[2801] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
ISDN questions anyone?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (drw@BOURBAKI.MIT.EDU)
Thu Jun 4 18:39:05 1992
Date: Thu, 4 Jun 92 18:36:15 EDT
From: drw@BOURBAKI.MIT.EDU
To: com-priv@psi.com, eff-talk@eff.org
The question that comes to my mind is: What is the rate structure?
There are a number of possible tradeoffs, and how the rate structure
makes these tradeoffs will have interesting consequences.
- What is the balance between fixed costs and usage-based costs?
- (Believing that ISDN is a virtual-circuit type protocol:) What is
the balance between the cost of maintaining a connection and the cost
of sending data on a connection?
The former strikes to the heart of a lot of the rate structure
discussions we've had on com-priv.
The latter is particularly interesting compared to the Internet, where
it is assumed that the cost of maintaining a connection with a very
low data rate is very small relative to the cost of transmitting a
large amount of data. Thus, the Internet doesn't penalize highly
bursty usage. I've seen suggestions that ISDN presumes that people
will connect, use a data connection at full rated speed, and then
disconnect.
Dale
