| Policy Number | Plan Code | Plan Name | Notes / Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| B001 | Plan FUM | Fully Unmetered | |
| B002 | Plan EUM | Effectively Unmetered | |
| B003 | Plan BC1 | Hard Bandwidth Cap | Disconnection/suspension when cap reached |
| B004 | Plan BC2 | Soft Bandwidth Cap | Rate limit until cap reset or increased / charge for overage) |
| B005 | Plan FAIR-A | Fair Use PLAN A (Strict Fair Usage) | Based on 95th percentile |
| B006 | Plan INTRA | Free intra-network / low cost peering traffic | Not an actual "bandwidth plan", but is an important traffic policy that often needs referred to |
| B007 | Plan FUM-SE | Sweden Fully Unmetered | Standard Fully Unmetered pricing for Swedish servers |
| B008 | Plan FUM-SE-CMT | Sweden Clearly Mixed Fully Unmetered | Discounted Fully Unmetered pricing for Swedish servers which have "Clearly Mixed Traffic" with 30%+ peering/internal traffic |
| Region | Country Code | Default Plan Code for Dedi's | Default Plan Code for VPS's | Notes / Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sweden | SE | 1gbps (FAIR-A) or 100mbps (EUM) | 100mbps (EUM) | No standard packages come with fully unmetered (FUM) by default, if you need FUM you must ask support before or after you've ordered a server |
| Germany | DE | 1gbps (FUM) | 1gbps / 100mbps (FUM) | All servers in DE/FI are fully unmetered unless you've added a 10gbps NIC and uplink |
| Finland | FI | 1gbps (FUM) | 1gbps / 100mbps (FUM) | All servers in DE/FI are fully unmetered unless you've added a 10gbps NIC and uplink |
| United States | US | 1gbps (BC2 or EUM) | 100mbps (BC2 or EUM) | We use several third-party providers for our US servers, so bandwidth policy can vary massively |
| Netherlands (2021) | NL | 1gbps (EUM) or 10gbps (EUM) | 1gbps (EUM) or 100mbps (FUM) | This only applies to servers in our NEW Netherlands datacenter which were ordered after July 31st 2021 |
| Netherlands (2020) | NL | N/A | 5gbps w/ 500GB/mo (BC1) | All VPS's in our third-party Choopa regions (NL orders prior to July/August 2021, CA, and JP) have a hard BW cap of 1TB/mo or less |
| Canada | CA | N/A | 5gbps w/ 500GB/mo (BC1) | All VPS's in our third-party Choopa regions (NL orders prior to July/August 2021, CA, and JP) have a hard BW cap of 1TB/mo or less |
| Japan | JP | N/A | 5gbps w/ 500GB/mo (BC1) | All VPS's in our third-party Choopa regions (NL orders prior to July/August 2021, CA, and JP) have a hard BW cap of 1TB/mo or less |
By default, unless you've been quoted for a different bandwidth policy and have accepted/paid for the upgrade, Swedish servers are split into two policies:
Servers in SE come with either "Effectively Unmetered" (100mbps VPS's), or Strict Fair Use (Dedi's and VPS's with >=200mbps networking).
However - fully unmetered is available if you're willing to pay for the upgrade. See Sweden Unmetered Pricing.
All servers in Germany and Finland are FULLY UNMETERED. Dedicated servers in Germany get 1gbps fully unmetered by default, while VPS's get 100mbps fully unmetered.
NOTE: It's possible to upgrade a DE/FI dedicated server to 10gbps, but doing so will result in being changed to Metered Networking (20TB per month, with $2.00 / TB overage)
All NL/CA servers are currently only available with Metered Networking with a bandwidth cap that varies by package size.
Bandwidth overage will be charged at $0.02 / GB ($20.00 / TB).
All Japanese servers are currently only available with Metered Networking with a bandwidth cap that varies by package size.
Bandwidth overage will be charged at $0.10 / GB ($100.00 / TB).
Traffic between servers in the same Privex region (Privex SE <-> Privex SE // Privex NL <-> Privex NL // etc.) generally stays entirely within our network for the region, and thus it's ignored when inspecting the traffic usage of customers.
Traffic to/from our peers (see our looking glass) in Sweden is generally considered free, so long as either:
The terms "Fully Unmetered", "Truly Unmetered", and/or "100% Unmetered" refer to a fully unmetered bandwidth policy. A fully unmetered policy is a policy that gives you unlimited traffic at a certain speed, for example "100mbps fully unmetered" would mean you would have a 100 megabit per second internet connection, and you would be able to use it at any speed (including "maxing it out" at 100mbps) effectively 24/7 - every single day.
Fully Unmetered is standard at Privex's Germany (DE) and Finland (FI) regions for both Dedicated and Virtual servers, while for all other Privex regions you should assume "Unmetered" means "Effectively Unmetered". If you aren't certain about which bandwidth policy that a server package comes with, or which policy one of your existing servers is under - please contact support to find out for sure
All of our Germany (DE) and Finland (FI) region packages are FULLY UNMETERED, while all other Privex regions have packages that default to either metered with a hard bandwidth cap, or a form of Fair Use. To understand the bandwidth policies used / available in each region, please see Bandwidth Policies By Region / Server Type.
If you plan to run things such as Tor nodes (whether exit or non-exit), seedboxes, or other activities that can result in 24/7 high network usage - we will require that you pay for a fully unmetered networking plan.
NOTE: For the standard 100mbps "unmetered' we provide with our Sweden VPS's - it's technically a very lax fair use, the policy for the "Effectively Unmetered" 100mbps is pretty much "Don't max out the 100mbps 24/7". This is effectively unmetered 100mbps, but with a ban on anything that consistently consumes high traffic 24/7 (Tor nodes, torrent seedboxes, etc.). See the "Effectively Unmetered" section to further understand our "effectively unmetered" bandwidth policy used for Sweden VPS's.
Our FULLY unmetered networking in Sweden is priced as such:
For example:
100 x 0.8 = $80/mo500 x 0.75 = $375/mo1,000 x 0.7 = $700/mo5,000 x 0.6 = $3,000/mo10,000 x 0.6 = $6,000/moIf on average, you're able to prove at least 30% of your traffic flows via our peers, or within our internal network, then we can offer you our "clearly mixed traffic" pricing for unmetered networking, which is discounted due to at least 30% of traffic flowing via free/low-cost links (peering / internal network):
Our Clearly Mixed Traffic - FULLY unmetered networking in Sweden is priced as such:
Much like cell phone (mobile phone) providers across the world, some of the network providers we use in some of our regions, such as the Netherlands, Canada, and Japan - measure bandwidth usage by the number of megabytes/gigabytes/terabytes that have been transferred (whether uploaded or downloaded) over a certain time period, usually over the period of a month, or hour (in the case of hourly billing).
There are two types of bandwidth cap:
A hard bandwidth cap is one that a lot of people may be familiar with, as many cell phone providers use hard bandwidth caps for their data plans.
The "hard" in "hard bandwidth cap" refers to what happens when the bandwidth cap is hit / over used - with "hard" meaning "you get disconnected", thus with a hard bandwidth cap, when you run out of bandwidth, you'll be cut off from the network until you purchase more bandwidth.
Soft bandwidth caps are also used by some cell phone providers across the world - as the name implies, they're "soft"er on the customer when they run out of bandwidth.
The "soft" in "soft bandwidth cap" generally means that the customer doesn't get cut off when they reach their cap (unlike a Hard Bandwidth Cap), instead, the provider will either employ some sort-of limitations to the customers connection, to prevent them from racking up large costs for themselves / their provider - or through some form of automatically charging the customer for their overusage.
There are two common methods that may be used when a customer exceeds a soft bandwidth cap (usually networks only use one or the other, but some may use both):
Rate limiting the customer's network speed until the customer buys more bandwidth/data, or simply until the next billing period - e.g. reducing a customer's network speed from 100mbps down to a much slower 5mbps until they buy more bandwidth, or until the end of the current billing period.
Track the bandwidth overage from their cap (how many GB/TB has the customer used past their monthly cap), and charge them for it on their next bill, e.g. $1.00 / per TB over their bandwidth cap.
(inclusive 100mbps with Swedish VPS's)
For the 100mbps included networking with our Swedish VPS's - the network usage is covered under our "effectively unmetered" policy, which is very simple:
There's no hard "bandwidth cap", nor a hard limit on the number of hours you may use the full 100mbps under our "effectively unmetered" policy.
As an example of breaking the Effectively Unmetered fair usage policy - a server would need to be maxing out (or close to maxing out) their inclusive 100mbps fair use, for 3 continuous days.
Upon one of our staff members noticing this, we'd check to see if the customer had alerted us of planned high traffic for an extended amount of time - if not, we'd alert the customer via e-mail, along with via any alternative communication methods the customer has with us (e.g. Discord / Telegram / XMPP) - so we can ask for an explanation, expected end time/date of the traffic, and inform the customer of our unmetered networking plans incase their server is being used for an activity that will use traffic 24/7.
If the customer cannot provide an expected end date/time of the traffic + justify the reason for the high traffic for an extended period of time - or the customer doesn't respond within ~36 hrs, the server may be capped to 10mbps until either the customer is willing to co-operate with us, or their next month's billing cycle starts.
As a general rule of thumb, you should ensure you max out the 100mbps for no more than 72 hrs (3 days) per week - spread out in short bursts. This is not an enforced policy, simply an example of staying within the fair use policy.
We understand when you first get your server, you may need to transfer a large amount of data from your old / other server(s), and depending on the amount of data being transferred, you may need to max out the 100mbps for several days. This is permitted, and there wouldn't be any additional cost for doing so - however...
If you expect to max out your 100mbps for more than 24 consecutive hours, we'd appreciate it if you would alert us at [email protected] and let us know how long you expect the traffic to last for (e.g. "transfer expected to take up to 3 days / 72 hrs"), as to avoid your server potentially being flagged for breaching the fair use policy.
If the traffic is related to a one-off transfer, e.g. initial migration to Privex, we may offer to temporarily upgrade the customer's networking to a higher speed at no charge, so long as the transfers would be finished in a shorter time due to the increased speed.
Alternative Explanation
Effectively Unmetered is a fair use bandwidth policy that applies to generally all Privex server packages which say "Unmetered" - unless they explicitly state that they're "Fully / 100% Unmetered". Unlike other bandwidth policies, effectively unmetered doesn't have any specific set limits, rather - staff will use their own judgement (common sense) to figure out whether a certain customer's server has breached the "effectively" part of the policy.
In simple terms - effectively unmetered means a customer can use as much traffic as they want on that server - as long as it has an end date - i.e. all transfers / traffic spikes will end within 24-72 hrs - or it fits at least one of the following guidelines:
1. low speed traffic (<=50mbps)
2. internal traffic - i.e. traffic between servers purchased from Privex, which are in the same region
3. traffic to/from our peers at exchanges such as SOL-IX, STHIX, or AMS-IX
4. internet (transit) traffic above 100mbps, so long as the "transfer" or other reason for the traffic usage - has an end date/time within 3 days.
Effectively Unmetered IS NOT SUITABLE for persistent 24/7 traffic at >=50mbps, for example, operating a Tor node (whether relay or exit), or running a torrent seedbox which is constantly uploading or downloading torrents.
( with overage charges (Swedish dedi's / Swedish VPS's with >=200mbps) )
For Swedish dedicated servers (1gbps as standard), and Swedish VPS's with their network speed set to 200mbps or higher - a much stricter Fair Use Policy applies.
This bandwidth policy is based on how transit overage (burst) is normally billed to network operators such as ourselves - Privex - which is often 98th, 95th, or 90th Percentile billing
Due to the way that we're billed for transit in Sweden (95th Percentile), along with the high cost of network traffic overage, we require customers to be extremely mindful of their traffic usage.
If you're on a "Strict Fair Use" networking plan, you must avoid using more than ~200mbps for more than 20 hours per month (roughly 30 minutes per day on avg.)
With a 1gbps network connection under our Strict Fair Use plan, this equates to roughly a 9 TB per month bandwidth cap.
1000mbit / 8 = 125mbyte
125 x 60 x 60 x 20 = 9,000,000 megabytes = 9,000 gigabytes = 9 terabytes
(60 seconds x 60 minutes x 20 hours)
A lot of transit providers offer "burstable" traffic, which for example, allows you to pay for 1gbps "committed" at a certain price per mbit (e.g. $0.70/mbit/mo), while "burst" or "overage" might be charged at $1.00/mbit/mo.
Transit providers usually calculate how much "burst" a network has used, using a mathematical/statistical method known as 95th percentile (or a variation such as 90th percentile, or 98th percentile). 95th percentile means that they take 5% of the highest traffic readings ( (30 * 24) * 0.05 = 36 hrs ) for the month, remove them, and then charge you for the highest traffic reading during the remaining 95% of the month.
This means that we get ~36 hrs of "free" traffic per month which could be at 100x the speed we actually pay for - e.g. you might pay for only 100mbps committed, while using 30 hrs of traffic at 10gbps. Those 30 hrs would be effectively free, but if you were to use 40 hrs at 10gbps instead, suddenly you've got to pay for 9900mbps (9.9gbps) of burst/overage traffic for the month - at $1.00/mbit that would be $9,900 USD at the end of the month which you maxed out the 10gbps for 40 hrs.
As you can see, burst bills can be very expensive, which is why we ask that customers on a Fair Use networking plan - avoid using more than 200mbps for more than 20 hrs per month, which would leave us 16 hrs buffer (or more - if they don't use the full 20) of leftover "free" traffic, which could be used by other customers.
If you exceed the 20 hours per month cap for traffic over ~200mbps which goes via our transit (any IPs we don't have peering towards, and which aren't on our LAN), we have the right to charge you for bandwidth overage based on either: Average Speed, Highest Speed, 98th, 95th, or 90th Percentile billing, depending on the specific characteristics of the overage. However, in most cases, we use 95th Percentile - as it's the same burstable billing calculation method that most of our transit providers use.