A service of EPEC Technologies, LLC
EPEC Servers
Status of Policy Enforcement - 0 Enforcement Events
To date, as of the revision 2 update (over a year after our revision 1 policy officially went into effect), zero bandwith inquiries have been initiated. All of our customers have been happily enjoying unmetered bandwidth and no one has heard anything from us. Our network infrastructure remains healthy and below 10% total utilization. As our operations continue to ramp up, we continue to assess and implement necessary capacity upgrades. We intend to further refine and update this policy as any infractions occur to help clarify our expectations and keep our quality of service high for all customers.
Purpose of this Policy
This policy intends to explain in a clear and transparent way what we are providing as a part of our unmetered bandwidth services. All providers claiming to offer an unlimited or unmetered network connection have some limitations, but many do not admit to them or define them in a clear way. This policy is supplemental to our other policies such as Terms of Service and Acceptable Use Policy.
Intention of Unmetered Bandwidth Services
Unmetered bandwidth implies no commit guarantee on port speeds for services. Unmetered bandwidth allows the network port to burst up to the full speed of the service port for short time periods. Unmetered bandwidth service is not a guarantee of any port speeds or performance metrics. It is intended to allow our users to use their server without fear of accruing bandwidth overage charges. It is not an open invitation to abuse the service and use it beyond its intended purpose.
EPEC Technologies, LLC has the right to cap, rate limit, or traffic shape your service as we see fit in order to comply with our needs and maintain a fair and acceptable usage amongst other customers on our shared services. EPEC Technologies, LLC reserves the right to terminate services with customers when it observes an undue burden on its network, or its other customers. Nothing in this document limits EPEC Technologies, LLC's right to manage our network as we deem appropriate and necessary.
Enforcement of Policy
In general, EPEC Technologies, LLC will reach out to customers prior to taking action to restrict bandwidth usage, except in cases of extremely excessive utilization that may be impacting other customers. If such a throttling event prior to customer contact does occur, it shall be considered temporary, and can be lifted by our support team once the customer is reached. In the case of an emergency throttle, regardless of service plan, we will not restrict service speed to less than 100Mbps for the purpose of this temporary throttling. Our aim in this case is to prevent performance degredation, not to cripple your service.
At this time, no strict automated bandwidth usage enforcement is in place, and all decisions are subject to human review and discretion by EPEC Technologies, LLC. Usage in excess of the amounts outlined in this policy may not necessarily result in any action. If we notice excessive bandwidth usage and at our discretion feel that action is required, we will review your usage through the perspective of this policy to decide what actions are appropriate.
When we observe excessive usage, we will trigger a bandwidth usage inquiry, which means we will contact the customer. The intention of this inquiry is to determine whether the usage is intentional and whether the intentional usage will be long term. In general, we do not aim to impose bandwidth restraints on our users, so we may grant permission to continue the usage at our discretion.
If the customer intends to use the service beyond the defined scope of their service plan as outlined in this policy, they may be asked to upgrade to a higher service plan to continue their usage, they may opt to cancel their services if desired, or they may opt to be throttled indefinitely.
Unmetered Private Cloud Services
For dedicated private cloud services, we impose no specific bandwidth limitations, as these services typically include a dedicated physical network port. If we are providing you an unmetered private cloud at an advertised port speed, it is allocated to us that way from our provider, and we do not care how much you use because your usage cannot impact anyone else on our infrastructure. We may contact you about your usage if it triggers a problem with our upstream provider, see section "Vendor Limitations or Complaints".
Unmetered VPS Services
Virtual Private Servers are, by nature, a shared resource. If we allowed our customers to use the entirety of the network port on a given virtual machine hypervisor, the performance of the network for other users would be negatively impacted. To this end, we release the following to clarify our expectations. This section of the policy is intended as a guideline to inform our customers of our standard operating procedures, and does not make any specific guarantee of port speeds or performance metrics.
EPEC Technologies, LLC retains our right to throttle network traffic on a VPS which is exceeding expected bandwidth usage thresholds. For more information, please see "Enforcement of Policy".
The following formula can provide guidance on acceptable usage levels. This is not a restriction on burst bandwidth, but rather an expectation of what the sustained usage rate should not exceed over a long period of time. This is not necessarily a concrete definition of allowed usage, but is a guideline for when a bandwidth usage inquiry may be initiated. In general, an inquiry will only be initiated if 95th percentile network utilization exceeds this guideline for a period of 7 consecutive days, or the monthly usage exceeds the equivalent 95th percentile usage of the speed calculated.
100Mbps x (RAM/4)
Where "RAM" is the number of gigabytes of memory allocated to the VPS.
For example, a VPS with 2GB of RAM:
100Mbps x (2/4) = 100Mbps x 0.5 = 50Mbps
Therefore, a bandwidth usage inquiry may be triggered on a 2GB memory tier VPS by using a greater amount of bandwidth, such as 100Mbps, for more than 7 days (24 hour periods, so 168 hours total) in a billing cycle. Or, by an order of magnitude, may be triggered by using a higher amount of bandwidth, such as 350Mbps, for more than 2 days (48 hours) in a billing cycle. Or, if the monthly aggregate usage of the VPS approaches or is on course to exceed 16TB (which is 50Mbps x 30 days).
Thus, if you need to use a greater amount of bandwidth, you are asked to use a higher tier VPS. We believe this is fair and reasonable, as a larger server with greater resources should be expected to have a higher amount of bandwidth usage, since it can be used for more things. Additionally, a current industry standard is 10TB of usage for even some dedicated server providers, so we believe that this policy is generous.
Unmetered Transient Network Services from HomeLab Host
HomeLab Host is a unique service which provides a transient proxy service. It is operated using shared servers and resources, similar to our VPS products. To this end, we release the following to clarify our expectations. This section of the policy is intended as a guideline to inform our customers of our standard operating procedures, and does not make any specific guarantee of port speeds or performance metrics.
EPEC Technologies, LLC retains our right to throttle network traffic on a transient network services subscriber which is exceeding expected bandwidth usage thresholds. For more information, please see "Enforcement of Policy".
The following can provide guidance on acceptable usage levels. This is not a restriction on burst bandwidth, but rather an expectation of what the sustained usage rate should not exceed over a long period of time. This is not necessarily a concrete definition of allowed usage, but is a guideline for when a bandwidth usage inquiry may be initiated. In general, an inquiry will only be initiated if 95th percentile network utilization exceeds this guideline for a period of 7 consecutive days, or the monthly usage exceeds the equivalent 95th percentile usage of the speed calculated.
Allowed sustained bandwidth utilization increases as your service tier increases. The bandwidth amounts are pooled between all resources on your subscription. This is not a hard quota or a rate limit, merely an expected maximum sustained bandwidth utilization over an extended period of time.
- 20Mbps per VPN subscription.
Since a number of residential Internet providers impose usage caps around 1TB, and few have upload speeds exceeding 100Mbps, and the use of this quantity of bandwidth on a residential port would be abnormal to your ISP, we expect that for all intents and purposes, our service is effectively unlimited for most customers. In general, we only inquire about truly abnormal amounts of usage, and we want to approach every situation from a standpoint of solving your needs by providing a dedicated solution for you.
Thus, if you need to use a greater amount of bandwidth, you may be asked to upgrade to a VPS tier of service or other dedicated service.
Vendor Limitations or Complaints
All service providers have their limitations, including our vendors. If your network usage should trigger a complaint or investigation from our upstream network provider, we reserve the right to take all necessary steps to manage and restrict your usage, regardless of compliance or noncompilance with our policy.
Revisions to this Policy
EPEC Technologies, LLC reserves the right to revise this policy as the need arises or as deemed necessary by our management. If we revise this policy in the future in a way which negatively impacts your use of the service, we will allow you to cancel and refund the duration of your prepaid time interval on your server on the basis of the change of policy (for example, if you have prepaid for a server for a year). In the unlikely event that this occurs, you must notify us of your intention to cancel your contract within sixty (60) days of the revision to this policy.
A service of EPEC Technologies, LLC