Can someone explain to me how the 95th %ile charging is calculated?
As far as I understand it is to do with charging for bandwidth in Mb/s...

Also some providers are charging different rates for europe and international traffic. I assume this is because they will send your traffic down different carriers depending on its destination. Why can it not all go down the european cariers and then get routed somewhere else down the line?

I am quite new to all this and was just wondering how all this works...

Thanks

In a calendar month - they take the top 5% of all your readings off, and you pay what the next reading is.

5% of a month is 30 hours , so effectively you could only pay for 1 mbit, but BURST to 100mbit for 30 hours, and then still only pay for 1mbit.

if u went over that 30 hours by just 5 minutes - youd get charged for 100mbit!!!

Generally most transit is charged in the 95% way!

Check out this site... http://www.seanadams.com/95/

Thanks BCRob and wubwob for your help. I am looking at co-locating a server and this might workout cheaper :)

95% billing is a horror story waiting to happen, and I've heard just about all of them.

Go with a dedicated bandwidth pipe. It's cheaper, and not worth the risk.

Let's say;
Your average usage is 500KBps.
Let me give you a scenario; Your machine gets hacked, or attacked by a DDOS and pegs-out to 10MBps for 40 hours.

You're now getting billed for 10MBps instead of your typical 500KBps per second.


Do the math there; and it's really not worth the risk.

With colocation, unless you purchase a management solution, the provider is not going to care to hear "Well, my machine got hacked." It's your responsibility to maintain and secure the machine, so there's no valid excuse, in this event.

I hadn't thought about ddos attacks! If I were paying per gb of transfer wouldn't I still have a very high bill anyway if I were hacked?

It depends on your ISP and how they deal with DOS attacks.

I believe MOST have a policy whereby you can contact them and get it blocked - and therefor not charged.

If you only tell them about the doss a few days later, they might have a hard time believing you!

Different bandwidth measurements are used in different situations.

If you have high bandwidth requirements and need the ability to burst the 95% percentile is a good idea.

I agree with what webworkz is saying - if you DO go with 95% percentile , keep an eye on your usage all the time - you dont want to be unexpectantly charged!

The only option we run for 95% is still under a pinch. If you're running a 1MBps line, and for some reason claim to require the ability to burst to 100MBps, something's wrong.

There are very few reasons that a 99MBps burst should be required, even during large backup processes. I'm not saying this doesn't apply in some cases; but certainly not in the case of a single tower/rackmount dedicated/colo server.

Precisely backup purposes is what 95% measurement is good for.

You can buy 1mbit commit, and then say every night you bursted for 1 hour @ 100mbit (around 40gb worth), then at the end of the month you have bursted at 100mbit for 30 hours and still only have to pay for 1mbit.

1mbit, and you just transfered 1200gb a month! Thats a bargain!

A large shoutcast stream i run that draws huge listeners on the weekends bursts to 70mbit , but not for very long, then during the week its pretty silent, im guessing 95% measurement would suit me pretty good. (atm paying for GB used)

Why not just use XO, it's cheap, no worries anyway.

Whats XO?

Heard of TLLHOST?

50 GB transfer $5 Thats $32/Mbps