Re: More Sidgemore on per-bit pricing (fwd)

[Vadim Antonov <avg () alink net>]

Pushpendra Mohta wrote:
 
> The argument about billing based on destination being very expensive is
> not entirely true. Whether on not they bill on this data, most any one
> planning a global IP backbone measures traffic distributions very
> carefully, not only for network engineering but also to understand the
> cost of business. The granularity required to bill on this data may
> have to improve -but it is not a big leap to make.
 
Generally speaking, it is impossible, because aggregation removes
information.  I.e. the better aggregation is, the harder is to pinpoint
the exact location of the destination.

In other words, even destination-based charging (except very special
cases like ISP in the middle of nowhere connected by one wire to the
rest of the world) requires cooperation of many parties, since no
party has any accurate cost-of-transport information locally.

--vadim