[17241] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: The Great Exchange
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jay R. Ashworth)
Thu May 28 10:25:14 1998
Date: Thu, 28 May 1998 10:14:17 -0400
From: "Jay R. Ashworth" <jra@scfn.thpl.lib.fl.us>
To: "'nanog@merit.edu'" <nanog@merit.edu>
In-Reply-To: <13676.55230.756875.240242@daedalus.crosslink.net>; from Michael Shields <shields@crosslink.net> on Thu, May 28, 1998 at 03:19:26AM +0000
On Thu, May 28, 1998 at 03:19:26AM +0000, Michael Shields wrote:
> Until I can make a one-hour call from DC to Moscow for the same price,
> or even a similar price, as a one-hour call to New York, it's not
> equitable that I can ftp for the same price.
Which resource is it that you are pre-empting, Michael, when you FTP
that file?
Circuit switching (TASI notwithstanding) and packet switching have
different scarcity, and therefore pricing, models.
> Could be. I think the economic basis is there; I just don't know if
> it's strong enough to overcome customers' love of flat-rate.
I think that it is not, and I don't think it's worth it to a whole
bunch of people to buy three times as much router CPU to do the work.
> Probably it will never make market sense to have distance-sensitive
> traffic pricing for "low-speed" users, where the cost of providing the
> service is mostly the cost of tech support, billing, dialin or xDSL
> aggregation, &c., and bandwidth is a small proportion of the cost.
With current trends, will the actual bandwidth _ever_ be more than a
small fraction of the cost? Except _maybe_ on trans-oceanic lines...
and bet on that situation to get better, not worse, as well.
Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth jra@baylink.com
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