Moose, you know that I like and have always respected you... but did you read that one sentence and NOTHING else that I said? Come on. Missing the part about how pricing is usually very similar? The part where I said that people shouldn't shop based on pricing alone? Missing the basic concept that 95th percentile isn't a measurement of total bandwidth that was used but rather a measurement of a client's near-peak utilization during a billing period?
Irresponsible, innacurate? Well, I suppose either interpretation is possible based on how you interpret everything that I'm saying. But full of shit? Give me a fucking break. Did you wake up on the wrong side of the bed or what?
Obviously if a host has extremely low pricing per megabit for 95th percentile billing then all bets are off.
Fundamentally what I said is true: the purpose of 95th percentile is to measure costs associated with clients that have high bursts versus those that do not. The purpose is absolutely to measure and charge for peak utilization and nothing else. Conversely, average billing does no such thing. The metric that average billing is based on does not allow a host to easily pay himself for the bandwidth that he "has to have open" but can't ever actually sell.
Otherwise, every host would all bill on average because it comes closest to measuring what actual utilization was for any given period. Plus, the 'average' billing model is the easiest for clients to understand conceptually. I've never had a client inquire about hosting services that was surprised by a bill that was "on average" from his previous host - only inquiries that have been shocked by 95th percentile billing from their previous host.
Like I said, they're both valid business models. If anything, I'm at most marginally inaccurate. Conceptually what I'm trying to point out here is very similar to an analogy we could draw to everyone's water bills. Basically, we all get billed for the water that we use - much like average billing. If we were billed on 95th percentile for water, for many of us it would be like getting a bill based on running the sprinkler, dishwasher, washing mashine, shower and a faucet 95% of the time. LOL
Personally, I think billing on average definitely favors the client perspective - it sure as shit doesn't benefit the host. As we both know, all large hosts either buy fixed pipe or 95th percentile from their upstreams - even I don't buy on average. Show me a place in the country where I can buy 500 megabit or a gigabit on average billing and I'll move my hosting company there!
Why don't you go back and re-read my posts before you take what I've said out of context again. Or, after all this, do you still think that I'm blowing smoke up people's asses?
Brad