What is an Unmetered Dedicated Server

Dedicated Server

Before helping you to distinguish between the unmetered and metered dedicated server, I would like to introduce more about the basic knowledge of Bandwidth. The bandwidth is irreplaceable and directly influence the performance of the server. Therefore, bandwidth is not something you should ignore when choosing a hosting plan. In this blog post, we will cover some basic subjects about traffic and bandwidth so you can better understand the whole unmetered concept.

What is the relationship between bandwidth and traffic?

In hosting environments, Bandwidth can be described the format as Megabits per second (Mbps) and Gigabits per second (Gbps). Hosting bandwidth typically ranges between 10Mbps and 1Gbps, with 100Mbps a common bandwidth for high-performance dedicated servers. It is like the speed of the bus in a certain width of the highway that shows the time required to the destination.

Whereas, Traffic is usually measured in terabytes (TB), which is the quota of traffic in your server hosting plan.  The limit of the data reflects that the data transfer between your servers and the public web during the month. It is like the capacity for the passenger on the bus that shows the numbers of people can be transferred to the destination.

Difference Between Metered and Unmetered Server

  • Metered servers get a specific amount of bandwidth measured in TB per month.  Overage of these amounts is then billed per GB.  
  •  Unmetered servers are not given a specific amount of GB bandwidth per month but are given a specific port size. Without overage costs, customers are free to use as much bandwidth as the purchased port can handle.   A 1Gbps port could transmit 330,000GB (or 330TB) of bandwidth if maxed out for an entire month.
Dedicated BandwidthMonthly traffic
10 MBps~3.3 TB
100 Mbps~33 TB
1 Gbps~330 TB
10 Gbps~3300 TB


Why I Need an Unmetered Server

  • Avoiding bandwidth overage fees may be the most common reason. With traditional metered dedicated hosting, you do have to be aware of the amount of bandwidth in order to avoid paying extra for bandwidth.
  • Better resource allocation is always needed when your site gets more traffic, content, and interactions. It’s important for you to be prepared for traffic anomalies or sudden spikes, no crashes or buffering that you might not know and unexpected.
  • Deploying more flexibility and freedom for your website. You can use your bandwidth however you need—without cutting back on apps, files, e-commerce stores, blogs, or anything else your business needs. You can optimize your site using whatever software you need to increase its functionality and performance.

Unlimited vs. Unmetered Dedicated Servers

Most of people will come across the phrase unmetered dedicated server and unlimited dedicated server, and it would be naturally categorized the same things. In fact, “unlimited” does not exist to the world of server hosting, it is just the words of marketing strategy to appeal to more people and let them think it is the best option out of all.Bandwidth is a measure of speed”. Data transfer speeds cannot be limitless—there will always be a maximum that every server has a finite limitation on the bandwidth it can produce.

Even unmetered means that there is no certain amount of quota to transfer massive data, it is still bonding to the limit of speed to the corresponding of bandwidth as well as the hardware limitations such as CPU, RAM and storage.

Therefore, to display more accurate description, it should better be called “Unmetered” rather than unlimited dedicated server.

How I Find the Proper Unmetered Dedicated Server Hosting

Doing some research about the history of service provider and what reputation they have. When choosing the desired one, please review their terms of service carefully including the content of services, configuration and the amount of bandwidth, etc.

When some providers give you 100Mbps connection with shared bandwidth, this connection will be gradually slow and will bottleneck frequently. Therefore, to ensure you have the above advantages of unmetered server, you should go for dedicated bandwidth. 

Dataplugs offers unmetered dedicated server. All server plans come with 50Mbps / 100Mbps dedicated international bandwidth. Feel free to sign up our 3-day free trial and experience our low latency and resilient connectivity. To tackle your high traffic workloads, you can upgrade to 1Gbps dedicated international bandwidth at discount price. If you still have any enquiry, please contact us by phone +852 3959 1888 or email sales@dataplugs.com to learn more about our services.