Burstable-Billing

From FiberWiki

95% billing

Burstable billing is a method of measuring bandwidth based on peak utilization. It also allows usage to exceed a specified threshold for brief periods of time without the financial penalty of purchasing a higher commitment from an ISP.

The 95th percentile is a widely used mathematical calculation to evaluate the regular and sustained utilization of a network connection. It is commonly used among all major internet transit and peering networks, as well as datacenters and ISPs for both capacity planning and calculating usage. It roughly means ‘for most of the time this was the throughput on the line’.

The 95th percentile is a good number to use for billing as it can allow the customer throughput bursts without additional financial compensation. Basically the 95th percentile says that 95% of the time, the usage is at or below this amount. Conversely, usage could be above that amount up to 5% of the time.

Bandwidth is measured from the switch or router and recorded in a log file. In most cases this is done every 5 minutes. At the end of the month, the samples are sorted from highest to lowest, and the top 5% (which equal to approximately 36 hours of a 30-day billing cycle) of data is thrown away. The next highest measurement becomes the ‘billable utilization’ for the month.

Based on this model, the top 36 hours (top 5% of 720 hours) of peak traffic is not taken into account when billed for an entire month. Bandwidth could be utilized at a higher rate for up to 65 min a day with no financial penalty.

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Article originally wrote by Wikipedia.org