Unlimited bandwidth

We struggled for quite some time on how best to market our 'unlimited bandwidth' because we wanted to be refreshingly honest and open with our customers without losing business to our less ethical competitors. If truth be told 'unlimited bandwidth' does not exist (not with any provider, sorry).

Unfortunately the market is full of unscrupulous providers who dress up their 'unlimited' bandwidth offerings with terms like 'virtual pipe', '100Mb/s switch port', or they subject you to hidden 'Acceptable Usage Policies'; all designed to mislead you. We didn't want any stinking part of it, which is why we've taken an educational approach to this matter.

100Mb/s switch port describes the connection from the server to the switch, not from the switch out to the internet. Caps will most likely be placed on the outbound port of the switch, slowing things down considerably.

'Virtual pipes' are most likely highly contended (meaning a large pipe size but lots of servers fighting for the same connectivity, slowing everything down). Think of this like a three lane motorway during rush hour, with every car fighting for tarmac.

Read reviews on the internet before signing up with any provider offering 'unlimited bandwidth' or call us for advice.

We manage our network for speed (to ensure a fast browsing experience) and this involves us maintaining a low contention of servers in relation to the available bandwidth, managing our core equipment properly and ensuring that we run the network at less than 50% capacity as a general rule, to allow for bursts in usage.

As such, we provide a 'good for' quota of unlimited bandwidth, which is a guide to the amount of throughput your server could theoretically handle based on its specification. If you exceed the 'good for' quota then chances are your server will be struggling under the load anyway.

We will not punish you for using more than the 'good for' bandwidth but you may need to look at the next server up in the range to maintain performance. We do have an Acceptable Usage Policy in our terms and conditions to protect other customers on our network, but we've never had to enforce this under normal operating conditions.

With small businesses using less than 1GB/month on average in the UK, our 'good for' quotas are well in excess of this. The benefit to you is the fast loading of your web pages, resulting in greater customer satisfaction, a lower bounce rate, higher referral rates and greater profits as a result.