Question on 95th percentile and Over-usage transit pricing

Thu Sep 22 17:31:34 UTC 2011

On Sep 22, 12:54 am, PC <paul4... at gmail.com> wrote:
> An optimal solution would be a tiered system where the adjusted price only
> applies to traffic units over the price tier threshold and not retroactively
> to all traffic units.

I have seen a more "optimal" scheme about 15 years ago. Pricing was a
smooth function, but it was for software licensing, not networking.

As I recall, their scheme went something like:
invoice_amount = some_constant * (quantity)^0.75

This seemed smart to me. It gave the customer incentives to invest
more, but also got rid of silly discontinuities that would cause
irrational customer and salesperson behavior.

Has anyone seen something similar in the service provider world? All I
ever see are arbitrary step functions.