Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!think!bbn!drilex!dricejb From: dricejb@drilex.UUCP (Craig Jackson drilex1) Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip Subject: Re: billing for use Message-ID: <8577@drilex.UUCP> Date: 21 Feb 90 01:09:13 GMT References: Organization: DRI/McGraw-Hill, Lexington, MA Lines: 41 In article emv@math.lsa.umich.edu (Edward Vielmetti) writes: >In article ms6b+@ANDREW.CMU.EDU (Marvin Sirbu) writes: >> [That billing for use encourages conservation of 'scarce' resources.] >One of the problems associated with billing for use is that is >provides incentives to circumvent billing procedures, thus generating >possible non-optimal behavior. Consider a tax on anonymous FTP >transactions; users will either find a way to make their anonymous >FTPs look like something else (run an FTP daemon on the SUPDUP port, >or hide it up in some un-numbered port) or turn to heavier use of >mail-based servers and clog up already jammed mail queues. Similarly, >a tax on TCP services will induce people to use UDP even when it might >be sub-optimal for use on their particular network. Any billing system will lead to efforts to circumvent it. However, if the billing system is fair and reasonably secure, *most people* will work with it, instead of against. In your TCP vs UDP case, it wouldn't make sense to bill for data bytes transmitted over TCP differently than data bytes transmitted over UDP. However, attaching a cost penalty would certainly discourage bad TCP implementations. >When you start to bill for use on a per-packet or per-connection >basis, the Law of Unintended Consequences is bound to strike. >If you have naive or uneducated users, solve their inefficient >use of the network through education, not a tax on their foolishness. The Law of Unintended Consequences will occur in any situation. But no amount of education will work if the incentives are all against it. (Face it. Everybody's had at least one subject that they studied only because it was required. When I say required, that means that there was some penalty attached to not doing so.) I think that the idea that 'It is immoral to bill for use on networks' is an idea which keeps large-scale networks in the research/sugar-daddy world. I've been formulating some ideas on this--I'll try to post something concrete soon. -- Craig Jackson dricejb@drilex.dri.mgh.com {bbn,axiom,redsox,atexnet,ka3ovk}!drilex!{dricej,dricejb}