I kepp hearing talk about 95%. From what I can gather it has to do with bandwith and it is supposidly a bad thing but thats all I can figure out.

Can anyone explain exactly is meant by this or give me a url that would explain it?

Also does Alabanza use this gauge of bandwidth?

Thanks

There is no accurate way of measuring the amount of data transfer in GB per month to a particular server. So when colocating/going dedicated. The ISP measures the throughput at a particular time every 5 minutes:


15:13:05 server1.dedicatedservercompany.com 10Kb/sec
15:18:05 server1.dedicatedservercompany.com 16Kb/sec
15:23:05 server1.dedicatedservercompany.com 6Kb/sec
15:28:05 server1.dedicatedservercompany.com 19Kb/sec
15:33:05 server1.dedicatedservercompany.com .5Kb/sec
15:38:05 server1.dedicatedservercompany.com 50Kb/sec


At the end of the month it will take the logs for each server (as example above) and find the highest point of bandwidth e.g. 50Kb/Sec it then multiplies this by 60, 60, 24, 30.4 (seconds per minute, mins per hour, hours per day, days per month). Which gives 131328000Kb transfer for month, it converts this from Kilobits (which all bandwidth is measured in, even your 56k modem is only 7Kilobytes/sec) into Kilobytes (divide by 8) which gives 16416000Kilobytes total transfer, which is 16.41GB.

Now they have calculated your bandwidth at 16.41GB they knock 5% off this (divide by 100 times by 95) to give 15.58gb.

Whereas if they were averaging your bandwidth out (16Kb/sec is the average(total divide by 6)) and calculate that into GB it's only 5.2GB.

There is very very few people who benefit from 95% method, unless your traffic is constant (very constant) day in day out without any spikes in tcp/ip traffic. What happens when someone transfers a file from a T3 to your server (and it only last 7 seconds) you're charged for the month (minus 5%)

Jeremy,

Firstly Alabanza doesn't use it, I can tell you that much. They offer you 50GB of data transfer per month when you lease a server from them, and you pay extra per GB for overages. How much depends on the deal you cut with them.

The following is copied and pasted from Silicon Valley Web Hosting's FAQ:

The "95th percentile" based billing is sort of a hybrid between the previous two billing methods. Throughout the month your incoming and outgoing bandwidth is graphed in five minute intervals. Every five minutes your transfer is totaled for the previous five minutes and an average transfer rate is derived. From that data a graph is created to show you your "real-time" bandwidth usage.

For example, if during the five minute interval you had 300 megabytes of outgoing transfer and 30 megabytes of incoming transfer your average outgoing transfer rate would be 8 megabits and your average incoming transfer rate would be 0.8 megabits. For reference, 8 megabits equals 1 Megabyte of data transferred every second (multiplied out for 300 seconds -- five minutes -- you get a total of 300 Megabytes of data transferred).

After the five minute samples are calculated the lowest of the two samples (usually the incoming data sample) is tossed out and the highest of the two samples (usually the outgoing data sample) is kept. This in effect gives you free incoming data transfer since the smaller of the data samples is tossed out completely.

At the end of 30 days we have 8,640 samples. At that time the top 5% of the samples (432 samples -- 36 hours worth) are tossed out. You are then billed on the highest remaining sample. This gives you 36 hours of transfer for free (as well as already having half of the samples tossed out).

Personally I find this to be far too complex, and I know other people have strong feelings about it. Just charge me for whatever I used is my preference, but then I find working my own age out to be an overly complex calculation

:homer:

Hope this helps,
Speedie.

Originally posted by JeremyL
I kepp hearing talk about 95%. From what I can gather it has to do with bandwith and it is supposidly a bad thing but thats all I can figure out.

Can anyone explain exactly is meant by this or give me a url that would explain it?

Also does Alabanza use this gauge of bandwidth?

Thanks Alabanza does not use it.

Whether it's a "bad thing" is a matter of opinion. Basically, as opposed to measuring total accumulated transfers over the month, it's a way of measuring your peak bandwidth usage. They then take 95% of that peak, and convert it to a monthly value -- essentially what your transfer total would be if you used 95% of your peak for the entire month.

The confusion -- as well as the now-popular opinion that it's a bad thing -- happens because that conversion leaves you comparing apples and oranges. If a provider using the "95th percentile rule" and one that does not both tell you that you allowed, say, 50 gigs a month they aren't talking about the same thing. If the 95th percentile host tells you that they charge $3/gig if you go over your allotment and the other one tells you that they charge $10/gig, they aren't measuring the same thing so you can't compare the two.

And in fact you'll typically see that the rates, the pure dollar amount "price tags," are lower from the providers who do use the 95th percentile. It doesn't matter, they are different products. If apples are cheaper than oranges, does it mean they are always a better choice?

If your usage were absolutely flat, the 95th percentile rule would work to your advantage. If you have wild peaks it wouldn't work out so well for you.

At the end of the month it will take the logs for each server (as example above) and find the highest point of bandwidth e.g. 50Kb/Sec

THAT SCARES ME ... So the highest SECOND in an entire month, that's what calculates my total bandwidth usage? What if one day there was extrememly higher bandwidth than all other days? I must not understand correctly b/c with a system like that, bandwidth calculations would be far off. What ISPs use it?

You do understand it correctly....and you are also right that if you have 1 day of very high bandwidth usage, you will have a huge bill to pay.


But that is only for hosts that use the 95% percentile rule.....so find somewhere that doesn't use that :)

EWS, you understand the principle fine, but the highest second of the month would be tossed out since it would be in the 5% that gets tossed. As Greg said though, a high usage day will nail you for the month. There is logic to this in that the NOC must provide for that peak usage.

[So the highest SECOND in an entire month, that's what calculates my total bandwidth usage? A single second spike wouldn't be significant because a sample isn't taken every second. In the example quoted above, that second's usage would be included in a five minute sample. If the rest of that five minute period was quiet, that one-second spike would get "diluted" by the other 299 "slow" seconds.

In other words, the measurement isn't of what the transfer rate is at a precise moment every five minutes, it's what the amount transferred was during each five-minute block. Five minutes in the example; other providers may use different periods.
[What if one day there was extrememly higher bandwidth than all other days? Yep, if you're talking about an entire day of extraordinarily high usage, you'd pay based on that rate. Or, more precisely, at the rate of the highest 5-minute block after dropping the highest five percent.

Does anyone have a list of the providers who do use this rule? It would be nice to know so those who oppose it can just totally avoid it when shopping for a host.

Also, if you host or resell for a company who is leasing from a company who uses that rule, does that mean that the rule trickles down to all the accounts under them? If so, that would mean some inaccuracy as far as what those hosts offer, right?

You people are a bit too scared...
Consider the following 4 examples:

First is 95%host.com, which use, you guessed it, the 95% percentil rule. He calculate the average bandwidth once the 5% highest peaks were removed. He also allow you to run your site at a lignting fast speed, you can use as much abndwdith as you want, without any problems. He does charges $3 per extra GB and will usually be a bit more expansive than the other hosts around, but hey... he's the fastest!

Second host is cappedhosting.com. He puts you on a limited line of say, 512 kbps per months which can NEVER be surpassed. The max bandwidth he announce can't really be reached unless your site is running at max capacity all the time. Your site will be fast untill you reched that cap.

Third host is cappedwithbursthosting.com. Similar to the previous host, he also allow burst on the line, which mean that a few seconds of high speed are allowed every minutes or so. You are on a capped line, but can go over it for a short period of time. He will charge by the line, but in fact this is very similar to 95% rule and you stie should be as fast as on 95%. The only difference is that you won't get any over bandwidth fees, but may have a slow site if you go over your CAP for a long time.

The fourth and last host is sharedlinehosting.com. He calculate by the exact GB, charges around $5 extra per GB or more. The problem with this host is that you, along with about 10 other customers, are all sharing the same line. That mean that you can probably burst to 1,5mbpsor more at 3 am in the morning, but may also be limited to much slower speed at peak hours, because all the other servers are using the same bandwidth as you are. Overall cheaper but slower host.

You pick which one you prefer. Fast & expensive or slow & cheap?

None are WORST or BETTER than the other.

I suppose there is actually a fifth then (which is EXACTLY like the fourth you mentioned, but without the bandwidth tracking):

The fifth and last host is sharedlinehosting2.com. The problem with this host is that you, along with about 10 other customers, are all sharing the same line. That mean that you can probably burst to 1,5mbps or more at 3 am in the morning, but may also be limited to much slower speed at peak hours, because all the other servers are using the same bandwidth as you are. Overall cheaper but slower host

Originally posted by Vyper
Also, if you host or resell for a company who is leasing from a company who uses that rule, does that mean that the rule trickles down to all the accounts under them? If so, that would mean some inaccuracy as far as what those hosts offer, right? Inaccuracy? I'm not sure what you mean, but I don't see why the billing method used by the host's provider necessarily has any effect on that host's offerings to its clients.

And it's certainly possible for a host to use a billing method other than the 95th percentile approach even if that's the method that the host's own provider uses.

I'm not saying there would be, I'm just asking if there would be since I don't know. If I were being charged an arm and the leg for something one of my resold accounts is doing, I would maybe think about passing down the rule just like they do with acceptable use policies.

Originally posted by Félix C.Courtemanche
You people are a bit too scared...
...
You pick which one you prefer. Fast & expensive or slow & cheap?

None are WORST or BETTER than the other.

I don't think it's fear - just general questions about the nature of traffic and bandwidth charges. I disagree that "fast & expensive" or "slow & cheap" are the only two categories out there. Having fast connections and being reasonable, price-wise, are not mutually exclusive items.

Originally posted by Vyper
I'm not saying there would be, I'm just asking if there would be since I don't know. If I were being charged an arm and the leg for something one of my resold accounts is doing, I would maybe think about passing down the rule just like they do with acceptable use policies. If you were hosting and paying your provider under the 95th percentile rule, sure, you would be charged if one of your customers had a big spike that pushed your overall usage up. But the point is that you could certainly account for those kinds of charges by building it into any pricing structure you want to use. You wouldn't have to be billing your own customers the same way that you are being billed.

That means just what Annette said. You could offer the fast connections you get but bill for them using an approach that would seem "flatter" to your clients. Basically that might mean in months when your overall usage is flat you'd profit more than you would in those months when your service as a whole included a large spike. In the long run you could still come out fine, and if the 95th percentile rule is developing a bad reputation (undeservably so, in my opinion) you might find marketing easier if you didn't pass it through.

[i]

The fourth and last host is sharedlinehosting.com. He calculate by the exact GB, charges around $5 extra per GB or more. The problem with this host is that you, along with about 10 other customers, are all sharing the same line. That mean that you can probably burst to 1,5mbpsor more at 3 am in the morning, but may also be limited to much slower speed at peak hours, because all the other servers are using the same bandwidth as you are. Overall cheaper but slower host.

You pick which one you prefer. Fast & expensive or slow & cheap?

None are WORST or BETTER than the other. [/B]

This is not a true statement, if a NOC uses the 95% and has 1000 servers then they all burst whne they need and get the bill. Fast and somewhat expensive. If an NOC uses the 50% rule and still has 1000 servers that does not mean they will be slow at all. Both host could have redundant DS-3 lines, the 95% company would of course be using burstable lines and the 50% company has already paid for a full DS-3 line so no matter what they use they get the same bill from their provider. Now both NOC's have the same potential total bandwidth, one os already completely open and paid for(50% or average) , the other pays as they need it (95%).

Lets clarify my statement.

Unless you noticed, this was a _generalisation_. There ARE cheap & fast and expensive & slow hosts EVERYWHERE as well as the other kind. But _generally_ this is how it work. It's simple math, and I am in the business as well, so I have a pretty good idea of how much the bandwidth really cost and what you really can afford.

It all depends on how much the host wants to make to survive. You could most likely find a host with extra GB charged 1$ per gb, a 100$ per month server with 100 GB of transfer on an bandwidth unlimited connection. But the general behavior of a host is whatb I described there. I simply changed the name of a few well known hosting company and described their plans. I di not stated it was the sole and only truth... There is no way to categorize or classify any type of similar company in only 4 category.

I do still believe that it has to do with some lack of reading and fear. This topic has been explained many times already, and seriously, what I said (except the fast & expensive part) is the description of how it work. For sure, your company may be cheaper and faster than what I explained. That was definately not the point of my post.

To clarify the 95th percentile rule of calculating bandwidth, just check out Duster's page that explains it clearly. I have read many post in this thread that do not accurately describe this method.

Here is Duster's page that explains it all:

http://techcellence.net/bandwidth.htm

PS: Hope you don't mind me giving out your page address Duster. :)

Originally posted by tabernack
Here is Duster's page that explains it all:

http://techcellence.net/bandwidth.htm

PS: Hope you don't mind me giving out your page address Duster. :)


Only if it doesn't spike the usage for that day :)