What about netflow ?
[to Vadim Antonov who said that _metering_ traffic is intractable]
Dear ISP - you have made an accounting error that I am able to demonstrate in my copious traffic logs. Please credit $x to my account.
or
Dear Customer - our copious traffic logs indicate that you generated x
On 08/25/98 03:48:29 PM Sean M. Doran wrote: traffic
last month. Please pay $x net 30 days. Thank you.
Dispute resolution -- it's fun!
i think this point is the single largest barrier to doing proper billing. isp billing needs to be as bullet-proof as telco/voice billing. i suspect that with many isp's (and certainly from some of my past experience) if customers would ever have disputed an invoice we wouldn't have had a leg to stand on. i'm sure some providers have good billing systems but i know many that don't yet they do some kind of usage based billing. also, as useful as netflow can be, at oc-3 speeds and higher the sheer amount of data exported can be overwhelming both to routers and trunks (in agreement with vadim). -brett