Yes, but part of the software is a billing component which tells you *exactly* how much bandwidth you've used and what the total cost of the bandwidth is. You can also set a budget limit in the application which would not allow the bandwidth purchased to exceed $x. -- Jonathan J.J.Bailey wrote:

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Hello Fellow NANOG'ers,

I was just thinking about this - tell me if it sounds reasonable? The company that I work for developed a piece of technology which, through rate-limit statements, allow customers to buy/sell bandwidth "on demand". Now, I was thinking: "Why can't we take this technology that we've tested successfully in a colo environment and adapt it a little bit for personal/business-class ISP's to allow them to bill for the bandwidth that a customer uses, and only that with the exception of a base monthly fee (to cover the DSL/T1 loop, e-mail services, support, etc.) of a few dollars.

Personally, I would like to see a scenario where everyone just pays for what they use - it would be a much better system for allowing people who don't necessarily need to get on the Internet at high-speed, get on high-speed which will not only increase revenue for the ISP's, but also for the customer who can now use DSL/T1 access in a much more effective way.

Questions? Comments? Suggestions?

Sounds good in theory. Sometimes, though, people don't want billing surprises. They find that knowing what the bill will be is more valuable than the savings. Or, they are unwilling to get hammered by an anomaly.

-- Jonathan M. Slivko Network Operations Center Invisible Hand Networks, Inc. help@invisiblehand.net 1-866-MERKATO (USA) 1-812-355-5908 (Intl) <http://www.invisiblehand.net>