Customer Support >>
FAQ's - Billing/Contract Questions
Still have questions? Feel free to Contact Us. We are happy to answer any of your questions.
What forms of payments do you accept?
Credit cards (Visa, MC & American Express), Check or Bank Wire
Do you charge a setup fee for dedicated servers?
Yes. Setup fees vary for each Dedicated Server we offer.
What does 1 Megabit Per Second (1Mbps) of bandwidth equate to?
Theoretically a dedicated connection of 1 Megabit Per Second (1Mbps or Meg) will transfer a total of 324 Gigabytes of data if constantly used at 100% throughput capacity for an entire month. Since this rarely occurs, we always estimate the true effective transfer to be in the range of 250-300 Gigabytes.
What happens if I go over my allowed amount of bandwidth?
It depends on what type of bandwidth plan you have selected. In some cases, overage charges apply and in other cases, they do not. Also, we never cap bandwidth unless the customer has requested we do so.
Do you require a minimum contract?
Yes, 12 months.
What is the difference between PER-GIG and PER-MEG?
Per-gig is the actual total SIZE of the combined files that are sent by the server. Throughput is sold in Gigabytes (GB) and is an aggregate monthly total. So, for example, lets say you have a web page called THISPAGE.HTML and the actual page is 25k and on this page you have 3 graphic images that are 25k each, then that is a total of 100k. If 100,000 people come to that page over the course of a month, then your PER-GIG amount would be calculated as 100kB X 100,000 = 10,000,000kB or 10GB. So for that month your PER-GIG amount would be 10GB. It does not if all 100,000 people hit the server at the same time or were evenly spread out over the course of the month…your PER-GIG is still 10GB for the month.
PER-MEG is measured in Megabits Per Second (Mbps) and measures how much information is traveling through the "pipe" at any given time. This is usually used for larger clients because in order to push more information through the pipe, you need a bigger pipe. We like to compare PER-MEG to water in a series of water pipes. Imagine that your home PC has a water hose connected to it instead of a telephone line. The water hose is 1/2" and is connected to the side of your house where it meets a 2" PVC pipe and your house is connected to the water main, which is a 12" pipe. In this example your water hose is your home telephone line and your house is your ISP and the water main is the backbones. It does not matter how hard you try, you are only going to get 1/2" of water into your PC at any given time because the "pipe" is only a 1/2" water hose.
Now if we were going to sell you water BY THE GALLON, that would be called PER-GIG (see above), or we can sell you a PIPE and just charge you for the amount of water that you push through the pipe at any given time...this is called PER-MEG. So for example, if we take a measurement right now and you are pushing 1" of water through the pipe and we look again in 5 minutes and you are pushing 1" still and we look again in 5 more minutes and you are pushing 1/2" and we look again in 5 more minutes and you are pushing 2", then how big of a pipe do you need to accommodate your traffic flow without any water being backed up like a funnel? You would need a 2" pipe, but you are not using 2" all the time so why do you have to pay for a 2" pipe all the time? That's where the 95% comes in.
So what is this "95th percentile"?
The 95th percentile is an industry standard. Every five minutes, the billing system takes a reading of the current bandwidth usage and puts it into a list. At the end of the month that list will contain 8640 readings (there are 12 5 minute intervals in an hour, 24 hours a day for 30 days). We will then take that list and sort it from the biggest number to the smallest number so that your largest 5 minute reading is on the top and the second largest is next and the third largest is next and so on and so forth. The top 432 entries (5%) are discarded and the 433rd is considered your "95th Percentile" and that is the figure that you pay for. The 95th percentile was designed to help chop off wild peaks and allow us just bill you for what you are sustaining on a regular basis.
How do I know what my 95th percentile figure is?
You will have access to your 95th percentile figure and graphs for each server you have. These graphs and your billing numbers can be accessed via MyNatNet.
Why must I give you a commitment on the amount of bandwidth I plan to use? Can't I just be billed for what I use?
Like all hosting companies, we have to purchase enough bandwidth to meet the needs of all of our customers. Once we combine the commitments (we call it a CIR, or Committed Information Rate) of all of our customers we know how much bandwidth we will need to purchase, but it's a bit trickier than that. As we have no way of knowing who is working on the next "million hit deal" or going to be listed on any of the major link lists that are available, we need to make sure that we have plenty of overhead. If we run out of bandwidth, then EVERYONE of our customers suffer, so we take our customer's commitments to us and we add an additional 50% to that number, and then we purchase that amount of bandwidth. Does this mean that we have lots of bandwidth that we are not using at any given time? Absolutely. Is this really good for business? Absolutely. It's good for your business, because you can burst (or use) as much bandwidth as you want, assured that we have it. It's good for our business because customers know they are in good hands and that they can recommend us to their friends without fear of having to share a limited bandwidth space.
What happens if I go over my plan?
This depends on the type of plan you have. If you have concerns regarding overages, please contact our billing department at billing@nationalnet.com
My question was not answered here.
Should you have a question that was not answered here, go to the contact page or call us at 404-420-7000 (toll-free at 888-462-8638).
