What does 95th %tile mean?

Fri Apr 20 16:52:28 UTC 2001

[ On Friday, April 20, 2001 at 09:57:55 (-0400), Alex Pilosov wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: What does 95th %tile mean?
>
> Absolutely. Here's a scheme that, if everyone was using only 95th
> percentile billing, would give you webhosting at gigabit rate while only
> paying 30x minimal rate webhosting:
> 
> a) colocate hardware at 30 different datacenters at gigE speed, but billed
> for 95th percentile.
> b) have a DNS server that rotates records, pointing to a different
> server each day.
> c) bingo. Each of your providers will remove highest 95th percentile (1.5
> days worth of traffic) and only bill you for minimal utilization. 

Since you're probably going to get billed a port charge, and probably a
few other fees for each installation (not to mention installation
costs), that scheme will probably still end up costing you more than you
can save by simply finding the best bulk pricing from one or two
providers, and each provider will still make more from you in terms of
flat average usage than you actually use.

Sure each hosting site will experience one "bad" day per month due to
your "burst", but that's not going to hurt them too much.  Eventually
they'll spot what you're doing too (at least if it hurts them at all)
and they'll probably force you to re-negotiate to a bulk-throughput
deal.

Besides if bandwidth is your biggest cost then you're going to have to
have at least two sites online at any given time and so you'll need 60
or more sites!  The maintenance costs alone might kill you.

No sane person will try to play those games because they know they'll
end up paying one way or another.  Either they'll get caught and be
forced to re-negotiate on byte counts (or move and face installation
charges again) or they'll end up paying way too much in capital costs
and service fees, maintenance, etc.

-- 
							Greg A. Woods

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Planix, Inc. <woods at planix.com>;   Secrets of the Weird <woods at weird.com>