Mike Leber asked: | Don't you mean senders here? (You seemed to be proposing a senders pay | system.) If not, of course receivers would continue to participate, they | earn money under your scenario for each bit they receive! A transmitter always has the option not to send. If they are unwilling to pay the receiver, they just don't send to it. Note that transmitters and receivers here are not end-to-end, but rather hop-by-hop, organizationally speaking. That is, sender host/site pays its provider, which pays the next provider which pays the next provider which pays the destination. What is paid is a business negotiation, clearly, and one option is that the payment amount is zero (i.e., I will only send you traffic if I don't have to pay for it). Basically that last sentence is precisely the issue between BBN and Exodus (cf. I will only accept traffic from you if you pay for it). Sean.