Michael Shields wrote:
Perry E. Metzinger wrote ...
Can you back up your comment about metering requiring three times the current CPU capacity of routers?
As a router manufacturer i can assure you that keeping detailed transfer records at today backbone's speeds is totally infeasible. (I do not say impossible, but the equipment capable of doing that doesn't exist, and would cost _at least_ two orders of magnitude more than conventional routers). Of course, someone may come up with schemes like the "cost counter" in the packets, but why bother? By and large the economic case for fine grained distance-sensitive Internet service is non-existent. --vadim PS If anyone wonders where i got cost estimate consider that full OC-12c produces about 250kpps, or about 25k flows/sec. That produces storage requirement at 0.5Mb / sec, or 43Gb / day. For any reasonable billing one have to keep records for at least a year.