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Methods of data/bandwidth provisioning

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Methods of data/bandwidth provisioning

Network providers must charge for bandwidth by one of three means:

Offer a flat rate, bandwidth limited connection, to customers whose usage patterns are not so intense. The customers like it because they don't have to worry about how much bandwidth they use, and network providers like it because it simplifies billing, and they make more money as long as they have plenty of low-usage customers. The problem, particularly if the network provider is selling very fast connections, is that it can become overwhelmed by even a small number of high-usage customers. Even residential customers can be such high-usage clients, thanks to recently popular services such as peer-to-peer file sharing.

Sell a fast connection (eg 100Mbit Ethernet) and charge for the volume of data transfer - eg number of Gigabytes per month. This model sometimes works great for web sites, which almost always generate traffic in a predictable bell curve. However, it severely penalises customers who use bandwidth intermittently. For example, suppose a customer runs a busy mail server or an automated off-site backup every night. This brief usage spurt costs the network provider almost nothing. Although the recurring sustained data rate is low, the customer gets charged for a huge amount of bandwidth.

Sell a fast connection and bill by 95th percentile method. By now this should make sense - it's a fair system where everybody pays for what they get. The advantage to the customer is that they get the performance of a high-speed connection, while paying only for their actual usage.

The 95th percentile bandwidth provision method

The 95th percentile is the highest value left when the top 5% of a numerically sorted set of collected data is discarded. It is used as a measure of the peak value used when one discounts a fair amount for transitory spikes. This is different from the average.

When the 95 percentile method is used to calculate bandwidth usage, we capture all raw data usage and normalise this into 5 minute samples. At the end of the billing month, those 5 minute usage samples are sorted in an increasing order with the top 5% of the highest recorded usage being completely discarded. This eliminates normal traffic spikes.

The advantage of the 95 percentile billing is that you effectively get the performance of a high-speed circuit connection, while paying only for the “actual” usage. This bandwidth delivering mechanism is inherently burstable, being completely different from the traditional fixed circuits.

The 95 percentile style of billing can be applied to inbound only, outbound only, the greatest of inbound/outbound or the combination of both inbound+outbound circuit provisioning.