The 95th Percentile: How to Manage Capacity Before You Run Out

One of the largest challenges with network bandwidth metering is the way traffic flows. Traffic comes in bursts. It’s never a constant, predictable stream of data you can measure once, spec hardware for and be done with (wouldn’t that be nice?!). Instead, you need to account for the dynamic nature of bandwidth utilization and its impact on performance. You’ll never be able to predict every burst of traffic your network experiences. But, with effective performance monitoring, you can significantly improve both your capacity planning and management now and into the future. Tracking bandwidth utilization peaks and averages is useful data, but those metrics can’t give you a complete picture on their own. For that, we’ll take a look at the concept of “the 95th percentile” bandwidth metering, a method of measurement and planning that can help you better understand and manage capacity in your network.

 Read the article over at Auvik.