this respect, is often considered "as much as an average website may need". The problem is, of course, there is no such thing as an average website. A small website can suddenly get into the spotlight and thereby be far from average.

Some people acknowledge the fact that unlimited is not an acceptable word to use when describing bandwidth, that it can be considered deceiving, but sustain that "unmetered" would be the right term for it.

 

The most obvious reason for using unmetered bandwidth is simple: you don't get to worry about being charged for going over the bandwidth allotment. It's a sort of guarantee that higher traffic won't translate into higher charges.

Usually, certain types of websites are typically not eligible for unmetered bandwidth:

• Those that offer file downloads (software, video, mp3s etc.)
• Those that host image galleries (they are notorious for both high bandwidth and high server resources usage)
• Those that contain popular forums
• Portals and other types of communities
• Adult websites

It's also relatively common to see a restraint like "90% of the files must be linked from HTML/PHP/ASP etc. type of pages." In other words, this means that the website must be content driven. Some hosts are more restrictive than others and some are less restrictive, meaning some go to greater lengths to protect themselves while others are willing to take more chances.

Most of these restrictions are also used by the hosts offering unlimited bandwidth, which is not that strange if we remember that unmetered bandwidth in shared hosting is almost directly derived from the concept of unlimited bandwidth.

Now, if we examine those restrictions, it's very hard to imagine a website that can use huge amounts of bandwidth (to actually take advantage of the unmetered bandwidth offer) and not fall in one of the categories above. But should it happen for a website to get through that maze of rules and end up being eligible for unmetered bandwidth, the host will still stop it from taking what would constitute the true advantage of the offer.

That's because there is usually a clause that gives the hosting company all the power. That is the "server resources abuse" clause: "If your website uses so much CPU power and memory that it affects the performance of other websites on the server, the host will suspend it. "

We can help you and your host to prevent such an event from happening.

 

We hope you have an understanding of what unmetered means and how most hosting companies offer it. Once you really consume a lot of traffic, your site is kindly asked to leave, mostly "due to intensive use of server resources". By taking advantage of MegaRouter services, you can prevent either inconvenience for you and your hosting provider: high bandwidth usage and intensive use of server resources.

First, bandwidth consuming resources will mostly be downloaded from MegaRouter's network. Indeed, mostly, because every once in a while the MegaRouter network will contact the source, i.e. your website, to refresh its own copy. You have total control over how many times this will happen.

Second, because the MegaRouter solution is able to cache dynamic resources (i.e. content from a database) the burden on the server that is hosting your website will be a lot lower, thus keeping your hosting provider and website visitors happy.

 

You realize by now that unlimited or even unmetered doesn't mean 'bandwidth ad infinitum'. You can only push so many bytes through a network cable. That said, we offer bandwidth at 20, 50 and 100 megabits per seconds. A 20 Mbit/sec connection means that in one month you should be able to push about 6.5 terabyte through the network. In theory, that is, because a website commonly does not have a sustained throughput of 20Mbit/sec. The number of active visitors usually change during the day. Also, our servers are connected via private (non-shared) 100Mbit port to a 9Gbit backbone which is shared by all servers that have subscribed to unmetered service plan. The bandwidth is NOT dedicated. Dedicated bandwidth is available upon request.

We manage the performance of our servers to ensure that usage of server resources is within accebtable limits. Through live statistics, you will be able to monitor the performance of the server yourself. If at any time the capacity of a server is reached, we will enable an additional server to balance the load.

 

If you need more information, or if you would like to see a demonstration, please contact us at sales@megarouter.com.