Traffic, bandwidth and the 95th percentile explained
A server offer may include several terabytes of traffic and also state a connection speed in gigabits per second. Both matter, but they describe different things: the volume transferred and the transfer rate. Combine them with the pattern of usage over time to compare costs.
Distinguish volume from speed
Traffic in GB or TB describes accumulated data volume. Bandwidth in Mbit/s or Gbit/s describes a rate. Lowercase b means bit and uppercase B means byte. Eight bits make one byte. A 1 Gbit/s connection theoretically corresponds to at most 125 MB/s before protocol overhead and other constraints along the transfer path.
A shared host connection is not a guaranteed transfer rate for every virtual machine. Storage, the application, the remote endpoint and other workloads can affect throughput. Compare port speed, committed bandwidth and billed volume separately.
When volume-based billing fits
Volume-based billing is straightforward when monthly data transfer is predictable and measurable. NUXOA managed, Linux and Windows servers include 20 TB per month. Additional traffic costs €1.50 net per TB. For example, 24 TB of billable traffic means 4 TB of excess usage and an additional €6 net on top of the package price.
Compare flat-rate and percentile billing
A Gbit/s flat rate can suit consistently high throughput. With 95th-percentile billing, sampled transfer rates are evaluated and the highest five percent of samples are disregarded when determining the percentile value. This does not exempt five percent of the transferred data volume. Frequent or prolonged peaks can still increase the billed rate.
A useful calculation requires the sampling interval, billing period, treatment of incoming and outgoing traffic and any minimum commitment. Compare models using the same workload trace. Short overnight transfers and a continuously busy service can have different requirements despite similar monthly volumes.