Podcast: Quad Core
Faster, Hotter, Scalier
Jill
David
Jason
Joyent Weblog
BingoDisk: Two New Plans (10 and 15 GB Versions), and Unlimited Bandwidth
BingoDisk now comes in two new petite plans. BingoDisk Nano: 10GB for $19/year. BingoDisk Mini: 15GB for $29/year.
We have removed any bandwidth restrictions on all BingoDisk plans. Yep, download and upload all you want, there’s no limit. [Note: but please don’t abuse us, evil Internet, or we will break up with you.]
BingoDisk is great for any sort of static file serving (examples: podcasts, videocasts, static html files, or just a big file repository on the network). It is based on Sun Fire X4500 servers/storage, so the price is right, and the reliability rock solid. And the protocol isn’t proprietary. It’s just HTTP (WebDAV). So your operating systems and applications can take advantage of BingoDisk storage easily without recourse to proprietary clients.
Commenting is closed for this article.
Do all Accelerator, Shared hosting and BingoDisk customers reside on the same single Sun Fire X4500?
Also, how does someone upgrade the OS/software on an X4500 without taking it down?
— Greg 639 days ago #@Greg: huh? No. And. Huh?
— David Young 639 days ago #Are there any plans to make ZFS snapshotting available to users, either for Bingo or Strongspace?
I don’t need masses of storage, but all my ‘off-site rsync’ solutions are one bad rsync away from catastrophe.
— Dick Davies 639 days ago #That’s great. I just signed up for Nano one. Just what i needed. Got error at the end, but I guess it will be sorted out. Thanks!
and Greg: 2x huh?
— velimir 639 days ago #Unlimited, eh? You guys have been talking down overselling and “unlimited” bandwidth for years.
Is this just a marketing move, or is something unique about the Bingo! product that unlimited is genuine and sustainable?
— Mike 639 days ago #@Mike: well, as I said, we will turn off the abusers. And we’re not (yet) turning on unlimited bandwidth for every product.
— David Young 639 days ago #What counts as abuse? Unlimited means unlimited to me…
— PhilipJ 639 days ago #I find it ironic that BingoDisk and StrongSpace are both down right now.
https://help.textdrive.com/index.php?pg=forums.posts&id=438&pc=1
— Frank 639 days ago #David, wow. Pretty amazing offer!
— Raymond Brigleb 639 days ago #Yea unlimited but abusable seems absurd to me. Either set limits or don’t.
— asdf 639 days ago #Yeah… I don’t think you guys should market unlimited bandwidth. ISPs such as Comcast are getting a huge amount of flame for doing the same.
(not that I care personally)
— Joe Van Dyk 639 days ago #huh, what is the problem with the words ‘unlimited’ and ‘abusers’... I am pretty aware at which points and how I could abuse Bingo so I am goint to keep it way bellow that… also I am sure I would get a friendly warning if the glass is full.
Flame me as much as you want, but I find most problems with ie. shared servers (Joyent, but also others related) is that users are not aware of the limits and have little knowledge of what they are doing… they pay 1$ and think the whole world is theirs… the same with Bingo (and web in general).
sorry for the rant
— velimir 639 days ago #@velimir: Meaning that we all have the right to burst to 95%, but don’t expect to be allowed to do that 24×7. We all have to be good neighbors. Think of it as an all you can eat buffet, sure you can try to eat 25 pounds of lobster; but management has the right to ask you to leave. (note I’m a happy Joyent/TxD customer not an employee)
— Linda Derezinski 639 days ago #@Linda: that’s right. We recognize that some months you’re going to need to eat 25 lbs of lobster. Fine. But every month? So, what’s abuse? 4TB every month? 8TB? Honestly, I don’t know the answer. We’re going to watch and see. Think of this along the lines of the American Express® “no spending limit”. Though…I certainly reached the limit in college ;) Most people won’t be able to hit the upper limits, even if they tried.
— David Young 639 days ago #Honestly, you’re just setting up the situation for upset customers. Set limits, then no one can complain when they go over it. You guys, or at least the textdrive people, criticized this overselling bs for months and set smart soft limits. Do the same.
— asdf 639 days ago #Yeah, seriously, what does unlimited (but not really) say? You need to set expectations by setting some sort of limit and you can always set a billing rate for anything over the limit as you do at textdrive (though hopefully not at the same ridiculous rates). There’s plenty of room for experimentation, you could even offer just a flat rate per GB based on what you expect it to cost you. But gimmicks like this only attract uninformed customers who fall for stuff like this or people who will try to push you to your unstated limit. Worse, it repels people like me who decide it’s not worth dealing with the uncertainty, and presumably indecisive people who would make an announcement like this.
— Ajay 638 days ago #Some people just have to whine about everything.
The plan clearly means “We wont harass you if you go over the ‘limit’, unless you take the piss.”
— Ryan 638 days ago #@Linda: if you re-read what i wrote or if English was my first language you would see I meant exactly the same as you did…
I am a good neighbour, so are you I guess… but how many others?
.Velimir
— velimir 638 days ago #@Ajay: sorry. Not true. Informed customers want flexibility. Abusers want to abuse. We won’t support the abusers. We will support the informed customers. The policy is unlimited. 99.99% of users will be more than happy with that. Then there is the guy that wants to serve up Sponge Bob episodes…
— David Young 638 days ago #Alright, since you seem to have already made the decision and now just rationalizing it with meaningless statements like “Informed customers want flexibility. Abusers want to abuse”, let me point out the huge upstorm over comcast doing the exact same thing:
http://www.digg.com/tech_news/Comcast_Unlimited_Service_not_so_Unlimited
In addition, here’s textdrive’s own Jason saying unlimited bandwidth is B.S.:
http://forum.textdrive.com/viewtopic.php?pid=7667#p7667
— asdf 638 days ago #Someone serving up illegal content is breaking all kinds of other rules too, the least interesting of which might be bandwidth usage.
— PhilipJ 638 days ago #@asdf: Jason and I both believed that unlimited was BS. We’ve changed our position. I’m willing to use another word rather than “unlimited” I just don’t know what that would be. Example: there is no speed limit on the freeways in the state of Montana. However, you are not supposed to drive at an unsafe speed. Another example (which I’ve already used): American Express offers “no preset spending limit”. But there is a limit if they believe you can’t pay. Maybe that’s what we should say: no preset bandwidth limit. But I’m not sure that really helps.
— David Young 638 days ago #I’m sad, no TextPanel and the demise of shared hosting :(
http://forum.textdrive.com/viewtopic.php?id=14413
— Greg 638 days ago #So lets say you serve up podcasts and say you use 30Tb a month. Is this abuse?
— Jacques Marneweck 638 days ago #@Greg: no demise for shared hosting. Instead, the coming rise of Connector hosting.
— David Young 638 days ago #@Jacques: probably. If you’re doing it every month.
— David Young 638 days ago #@David
>> “no demise for shared hosting. Instead, the coming rise of Connector hosting.”
Connector hosting is great and I’m really excited, but I would also like to become a TextDrive customer and be able to install WordPress or development my own web framework and host it there.
It seems like TextDrive is changing directions from being a web hosting company to becoming a (web) application services company.
Not that I’m complaining, it just would be nice to have an option to host web content at TextDrive in the future without purchasing an expensive Accelerator.
— Greg 638 days ago #@Greg: you will have that option. Shared hosting isn’t going away.
— David Young 638 days ago #We call unlimited speed limits “Open speed limits”...
Open Bandwidth Limits can maybe be an alternative name.
“Our bandwidth limits are open, you wont be charged, and you will be warned before any action is taken, if you are considered to be abusing the system.”
I of course think this is all implied to any reasonable person. But some people evidently aren’t reasonable.
— Ryan 637 days ago #@David: that was my “worst thumbsuck ever”. A few years ago while running a “virtual idols” competition I did about 50 Gigs of downloads of mp3 files (back in the early 2000’s). At R 0.42c a meg it was no laughing matter.
I know choosing a random worst worst worst worst worst case scenario can be silly in certain cases. Hopefully I will never be that popular when I start my podcast.
— Jacques Marneweck 637 days ago #Here’s a suggestion:
To all of you whining about unlimited bandwidth, don’t purchase the service. You’re almost assuredly the abusers anyways, and you’ll just play the victim when you are removed after transferring 20TB+ for consecutive months even after being warned.
Save us all the drama ;)
— tim 637 days ago #I think the word Joyent want to use is unmetered rather than unlimited, after all they expect personal usage or a small users group, an upload speed not exceeding 1Mbps from an ADSL link. Even with shared downloads they shouldn’t expect it to be used like Amazon S3, MySpace of flickr
— fchurch 630 days ago #Hey guys, you may want to update your textdrive.com frontpage :)
It still says that you get 10GB of bandwidth on the 100GB plan…
Aaron
— Aaron Berland 622 days ago #