[1273] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: impact of settlements on provision of free services
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Lixia Zhang)
Thu Aug 29 21:06:31 1991
Date: Thu, 29 Aug 1991 18:05:15 PDT
From: Lixia Zhang <lixia@parc.xerox.com>
Reply-To: lixia@parc.xerox.com
To: "Stan Hanks (bcm)" <stan@karazm.math.uh.edu>
Cc: com-priv@uu.psi.com, craig@sics.se
In-Reply-To: Your message of Wed, 28 Aug 1991 19:42:29 PDT
> I agree violently that moving to a strict usage-based billing system
> for everyone is counterproductive.
Well, I feel more careful thinking is needed about this usage-based
billing issue:
- We've been doing email+ftp+telnet for couple of decades.
In a near future, I believe a lot of new applications will enter the
net, such as real time voice and video. Currently many people are
working on traffic control algorithms for providing different
quality of service (QOS). 0.5 sec delay is NOT noticable for email
traffic, but is intolerable for real time voice.
- Should/should not the different QOS support be reflected on the
bill you pay for the service?
One point I'd like to emphasize is that, NOT all users benefit from
a QOS support. The basic trick of QOS support is merely shuffling
queueing delay and/or losses among pkts of different applications,
so real time pkts get better service, while performance-insensitive
pkts get WORSE service (as compared to current FIFO service for
all).
> For one thing, it makes any decision
> to use the network equate to a decision to spend money. And if you get
> yelled at for spending money, you just won't use the network.
I'm not sure about this money-spending fear. Every phone call costs
money, but that does NOT seem to prevent people from making many calls
everyday.
Every time you turn on a light, you spend money for that, but does
that make anyone stay in dark?
Lixia
