Bandwidth, Data Packs & Transit

Servers Australia prides itself on providing a quality and affordable network. All of our network services come with DDoS protection, 1Gbps switch ports and a 100% network service level agreement. View our network map. Our AS numbers are AS45671 & AS9280 with more information available here

Base data packs are included on all products, with the ability for customers to top up their base allowance if they need to. A data pack is a set amount of data that is in the form of a per GB amount. This amount is measured and calculated at the customer’s switch port and is measured on both inbound traffic and outbound traffic. Our data packs are also reset every month on the first day of the month.

Unlike our competition, we do not limit the port speed, which allows you to get the maximum throughput and value from the included or purchased data pack. As a minimum standard, all products are provisioned on a 1Gbps port. Customers can upgrade to a 10Gbps port upon request. There may be an additional charge.

Tip: This same concept applies to any data unit you might encounter. You can use an online conversion calculator if you’d rather not do the math manually.

Benefits of Servers Australia Transit

Servers Australia provides complimentary 24/7 full DDoS scrubbing and mitigation of up to 100Gbps sustained attacks. Servers Australia provides multiple transit providers in each state, with a minimum of 2 providers to provide redundant network paths. Servers Australia peers with multiple Internet Exchanges to minimise congestion on the network to provide low latency for the fastest connection route.

Shared Bandwidth

This is the most common bandwidth on the Servers Australia network, connecting customers to a 1Gbps port, with the port being shared amongst many servers. Customers receive a data allocation pack of a certain set of GB’s per month, and can use whatever allocated per Mbps is available within that 1Gbps port speed. Servers Australia generally advises that you will be able to get 800+ Mbps on a shared 1Gbps port the majority of the time, however, this is not guaranteed and you will also be using your data pack if you are using this amount of speed.

Guaranteed Bandwidth

Guaranteed bandwidth means that you are not sharing your internet ‘PIPE’. Think of it as a multi-lane freeway without on-ramps or off-ramps and yours is the only car. You’re free to do the maximum allowable speed limit at all times because there are no other cars on your road – that’s guaranteed bandwidth. On the other hand, shared bandwidth is the same multi-lane freeway but with on-ramps and off-ramps. Now you have to share the road, and although the maximum allowable speed limit still exists, the speed at which you can drive is now dictated by how many other cars are using the road. Guaranteed bandwidth ensures the entire road is solely for your car. There is almost always a price premium for guaranteed bandwidth, and there are no limits on GB’s uploaded or downloaded.

What is 95th Percentile Bandwidth and How is the Billing Calculated?

95th Percentile IP transit is used for customers that are buying IP transit or plans that involved ‘un-metered data’ plans, these plans allow you to use as much data as you want within the allocated IP transit plan you have purchased, If you buy 10 Mbits of IP transit, then this means that you can use 10 Mbits of IP bandwidth 95% of the time and burst to 1 Gbit for 5% of the time. To learn more about this, please see an explanation below. On average, a 10 Mbit port can do 3.3TB of data Inbound per month and 3.3 TB outbound per Month and potentially more when using the additional 5% of burst capacity.

Bandwidth consumption is a calculated value. The Servers Australia billing bandwidth system checks your server’s usage every 5 minutes at the switch uplink port and collects that data as a ‘ data sample’. This ‘data sample’ is stored in our database for later usage calculation. The samples which are taken from the network switch port which services your equipment (at 5-minute intervals) are added together to provide the 5-minute sampling totals. These totals are provided by the network in bytes and then are translated into kilobytes (1024 bytes) and subsequently to megabytes (1024 kilobytes) for a more accurate, human-readable figure. The megabyte figure, once translated, is divided by the number of seconds that have passed while gathering the sample to find the total amount of bandwidth that has entered and left your server during that time span.

How is 95th Percentile Billing Beneficial For You and Your Clients?

As many of today’s websites have irregular traffic patterns, per Mbit bandwidth accounting is the most liberal and forgiving for sudden increases and spikes in usage. As mentioned, we take the total of all the samples gathered during the month for your server and eliminate the top 5% of those samples. This is perfect for those of you who operate sites such as blogs and eCommerce sites. We know that a popular blog post, new product release, or having a part of your site listed on news sites can briefly and quickly skyrocket access to your server. We understand this and do not think that you should be penalised for brief spikes in your site’s access.