ATM Utility

Tue Nov 8 16:22:09 UTC 1994

In message <9411080848.AA16753 at uh.msc.edu>, Tim Salo writes:
> 
> Most ATM pricing I have seen has a "committed information rate"
> component, which assures a minimum available bandwidth.  This is not
> the "metered" pricing to which you are responding.
> 
> -tjs

Tim,

None of us has tried to hook up a small business or our PeeCee at home
to an ATM netwpork and see if setting up and SVC to ftp.*.* at some
low rate is proportional to the cost of asking for a PVC at 10s of
Mb/s, for obvious reasons (no one offers it - in case anyone can't see
the obvious reasons).  It might end up being orders of magnitude
cheaper to get some other type of connection to an IP provider below
some bandwidth threshhold than an ATM connection and paying per SVC.
For example, it is quite easy to exceed $1,000/mo using IP over POTs
or IP over ISDN with usage sensitive billing (within the same city),
while a leased circuit would be far cheaper.  I have existance proof
of that (both involve home use).

Curtis