From: "Stephen Stuart"
Billing disputes in the exchange point now involve three parties, and become more complex as a result - this, in theory, results in the technology not reducing op-ex but shifting it from the operations department to the accounting and legal departments.
If a proper rulebased system were implemented, wouldn't this account for the issues? For example, implementation of an increase is only allowed by peer E if the traffic has been a gradual increase and X throughput has been met for T amount of time. Peer E would also have specific caps allotted for peer S and T along with priority in granting the increases. In the case of the worm, it is important to have a good traffic analyzer to recognize that the increase in bandwith has been too drastic to constitute a valid need. Of course, traffic patterns to vary abit in short periods of time, but the average sustained throughput and the average peak do not increase rapidly. What was seen with Saphire should never be confused with normal traffic and requests for bandwidth increments should be ignored by any automated system. Of course, I realize that to implement the necessary rules would add a complexity that could cost largs sums of money due to mistakes. -Jack