On Sun, 3 Jun 2001, Joe Abley wrote:
I think your argument is in favor of 95th percentile vs an accurate average, not rate vs amount samples. If for some reason you lose a sample with an average system, your revenue goes down, whereas if you lose a sample in 95th percentile you're more likely not to make it go down much.
Not really. For any averaging function you care to apply to the sample population, there will be some samples that tend to increase the result, and some that tend to decrease the result. Whether or not the billable value goes up or down depends on the sample that was dropped, on the remaining samples, and on the averaging function being used.
No, you're working under the assumption that the divisor goes up only with increased samples, while the system I outlined continues to go up with the progression of time. No reason that can't be changed though, and that isn't important to the argument... :P
I'd say the real problem is with the vendor. Fortunantly most people have counters.
Suppose you are selling transit to several customers across a switch operated by someone else (an exchange operator, for example), such that the traffic for several customers is carried by a single interface on your router. Suppose direct interconnects are not practical, and suppose you have no access to any counters that may be available on the switch.
The options are: (1) do not sell to these customers, or (2) find some way to sell to these customers by counting packets yourself. Option (1) presents a far more consistent opportunity to decrease potential revenue than does option (2).
You can do it with VLANs, I believe Equinix does this on their exchange switches. -- Richard A Steenbergen <ras@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)