Xref: utzoo news.sysadmin:2279 comp.misc:5782
Newsgroups: news.sysadmin,comp.misc
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: computer charge back
Message-ID: <1989Apr16.020150.1083@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <885@hawkmoon.MN.ORG>
Date: Sun, 16 Apr 89 02:01:50 GMT

In article <885@hawkmoon.MN.ORG> det@hawkmoon.MN.ORG (Derek E. Terveer) writes:
>...  However, we (=i) don't have much experience at the kinds
>of rates to charge for the following resources:
>
>	cpu time	cpu seconds

You might want to consider not charging for CPU time at all, provided it
does not exceed some fraction of connect time.  Do you know how much
CPU time you used in your editor to prepare your message?  Do your users
have any idea how much CPU time they use in normal interactive work?
Almost certainly not.  What you'll be presenting them with is a "mystery
charge":  they won't have any idea of how to minimize it or how much
a specific activity costs them.  This is distinctly user-hostile.

Obviously, people who leave background number crunching going after they
sign off, or spend hours in a compute-intensive interactive statistics
package, are a slightly different story.  That's why I suggest putting
an upper bound on free CPU time, as a fraction of connect time.  That
way the normal interactive user sees only charges he understands, but
the cruncher is still paying for his CPU time.

The same comments apply to charging for memory use and character i/o.
-- 
Welcome to Mars!  Your         |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
passport and visa, comrade?    | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu