[mrtg] Re: 95th percentile?

[Brian Pavane]

George,

Well, with the graphing or without the graphing you also need some output
that you could easily take and enter into your billing records.  Perhaps
even a webpage at the end of the month showing  you (and your customer)
their total bandwidth for the month, avg, and 95th percentile.  Point
being, a graph is nice, and I do see your reason for graphing it, but I
don't want to have my billing dept. looking at graphs to determine
billing.  I would not mind having them going to a website though that
clearly stated what the bandwidth was.

On Sun, 26 Sep 1999, George D. Nincehelser wrote:

> You don't *have* to graph it, but doing so should sure make make it a lot
> easier to explain to your boss or customer (or maybe yourself) what it
> means.  (e.g. "If this little line (traffic) goes higher than that little
> line (95th percentile) a little to often, open up your wallet.)
> 
> Since the 95th percentile figure translates directly into $$$, everyone one
> (including the non-technical types) are really concerned with what the value
> is and where it is going.  It needs to be expressed quickly and clearly, and
> putting it on the graph seems to me a good way to do it.  Having this info
> would give everyone viewing them a clear view of our costs and ideas on how
> to manage them.
> 
> I'd really like to see a historic 95th percentile (like last month's billing
> period) and a "current" 95th percentile based on usage in this billing
> period.
> 
> Giving this some more thought, I'm a little unclear on the current 5-minute
> MRTG graphs...Do the 5-minute graphs show peaks, or are they showing an
> average?  I've always assumed it was an averaged value, but I turned on
> "WithPeaks" to see what would happen.  I then get peaks on all the other
> graphs, but *not* on the 5-minute graph.  What am I not understanding here?
> 
> George
> 
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Brian Pavane <bpavane at liii.com>
> To: George D. Nincehelser <george at aaih.net>
> Cc: Pete Templin <templin at urdirect.net>; David C Prall <dcp at dcptech.com>;
> <mrtg at list.ee.ethz.ch>
> Sent: Sunday, September 26, 1999 4:23 PM
> Subject: [mrtg] Re: 95th percentile?
> 
> 
> > I don't think the 95th percentile information really needs to be graphed.
> > Meerly a program that could pull the readings every 5 minutes from a piece
> > of equipment (say... a cisco), and then via cron at the end of the month
> > spit out a report would be sufficient.  This type of program doesn't need
> > to be tied to MRTG, however, being that MRTG is already pulling this data,
> > it would be best to find a way to reuse what MRTG pulls.
> >
> > On Fri, 24 Sep 1999, George D. Nincehelser wrote:
> >
> > > That's exactly what I've been looking for.
> > >
> > > I assume that there is a way an external script can gather the data and
> > > calculate the 95th percentile,  then pass that info in some way to MRTG
> so
> > > it can be graphed?
> > >
> > > I'm unclear as to the best way to graph the 95th percentile data.  I'm
> > > thinking that a simple straight line across the graph would be
> sufficient
> > > for billing purposes, but a trending line might look cool.  I imagine
> the
> > > line would best be reset at the end of each billing period.
> > >
> > > Thoughts?
> > > George
> > >
> > > > -----Original Message-----
> > > > From: mrtg-bounce at list.ee.ethz.ch
> [mailto:mrtg-bounce at list.ee.ethz.ch]On
> > > > Behalf Of Pete Templin
> > > > Sent: Friday, September 24, 1999 10:04 AM
> > > > To: David C Prall
> > > > Cc: mrtg at list.ee.ethz.ch
> > > > Subject: [mrtg] Re: 95th percentile?
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > On Fri, 24 Sep 1999, David C Prall wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > What exactly are you looking for. I just use the WithPeak[]: wmy
> option.
> > > > > This shows the high along with the averages. Giving you four lines
> > > > > rather then two.
> > > > >
> > > > > At some point there was a patch for doing this, but at somepoint I
> > > > > believe it got converted into the WithPeak option. I have only been
> > > > > using MRTG for 6 months where I have actually looked beyond the
> standard
> > > > > default configmaker script. And at that point WithPeak was
> implemented,
> > > > > so I used it.
> > > >
> > > > Most folks looking for 95th percentile want to be able to calculate
> the
> > > > 95th percentile of all of the data over a given time period (usually a
> > > > month).  MRTG only keeps its five minutes numbers for about two days,
> and
> > > > then it only stores averaged averages.  It's impossible to recreate
> the
> > > > true 95th percentile five minute average using reaveraged numbers; the
> > > > peaks merely show the highest five minute peak across a two hour
> period.
> > > > There's no way to determine how many five minute samples were that
> high.
> > > >
> > > > Some people have written scripts that archive a day's worth of
> five-minute
> > > > samples each day, and then crank through that unaveraged data at the
> end
> > > > of the month.  The few folks I've talked to about this usually wrote
> it on
> > > > company time, and weren't permitted to release their script.  It's
> > > > actually not that hard; the challenge is making sure that it scales
> well
> > > > (or can be reengineered to scale).
> > > >
> > > > Pete
> > > >
> > > > --
> > > > Peter J. Templin, Jr., CCNA
> > > > Systems and Networks Administrator
> > > >
> > > > On-Line Internet Services - URDirect.net
> > > > A division of Global On-Line Computers
> > > > 2414 Babcock Rd. Suite 106 templin at urdirect.net
> > > > San Antonio, TX 78229 (210)692-9911
> > > >
> > > > --
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> > > >
> > >
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> > >
> >
> >
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> 
> 


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