[232] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
NREN and Usage Based Billing
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (HORN%HYDRA%sdi.polaroid.com@RELAY.)
Thu Feb 28 09:27:28 1991
Date: Thu, 28 Feb 91 08:04 EST
From: HORN%HYDRA%sdi.polaroid.com@RELAY.CS.NET
To: com-priv%psi.com@RELAY.CS.NET
X-Envelope-To: com-priv@psi.COM
X-Vms-To: SDI::INGATE::"com-priv@psi.com"
It is probably best for the NREN policies to avoid any effort to direct the
methods used for accounting or billing. These are areas where any blanket
forcing is more likely to have unwanted side effects than desirable direct
effects.
The better approach is to structure both NREN and NSF policies to maximize the
freedom of individual players to choose their own prefered vendor, and to
encourage easy vendor switching. Then the user preferences will have maximum
impact on the vendors and vendors that do not listen will lose customers. I
suspect that the user distaste for usage based systems will then be sufficient
to either eliminate usage based or structure the usage accounting in an
acceptable manner. Usage based systems do encourage more efficient use of
networks and should result in lower overall costs. Let the end users decide
how to balance billing inconveniences against improved system efficiency.
R Horn horn%hydra@polaroid.com
