Low Cost Tube Bandwidth

The cost of putting fiber is fixed and now days paid thanks to all the chapter 11 we had after the dot com crash. So every time say L3 want add more usage all they have to do is lit more fiber or replace the optics (start location, end location and every 40km or 160km telco huts) and they go from 10gb to 40gb to 160gb, you get the idea.

Jay

how much is over charge if I go over 100 meg (I see that the port speed is 1g)

Since this thread is of great interest to me (and is a great thread in and of itself...a lot of good input from some very knowledgeable people, esp. k0nr4d), here is my $.02


I feel compelled to point out the inaccuracy [imho] of this [alleged] claim. Brad, I respect both your tenure in the industry, as it is greater than mine, and Mojo's excellent reputation. However, I disagree with this [alleged] statement on the grounds that I believe it is more of an appeal to your favored price point for a sale, than the actual truth. I don't think that needing $4-6 bandwidth is a sign of being in dire straits at all. Different sites monetize at different rates, and some cut it pretty slim. When you're pushing tens of gigabits, and bandwidth cost comprises >%90 of your total operational expense, lowering that bandwidth cost is directly proportional to money-in-pocket.

Thank you, DH. You rock!

I agree %100.

Here too. I've personally setup port-channeled servers that pushed 2gbps.

Feel free to ICQ me to see how my offering compares, too.

95th percentile is basically how your providers are billed, almost exclusively. The other option for providers is if course a full link (e.g. 10 gigabit) for X. Most providers usually will opt for the 95th percentile as it lets you cheaply have additional capacity, without paying for it sitting there unused. For example, I could have 2x10GE uplinks to level3, each pushing 5gbit and pay for the actual usage of 10Gbit/sec vs. having to have 2 10gbit links, one maxed out, and the other essentially unused while paying for the full 20gbit.

This also works for you as well, it's how a provider can provider you a gige or 100mbit line, and bill you for a fraction of it. Your host having the extra capacity for you to use above your committed data rate, does not come free in terms of internal infrastructure and transit/peering links to other providers. Thus, average billing (otherwise known as per-GB billing, the math is identical) incurs substantial risk for a host - what happens when a user maxes out their gige for a single hour during each day, but has zero usage otherwise? Via average billing they would be billed for nearly nothing, but you still had to have a full gigabit of capacity for them - obviously taking a rather substantial loss. Again, a numbers game

That explains *why* 95th percentile is used. Hopefully I can explain the math behind it concisely. My favorite way to try to describe it's intent to folks, is it is "average peak utilization" of a given link. The number was found to largely capture the actual rate used on a day to day basis, during a given customer's peak times - while allowing for extraneous bursting to not be billed (so if you hit a full gigabit for 4 hours one day, and you otherwise are at around 200mbit during your daily peaks, you will be billed for that 200mbit, not the full gige).

The math works like so. Imagine you have 30 days in a month. 10% of this figure is 3 days, so we have some nice round numbers to work with. Lets say I take an average usage rate for each day.

So, I have 30 "samples" of your average daily usage. I then look at this data, and throw out the 3 highest days of usage. The next highest sample (day) is what determines your billing rate. This lets you have 3 days of "free" bursting, and you pay for the next highest daily average after those 3.

95th percentile for billing works exactly the same way. Simply swap out the 30 samples (days) with 3600 samples (5 minute averages), and the top 10% of those with 5%. In a provider billing case, we are throwing away the top 5% of those 5 minute averages, and then billing you on the next highest 5 minute average usage sample. This equates to roughly 1.5 days of "free" usage. So, if you get slashdotted one day out of the month, you will not be billed for your quadruple usage. If you get slashdotted for 5 days of the month, you will.

It sounds somewhat complicated at first, but once you become familiar with it, it's not so bad. In fact, it's pretty amazing how accurate it really is at getting to the "average daily peak usage" number I mentioned at first.

Hope that helps

SnakeDoctor - yep, you understand it fully. Let me know if you have further questions.

Peace,

-Phil

$8/mbps

If this is a worry, we have no problem implementing a cap, at any level. For example, if you want to commit to 100mbps, want to be able to realize growth, but don't want to be liable for a 600bmps 12-hour spike, we could just commit you to 100mps, and cap you at 150mbps.

Just some food for thought.

Phil, my hats off to you. My fingers hurt just thinking about typing all that. :P

I emailed Andy over the weekend and got a pricing quote at around $14/megabit, definitely not as competitive as I had hoped.
WG

Sean, please contact us on ICQ or via email. I'm sure we can work something out in your favor.

thanks for the explanation Phil. I think I'm a bit closer to understanding 95th Percentile now. Your right it will be a case of actually getting the bill and working with it more to feel at home with it.

Phil seems to offer a good price ($6/meg).

i have unmanaged single xeon quad core 4gb ram, 2x500gb sata 7200rpm and 100mbps unmetered at $500 per month server. if you can get me managed server for the same or better price, please contact me on icq.

WG,

I'm certain there was a misunderstanding at some point. Contact Andy again, or myself with your needs, and we'll develop a solution in the $6-7 range, most likely.

I suggest Choopa - they have excellent 24/7 service and their billing is a dream!

If you want very cheap but non-managed, check out LeaseWeb.

Good luck with that