Bandwidth monitoring

[Ian Freislich]

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.