[10750] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: Settlements
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Rick Adams)
Mon Mar 7 22:44:16 1994
Date: Mon, 7 Mar 94 16:47:37 -0500
From: rick@uunet.uu.net (Rick Adams)
To: com-priv@psi.com
Well, overlooking the potentially high cost of actually counting the bits
(or whatever)
The biggest problems with the settlements model, is that they will
almost certainly not be settlements.
The "big guys" will set a rate for transit and call it a settlement.
The little guys will have no choice but to pay it for "full interconnection".
This is analgous to the "settlements" on international calls where the US
phone companys pay a factor of 5 or ten times as much to the foreign,
monopoly carriers as they receive in return. They have no alternative.
And, of course, there is the not yet resolved killer of exactly what
do you settle on? Bytes sent kills anonymous ftp servers. Bytes received
is like an unlimited collect call that cant be refused.
Settlements might be ok in theory, but have proven to be totally impossible to
implement fairly (emphasis on fairly. They are eay to implement unfairly)
--rick
