Pulsed Media Traffic Limits

Traffic limits on Pulsed Media seedboxes hold your plan's post-cap speed after the monthly cap: 100 Mbps unless your plan lists a lower one. There is no further step-down: past the cap, external upload stays at that speed until the throttle releases (see the cooldown below). The cap rarely binds in normal use.

For the general meaning of bandwidth as a concept, see Bandwidth on Wikipedia.

Plan speeds

Each Pulsed Media product line has a different network port speed:

Plan	Port speed	Shared between
V1000	1 Gbps	~10 users
M1000	1 Gbps	~15 users
M10G	10 Gbps	~12 users
Dragon-R	20 Gbps	~26 users

Port speed is the maximum the server's network interface can handle. Actual throughput depends on how many users are active at the same time, how many peers the swarm has, and whether the remote end can keep up.

On a 10 Gbps link with a well-seeded torrent, a 50 GB file can finish in about 40 seconds. On a 1 Gbps link, the same file takes about seven minutes.

Traffic calculation

Traffic is calculated on a rolling 30-day window, not by calendar month and not by service renewal date. The counter looks at the last 30 days of transfer.

There is no "reset day" where your counter drops to zero. A large upload on day 1 still counts on day 29, and drops off on day 31.

Internal vs. external traffic

Pulsed Media distinguishes between two kinds of traffic, and only one counts toward your cap:

Internal — traffic between Pulsed Media servers within the same datacenter. Multi-box workflows, storage offload, archive sync between your seedbox and a Pulsed Media storage box. Internal traffic is not counted toward your monthly cap at all. Not throttled, not metered, not capped.
External — traffic to and from the public internet. This is what the monthly cap measures and what the throttle applies to.

Torrent traffic with peers on the public internet is external. SFTP downloads from your seedbox to your home connection are external. Internal moves between PM-owned servers are not.

How the throttle works

The throttle has a single shape: full plan speed up to your monthly cap, then a flat post-cap speed.

Below 100% of cap

Full plan port speed (e.g. 10 Gbps on M10G), shared with other users on the same server.

Past the cap — flat post-cap speed

Cross your monthly cap and external upload is held at your plan's post-cap speed: 100 Mbps unless your plan lists a lower one. It does not step down further, however far past the cap you go.

For a 500 GB plan: full speed up to 500 GB used, then the post-cap speed. For a 1 TB plan: full speed up to 1 TB used, then the post-cap speed.

Sustained at 100 Mbps, that is still roughly 30 TB of transfer a month.

Cooldown — three days under, then release

When usage drops back under your cap, the throttle does not lift immediately. Three consecutive days under-cap, then it releases. The reason is the rolling 30-day window: a one-day dip below cap could oscillate the account in and out of throttled state as the window shifts. Three days is enough to confirm the usage pattern actually changed.

Day four morning, you're back at full speed.

Downloads aren't throttled

The throttle applies to external upload only. Pulling new content into your seedbox stays full speed at every stage.

"Unlimited" plans (100 TB fair use)

Plans labeled "unlimited" bandwidth operate under a 100 TB fair use threshold over the rolling 30-day window. No ramp applies here either.

For reference: 100 TB of upload in 30 days requires averaging about 300 Mbps around the clock.

Speed vs. transfer

Term	Measures	Unit	Example
Port speed	How fast data moves	Gbps / Mbps	"10 Gbps link"
Traffic / data transfer	How much data moved	TB / GB	"50 TB this month"
Throughput	Actual speed achieved	MB/s	"850 MB/s sustained"

Network speeds are measured in bits per second (Gbps, Mbps). File sizes and transfer totals are measured in bytes (GB, TB). 1 byte = 8 bits. A 1 Gbps link transfers about 125 MB/s at maximum.

Checking your usage

Your current traffic usage is visible in the PMSS web panel. The welcome page shows your rolling 30-day traffic total and a usage graph. From SSH, the userShowLimits command prints the same 30-day upload total next to your limit.

When the throttle is active, the panel shows the current effective Mbps cap, with a link to upgrade your bandwidth allowance for more headroom.

Policy update — May 2026

The single-shape policy replaced a multi-stage scheme in May 2026. The previous configuration stacked a pre-cap sliding throttle (75–100% of cap), a five-tier overage table, and a separate progressive ramp. Three layers, hard to predict, easy to misread. The May rollout first replaced them with one linear ramp from 100 Mbps down to a 5 Mbps floor. On 10 May 2026 that ramp was removed as well, because some of our services promise 100 Mbps unlimited after the traffic cap. Since then the post-cap speed is flat: 100 Mbps, or your plan's own post-cap speed if it lists a lower one.

A documentation commit on 2025-09-27 had broken throttle enforcement fleet-wide for seven months. Comment lines added to the config template described the placeholders by name; the renderer substituted them alongside the real ones, producing invalid config. The state files showed correct caps. The kernel never got the rules. The cap rarely binds in normal use, so the gap stayed quiet. Both the renderer bug and the multi-stage policy were addressed in the May 2026 rollout.