Every bare-metal server is connected to its own switch port at a fixed speed, and that speed is the ceiling for everything the server does on the network. This page explains what you get by default, what the port can be turned up to, and how a change is made on a server that is already running.
What a server comes with
| Server line | Physical port | Default plan | Speeds you can move to |
|---|---|---|---|
| Express, Instant (E3-1230 v3) | 1G | 1G metered, 17 TB out | none: the line is metered only |
| Edge (E3-1270 v6, Ryzen 7 3700X) | 1G | 1G metered, 100 TB out | 1G or 2G unmetered |
| Edge Pro, Bandwidth, Compute, Accelerator, Pro, Memory | 10G | 10G metered, 100 TB out | 1G, 2G, 5G, 10G or 20G unmetered |
Two things follow from the table. On a metered plan the server already runs at the full speed of its physical port; the allowance limits monthly volume, not throughput. And the unmetered speeds are not always the physical port: a 10G server on a 2G unmetered plan is rate-limited to 2 Gbps on the switch, in exchange for a lower fixed price, and can be raised later.
Which speed you actually need
Look at the Graphs tab of the server before deciding. The 95th percentile figure there is the honest measure of what the server pushes when busy, with the short spikes removed. As a rule of thumb:
- A 95th percentile below 300 Mbps on a metered plan is fine as it is; watch the monthly OUT total instead.
- A 95th percentile that regularly sits near the plan's speed (say 900 Mbps on a 1G plan) means the port is the bottleneck. Move up a step.
- A metered server whose outbound total keeps crossing the allowance is usually cheaper on an unmetered plan at the speed it actually uses; see bandwidth explained.
Changing the speed on a running server
The speed is a setting on the switch port, not in the server, so a change needs no reinstall and no reboot. In practice:
- Open a support ticket, pick the server in the related-server field, and say which plan you want (for example “2G unmetered” or “back to 100 TB metered”).
- We confirm the price difference and the date it takes effect on the invoice. Upgrades are usually applied the same business day.
- The port is reconfigured. A speed change on a live port takes a few seconds; the link may renegotiate once. Nothing on the server needs to change, though a bonded interface renegotiates its members as well.
- The new speed shows on the Graphs tab as the link speed, and the next invoice carries the new plan.
Moving from a 1G line to anything above 2G is not a port change: the Edge line is built with 1G network hardware. For 5G and up you migrate to an Edge Pro or higher server, which we can do on a new machine alongside the old one.
Bonding two ports
Servers with a second port can bond the two into one logical link, either for redundancy or, with LACP, for double the throughput. The bond needs a matching port-channel on our switch, which we configure when you ask for it in a ticket; the server side is described in configuring bonding on Ubuntu with Netplan. A bond does not change the billing: the plan's speed applies to the bond as a whole.
Questions we get
- Can I test a higher speed for a month? Yes. Ask for the upgrade and, at the end of the month, ask to go back. Both are port changes with no downtime.
- Will a downgrade cut my traffic off? No. The port is rate-limited to the new speed; connections continue, just slower if they were using more.
- My speed test shows less than the port speed. A single TCP stream rarely fills a 10G port; test with several parallel streams, and from a host that itself has the capacity. The Graphs tab shows what the port actually carries.
- Is the port shared with other customers? No. Every server has its own switch port, and an unmetered speed is provisioned for that port alone.
Current speeds and prices per line are on each product page in the shop; when this page and the shop disagree, the shop is right.