SE you have a Worldwide Franchise, and your support is a let down.

[Basher]

It depends. DSL/Cable providers usually have differing tiers depending on how much bandwidth you want. Usually you get a set speed per month, then a bandwidth limit (comcast has a measly 250GB, i hate you comcast). I've seen some ISPs want to charge you for going over their bandwidth limit per month, so you can be charged by both speed and volume.

If you're going for dedicated lines, it depends on what you need. The ISP I used to work for had two providers, each provided us with 15mnps fractional DS3. The difference between the two was that our one from Time Warner was capped at 15mbps, and the one from I think it was Worldcom was burstable, meaning that we got charged extra from anything over 15mbps (the line speed we negotiated for our contract). In this instance we were both paying for usage and volume.

KK. TY..

was gonna go through the costings of a temp server setup but then I realized it involved far too much effort for a saturday afternoon. Especially when theres a BBQ going.

[Tsukino_Kaji]

Usually you get a set speed per month, then a bandwidth limit (comcast has a measly 250GB, i hate you comcast).

They don't inforce it. I average 350-550g with no extra charges.

[Heroheart]

Ohhhhhhhh! Ching Chong Ling Long Ting Tong........... sounds familiar? someone needs a lollipop

[Nu-Hir]

KK. TY..

was gonna go through the costings of a temp server setup but then I realized it involved far too much effort for a saturday afternoon. Especially when theres a BBQ going.

To give you an idea http://www.creativedata.net/index.cfm?webid=168

You'll be looking at the full rack price, let's assume 20 full racks (it's probably more): $14.7k/month
I would assume they'd want at least one person at the datacenter to babysit 24/7: $14.5k/month
I don't knwo what kind of decent contract you'd get from them on bandwidth, so I'm going to assume they'll use a third party and pump it in, let's round up and go for bust on an uber connection: $40k/month

I'm probably lowballing bandwidth, but that's up to almost $70k/month. To pay for that, you'd need subscriptions of over 5000 people, or roughly the population of two servers.

They don't inforce it. I average 350-550g with no extra charges.

Yes they do. One of my co-workers got threatened to move to business class or he's losing his account for a year.

[Basher]

nicely done.

[Hanabira]

if mcdonalds closed for a week and a half but gave me a month of free food, id be okay with that

[Rocman]

As a small buisness owner myself i do agree with the OP on a buisness side of things. BUT, I do also believe as a human being this is the wrong time to post something like this. Wait untill things are back up and running again over inn Japan then express how you feel.

[Guardian]

It's not about not having a backup plan. what part of this don't you understand: They Voluntarily shut down the servers, sacrificing a month's worth of profits, in order to do it's part to help stabilize the situation in Japan?

They felt it was inappropriate to keep the service running in the given circumstances. It's not because they were FORCED to shut down the servers and had no plan for what to do if their service was disabled forcibly.

They very likely do have backup data in an offsite locaiton. But you're asking them to double the amount of equipment they need so that you can keep playing while the Japanese try to recover from entire towns being leveled and an impending nuclear disaster?

I'm really on the fence about both sides of this issue. If it was down RIGHT after the the incident, I wouldn't have said a thing. Personally though, with them having two days of service after the fact, they could have easily have sent most, if not all the server info to mirror servers in that time via the net. I think that's sorta what he's trying to say.

[jeffanddane]

Stop trolling him peeps jeese . . . .Would it be a surprise to tell you that my family that lives in japan and there friends that play FFXI want it back up so they can escape some of the sadness ? Although they helped the community by cleaning and donating is there wanting the server back up wrong ? To put it short i talked to my family in japan this morning because i like to keep up to date on whats going on over there for my families sake. But i can tell you alot of there friends who also play this game want servers back up because it would help them escape the crisis that there going through. Not a complete escape but just enough of an escape to have somewhat of a peaceful day after cleaning up the mess of tragedy that hit them. I would say even if the servers weren't brought up for us at least it could be put back up for them so my family and other players of FFXI could have somewhat of a normal day in this time of crisis for them. Yes its JUST A GAME I know this but a lot of people have there thing smoking/ drinking/ exercise/ gaming/ art/ reading etc. This just happens to be there thing and there are a lot of Japanese that want the servers back up just like us. Just because people play a game 24 hours a day don't mean they don't have a life . . That's just how they want to spend there life. . . And doing something is better then doing nothing.

[RAIST]

@Nu-Hir

I appreciate the effort, but I think your cost analysis may be a bit off. Typical markets start a generic Network Engineer at the equivalent of @$10/hour ($20k/yr)--14.5k doesn't even meet Minimum Wage in the US (7.25/hr, 40 hours/week = $15,080/yr). This wouldn't involve just one employee either--they do have labor laws, possibly even union restrictions in some areas (who knows), and you know.. they do need to sleep sometime. There will also need to be communications set up (ie, a phone perhaps), at least one terminal for the workers to use, among other expenses involved with highering employess (corporate needs for insurance, required UIB contributions to the government per employee, and various business related taxation/regulation).

And commercial bandwidth is a completely different animal. The same speed line as my residential line costs nearly 4 times as much per month simply because of the service agreement having a higher standard of service applied. If they have to build a circuit to you, it's an extra $200-300 initial setup cost--just for the SAME SPEED AS A RESIDENTIAL LINE. A dedicated dark fiber bundle can run upwards of 2k a month for a drop just one mile off the main trunk line. If you have to run say...10 miles, it could run upwards of 20k a month. If there is already a line nearby off the trunk that they can just tap and drop, the cost can be cut about 30%, but if they have to build to your site...you pay that full price, up to double that estimate depending on complications encountered along the route. Thats just to get the line to the site, then there are management services for breaking the connection out into the building, and whether you yourself are going to cut the lines to run throughout the complex and be responsible for their maintenance, or have the provider be responsible for that(upwards of $1 per foot per bundle PER MONTH to maintain them under the service agreement) and securing the ToS agreement and such (Quaranteed Quality of Service details like <10ms latency, guaranteed uptime and techinical response times, etc.). Regardless, you have to pay a hefty fee either way as you would need the right equipment and skillset for making fiber lines yourself, which again has a minimum market rate/hr for the technicians payroll. In the end a commercial line to support this large an operation could likely run more than 40k a month, depending on location and market. Remember, you have to account for the ongoing maintenance/operation cost for running this cost for TWO sites--source, and backup.

Raist