Is cloud bandwidth expensive?

Portal Home > Knowledgebase > Articles Database > Is cloud bandwidth expensive?

Posted by foldingspace20xx, 06-25-2011, 02:35 PM
Most cloud providers I've come across charge $0.15 per GB of bandwidth. Is this priced reasonably? Or is it too expensive? I was thinking to myself the other day, assuming YouTube streams 250PB of bandwidth each month, how much would that cost in the cloud per year? 250 PB * 12 * 0.15 = $450M Of course, this doesn't even include servers and petabytes of storage + redundancy. Are cloud providers charging too much for bandwidth to turn a commodity product into high gross profits? What do you think? If I was a large enterprise, would I be better off hosting everything in house?
Posted by mazedk, 06-25-2011, 03:04 PM
You cant really do that kinda calculation really.. having the size youtube does they have different deals, and being part of google it changes even more..
Posted by foldingspace20xx, 06-25-2011, 03:54 PM
Right, so then a website at the scale of YouTube would be better off staying in house to get better bandwidth deals? I am just curious as to whether cloud computing would benefit big giants and whether a brand-new video hosting website should go cloud.
Posted by Cookiesowns, 06-25-2011, 04:23 PM
You just answered your own question practically. Heh, A brand-new video hosting site should either look at CDN's or cloud hosting, as their basic bandwidth requirements wouldn't really be that high. If you're streaming more than thousands of TBs of bandwidth per month, then you really should have the budget to develop your own network and obtain contracts with various Transit providers. Pretty much it, in my own eyes.
Posted by mazedk, 06-25-2011, 04:58 PM
The advantages of cloud hosting ends at a certain point of the size of your: A. storage B. monthly bw C. number of servers At some point, its just more feasible to go with colo since you get to a point that it'll be cheaper to buy bulk bw..
Posted by tchen, 06-26-2011, 10:13 PM
Putting aside that this is the Cloud Hosting section, why would you seriously want to host video in the cloud? Of all the advantages clouds give, do any actually impact a setup of streaming servers? Choose an edge network and stream from there. Encoding, as well as command and control is still useful to place in the cloud, but the bandwidth eaters should go on the edge, and preferably at negotiated bulk discount rates.
Posted by KarlZimmer, 06-26-2011, 10:31 PM
Yes, start with cloud for getting the scale, getting started and getting on your feet, but always plan for that transition to the next step. If you can do a gradual transition, getting dedicated or colo servers for the settled/firm parts of your infrastructure that can really start saving you money.
Posted by tulix, 06-28-2011, 01:50 AM
I don't think it is a trivial question whether cloud is a good colution for a video hosting - it all depends on the type of video hosting. What if video hosting is for live events - you many need transcoding servers just for a limited time, what if you need to broadcast again for a limited time only? Cloud could be a good solution in this case. What if your hosting is growing but with a changing dynamics? On the other hand in my opinion most of cloud hosters, most of CDNs, especially for live streaming are gauging prices, just because market allows them to do that. I see the same with mobile apps market. So in some cases cloud could be a good solution for video hosting, as long as it wouldbe a cost effective solution.
Posted by Encrypted, 06-28-2011, 05:30 AM
If you consider that bandwidth from the actual providers is $18 per 1MB/s (around 300GB/month) for "premium" bandwidth providers... that equates to about 6cents/GB. The other 9cents is profit. So a combination of buying bulk bandwidth and owning the datacenter, that probably cuts the costs down to about 3-4cents GB. If you buy from budget providers, which I doubt they do or would.. they can probably get it down to about 1cent/GB. So your calculations are off by quite a bit.
Posted by tchen, 06-28-2011, 06:23 PM
I think your calculations are off as well by quite a bit. You forgot staffing, equipment, and power; each multiplied by the number of DC locations (it's rare to just have one for any quality host). Also add in a capacity buffer for bandwidth unless you're actually comparing committal rates. FYI, AWS gross margins are estimated at roughly 50%. Throw in the payroll and capital expenditures and you're ranging up.
Posted by TeamHC, 07-05-2011, 01:53 AM
Setting up a cloud itself is expensive. It will cost double of what we need to invest on traditional servers. So cloud won't come that cheap, after all Cloud guarantee you better services.
Posted by TeamHC, 07-05-2011, 02:08 AM
Setting up a cloud itself is expensive. It will cost double of what we need to invest on traditional servers. So cloud won't come that cheap, after all Cloud guarantee you better services.

Add to Favourites Print this Article