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Developers - How much Bandwidth is reasonable?
Working on some great new features for FOSSVPS front end.
But before I release anything I would like your opinion.
FOSSVPS is for developers of Open Source Software. It is not for 'hosting'. So what would be a reasonable amount of data transfer in / out that should be allocated per client per month. Bear in mind that projects would need down / uploading.
Genuine feedback appreciated ![]()


Comments
10GB
For most dev/API workloads bandwidth is rarely the bottleneck — a couple TB/month covers a lot unless you're serving media or large downloads. I'd worry more about RAM and disk I/O. If you're running something chatty (lots of small requests) connection handling matters more than raw transfer. What kind of app is it?
yea 2-3TB is the minimum.
Maybe 1 TB in+out if someone wants to serve a project packages repository, for example.
We checked our devbox.
We used just over 2GB in a week.
Thanks for the comments - my key point is 'It is not for 'hosting'.
So TBs of data is out of the equation. On the OGF the comments were that 50GB should be enough because you are pushing and pulling your code.
My feeling was a 'soft' limit of 40GB with a bimonthly 20GB boost. So average is 50GB per client. This then gives me a max b/w for the node so our generous donors - @Alexhost, @Hosteroid and @st-hosting know what to expect. It is unfair to expect unlimited bandwidth with no limitations.
I am very open to further discussion.
great, for most of git operations, it won’t consume much traffic though, even at very first maybe some large files.
And for some specific reason , more traffic can be considered case by case.
I never found high bandwidth critical for my projects , even with 100k+ WAU you can rarely cross 10TB/M
Absolutely - if a developer needs more b/w they only have to ask.
Also if the B/W is exceeded the NIC will just be throttled to some low amount (to be decided but likely 50Mbps).
For development I would say near 25GB a month is enough. And I would recommend throttling to less then 50Mbps after the cap, 10Mbps should be good.
Since it's not for hosting, 30–40 GB is enough for Git operations, etc.
I would say 3-4 TB to sit comfortably. Some developers like to deal with LFS for which high bandwidth requirement is a must.
Thanks for the feedback
I have built the automation to allow 50GB with a warning at 40GB. If the previous month did not exceed 50GB, a 'boost' of 20GB happens. If the limit (50 or 70GB) is reached then the B/W is limited.
@buggedout - I think 10Mbps is like a real slap, so I have dropped to 50Mbps until the monthly reset happens.
@Protocol903 - LFS is likely too big a project for FOSSVPS and the B/W is certainly too much. But thanks for flagging this as I had not considered it. If however a developer would like a bigger local disk I am happy to oblige, providing this is for genuine development.
The purpose of this 'filtering' is that in the past there has been abuse mainly from NodeSeek users where they say one thing and do another e.g. proxies & vpn. I have absolutely no intention of accessing the VPS to 'see' what they are doing so want to maintain this passive approach.
So what do developers 'feel' about this solution?
I think the only acceptable high network usage as proxy/vpn in FOSSVPS, if they're active contributor to a popular/new (but gaining momentum) proxy-vpn repository 😅😅😅. Even then, it has to be capped, 1-2TB at max