[52298] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Pricing model for transit services
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Joe Abley)
Mon Sep 23 17:28:48 2002
Date: Mon, 23 Sep 2002 17:28:15 -0400
From: Joe Abley <jabley@isc.org>
To: Richard A Steenbergen <ras@e-gerbil.net>
Cc: Lane Patterson <lane@laneandmimi.com>,
Alex Rubenstein <alex@nac.net>,
"Olivier.Bonaventure@info.fundp.ac.be" <Olivier.Bonaventure@info.fundp.ac.be>,
"suh@info.ucl.ac.be" <suh@info.ucl.ac.be>,
"nanog@merit.edu" <nanog@merit.edu>
In-Reply-To: <20020923200747.GQ1123@overlord.e-gerbil.net>
Errors-To: owner-nanog-outgoing@merit.edu
On Mon, Sep 23, 2002 at 04:07:47PM -0400, Richard A Steenbergen wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 23, 2002 at 12:50:17PM -0700, Lane Patterson wrote:
>
> > And there are at least 4 ways of computing 95th percentile, though I'm sure
> > there've already been threads on this.
>
> There is only one way, anyone else is computing "something else" that they
> just happen to bill with. But this sounds like a subject for the NANOG
> FAQ. :)
I think the problem is not that there are multiple definitions of
how to calculate the 95th percentile of a sample population, but
that different peoples' sample populations are constructed in
different ways.
I have seen billing based on:
max(95th(to_cust), 95th(from_cust))
95th(max(to_cust, from_cust))
95th(to_cust + from_cust)
95th(to_cust)
all referred to by different people as "95th percentile billing".
There are also many different ways of obtaining values for "to_cust"
and "from_cust", just to keep things interesting.
I would be interested to find out how many customers of services
billed by "95th percentile" do their own measurements and compare
them with the bill. I suspect the number is not large.
Maybe that's why most providers don't find it necessary to spell
out exactly what calculations they are doing in order to arrive at
a monthly figure with a dollar sign in front of it.
Joe
