Bandwidth P95: reading and comparing results
Understand sustained link utilization beyond isolated peaks.
What P95 represents
The 95th percentile sorts measurements from lowest to highest and identifies a value below which approximately 95% of observations fall. Cloutrix uses complete five-minute windows for this analysis. A short peak can appear in the chart without determining the period’s P95 on its own.
Inbound, outbound and maximum
Inbound and outbound are calculated separately. The higher directional P95 and the P95 of each window’s maximum answer different questions: in the latter, the busiest direction can change between windows. Check which measure your operation or contract uses.
Make comparisons consistent
Choose the same period, traffic category and interface role. Check collection coverage before comparing hosts or datacenters. Missing windows are not replaced with zero; missing data does not mean there was no traffic.
Turn charts into decisions
Use one hour for a recent incident, 12 or 24 hours for daily cycles, and 30 or 60 days for trends. History only exists after collection starts. Export available data to CSV to review an interval or share an analysis.