What does 95th %tile mean?

Fri Apr 20 15:48:06 UTC 2001

I was among the first to get into a dispute with Exodus over the in+out
billing policy.

I prevailed in the dispute because there was inconsistent language in the
service agreement.  We had a DS3 and the agreement was capped at a
certain monthly obligation based on 45 megabits of usage (actually, I
think we paid the maximum at 25 or 30 megabits).  But the in+out calculation
produces a maximum usage level, for a DS3, of 90 megabits.

Rather than change their billing policy, Exodus resolved the dispute by
altering our per-meg transit price.

Transit is a commodity exchanged in a system of free enterprise.  So as
long as you ask the vendor to put the usage calculation method in writing
_before_ the contract is signed (preferably, disclosed at the time the
first price quote is rendered), then there isn't room for disagreement.
Roughly speaking, an in+out price quote should carry about half (maybe up
to 70%) the per-meg transit price of a max(in,out) price quote.

If you know your usage patterns ahead of time, or can readily speculate
based on the app (all my users are running Napster, or I'm serving porn
to Latin America, or whatever), then you can readily compare price
quotes so long as you know how the usage calculatoin works.

-rich