[2421] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
re: Billing systems
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Craig Partridge)
Wed Feb 26 19:02:33 1992
To: drw@bourbaki.mit.edu
Cc: com-priv@psi.com
Reply-To: Craig Partridge <craig@aland.bbn.com>
From: Craig Partridge <craig@aland.bbn.com>
Date: Wed, 26 Feb 92 15:48:38 -0800
> If the cost of some particular link is usage-sensitive then please
> devise a short-term expedient for dealing with that problem.
>
> The trouble is that as the Internet gets denser, more and more costs
> becomes usage-sensitive. The only part of the net that is truly
> flat-rate for a user is the line from him to the first router. The
> "interior" parts of the net are used in proportion to the amount of
> data sent, not in porportion to the bandwidth of the lines to the
> users.
Actually, there's a good chance the data is in proportion to the bandwidth
of the lines. The proportion of traffic leaving an organization's
LAN into the greater Internet has proved to be almost constant, across
all organizations. Similar results for regional networks are being
informally reported. So there's good reason to believe that of you
buy a link of bandwidth X, I can reliably predict how much bandwidth
you'll inject into the network (over a day or so).
Yes there will be outriders. But the costs of billing are also lower...
Craig
