Re: Traffic Jams on the Internet

[frantz@netcom.com (Bill Frantz)]

At  3:54 PM 3/27/96 -0500, Mark M. wrote:
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>On Tue, 26 Mar 1996, E. ALLEN SMITH wrote:
>
>>       It occurs to me that it would be good if people sent in some
>> non-governmental/hierarchial solutions to this problem, such as ones using
>> digital cash as "postage" for prioritized mail.
>
>I read an article on various Internet pricing schemes a while ago and one
>of the ideas was a pretty clever solution.  Internet services would be
>classified according to their bandwidth requirement and need for
>interactivity.  The cost per byte of e-mail might be very cheap whereas the
>cost per byte for videoconferencing might be more.  There's no real way to
>rip off this scheme, because if you try to send an e-mail and classify it
>as "high priority" it is more expensive.

The phone companies have dealt with this kind of problem for years.  For
example, there are issues of phase jitter and bit error rate that they deal
with all the time.  If anything, they don't quite understand the email type
communication of, "Oh, anytime in the next 10 minutes, and tell me if it
doesn't get thru and I'll send it again."

In ATM, these characteristics are bundled into what is called Quality of
Service.  That, along with bandwidth, make a reasonable basis for charging.
 Email is a bit like flying standby, while video is more like the Concorde.
 IMHO, the only long-term solution to the problem of bandwidth allocation
involves markets.  Markets feed cost information back to the users and give
the providers incentive to improve service.

Regards - Bill


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