
On Thu, 19 April 2001, Greg A. Woods wrote:
> From the provider's perspective this doesn't really matter a whole lot
> and they can reduce the effect of your bursts on their other customers
> by simply narrowing their window.  There's no need to do silly sliding
> windows, multiple windows, etc. -- the averages are just fine.

>From a provider's perspective it does matter.  The most costly part
of any network is the last 1% because most of the fixed cost of the
network is based on the peak capacity, not average capacity.  Billing
based on average usage works best if you have a large population and
excess capacity.  Generally its the largest of the large customers who
have the most to gain by gaming the system.  A few T1 customers gaming
the system is just noise.

But you might have an OC48 customer who pegs their link requiring you
to add more peak capacity to your network.  But times their traffic, so
their average usage never exceeds an OC24, and pays the average price.
This is the type of customer which nailed the electric companies.
If you can save tens of thousands dollars by starting an electric
smelter at 30 minutes past the hour instead of exactly on the hour,
its noticable.  The electric companies reserve their fanciest meters
for large power consumers like smelters and colo providers :-)

This was fine in the past, when we were doubling the Internet's capacity
every X days.  I have a feeling providers will start managing/reducing the
excess capacity headroom in their networks.  And will start looking at
ways to wring more money out of their current customers.  Some rocket
science accountant somewhere should be working on a way to maximize the
chargable usage by just shifting the window bins back and forth until
he finds the maximum.

Is there any commercial provider not trying to maximize billable usage?
By carefully choosing window bins, a provider could generate 1%, 25%, 50%
more revenue across all his usage-based customers.

And if you got this idea from me, I expect 5% of the take....




