What is 95th Percentile?

The 95th percentile is a mathematical calculation widely used to evaluate the regular, sustained utilization of your Internet connection. The reason this statistic is so useful in measuring data throughput is that it gives a very accurate picture of the cost of the bandwidth. The 95th percentile says that 95% of the time, your usage is below this amount. Just the same, the remaining 5% of the time, your usage is above that amount. The 95th percentile is a good number to judge how much bandwidth you are actually utilizing and helps filter out usage spikes.

How does we calculate the 95th Percentile?

Traffic data samples are collected from our access switches every 5 minutes. Since the samples are taken every 5 minutes, the data sample represents a 5 minute averaged bits per second value. It's averaged because we don't know the highs and lows within that 5 minute period. Usually for any solid determination, we need a reasonably large data set to cover the peaks and valleys of your utilization. A month of samples is the typical data set and is how we bill your account. In short, our percentile calculation uses a 95th percentile on 5 minute averages during your current monthly billing cycle.

Who gets measured at the 95th Percentile?

We can bill all bandwidth services using the 95th percentile. If you are not being billed at the 95th percentile, and would like to be, just send an email to our billing department and we can explain how it may benefit you.

Why don't you charge a flat rate or for actual bandwidth used?

We do allow for a certain amount of bandwidth included in your monthly payment, however, we can not charge a flat rate for unlimited access, therefore if you go over the allocated bandwidth each month, you will be measured on the 95th percentile. The problem with charging a flat rate for unlimted access, is that we can become overwhelmed by even a small number of high-usage customers. Charging for actual bandwidth is also a problem, since it can severely penalize customers who use bandwidth intermittently. For example, suppose a customer runs an automated off-site backup every night. This brief usage spurt costs us almost nothing. Although the recurring sustained data rate is low, the customer gets charged for a huge amount of bandwidth.

So by now, it should be obvious that the best option is to bill by the 95th percentile. It's a fair system where everybody pays for what they get. The advantage to you is that you get the performance of a high-speed connection, while paying only for your actual usage. Basically, the 95th percentile tells you how much of your connection you're actually using and what you really need.

If you wish to know more about the 95th Percentile please feel free to call us on 08457 715 715 .