Re: Metered IP billing is indeed possible

[Mike Leber <mleber () he net>]

Neat.

While I wasn't one that claimed it was impossible, I suggest you try
sending the originally proposed site by site traffic data to your regular
joe average dialup user and see what response you get (remember you will
need to accompany the bill with 30 pages of lines like: file index.html
NNN bytes long transferred from host xyz.com at 11:39:06 on 7/9/98).  Oh,
by the way you need to store all this data for long enough that you can
legally resolve billing disputes.

The proposed original goal was to provide DETAIL so that the poor dialup
user would be able to figure out which web sites were the BAD ones sending
all the data.  This billing problem was brought up in regards to a
receiver pays system. 

Of course this kind of billing information is USELESS if they only visited
the site once or a few times. 

Because of this even providing the end user with this information
(presuming they are all network or software engineers and know how to read
it) won't fix the problem of encouraging waste in a transaction settlement
system.

Interesting package anyway. 

Mike.

On Tue, 25 Aug 1998, Bruce Hahne wrote:

> So, umm, who here recently claimed that packet metering and billing in an
> ISP/IP setting is technically impossible?  In my mailbox this evening I see:
>
> > Cisco, Solect Offer Usage-Based Billing Solution
> >
> > Cisco Systems, Inc., a global leader in Internet
> > networking, and Solect Technology Group, a leading provider
> > of infrastructure software solutions for service providers,
> > have announced current availability of IAF/NetFlow, an 
> > advanced usage-based billing system integrating Cisco's 
> > NetFlow software into Solect's Internet Administration 
> > Framework (IAF) product used by high-speed, broadband 
> > network and service providers for commercial and business 
> > users.
>
> Solect sells telco billing systems.  There are other products about to hit
> the market which do IP metering, and they're going to use telco billing
> systems as a back end as well.  The metered billing steamroller is coming,
> people.  Settlements won't be too far behind.  Watch out, because the telcos
> have over 100 years of experience playing this game.  (What was that NANOG
> 13 T-shirt slogan again, hm?)
>
> Bruce Hahne
> hahne () netcom com

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