HostDime’s dedicated server and colocation accounts are metered and billed on an Mbit scale normalized on the 95th Percentile billing standard. HostDime’s bandwidth quotas are in gigabyte (GB) format while the accounting is performed in Mbit/95th Percentile calculatuon. This post will educate and help clarify the Mbit/95th Percentile bandwidth billing for clients who have paid overages or have questions about the calculations.
How is 95th Percentile Bandwidth Billing Calculated?
Depending on which dedicated or colocation server package you order, a 10Mbit, 100Mbit, or 1000Mbit (1Gigabit) connectivity uplink port will be connected to your server. Most end-users are familiar with paying for what they use on a per-unit or per-use basis, however, 95th Percentile rates do not follow this standard. This method of billing is beneficial to HostDime clients as opposed to GB usage billing, which is based on total transfer during the month. The 95th Percentile standard tracks bandwidth at peak utilization and then ignores the top 5% of this peak for billing purposes.
Bandwidth consumption is a calculated value. HostDime’s bandwidth system checks your server’s usage every 5 minutes at the connectivity uplink port and collects that data as a ‘sample’. This ‘sample’ is stored in a database for later usage calculation. The samples which are taken from the network switch port which services your equipment (on 5 minute intervals) are added together to provide the 5 minute sampling totals. These totals are provided by the network in bytes and then are translated into kilobytes (1024 bytes) and subsequently to megabytes (1024 kilobytes) for a more accurate, human-readable figure. The megabyte figure, once translated, is divided by the number of seconds that have passed while gathering the sample to find the total amount of bandwidth that has entered and left your server during that time span.
By this point, raw data figures have been translated into throughput values- Megabits per second, or mbps (Mbit). Throughput values from the corresponding samples are then stored in a database and plotted on a graph for later use. At the end of each month, the sampled throughput values, which are based on the 5 minute samples, are all listed out and sorted from highest to lowest and the top 5% of the readings (the highest 5% of the values) are thrown out to get the ‘95th Percentile Usage Reading’.
What Does All This Mean?
Since we sample your usage every 5 minutes, HostDime techs can average the totals and post the result as a 5 minute usage point on your usage graph (displayed in ‘Mbit’ and accessible via Core). Over the course of the month, we will continue to plot the 5 minute usage averages, which total about 8,640 points plotted on the graph. Then the top 5 percent of your usage, or 432 graphed points, is thrown out! Your billable usage is determined based upon the highest remaining usage plotted on the graph. If your usage is equal to or lower than your committed bandwidth after the top 5% has been removed, you will not receive any additional billing.
Any usage over your account’s allotted limit will be billed at the appropriate rate of $20 per mbps per HostDime’s Terms of Service.
How is 95th Percentile Billing Beneficial for HostDime Clients?
As many of today’s websites have irregular traffic patterns, Mbit bandwidth accounting is the most liberal and forgiving for sudden increases and spikes in usage. As mentioned, we take the total of all the samples gathered during the month for your server and completely eliminate the top 5% of those samples. This is perfect for those of you who operate sites such as blogs and eCommerce sites. We know that a popular blog post, new product release, and/or having a part of your site listed on Reddit can briefly and quickly skyrocket access to your server. We understand this and do not think that you should be penalized for brief spikes in your site’s access.
GB Measurement | Mbit Measurement Conversation
1,000 GB = about 3.0 Mbit
1,500 GB = about 4.5 Mbit
2,000 GB = about 6.0 Mbit
3,000 GB = about 10.0 Mbit
5,000 GB = about 15.0 Mbit
10,000 GB = about 30.0 Mbit
20,000 GB = about 60.0 Mbit
1 Mbit is roughly equivalent to 325GB of sustained usage over a 30 day period.
If you have any questions, comments, or concerns please open a ticket in our Help Desk so that one of our Dedicated Server Specialists can assist you.
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Jared Smith is HostDime’s Content Marketer. Follow him on Twitter.