Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!MCC.COM!AI.CLIVE From: AI.CLIVE@MCC.COM (Clive Dawson) Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip Subject: Re: Why charge for packets Message-ID: <12393878510.64.AI.CLIVE@MCC.COM> Date: 27 Apr 88 21:28:02 GMT References: Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Organization: The Internet Lines: 19 Another scheme which might come in useful, and which is often used by city utilities, is to pick a period of time where usage is monitored to obtain a figure for "average" usage. Then a charge is based on this figure. There are no meters on our sewage lines which can be used to bill for wastewater. Instead, the city bases its wastewater charges by sampling potable water usage for a month or two. (This usually is done in the winter time to avoid the lawn watering factor, etc.) In this case, the network administrators might wish to compute an "average" packet count for each host by monitoring for some period of time. (Such times should obviously be well-kept secrets so that hosts don't influence the result by changing their behavior.) Network charges could then be assessed based on these results. Just figured I had to get MY two cents in...! Clive Dawson -------