Vadim Antonov writes:
Pushpendra Mohta wrote:
The argument about billing based on destination being very expensive is not entirely true. Whether on not they bill on this data, most any one planning a global IP backbone measures traffic distributions very carefully, not only for network engineering but also to understand the cost of business. The granularity required to bill on this data may have to improve -but it is not a big leap to make.
Generally speaking, it is impossible, because aggregation removes information. I.e. the better aggregation is, the harder is to pinpoint the exact location of the destination.
In other words, even destination-based charging (except very special cases like ISP in the middle of nowhere connected by one wire to the rest of the world) requires cooperation of many parties, since no party has any accurate cost-of-transport information locally.
--vadim
Ah. Granularity is the key. While there is enough information lost in routing aggregation that one could not calculate a price model based on V&H miles like telcos are apt to do, but one could reasonably attempt to do pricing buckets based on inter and intra "region" pricing. More importantly, there is an distinction between an IP Backbone and an ISP. The "Internet" may only be a specific case of an virtual network running on a large IP backbone. A large portion of the IP traffic is likely be in the transition of traditional "connection" oriented networks on to an IP network. This includes Virtual Private Networks of all flavors, and the subsequent transition of the data and application centers associated with these VPNs on to a carrier IP backbone. It includes things like Voice over IP, and IP based Call Centers. The connection oriented nature of these applications could provide the needed information for any pricing plan that was destination specific. --pushpendra Pushpendra Mohta pushp@cerf.net +1 619 812 3908