95th Percentile != Lame

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1

But peak vs non-peak has little to do with 95th percentile. Assuming that
every day's traffic patterns are the same (which is rarely true, there is
almost always a weekend/sunday difference), 95th percentile removes the
top 1 hour 12 minutes from each day's peak. This is more then enough time
to piss off your customers if they all hit the peak together and congest
your network.

If you really wanted to motivate customers to not all burst above what you
have provisioned, you would charge them a "bursting fee". Personally I am
of the philosophy that it is easier to build your network right. With the
availability of cheap dark fiber, cheap wdm gear, and "carrier neutral
exchange points" like PAIX and Equinix, the problem of "Oh crap my OC12 is
full during peak times, it will be another 6 months before the telco can
get me another one and it will double my operating costs" can be worked
around. If you build a good network which is really scaleable, bursting
costs you nothing. If you can pass the savings on to customers, while
giving them a solid network, you will get more customers who WANT to push
traffic. Pushing traffic leads to billing, which leads to money (usually).

2

Sure they do. I sell bandwidth. I either place a limit on each port, or I
let a client go full open - their call. I MUST be in a position to cover
those costs and yes, at times unused bandwidth. That cost must be past on
to the client if I am to remain in business. If all clients were willing
to set a ceiling and be forced to live within that ceiling, then no
problem. Clients who select a ceiling pay for the (100 percent) of that
bandwidth (ceiling).

If I do not have the bandwidth to cover the peaks of all clients at the
same time, I am shorting the clients.

3

But peak vs non-peak has little to do with 95th percentile. Assuming that
every day's traffic patterns are the same (which is rarely true, there is

My nybble's worth:

  95th percentile is usually based on a 5 minute average, and when you
have a lot of upstream bandwidth you can move a lot of data quickly and
it barely shows in a graph/monitoring system doing 'mrtg' style 5 minute
samples.

  It's better than nothing, and identifies 'hogs' quickly.

  Because of the large amount of 'business hours' users we have, I've
made some special deals to some 'off-hour' bandwidth hogs because of the
available and unused bandwidth during those hours. --Mike--