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RE: What does 95th %tile mean?
by Richard A. Steenbergen 20 Apr '01

20 Apr '01

On Thu, Apr 19, 2001 at 05:18:02PM -0700, David Schwartz wrote: > > > Same algorithm, same raw data, different 95% answers, both valid, yet > > one is twice as large as the other. Great outcome for a billing > > system isn't it? > > Any billing scheme based upon statistical sampling will, with > some probability, err in the favor of one party or the other randomly. > But it is important that the customer understands that he is being > billed based upon statistical sampling and thus there are no "exact" > measurements. Fair billing sysems? The traffic "samples" are just the current value of a byte counter minus the value of that same counter <x> minutes ago, divided by <x>. If you wanted to be "fair", you would bill on exact number of bytes transfered. But on the subject of fair... Most people bill on counters from their customer aggregation switch, but if you transfer data between two customers you are billed as though you sent it around the world, how is this fair? If you send traffic out a paid transit or free peer it costs you the same, how is this fair? If you pay only the higher of your inbound or outbound traffic, and you are a web server pushing 100Mbit out, then you get that 99.9Mbit in if you pay for it or not, how is that fair? How many people actually count every byte they transfer, and how many ISPs are actually capable of matching your count with theirs so you know they are not inflating their numbers either deliberately or accidentally. Hell, do you think the price you pay is fair? There is a reason major ISPs dont publish their prices openly, and that is because if you are not helping some sales person make his Z8 payments or comparison shopping and demanding better prices, you are probably getting screwed. Some people will charge for putting you on redundant uplinks with HSRP/VRRP, some will not. Some people will have redundant diverse well-planned infrastructures and some will not. Some will charge for both directions and 95th percentile, some will charge for 1 and 90th percentile. They will all claim to have better networks then they really do in one form or another, and they will all hide behind an NDA to make sure you don't find out because like it or not everyone has some skeleton in their wiring closet. And yes some will have huge amounts of money yet be run by idiots, and some will have almost no money and scrape out a solid reliable network. That is the nature of business, and fair is what you are willing to pay for the service you get. If you don't like it, vote with your wallet. :P -- Richard A Steenbergen <ras(a)e-gerbil.net> http://www.e-gerbil.net/ras PGP Key ID: 0x138EA177 (67 29 D7 BC E8 18 3E DA B2 46 B3 D8 14 36 FE B6)

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AOL and Earthlink postmaster-like contacts?
by Alan Clegg 20 Apr '01

20 Apr '01

If there is anyone with any clout with AOL on the list, please contact me directly. I need to talk with someone that actually has clue regarding mail policy and what their black-hole and "spam" policies are. Additionally, I'd like to talk with someone from Earthlink regarding their recent run-in with AOL's mail blackholes. I'll be providing details of what is going on as soon as I get it figured out myself. [btw, yes, I've contacted postmaster@ but both seem to be relatively deep black holes themselves] Thanks, AlanC -- perl -le '$_="6110>374086;2064208213:90<307;55";tr[0->][ LEOR\!AUBGNSTY];print' echo "6110>374086;2064208213:90<307;55" | tr '0->' ' LEOR\!AUBGNSTY' alan(a)clegg.com

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Re: What does 95th %tile mean?
by Sean Donelan 20 Apr '01

20 Apr '01

On Thu, 19 April 2001, Geoff Huston wrote: > It leads to the situation where the provider confidently asserts that the > 95% value was xkbps, and the customer confidently asserting ykbps and both > readings are equally valid, with both measurements using the _same_ > measurement technique. How is the consequent billing dispute resolved _fairly_? The great thing about changing jobs every once in a while is I get to experience the joy of looking at things from the outside. Because colo's use a lot of power, I'm learning a lot about how the electric companies work. Geez, if you thought telephone companies were bad :-) The power industry has a version of the 95% billing. Like ISPs, originally it was a simple measurement every 5 (10, 15, etc) minutes. Figure out the peak measurement, and you are done. Users figured out how to better control their usage, i.e. turning on motors for 9 minutes and then turning them off for six minutes. Were there billing disputes, you betcha! Now electric companies use a variety of sliding windows, and different ways to calculate usage. The top-of-the-line power meters have over 100 different ways to measure (and therefor different ways a utility can charge) power consumption. Each becoming progressively more complex, trying to eliminate ways for people to game the system. To resolve some billing disputes, the top meters include "pulse" connections so you can precisely synchronize your check meter with the utility's meter for auditing. So, does someone need to develop an Internet meter for your Internet line with a dial which spins faster when you use more packets?

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NANOG 22 / AT&T
by Rodney Joffe 19 Apr '01

19 Apr '01

If anyone from AT&T or AT&T Local Services is on the list, and can assist us with some layer8/layer9 logistical help relating to connectivity at NANOG 22 in Phoenix, I'd appreciate an email. Thanks... -- Rodney Joffe CenterGate Research Group, LLC. http://www.centergate.com "Technology so advanced, even we don't understand it!"(SM)

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OT: DSL equipment of non-american manufacture
by Jim Mercer 19 Apr '01

19 Apr '01

i'm looking at a new project, but am having some difficulties with export restrictions of the USA. can anyone point me at DSL head-end equipment of non-USA manufacture? -- [ Jim Mercer jim(a)pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.ca ] [ Reptilian Research -- Longer Life through Colder Blood ] [ aka jim(a)reptiles.org +1 416 410-5633 ]

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Re: OT: DSL equipment of non-american manufacture
by Jim Mercer 19 Apr '01

19 Apr '01

[ apologies for the previous empty reply ] On Thu, Apr 19, 2001 at 01:11:34PM -0400, Phillip Vandry wrote: > > can anyone point me at DSL head-end equipment of non-USA manufacture? > > Nortel is Canadian! yes/no. call nortel and tell them you want to ship their equipment to libya, russia or iraq. i don't beleive all of their manufacture is done in canada, and i think they are fairly depended on US branches, or US-based acquired companies. -- [ Jim Mercer jim(a)pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.ca ] [ Reptilian Research -- Longer Life through Colder Blood ] [ aka jim(a)reptiles.org +1 416 410-5633 ]

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Re: OT: DSL equipment of non-american manufacture
by Jim Mercer 19 Apr '01

19 Apr '01

On Thu, Apr 19, 2001 at 01:11:34PM -0400, Phillip Vandry wrote: > Jim, > > Nortel is Canadian! > > -Phil > > > i'm looking at a new project, but am having some difficulties with export > > restrictions of the USA. > > > > can anyone point me at DSL head-end equipment of non-USA manufacture? > > > > -- > > [ Jim Mercer jim(a)pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.ca ] > > [ Reptilian Research -- Longer Life through Colder Blood ] > > [ aka jim(a)reptiles.org +1 416 410-5633 ] > > -- [ Jim Mercer jim(a)pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.ca ] [ Reptilian Research -- Longer Life through Colder Blood ] [ aka jim(a)reptiles.org +1 416 410-5633 ]

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Governments CERT plans to sell early warnings on Web threats
by Eric Germann 19 Apr '01

19 Apr '01

http://www.msnbc.com/news/561513.asp?0nm=N14O ========================================================================== Eric Germann Inacom Info Systems egermann(a)inacomlima.com Lima, OH 45801 Ph: 419 331 9050 ICQ: 41927048 Fax: 603 825 5893 "It is so easy to miss pretty trivial solutions to problems deemed complicated. The goal of a scientist is to find an interesting problem, and live off it for a while. The goal of an engineer is to evade interesting problems :)" -- Vadim Antonov <avg(a)kotovnik.com> on NANOG

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RE: What does 95th %tile mean?
by Dearborn, Jeffrey S. 19 Apr '01

19 Apr '01

Here's how I explain it on our burstable T1's & T3's (We bill at the 90th percentile BTW): Burstable T1 Explanation I hope that this explanation helps: Consider that your Internet usage is probably similar to 99% of all business users. You will probably use the circuit Monday through Friday between the hours of 8am and 5pm. Utilization in the off hours and on weekends should be close to zero. This means that over an entire month (720 hours), you will have access to the circuit for only 180 hours. Remember, in that 180 hours (8am - 5pm), you will not be constantly uploading and downloading data. It is in fact quite the opposite. Internet traffic is "bursty". For example: If you are viewing a web page and you hit your enter key, data is transmitted and the image and text load. Once it is loaded, the transmission stops and you read the web page. At this point the bandwidth is again sitting idle and utilization is back at zero. This is the cycle that repeats itself during the day so it is a safe bet that your utilization in that 180 hour time frame is 50% at best. This now leaves you with 90 hours of utilization for the month. Since we bill you at the 90th percentile, this means that we will discard the highest 10% of you bandwidth peaks. The 10% equates to 72 hours. This means that we will subtract the HIGHEST 72 hours of utilization from the remaining 90 hours. This now leave you with the lowest 18 hours of utilization for the month. Again, I can't guarantee it, but it is very unlikely that your lowest 18 hours will be greater than 100k. This graph illustrates a typical business customers utilization on a T-1 circuit. http://www.intermedia.com/images/businessinternet/products/lineutil.gif Jeff Dearborn Major Account Manager Intermedia Communications Business Internet 800.993.4439 x2418 toll free 301.847.2418 direct dial 301.419.0288 fax http://www.intermedia.com/ -----Original Message----- From: Alex Rubenstein [mailto:alex@corp.nac.net] Sent: Thursday, April 19, 2001 10:09 AM To: 'nanog(a)merit.edu' Subject: What does 95th %tile mean? I've gotten myself into an argument with a provider about the definition of 'industry-standard 95th percentile method.' To me, this means the following: a) take the number of bytes xfered over a 5 minute period, and determine rate for both the inbound and outbound. Store this in your favorite data-store. b) at billing time, presumably on the first of the month or some other monthly increment, take all the samples, sort them from greatest to least, hacking off the top 5% of samples. Actually, this is done twice, once for inbound, once for outbound. Then, take the higher of those two, and multiply it by your favorite $ multiple (ie, $500 per megabit per second, or $1 per kilobit per second, etc). I think that most people agree with the above; the issue we are running into is one rogue provider who is billing this at in + out, not the greater of in or out. How is everyone else doing it? Specifically, larger folks (UU, Sprint, CW, Exodus/FGC, GX, Qwest, L3) Thanks!

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RE: What does 95th %tile mean?
by Lee Watterworth 19 Apr '01

19 Apr '01

...definately one of those things that need to be asked about during contract negotiations... -----Original Message----- From: Alex Rubenstein [mailto:alex@corp.nac.net] Sent: April 19, 2001 10:09 AM To: 'nanog(a)merit.edu' Subject: What does 95th %tile mean? I've gotten myself into an argument with a provider about the definition of 'industry-standard 95th percentile method.' To me, this means the following: a) take the number of bytes xfered over a 5 minute period, and determine rate for both the inbound and outbound. Store this in your favorite data-store. b) at billing time, presumably on the first of the month or some other monthly increment, take all the samples, sort them from greatest to least, hacking off the top 5% of samples. Actually, this is done twice, once for inbound, once for outbound. Then, take the higher of those two, and multiply it by your favorite $ multiple (ie, $500 per megabit per second, or $1 per kilobit per second, etc). I think that most people agree with the above; the issue we are running into is one rogue provider who is billing this at in + out, not the greater of in or out. How is everyone else doing it? Specifically, larger folks (UU, Sprint, CW, Exodus/FGC, GX, Qwest, L3) Thanks!

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