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North American Network Operators Group Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical Re: 95th Percentile = Lame
> The reality is that a customer who sustains a full DS3 24 hours a day 7 > days a week costs about as much to service as a customer who sustains a full > DS3 only a smaller portion of the time. Plus, when there is excess bandwidth > available, it makes sense to let the customer have it. Of course yes. Because if you uase line 5% of your time, ISP must maintain enougph bandwidth 100% of the time. And I dues not know examples when this 5% of the high load was out of peak hours. So, they are saying _we maintain backbone to allow you work 95% of the time, and please pay for it in full_. UUnet provid[ed] (really) berst ISP service I ever saw from American (not European, they are much better in quality and responsibility) company, and it is just because of their smart billing schemas. > > > It seems like quite an irrational settlement model. Why not simply bill > > for every bit that crosses your network? There certainly is a per-bit > > cost. > > Because bits moved at peak time cost you more than bits moved off-peak. You > have to design and build a network to tolerate your maximum sustained > bandwidth, not your average bandwidth. Plus, you want to reward customers > who can and do move bulk transfers to off-peak times. > > Which would you rather have, a customer who sustains 1Mbps 24 hours a day > seven days a week or a customer who sustains 100Mbps every Monday from 2PM > to 3PM? Do you think the cost per-bit is the same? > > > Or maybe not. Perhaps the electrical suppliers here in California > > should bill in the 95th percentile, and cite the Internet as a rational > > example. > > It's a shame that the current electricity metering and billing system has > no way to reward those people who shift some of their load off-peak. If it > did, the on-peak rate could be raised while leaving the off-peak rate the > same. This would help ease the crisis significantly while having much less > impact on poorer people who can't afford to pay 40% more for their > electricity. > > Imagine if electrical companies could bill based upon actual cost (minute > to minute). Imagine if people could set their meter to turn off different > circuits if the rate exceeded different amounts. Do you realize how much of > the problem this would solve? > > Yes, Internet billing is still in its infancy. Billing based upon peak > available bandwidth is obviously not right as it punishes people for leaving > room for growth and needlessly slows down their transfers when bandwidth is > available. Billing based just upon bits moved is obviously not right as it > fails to reward load leveling and makes it too hard to leverage existing > customers to get future ones. > > I can say from experience that 95th percentile billing seems to happen to > produce the right number. > > DS > >
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