OCModShop has posted a new article: How Does 95th Percentile Billing Work?

Many web businesses are hosted through a datacenter, and there are many pricing plans depending on your bandwidth needs. If your site is heavily text based without a lot of images and steady traffic, then a flat rate might be best for you . If you are like most web businesses, then you need dynamic bandwidth that can handle spikes, but don't want to overpay for unused traffic. Much like cell phone plans, you don't want to overpay for minutes you're not using but don't want to guess too short and have to pay overage charges. A 95th percentile pricing schedule can dynamically bill you based on your bandwidth needs, but is a little complicated to follow.

95th Percentile is a method of measuring bandwidth that bases your bill on peak utilization. Your bandwidth is measured from the switch or router and recorded in a log file. At the end of the month, your usage statistics are sorted, and the top 5% (approximately 36 hours of a 30-day billing cycle) of data is thrown away, and that next measurement becomes your 'billable utilization' for the month. Usually only a few services are billed using 95th percentile pricing: Dedicated T1 and Colocated servers. DSL and Wireless customers are usually billed on the total bandwidth used over the entire billing period.

How Does 95th Percentile Billing Work?