What does 95th %tile mean?

Sat Apr 21 04:52:15 UTC 2001


> > ... you may easily deduct News traffic from being billed. BTW:
> > tell me how
> > do you exclude News Traffic if you count the 95th %ile?
>
> Why should you? packets are packets; does your upstream provider charge
> you less for news? Are you magically capable of moving news across your
> own network cheaper than web traffic?

	One of my upstreams does not charge me the traffic cost for a newsfeed I
obtain from them. This is because the cost to move a packet from their Santa
Clara news server to my Santa Clara router is basically zero. On the other
hand, they do charge me for traffic they have to carry over their WAN.

	Suppose I have a DS3 with 10Mbps paid for and a 95% algorithm for
over-usage. If I get a full newsfeed from the computer next to the router my
DS3 goes to, should I pay the same cost as someone who transfers 15Mbps
constantly across the country on their backbone?

	That doesn't strike me as fair. Surely there is some cost associated with
providing me with news, since they need to get news to their news server.
But if they charged me the full cost of 14Mbps, we simply wouldn't get a
newsfeed from them, and they would have lost that business.

	DS