"1 Gbps unmetered" is one of the most common lines on a dedicated server listing, and one of the least examined. It sounds like a simple promise: a gigabit, no limits. In practice the phrase hides three separate questions: how much data the port can actually move, whether the gigabit is yours or shared, and what happens when you need more. This guide works through each.
What a 1Gbps unmetered dedicated server can move
A port's speed is a rate, so the monthly ceiling is just the rate multiplied by the seconds in a month:
| Measure | 1 Gbps at line rate |
|---|---|
| Per second | 125 MB |
| Per hour | 450 GB |
| Per day | 10.8 TB |
| Per 30-day month | 324 TB |
That is the theoretical ceiling. Real transfers carry protocol overhead: with the standard 1,500-byte MTU, a TCP connection with timestamps carries 1,448 bytes of data for every 1,538 bytes on the wire once headers, preamble and the gap between frames are counted. That is about 94%, so a perfectly saturated gigabit delivers roughly 941 Mbps of payload, or about 305 TB of file data in a month.
"Unmetered" means no quota, not no limit
Unmetered means the provider does not count your traffic in terabytes and bill you for it. The limit is the port speed itself. A metered plan sells a monthly transfer allowance, often on a faster port, and bills or throttles the traffic beyond it. An unmetered plan caps the speed and lets you use it around the clock.
That makes the comparison a question of volume and shape. If your traffic is steady and heavy, tens of terabytes a month or more, unmetered is almost always cheaper. If it is light, or mostly idle with rare large bursts, a metered plan can win. Unmetered Bandwidth vs Metered works through both with published rates, and the 95th percentile model some providers use instead is explained in 95th Percentile Bandwidth Billing.
For a sense of scale: DigitalOcean bills Droplet outbound transfer beyond the included allowance, which is pooled across a team's Droplets, at $0.01 per GiB, so 100 TB over the allowance would cost about $931. On a 1Gbps unmetered dedicated server it costs the same as an idle month.
Guaranteed or shared: the word that matters most
Two listings can both say "1 Gbps unmetered" and deliver very different things.
- Shared (or "up to") 1 Gbps. The port is 1 Gbps, but the uplink behind it is shared with other customers. At busy times you get whatever is left.
- Guaranteed 1 Gbps. The capacity behind the port is provisioned for you to use all of it, all the time.
NexonHost's store labels the port on the Xeon builds "1Gbps Unmetered (Guaranteed)". If a listing does not say which kind it is, ask before you sign. It is the question that tells you whether the advertised speed is a commitment or only a ceiling.
What fits on one gigabit
A useful planning rule is to size for peaks at about 80% of payload capacity, leaving room for retransmissions and bursts. That gives roughly 750 Mbps of usable throughput on a 1 Gbps port. The rates below are Apple's average video bit rates plus 128 kbit/s of stereo AAC audio, inside the 32 to 160 kbit/s Apple recommends.
| Workload | Rate per viewer | Concurrent viewers at ~750 Mbps |
|---|---|---|
| 540p video (Apple's default HLS variant) | 2.1 Mbps | ~355 |
| 720p video (Apple's top 720p H.264 variant) | 4.6 Mbps | ~165 |
| 1080p video (Apple's top 1080p H.264 variant) | 7.9 Mbps | ~95 |
For downloads the useful number is time. Delivering a 50 GB game update to 1,000 players is 50 TB, which takes about 4.9 days of a fully saturated gigabit. If that has to happen in a launch-day afternoon, you need a bigger port or a CDN.
When to move up from 1 Gbps
A common rule of thumb is to plan the upgrade once the 95th percentile of your busier direction passes about 70% of the port. By then the busiest 5% of the month, about 36 hours, runs close to the ceiling, and users feel slow-downs before the monthly average looks alarming. The step-ups on the Xeon builds, all unmetered and guaranteed:
| Port | Monthly port price | Ceiling per 30 days | Port price per TB |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 Gbps | €50 (included in €129) | 324 TB | €0.15 |
| 2 Gbps | €100 | 648 TB | €0.15 |
| 5 Gbps | €360 | 1,620 TB | €0.22 |
| 10 Gbps | €500 | 3,240 TB | €0.15 |
| 20 Gbps | €1,000 | 6,480 TB | €0.15 |
Each port price replaces the €50 gigabit, so on the entry build the monthly totals are €129, €179, €439, €579 and €1,079. Two things stand out. The port price per terabyte is the same €0.15 at every step except 5 Gbps, so scaling up costs no more per terabyte. And 5 Gbps is the expensive step: if you have outgrown 2 Gbps, 10 Gbps costs only €140 a month more than 5 Gbps and doubles the capacity. When a 10Gbps dedicated server makes sense covers when the move to 10 Gbps pays off.
Questions to ask before you buy
- Is the port guaranteed or shared?
- Is there a fair-use clause, and what number triggers it?
- Is inbound traffic counted, or only outbound?
- Can you upgrade the port without reinstalling or moving the server?
- Is DDoS mitigation included, and does attack traffic count against anything?
Get all five answers in writing before you order.
Where to start
A 1Gbps unmetered dedicated server from NexonHost starts at €129 a month on the 20-core Xeon build, with a guaranteed port, 40 Gbps of DDoS mitigation and one IPv4 address included, in any of twelve cities across Europe and the US. Every build, and how far its port can scale, is on the unmetered dedicated servers page; port prices are shown when you configure a server in the store. If the gigabit is already the bottleneck, the 2 Gbps option is the cheapest next step; beyond that, see the 10Gbps dedicated server range.
Prices and port options are as of 2 October 2026. Check the store's configure step for current port prices.
Sources
- HLS Authoring Specification for Apple Devices, Apple, item 1.25 bit-rate table (H.264: 2,000 kbps at 960×540, 4,500 kbps at 1280×720, 7,800 kbps at 1920×1080) item 1.32 (2,000 kbps default variant) and the stereo audio table (AAC 32 to 160 kbit/s). Retrieved 2 October 2026.
- Bandwidth billing, DigitalOcean documentation: Droplet outbound transfer beyond the pooled allowance billed at $0.01 per GiB. Retrieved 2 October 2026.
- NexonHost store configurator, Xeon builds: port options and prices. Retrieved 2 October 2026.
- Computed: 1 Gbps ÷ 8 = 125 MB/s; × 2,592,000 s = 324 TB; TCP payload efficiency 1,448 ÷ 1,538 = 94.1%; 100 TB = 93,132 GiB × $0.01 ≈ $931; 50 TB × 8 ÷ 941 Mbps ≈ 425,000 s ≈ 4.9 days; port price per TB = monthly port price ÷ TB at line rate; server totals = €79 base + port price; viewers ≈ 753 Mbps ÷ (video bit rate + 0.128 Mbps audio); busiest 5% of a 30-day month = 36 hours.
