[LINK] compelling Content wrecks broadband (was Volume charging)

[Saliya Wimalaratne]

On Tue, 26 Nov 2002, Richard Archer wrote:

> Why is that? I cannot see any effective difference between volume
> charging and pipe-size charging. Buying a pipe is simply a way of
> buying a facility to provide a certain amount of volume. Similarly
> buying by volume is a way of utilising a certain sized pipe.

There is a fairly significant difference from the performance perspective.
In the extreme cases:

Per-pipe charging encourages the pipe-purchaser to run it at 100%. 
The supplier, conversely, wants to run it at 0%. 

Byte-charging encourages the purchaser to run at 0% and the supplier
at 100% (assuming the supplier is actually making a profit on the bytes :)

The second scenario is, IMO, more likely to provide better performance to 
the data that runs across the pipe...


> The only catch would be that some people like to run their pipe at 40%
> capacity and others at 80%. So, people who bog down their links, thus
> publishing their compelling content at a snail's pace would be
> subsidised by publishers who maintain adequate pipes. In this
> degenerate case volume charging would appear to be preferable.

Yup. 

utilisation %-based charging is another word for byte-charging, too :)

The only thing 'wrong' with volume-charging is the fact that current
volume-charges (when expressed in  c/M) are probably an order of magnitude
more expensive than when the same data is bought 'by-the-pipe'. Go figure. 

Regards,

Saliya