Please Help!!! Is My Hosting Company Ripping Me Off????
 

This is what's in the contract i have with them:
--------------------------------
Monthly Service Fees

400 Gigs transferred
(95th Percentile Monthly Average)
$1.00 a gig overages with button
32 IP?s
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They are charging me on the 95th percentile.....
IS this wrong? I was told yesterday that it is, and the company i'm using is famous for it........

Please let me know what you think, I want to call them up and demand the terms to be changed to "Monthly Average" instead of "monthly 95% average" .......


Thanks in advance,

Jim

Let me guess xxxwebhosting.com correct? Paying $1.00 a gig is big time over charge IMO.

I won't say who is it, it's just one of my hosts...... I do not want to bash anyone in particular..... UNLESS they are scamming me

If you are with a host that charges on 95th percentile, then it's correct.... But any host charging on 95th% is fucking you anyway:Graucho , However, if you agreed to it when you signed up, then it's your own fault. As far as the extra gig charge, that's based on what they charge, and I'm sure it's posted on their site???

The per gig over price has been lowered to 0.75 for me now.... Do most hosting companies charge on the 95 percentile average?

I know that it's my fault.... but i also know that all i need to do is call them up (if they are ripping me off) and demand to be charged on the regular average....... or i'll pick up my bags, and leave...

i have to disagree,, i live 95 percentile

during a month your server could spike really high for sometime

lot of things could of happen,, some leaching software, hot linked, spam relayed

stuff thats beyond your normal,, with 95 percentile you don't have to worry bout that

I just went to your web page and noticed I was correct. Those guys are nice over there but overage IMO. I would only pay for what you use. Never pay anything over .60 a GIG

so should i ask to be figured on the regular average from now on?

What difference would it make if i had a bandwidth drain for awhile.... like say i'm on the hun...

Where are you getting .60c per gig? I'm paying $2.75/gig right now!

I'd even say don't pay over .30/gig and get your files protected. :winkwink:

talk to dave over at www.ReliableServers.Net he has some nice per gig plans 50 cents a gig or someshit

If you pay on 95th% your getting screwed. You must be paying on monthly average out if your doing anything more then a megabit. If your doing less, then you should be just paying for the actual gigs you use.

Hey man! Check these people out!

Best host I have ever worked with.

Stupid question of the day: WTF is 95th Percentile Monthly Average?

Thx,
Ray

Hey Jim...

I think you should call your host and see if this is not just a miscommunication somewhere.....I think you will find that you might just be misunderstanding something....

Here is why I believe this...

Your post above is contradicting itself.... First, there is no such thing as 95th Percentile Monthly Average ...it is either 95th -OR- Monthly Average. Second, when you pay on 95th you are paying for Mbps (or transfer rate) when you pay for 400Gigs you are paying for Gigs (or throughput)....the two terms are diametrically opposed.

This is why I think that you could be just misunderstanding something in your bill.

I would hate to see you get pissed off with your host if it is just a misunderstanding.

Hope this helps!


--T

Let me get this right, they take your 95th% and then figure GB based on that number, and then charge you 75 cents per GB over that ?? I don't see how you can figure GB used with a 95th %, the 95% is basically 95% of your 5 min bandwidth readings from the router or switch. Just to give you an example customer A has a 95% reading of 59420.38 kb/sec, but his average out on mrtg is 36795.2 kB/s, so if your traffic is like his you would be paying 38% more for your traffic when using the 95% versus the average out. That seems very confusing to me, and I do this shit all day long :1orglaugh


Tim
:Graucho

I thought you said "Diabolically Opposed". God damn I am still recovering from yesterday.

I think T nailed this on the head. Something is bass ackwards.

Here is a screen cap of my mrtg stats:
<img src="http://www.nebraskacoeds.com/stats1.jpg">
<img src="http://www.nebraskacoeds.com/stats2.jpg">


They just use the Gigabyte equivalent at the top.... for their figure...

Comments?

hmmm..

What they are doing is taking the 95%, saying that 1Mbit is = to 320 Gigabytes, and charging you for that.

The thing is.. it's not true. To get true GB Billing, you need to charge by the ACTUAL number of gigabytes transferred.

What they are doing is taking your peak bandwidth usage, knocking off 5 percent, and saying that you transferred that much bandwidth all month not taking into account the valleys.

This must be a dedicated server, yes? Why not just convert to Per Mbit Billing. You push enough.

Stupid question #2: Can someone answer this?

Based on the graph.... what would be a safe amount of dedicated Mbit/sec to ask for?


Like would 5Mbit be ok?

95 percentile basically is:

Ok, take your highest amount of b/w used at any 5 min interval... (Your PEAK... or the highest "mountain" on the graph) and multiply that by 0.95.... that will give you your 95 percentile Mbit/sec then you multiply that by some arbitrary number... like 340 (which accounts for how many gigs would be transfered over a 1 Mbit connection over the month)

And there is your bill


I think it sucks actually.... Basically i'm paying for much more b/w than i'm using...

Smegma....I agree 100% with your assesment of what they are doing. I also agree that this guy would be better served being on a true transfer billing as long as he thinks his bandwidth is going to remain where it has been for the last two months. I see that over the last year his bandwidth has gone up and down and only he knows what the future is going to hold.


Ray... I can only guess what 95th percentile Monthyl Average is....but if you are asking what a true 95th percentile is then let me see if I can help.....it is kind of hard to explain but I am going to try to make it as simple as possible:

Your server is connected to the internet by a NIC Card (ethernet port). That port can be monitored to see exactly how many megabits per second that is running through it at any given time using a program such as MRTG (there are others but MRTG seems to be an industry standard). The MRTG program calculates a 5 minute average and posts it to a database throughout a whole month, as well as gives you the graphical output that you see above.

So, now the end of the month rolls around and you have 8,640 "plotting points"...meaning there are 8,640 5 minute intervals in a month so you have 8,640 readings.

At this time you simply do a "SORT" to the list of numbers and sort them from the biggest number to the smallest. This will have your largest 5 minute usage for the month at the top and the smallest 5 minute usage at the bottom. (boy I hope this is making sense ;)

Since 5% of 8,640 is 432, you simply take the 433rd plotting point in your sorted list and that is your 95th percentile.

I really hope that I did not confuse you more...


--T

You are paying way too much :Grrrrrr

Hit me up on icq 38681040

if you are tired of your host, feel free to look into switching over to swiftco.net They can give you a better deal and just as good of service that's for sure.


Send an e-mail to hr@swiftdesk, or check out their site http://www.swiftco.net/

Just because you're billing is based on 95th percentile doesn't mean you're getting ripped off, its just a different billing model.

There are a few different ways to figure out your bandwidth billing.

By the gig, you pay a straight up price per gig of raw transfer.

Capped line, you buy say a 10mbps from your host and pay a flat rate for it. Since the line is capped you can't use more than that.

95th percentile, which is what Sweet T tried to explain above. You look at the graph, drop off the top 5% from the graph, and that's the number you pay for. Usually a predetermined $$ per MBPS.

Those of you saying "pay on average". Well the "average" according to this graph is about 3.4mpbs while the 95th percentile is about 5.2mbps.
BUT, if he was paying for bandwidth based on that average number as opposed to the 95th percentile, his price per meg would be much higher, so paying "on average" isn't necessarily cheaper.