roundtable: Re: feast-or-famine, FYI from Edupage

roundtable: Re: feast-or-famine, FYI from Edupage

Re: feast-or-famine, FYI from Edupage

David Farber (farber@cis.upenn.edu)
Fri, 01 Aug 1997 19:59:17 -0400 

Message-Id: <3.0.3.32.19970801195917.03b8659c@linc.cis.upenn.edu>
Date: Fri, 01 Aug 1997 19:59:17 -0400
To: roundtable@cni.org
From: David Farber <farber@cis.upenn.edu>
Subject: Re: feast-or-famine, FYI from Edupage
In-Reply-To: <33E26312.A19E5E0A@simon.net>


On 8/1/97, Sam Simon <sam@simon.net> wrote:
> 
> James Love <love@cptech.org> wrote:
> > 
> > ..... Charging for usage has nothing to do with Congestion, unless the
> > charges are related to congestion.  FOR EXAMPLE, until recently, AOL
> > had usage charges, AND IT HAD CONGESTION PROBLEMS, when everyone tried 
> > to use the network at the same time.  I used to use DRI's pricey data
> > network, which had a $60 per HOUR usage charge.  Guess what, it was
> > congested as all hell at predictable times of the day.
> >
> >     If you want to charge for congestion, not usage, show how this can
> > be done.  But don't make assertions that usage pricing will reduce
> > congestion, if it will simply reduce overall usage, without doing
> > anything about the the congestion problems that happen when everyone
> > is on the network at the same time.
> >
> >     Jamie
> >
> > Curtiss Priest wrote:
> > >
> > > RESEARCHERS ADVOCATE INTERNET USE CHARGE
> > >
> > > Researchers at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center conducted tests that
> > > showed the average packet of digital data took 189 milliseconds to
> > > travel from Stanford University to Cranfield University in Great Britain
> > > and then back to Stanford.  They then developed a statistical model of
> > > Internet traffic showing that when users are encouraged by fast
> > > response times, they ramp up their Internet activities, thus creating
> > > the "storms," or bursts of congestion, that continually plague the
> > > Net.  When the response time slows to a crawl, users back off, and
> > > eventually things get back to normal.  To avoid the feast-or-famine 
> > > scenario, the researchers advocate charging all users according to 
> > > the amount of bandwidth they use.  (Chronicle of Higher Education 
> > > 1 Aug 97)
> > >
> > >            W. Curtiss Priest, Director, CITS
> > >       Center for Information, Technology & Society
> > >          466 Pleasant St., Melrose, MA  02176
> > >        Voice: 617-662-4044  BMSLIB@MITVMA.MIT.EDU
> > >  Fax: 617-662-6882 WWW: http://www.eff.org/pub/Groups/CITS
> >
> > --
> > _______________________________________________________
> > James Love | Center for Study of Responsive Law
> > P.O. Box 19367 | Washington, DC 20036 | 202.387.8030
> > http://www.cptech.org | love@cptech.org
> 
> 
>   Jamie,
> 
>     You are right of course.  The point of usage charges is to (1)
> discourage use and (2) allocate cost to cost causers.  Cost in a network
> envrionment tends to be expansion to meet peak load demand.  Thus, it is
> important to charge only for those who contribute to peak, when they
> contribute to peak.  Sometimes, the cost of metering in this way is more
> expensive than the value it creates.  In any case, if there is to be
> unit charging, it should be focused on peak-load times.


It is worth pointing out that this whole subject was explored to death
during the days of centralized time sharing systems where congestion was a
problem and every charging scheme known to man/woman kind was proposed and
published in some learned journal. Almost all were ignored as not workable
or too much trouble, cost more than they saved or just were rejected by the
users. Luckily PCs came along to eliminate the big time sharing centers and
the problem went away for a while.

We could resurrect those old papers and change the names and submit them to
the new learned journals or to the network lists :-)

Dave

David Farber
<farber@cis.upenn.edu>

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