Every Netrouting server sits on its own switch port; nothing is shared with a neighbour. What differs between plans is how the traffic on that port is billed. There are two models: a metered allowance in terabytes per month, or an unmetered port at a fixed speed. This page explains both in the terms the invoice uses, says which servers can take which, and covers the third model, 95th percentile, that applies to pooled commits.
Metered: an allowance in terabytes, outbound only
A metered plan includes a monthly transfer allowance. The entry line (Express and Instant) includes 17 TB; every other bare-metal line includes 100 TB. Two rules make it simpler than most metered plans elsewhere:
- Only outbound traffic counts. Data leaving your server towards the internet is measured. Data coming in, such as uploads to your server, backups you pull, or a mirror you sync from, is free and does not appear in the total.
- The port is still the full port. A 10G server on a 100 TB plan can push 10 Gbps when it needs to. The allowance limits volume per month, not speed.
Traffic beyond the allowance is billed per gigabyte at the rate agreed on your plan, on the next invoice. Nothing is cut off or slowed when you cross the line; you are billed for the excess.
A worked example. A server on a 100 TB plan sends 120 TB in a month and receives 30 TB. The 30 TB inbound does not count. The 20 TB above the allowance is billed at the per-GB rate; the other 100 TB was included. Had the same server sent 90 TB, the invoice would show nothing extra.
The portal shows exactly where you stand: the Graphs tab of a server has the IN and OUT totals for the period and the 95th percentile for reference. See read your bandwidth graphs and transfer totals.
Unmetered: a dedicated port at a fixed speed
An unmetered plan replaces the allowance with a speed. You pay a fixed amount per month for a port that can run at that speed all month long. Three things are true of it here and are not true everywhere:
- Unmetered means unmetered. There is no fair-use clause, no throttling after a threshold, and no traffic shaping. Run the port flat out for 30 days and the invoice is the same.
- The port is dedicated. Your speed is provisioned on your switch port for you alone; it is not a share of an uplink that other customers also draw from.
- The speed is a switch setting. It is configured on the port, not in the server, so it can be changed on a live machine without a reinstall or downtime. Upgrading later is a ticket, not a migration.
Which speeds you can choose depends on the port the server is built with:
| Server line | Port | Included metered allowance | Unmetered speeds available |
|---|---|---|---|
| Express, Instant | 1G | 17 TB out | none (metered only) |
| Edge | 1G | 100 TB out | 1G, 2G |
| Edge Pro, Bandwidth, Compute, Accelerator, Pro, Memory | 10G | 100 TB out | 1G, 2G, 5G, 10G, 20G |
Choosing a speed below the port is a deliberate cap: a 10G server on a 2G unmetered plan is rate-limited to 2 Gbps on the switch, in exchange for a lower fixed price. That is how you turn a metered server into a predictable line item without paying for a full 10G.
95th percentile: how pooled commits are measured
The third model is not on the bare-metal order form; it is how pooled bandwidth for resellers and larger commits are measured. Traffic is sampled every five minutes for the month. The samples are sorted, the top 5 percent are thrown away, and the highest remaining sample is the billed rate in megabits per second. In practice that means about 36 hours of the busiest traffic each month are ignored, so short spikes (a backup window, a launch, a DDoS being absorbed) do not set your bill. Only sustained usage does.
Example. A pool of servers runs at 800 Mbps most of the month, with a few evenings at 2.5 Gbps. Those evenings are inside the discarded 5 percent; the 95th percentile lands near 800 Mbps and that is what is billed. The same pool on a per-terabyte plan would have paid for every byte of those evenings.
Which one to choose
| Your traffic looks like | Choose | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Websites, APIs, mail, a few terabytes a month | Metered | The included allowance is far more than you use; the port is still fast. |
| Backups and large inbound syncs | Metered | Inbound is free, so pulling data into the server costs nothing. |
| Streaming, downloads, CDN origin, game servers | Unmetered | Outbound volume is the whole business; a fixed price beats counting terabytes. |
| A fixed monthly budget and no surprises | Unmetered at a capped speed | 2G or 5G on a 10G port is a hard ceiling on both speed and cost. |
| Several servers, spiky traffic, reseller | Pooled 95th percentile | One commit for the fleet, spikes ignored. |
Cloud instances and colocation
Cloud Compute and Optimized Cloud instances include a fixed transfer allowance per plan and are not configurable at checkout. Colocation is sold either as a metered volume (with a 1G or 10G uplink, depending on the tier) or as a dedicated unmetered port at 1G, 2G or 10G; the same rules above apply.
Questions we get
- Does inbound traffic really not count? Not on metered bare-metal plans. Only outbound is measured against the allowance.
- Can I switch from metered to unmetered on a running server? Yes. The speed is set on the switch port, so it is a ticket and a change to the next invoice, with no downtime.
- Can I go faster than my unmetered speed for a moment? No. The port is limited to the speed you bought; that is what makes the price fixed. If you need headroom, buy the next step.
- What happens when I exceed a metered allowance? Nothing to the server. The excess is billed per gigabyte on the next invoice. Watch the OUT total on the Graphs tab if you are close.
- Can I share an allowance between servers? Not on standard plans. Resellers can pool traffic or a 95th-percentile commit across servers; see the pooling guide.
- Is DDoS traffic counted? Attack traffic is filtered by our protection before it reaches your port and is not billed to you.
Current allowances, speeds and prices are on each product page in the shop; when this page and the shop disagree, the shop is right.