4 ms·

Many, particularly smaller, ISPs pay for bandwidth based on 95%ile utilization. Years ago when I was involved in a few specialized ISPs, say I could fit in 60m

Many, particularly smaller, ISPs pay for bandwidth based on 95%ile utilization. Years ago when I was involved in a few specialized ISPs, say I could fit in 60mbps 95% of the time, and was paying $10/mbps. A day of you using 300Mbps could cost me thousands of dollars. This is the difference between consumer and business Internet in many cases, and is why so many residential services severely limit the outbound bandwidth: it competes with their extremely profitable business service levels. (Things may have changed, I haven't been involved with ISPs for 5 years)

iptrans 6y ago
The days of $10/Mbps are fortunately behind us. You can get bandwidth for 10c/Mbps or less. Also a day of 300 Mbps would not have cost you thousands of dollars as you get 36 hours for “free” when using 95th percentile billing.
- linsomniac 6y ago
  24 hours of 300Mbps would effective change the 95th %ile to 98.35 %ile, which could be dramatically higher than the 95%ile billing. As far as $0.1/Mbps, not common around here. Maybe in CA at HE or something, but I can't touch that price around here. Correct me if I wrong, but Amazon's price for a megabit/mo is $55-ish...
  - iptrans 6y ago
    Amazon bandwidth pricing is wildly overinflated, so that's not a useful metric to use as a comparison to wholesale bandwidth costs. At scale means purchasing bandwidth in quantities of 100G. You'd be surprised how straightforward it is to get reasonable wholesale bandwidth rates almost anywhere once you cross a certain monthly spend threshold. As to the 95th percentile thing, sure, if you've already used up your "free" burst capacity, pushing a further 300 Mbps for a day will push you over the limit.
  - welterde 6y ago
    Amazon, GCP, etc. transit are completely disconnected from reality. Those sub-$0.5/Mbps you can probably get in most big metros across the US and Europe if the connection point is on-net for the ISP in question. And if you are a residential ISP you can probably handle 80% of your traffic by peering at a few internet exchanges (google,youtube, netflix, etc.)..

iptrans 6y ago

The days of $10/Mbps are fortunately behind us. You can get bandwidth for 10c/Mbps or less. Also a day of 300 Mbps would not have cost you thousands of dollars as you get 36 hours for “free” when using 95th percentile billing.

linsomniac 6y ago
24 hours of 300Mbps would effective change the 95th %ile to 98.35 %ile, which could be dramatically higher than the 95%ile billing. As far as $0.1/Mbps, not common around here. Maybe in CA at HE or something, but I can't touch that price around here. Correct me if I wrong, but Amazon's price for a megabit/mo is $55-ish...
- iptrans 6y ago
  Amazon bandwidth pricing is wildly overinflated, so that's not a useful metric to use as a comparison to wholesale bandwidth costs. At scale means purchasing bandwidth in quantities of 100G. You'd be surprised how straightforward it is to get reasonable wholesale bandwidth rates almost anywhere once you cross a certain monthly spend threshold. As to the 95th percentile thing, sure, if you've already used up your "free" burst capacity, pushing a further 300 Mbps for a day will push you over the limit.
- welterde 6y ago
  Amazon, GCP, etc. transit are completely disconnected from reality. Those sub-$0.5/Mbps you can probably get in most big metros across the US and Europe if the connection point is on-net for the ISP in question. And if you are a residential ISP you can probably handle 80% of your traffic by peering at a few internet exchanges (google,youtube, netflix, etc.)..