The Great Exchange

Thu May 28 00:45:53 UTC 1998

     1) The price of metering packets by destination exceeds the cost of
     providing the underlying service as it stands. This does not make me
     think that distance sensitive pricing has a bright future.

This depends on what part of the planet you are on. If you have to
support the cost of trans oceanic links then there certainly is the
incentive to at least introduce price points for "domestic" traffic
and "international".

     In short, I see no economic basis for such metering, and no moves
     towards such metering. Maybe I'm wrong, but I doubt that we're going
     to see any change in this any time soon.

I think it's a North American view of the world, unsurprising on NANOG
:-) Traffic metering is the dominant charging mechanism for permanent
connections in Oz and Connect differentiate traffic based on its
source (domestic/cache/external).

Mark.