Date: Thu, 26 Jun 2003 17:19:30 +0200 From: Ian Freislich <ianf@za.uu.net> To: Richard A Steenbergen <ras@e-gerbil.net> Cc: net@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Bandwidth monitoring Message-ID: <21824.1056640770@mci.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 26 Jun 2003 10:50:17 -0400." <20030626145017.GK20396@overlord.e-gerbil.net> References: <20030626145017.GK20396@overlord.e-gerbil.net>
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Richard A Steenbergen wrote: > > I would suggest that you find out exacly how they measure your > > traffic useage. ie do they measure only packets that were switched > > by their router or just any and every single byte that their > > router's ethernet interface sees. The first is IMHO much more fair > > than the second because trafic local to your IP network won't be > > charged. > > It isn't really unfair, as long as everyone does it the same way > consistantly. Maybe it's unfair for your provider to charge you the > same price for traffic to your next-door-neighbor customer off the > same switch that they would charge you for transit they haul to the > other side of the world... Or maybe it's unfair that you pay so > little for that longhaul traffic, and they're just giving you a lower > price becaue they assume you'll do some local traffic and it will all > average out. Maybe I should qualify 'fair' and 'local ip network'. We, that is UUNET South Africa, found using the SNMP if[In|Out]Octet counters on the ethernet interface would count traffic between your hosts on the same piece of 'local ip network' - the /28 or /29 assigned to your VLAN in the co-location facility. I don't think that this is fair since the ISP network never really has to think too hard about those packets and it certainly doesn't have to route them. However, if a packet leaves your little piece of the internet and is routed to another piece, even if it is in a cabinet next door to yours, then I really don't think there is a problem billing for that traffic. My suggestion that Adam checks out what his ISP is doing still stands because they may not be aware of the implications and side-effects of their particular way of measuring the traffic. They might land up saying 'Gosh, we didn't realise that we were billing $BIGNUM for your online backups to another server in your cabinet, sorry about that. Try this new invoice for size.' Ian * These opinions are my own and not my company's of course.
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