Bandwidth · port speed
Peaks decide, not monthly totals. The arithmetic for both port speeds, why one connection rarely fills 10 Gbit/s, and which workloads justify the faster berth.
Quick answer
Do I need a 1 Gbps or 10 Gbps port on my server?
You need a 10 Gbps port only if your server often has to push more than 1 Gbit/s at once. Typical cases are mirrors, large restores and busy VPN or Tor traffic. Otherwise a 1 Gbps port, good for 324 TB in 30 days, is enough. Ravenquay sells both unmetered: Harbor 8 at $72.62, Harbor 10G at $356.25. No KYC; crypto only.
| 1 Gbit/s port | 10 Gbit/s port | |
|---|---|---|
| Bytes per second at full speed | 125 MB | 1.25 GB |
| Most data in 30 days, each direction | 324 TB | 3,240 TB |
| Time to send 1 TB at full speed | 2 h 13 min | 13 min 20 s |
| Time to send 10 TB | 22 h 13 min | 2 h 13 min |
| Time to send 100 TB | 9 days 6 h | 22 h 13 min |
| Clients at 25 Mbit/s each, all at once | 40 | 400 |
| Data one TCP flow must keep in flight at a 50 ms round trip | 6.25 MB | 62.5 MB |
| Ravenquay berths | Harbor 8 (8 cores / 16 threads), Harbor 16 (16 cores / 32 threads) | Harbor 10G (24 cores / 48 threads) |
| Price per 30 days, unmetered | $72.62 or $205.27 | $356.25 |
Line-rate arithmetic in decimal units (1 TB = 10^12 bytes), before protocol overhead. A calculation, not a measurement.
A 1 Gbps port is enough when your busiest minutes stay below about 800 Mbit/s. The monthly total matters far less than the peak.
The arithmetic is generous. A port that averages 300 Mbit/s still moves about 97 TB in 30 days. Workloads that usually fit:
Ravenquay surveyed 18 no-KYC crypto hosts on 30 October 2026: 11 sold an unmetered dedicated server, but only 4 did so at 10 Gbit/s. The full conversion from speed to volume is on how many TB a 1 Gbps port transfers per month.
A 10 Gbps port pays off when many clients pull data at the same moment, or when a large transfer has a deadline.
A 10 Gbit/s port does not make one download ten times faster; it lets ten times as many run at full speed.
Because a single TCP connection can only send what its window allows in each round trip. RFC 7323 states that TCP performance problems arise when the bandwidth × delay product is large.
To fill 10 Gbit/s on a 100 ms path, one flow needs 125 MB of data in flight. On a 20 ms path inside Europe it still needs 25 MB. The Linux kernel documentation sets the default ceiling for automatically tuned send buffers between 64 KB and 4 MB, depending on RAM.
With a 4 MB send buffer and a 100 ms round trip, one TCP flow tops out near 335 Mbit/s. A faster port does not change that. That figure is an upper bound from arithmetic, not a measurement.
Two fixes exist. ESnet's guide for hosts with a 10G network card raises the buffer ceilings to 32 MB and 64 MB. For bulk transfers, it notes that tools such as Globus open 4 to 8 parallel streams.
net.core.rmem_max = 67108864
net.core.wmem_max = 67108864
net.ipv4.tcp_rmem = 4096 87380 33554432
net.ipv4.tcp_wmem = 4096 65536 33554432
net.core.default_qdisc = fqLoad the file with sysctl --system. ESnet advises leaving the congestion control at its default, which is CUBIC on most Linux distributions.
Everything between the disk and the far end. A 10 Gbit/s port only helps when each link in that chain is as fast.
Measure the busiest five minutes of a normal week, not the monthly total. Three standard Linux tools are enough:
vnstat -l shows the live rate on an interface, and vnstat -5 keeps 5-minute history.sar -n DEV 1 prints the rate of every interface once per second.ip -s link shows the raw byte counters, so you can compute a rate yourself.If your peaks often pass 800 Mbit/s on a 1 Gbit/s port, the port has little headroom left at busy times. That is the moment to move to 10 Gbit/s.
Harbor 8 and Harbor 16: Unmetered at 1 Gbit/s. Harbor 10G: Unmetered at 10 Gbit/s. Unmetered means no monthly traffic quota and no overage bill: the port speed of your plan, 1 or 10 Gbit/s, is the only limit. Each server has one dedicated IPv4 address and an IPv6 /64. Terms and every price are on the Ravenquay pricing page. The 10 Gbit/s berth has its own page, with the hosts it is priced against.
Best value
8 cores · unmetered 1 Gbit/s
$72.62
3 months $196.07 (−10%)6 months $348.57 (−20%)1 year $610 (−30%)
16 cores · unmetered 1 Gbit/s
$205.27
3 months $554.22 (−10%)6 months $985.29 (−20%)1 year $1,724.26 (−30%)
24 cores · unmetered 10 Gbit/s
$356.25
3 months $961.87 (−10%)6 months $1,710 (−20%)1 year $2,992.50 (−30%)
In every plan: Unmetered port · Tor exits allowed · RAID 1 · Dedicated IPv4 · No logs · No KYC
For most single websites, team VPNs and community services, yes. A 1 Gbit/s port serves 40 clients at 25 Mbit/s each at the same moment, and can move 324 TB in 30 days.
1,250 MB per second at line rate, in decimal megabytes. After Ethernet and TCP/IP headers, a single direction carries roughly 1,180 MB of file data per second.
Only if your own connection and the path allow it. A single TCP flow is limited by its window and the round-trip time, so one remote download often stays far below 10 Gbit/s.
Yes. Unmetered means no monthly traffic quota and no overage bill: the port speed of your plan, 1 or 10 Gbit/s, is the only limit. Each server has one dedicated IPv4 address and an IPv6 /64.
Harbor 10G costs $356.25 per 30 days, against $72.62 for Harbor 8 and $205.27 for Harbor 16. There is no setup fee: you pay the price of your chosen term, both when you order and when you renew.
Unmetered from $72.62/30 days · no KYC
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