We're starting a little co-lo/web hosting company and I'm wondering what is the most popular method of billing? Per GB or per Mbps?

How do the two equal each other?

How many GB's/per month = Mbps (I realize this will fluctuate with how many days are in the month). What formula or calculator do you us for your billing?

Thanks for your input.

Jason Stevens

I bill GB on servers and Mbps on Colo.

They're two different animals and customers.

You colo competition is Level3, Qwest and they bill Colo + Mbps

Servers your competition is RackShack, RackSpace and they bill GB.

Customers like apples to apples comparisons.

I just want to note, again, that I'm new to this. heh.

So what I'm wondering would be how you justify the cost of GB vs Mbps to what your paying?

Figure I'm paying say 250/Mbps. How many GB's could be downloaded from a site in 30 days and stay with in the 1/Mbps range? I guess to put it a little bit more to the point, at a 1 Mbps average over 30 days, how much could a person download?

30 days = 2592000 seconds

2592000 seconds X 1Mbps = 2592000Mb

2592000Mb = 324000MB (right?)

324000MB = 324GB

$.78/GB would be cost at 250Mbps?

So a person who averages 1Mbps over a 30 day period should have put out roughly 324GB? I just want to make sure that I'm right on that.

Thanks for the help.

-Jason

Originally posted by patmccroch


So a person who averages 1Mbps over a 30 day period should have put out roughly 324GB? I just want to make sure that I'm right on that.



If they did average 1Mbps over 30 days then yes that is what they did put out. Thing is most people will spend some time at 2Mbps and some times at 1/2Mbps. Hence why some hosts charge 95%

95%?

we are using mrtg to monitor our bandwidth and it takes an over all average of the month's usage. would you suggest that method or can you suggest another piece of software/method to use?

The 95th percentile rule is something like this:
If you are creating a very constant flow of data, say 1.9Mbps - 2.1 Mbps than you're charged for 2Mbps, maybe a little more.
But if you use 0.5Mbps during the night and 3Mbps during the day, they're not going to charge you for 1.75Mbps (the average) but for, let's say, 2.6Mbps. You can do a search on that. You'll find tens of discussions on this matter.

Now in your case: If your bandwidth provider (ie. your datacenter) uses the 95th percentile rule, it's not funny if one of your clients uses 10Mbps during one day and 0Mbps during the rest of the month. You'd charge him for the 0.3Mbps average and your bw provider is certainly gonna charge you more than that :)
So you'll just have to ask them exactly how they charge you :)