colo bandwidth

Island · May 18th, 2007, 12:30 AM

How is bandwidth measured, billed, and metered on colo servers?

On a the 2 mbps plan, is the port capped at 2 mbps, or is it on a 10 mbps port with billing being 2 mbps at 95th percentile to avoid overage cost?

My dedicated servers to date have been on 100 mbps ports with a set amount of monthly bandwidth, so I'm wondering:
1.) will cable or dsl users notice a noticable slowdown downloading a large image (e.g. a 2 MB file) on a 2 mbps colo plan vs. on a 100 mbps dedicated server.
2.) will using a colo box to backup another dedicated server with a 12 GB tar.gz file cause me a large overage fee on the 2mbps colo box if it's on the 95th percentile billing system.

Island · May 22nd, 2007, 6:50 PM

Anybody here currently using a server billed at 2mbps vs. a set allotment of bandwidth per month?

I'm wondering if it would be easy to deal with this, if it could result in a noticeable speed decrease vs. having full port speed, or if I have full port speed but billed on 95th percentile, if doing 12 GB ftp backups to an off-site location would be greatly complicated or else skew my billing resulting in huge overage fees.

A couple other colo providers that I'm also looking at provide either 1000 GB or 1200 GB just like you would get on a dedicated box (though one bills at 500 in / 500 out so for most purposes you end up with ~550 GB-600 GB usable for a web server which is still plenty to me) which might be easier for me to deal with.

**deastwood** · May 22nd, 2007, 7:55 PM

hi island, not to sure about the answers to these questions, as this is mostly a user forum, i would suggest contacting sales for some proper answers

Island · May 23rd, 2007, 6:47 PM

Thanks deastwood.

I think at this point I'm leaning towards going with a provider that gives a set bandwidth allocation per month vs. the 2mbps billing as it would seem a lot easier from a customer perspective. I've never had a 95th percentile server so I'm a bit nervous about monitoring the spikes to be sure they don't exceed 5% that could put me way over even though the overall usage is not that great.

I can see why surpass would do it this way though (with a dedicated box the supplied hardware dictates how bursty a customer can be on the network, whereas if a customer collocates a very powerful server they could potentially handle much higher spikes of traffic so billing at x-mbps keeps that in control on the lower end colo packages)

May 18th, 2007, 12:30 AM	#1 (permalink)
Island Registered User Seasoned Poster Joined in Feb 2007 74 posts Gave thanks: 2 Thanked 5 times	colo bandwidth How is bandwidth measured, billed, and metered on colo servers? On a the 2 mbps plan, is the port capped at 2 mbps, or is it on a 10 mbps port with billing being 2 mbps at 95th percentile to avoid overage cost? My dedicated servers to date have been on 100 mbps ports with a set amount of monthly bandwidth, so I'm wondering: 1.) will cable or dsl users notice a noticable slowdown downloading a large image (e.g. a 2 MB file) on a 2 mbps colo plan vs. on a 100 mbps dedicated server. 2.) will using a colo box to backup another dedicated server with a 12 GB tar.gz file cause me a large overage fee on the 2mbps colo box if it's on the 95th percentile billing system. __________________ Digital Color Printing & Offset Printing Press Forum

May 22nd, 2007, 6:50 PM	#2 (permalink)
Island Registered User Seasoned Poster Joined in Feb 2007 74 posts Gave thanks: 2 Thanked 5 times	Anybody here currently using a server billed at 2mbps vs. a set allotment of bandwidth per month? I'm wondering if it would be easy to deal with this, if it could result in a noticeable speed decrease vs. having full port speed, or if I have full port speed but billed on 95th percentile, if doing 12 GB ftp backups to an off-site location would be greatly complicated or else skew my billing resulting in huge overage fees. A couple other colo providers that I'm also looking at provide either 1000 GB or 1200 GB just like you would get on a dedicated box (though one bills at 500 in / 500 out so for most purposes you end up with ~550 GB-600 GB usable for a web server which is still plenty to me) which might be easier for me to deal with. __________________ Digital Color Printing & Offset Printing Press Forum

May 22nd, 2007, 7:55 PM	#3 (permalink)
deastwood Surpass Fan Super #1 Joined in Mar 2006 1,024 posts Gave thanks: 66 Thanked 55 times	hi island, not to sure about the answers to these questions, as this is mostly a user forum, i would suggest contacting sales for some proper answers __________________ Oxygen Solutions - Main Website MoneyScience - Latest Project

May 23rd, 2007, 6:47 PM	#4 (permalink)
Island Registered User Seasoned Poster Joined in Feb 2007 74 posts Gave thanks: 2 Thanked 5 times	Thanks deastwood. I think at this point I'm leaning towards going with a provider that gives a set bandwidth allocation per month vs. the 2mbps billing as it would seem a lot easier from a customer perspective. I've never had a 95th percentile server so I'm a bit nervous about monitoring the spikes to be sure they don't exceed 5% that could put me way over even though the overall usage is not that great. I can see why surpass would do it this way though (with a dedicated box the supplied hardware dictates how bursty a customer can be on the network, whereas if a customer collocates a very powerful server they could potentially handle much higher spikes of traffic so billing at x-mbps keeps that in control on the lower end colo packages) __________________ Digital Color Printing & Offset Printing Press Forum Last edited by Island; May 23rd, 2007 at 6:50 PM..

Thread Tools	Search this Thread
Show Printable Version Email this Page	Search this Thread: Advanced Search

Currently Active Users Viewing This Thread: 1 (0 members and 1 guests)