Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!MCL.UNISYS.COM!perry
From: perry@MCL.UNISYS.COM (Dennis Perry)
Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip
Subject: Re:  My two cents about charge schemes on the Arpanet
Message-ID: <8804260952.AA08097@LANAI.MCL.UNISYS.COM>
Date: 26 Apr 88 09:52:49 GMT
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 18

Valdis, you raise an interesting point about multiple routes and
some nets that charge and some that don't.  This gets into some
interesting issues about routing and routing restrictions.  Indeed,
one might develop several PhD thesis about 'routing with restrictions'
or gateways that spend 50% of there time deciding if they can accept
you packet (no money, wrong organization, wrong destination, etc.)

A similar issue apparent arose in the Arpanet connections to Europe
that went over x.25 links thru the PTTs.  The X.25 networks wanted
to charge the Arpanet for traffice originating in the Arpanet destined
to Europe, across the X.25 links.  The Europeans were already paying
for their half.  DARPA refused to pay, making the argument that
it was a 'wash'.  If we charged the Europeans to carry their traffic
and they charged us to carry their traffic, the excercise was one
of exchanging the same amount of money, so why waste the money on
the overhead of breaking even?  The net result was the Europeans
pay for both directions of traffic.

dennis