Hey, I was wondering how you guys thought a capped line compared to charging per GB.

I am looking around, and http://www.maxim.net and http://www.tera-byte.com stand out from the crowd, but am I mistaken? They both cap the line, and the prices seem great, while most hosts are charging $3/GB (I know it can get quite a bit cheaper).

Although a T1 (1.5 mbps) can theoretically do nearly 500 GB of transfer in a month, if you don't want the peak hours to be slow, I figure this translates into realistically doing about 200-250 GBs of transfer in a month.

From your guys' experience, does this sound about right? If it is, then Maxim and TB still look really good to me.

As long your NOC measure the bandwith usage on actual bytes transfered, you'd better go with charging per GB method.
But if they charge you with 95%ile rule or average method while on the other hand you have limited budget, you'd better go with capped line method.

I saw people refer to that terminology in other posts but I don't understand what exactly that is?

NOC = ?
95%ile rule / average method = ?

So are you basically saying if it is the exact equivalent of a T1, you think per GB would be better? But if they do this other method, you can use 2 mbps as long as the other half of the time you are using 1 mbps (assuming you want to pay for 1.5mbps).

Does anyone know which method Maxim and TB charge? I assumed the former.

Oh, and a realize per GB is a lot better, but it is also a lot more (yes, I am on a tight budget, so a few hundred dollars makes a big difference to me).

Maxim charges $340 for 1.5 mbps. If my estimate is correct, and I need 1.5 mbps to get 200 GB of transfer in a month without seeing a slow down during the daily peak, I would have to pay $600 at $3/GB.

It boils down to how many gigs can be transferred realistically, no?

NOC = Network Operations Center

I guess bandwidth and transfer could be expl;ained like this (short explanation):

Two methods: Capped/Burstable.
Capped: limited to a certain speed.
Burstable: not limited to a certain speed.

Burstable divided into two methods: Average/95 percentile.
Average: billed as the average of your traffic (spikes and all).
95 Percentile: similar, yet you are billed at the highest speed you needed that month, minus the top 5% for the whole month. Where this hurts is if you were to get very heavy traffic the last week of the billing month, you'd be billed as if you were using the full speed all month long (minus the top 5%).

Ah ok, thanks Chicken!

Well I am pretty sure Maxim and TB are straight capped, anyone wanna throw out some numbers of how many gigs they think a T1 can realistically do in a month? (not slow at peak times)

On a very rough average 400gigs. I don't know, I'm I right Charles?