How ISPs bill : Time Zones & 95th Percentile Calculations

Mon Jan 23 21:58:37 UTC 2017

NANOG’ers:

Steve McManus of Akamai and I have a few questions regarding how providers use time zones for billing, and how the 95th percentile (95/5) is calculated.

Many ISPs use UTC on logs and such for reasons which should be obvious. But do they use local time for billing? What if there are ports in multiple time zones? When calculating 95/5 for LACP groups, is the aggregate used or individual physical ports? Etc.

We have created a short form to collect some real-world data on this.

	https://goo.gl/d1HRNb

We fully understand this is far from a statistically randomized double-blind survey, but it is what we could do in the few minutes of spare time we had.

The form is only 7 multiple-choice questions, with two optional “comment” sections and an optional contact info section. We would really appreciate if people would share data (anonymously!) on how they bill or get billed.

The form is designed to be used once per relationship. If you have two upstreams who use two different billing methods, we would greatly appreciate if you could fill in the form twice. It seemed easier to have you click 7 radio buttons twice than ask you to explain the different methods on one form.

Thank you for your time. Results will be aggregated and published at some later date to be determined. If you would like the results faster, be sure to leave your email address in the contact section.

-- 
TTFN,
patrick

-- 
TTFN,
patrick