Thread: Starting your own seedbox company?

This is a purely research project and I post here for the fun.:laugh:

The reason to motivate me to post is bytesized. Their price is quite good (the lunchbox anyway) and they get generally good reviews. I saw they had a new server yesterday and 9 spots sold out in a few hours. So I ask myself, what does it take to start a seedbox company? Or just get a seedbox for a few friends to share?

In this first post, I will study a few options to find a provider.And give some of my observations of current seedbox business.

The first thing come to mind is OVH. Being Europe's largest hosting company, they also dominate seedbox business. I will not bore you with all the details of OVH, but suffice to say, if you live in a region where you can buy OVH, it is a decent choice. OVH France still offers unlimited unmetered traffic, while other OVH branches generally have a outbound traffic limit.

One interesting thing is that you rarely see *NEW* dedicated servers resold from OVH/Kimsufi France. I think this is due to the per infrastructure bandwidth limit. Basically, one person can buy only one server (sure you can buy more but speed will be cut propotionally). So it is only ecnomical to use the precious few new OVH france servers as shared seedboxes. You get more money for shared. OVH/Kimsufi in other countries do not have this restriction (restricted in a per server basis). So you can buy from them and resell as dedis.

OVH is really not available for anyone who lives outside Europe, unless you happen to have a best friend there. So it brings us some interesting choices.

The first alernative choice is server.lu. You all know that whatbox and bytesized and a few others are based there. They generally have good peering around the world. I quote from server.lu owner's own post

We have 10 GBIT/s to DE-CIX, LINX and AMS-IX. We have our own equipment in London, Frankfurt and Amsterdam (Cisco 6504 Routers). Transit comes mainly from HE, Cogent and Teleglobe (TATA). We also have one Level3 uplink, but despite the fact that Level3 have the biggest network in the world, they are not that convincing in our region.

We are currently planning 10 GIG transatlantic links to 60 Hudson in order to peer on NYIIX and Equinix.

The cummulated capacity is around 90 GIG with an increase of 2-3 GIG per month. The network is never overbooked and we upgrade our capacities as soon as we hit the threshold of 65-70% usage.

Of course that was a year ago, their infrastructure expanded a lot since then.

Anyway, they offer some good plans. Their price is generally higher than OVH, but the true gem is somewhat hidden - the refurbished servers. And the crown jewel is RS7000.

For 79 euro a month plus 49 euro setup, you get an AMD 64 X2 5600+, 6G of RAM, 2x750G HDD, and you get 2 IPs. Bytesized admits this is their main "workhorse".

Why is it so good?
1. It is truly unmetered.
2. 6G RAM and 1500G HDD is enough to handle about 9-12 people. So you get a good profit margin and satisfactory level of service.
3. 2 IPs, additional IP can be bought at 10 euro each without a monthly fee.
4. They also offer no setup fee plan at 89 euro per month.

And I suspect they have an internal transfer rate of 1Gbps. These servers do come with 1Gbps NIC and I heard a lot of people saying reaching 20MB/s upload using server.lu.

And the best thing is: you can buy it anywhere from the world as far as I know. Now the bad thing: these refurb servers do not come online often, so you have to fill in an application and wait.

Well theres a guy on the whirlpool australia forums that did just that. Because in australia there isnt many local seedbox options he decided to start his own.

Plans (Custom Seedbox)

He can also provide OVH and Kimsufi servers.

Now comes to the 2nd alternative: 100TB.com.

Being in the US has its disadvantages, but they do offer dedicated 1Gbps outbound connection at reasonable price. (OVH is 200Mbps outbound).

Their Amber plan is actually quite good. 201.15/month gets you a very good server with no setup fee.

The specs are Quad core Xeon 3220, 8G of RAM and 2x500G HDD. It also comes with 8 IP address so you do not need to worry about sharing IPs.

100TB per month means average of 40MB/s transfer rate, or 320Mbit/s. This should be sufficient for most seedboxes usage. This is sustained speed, which is not bad. Hyperthetically, for 4 or 8 people, it should be sufficient.

While there are some bad comments on the provider, generally it is a decent choice for 1Gbps lover, and a lot of people are reporting 300Mbit/s sustained rate. Oh, and anyone should be able to buy it, not country restrictions.

Their options are quite overpriced so it is not recommended to get any.

This thread has been very informative for me. Thanks to all who shared.

The next one I want to mention is Netdirekt from Germany.

They caught my eye because many of new Xirvik servers are based on this provider. They claim to have over 90Gbit connection to other providers and provide the usual guarantee. By having good peering all over Europe, it is said to offer good speed to other seedbox heavy datacenters.

They have only one unlimited plan. For 99 euro per month (VAT is included) and set up free, they offer E6600, 4G RAM and 2x250G HDD. This one is obviously too expensive. But they do have customized machines with more HDD.

Recent experience by Xirvik German server users are quite good. So I guess this is another worth watching.

Well, to start a seedbox company is not a big deal, What it matter is , your customer service, and your service quality.Many seedbox providers start off with good service, but as their customer database increases , their quality of service goes down.

Talking about the Seedbox Hosts Or Datacenters.

Server.lu (Luxemburg) and Net Direct ,Germany are Best seedbox hosts for 100Mbps connection.
Ovh also provides a variety of Dedicated Servers, But they have very bad routing to the countries outside Europe.

Talking about 1 Gbit Connection, Servers
Well then no one can compete with OVH, fact that most of the seedboxes are hosted within their network. FTP Speeds of 1 Gbit connections are Better as compared to thier 100Mbps ones... Weird though

I have Personally Used 100TB.com
But not that good for seedboxes, But yeah they have a very good backbone, and FTP speeds normally maxout your connection.

Originally Posted by chmmr

The next one I want to mention is Netdirekt from Germany.

They caught my eye because many of new Xirvik servers are based on this provider. They claim to have over 90Gbit connection to other providers and provide the usual guarantee. By having good peering all over Europe, it is said to offer good speed to other seedbox heavy datacenters.

They have only one unlimited plan. For 99 euro per month (VAT is included) and set up free, they offer E6600, 4G RAM and 2x250G HDD. This one is obviously too expensive. But they do have customized machines with more HDD.

Recent experience by Xirvik German server users are quite good. So I guess this is another worth watching.

If you go to buy directly from NetDirect it will eb expensive for you.
You need to go through a reseller .
If anyone around needs to Buy Dedicated servers from net direct
Let me know...
i can get them for very cheap rate.