The MPLS WG Archive

[Curtis Villamizar <curtis@fictitious.org>]

In message <3E64EAA2.FDD36434@lucent.com>, Stephen Trowbridge writes:
> Curtis,
> Working for an equipment manufacturer, I have never felt that it was
> my place to tell a SP how they should bill for their services. I don't
> think we should preclude any particular billing model by our architecture.
> It is the market that should decide what gets offered at a flat rate:
> not the equipment, and certainly not the standards.
> Steve


Steve,

This is no different from the 1995 argument that IP should go away
becasue there is no good way to bill on a per connection basis.

What you are asking for is customer initiated connections which can be
metered for billing purposes.

I used to work at two major ISPs in the architecture group.  There was
no such requirement.  Since leaving and being on the vendor side I
have not heard any such requirement from customers.

Well actually if you count Enron as a customer, Enron's bandwidth
brokering required customer initiated connections with AAA and
possibly metering.  They hadn't decided on the latter before they gave
up and switched their business plan to a QoS enabled backbone for VOD
(remember the Enron/Blockbuster announcement).  We all know how far
both of those ideas went.

It appears that you are not arguing that any SP wishes to repeat
Enron's folly (the first of the two), just that we should extend the
protocols to accommodate it just in case.  That doesn't sound like a
strong case for a set of requirements.

Curtis


> Curtis Villamizar wrote:
> > 
> > In message <3E64A690.D3BB8603@lucent.com>, Yangguang Xu writes:
> > >
> > >
> > > Kireeti,
> > >
> > > Yea, you are right. You pay flat rate for a DSL.  [...]
> > 
> > Lets look up and down the food chain.
> > 
> >   At consumer level, service is tiered flat rate.  DSL, cable IP, cell
> >   phone, now POTS.
> > 
> >   IP service at T1 or higher has always been flat rate or burstable
> >   tiered flat rate.
> > 
> >   Switched services such as FR and ATM have been flat rate PVC or
> >   SPVC.  SVC service is generally not available and where it is has
> >   almost negligible penetration.
> > 
> >   At the high end, leased lines, leased lambdas, and leased dark fiber
> >   is definitely not signaled dynamicly by the customer so there is not
> >   "call" or customer connection.
> > 
> > What has had a call model:
> > 
> >   X.25
> > 
> >   ISDN
> > 
> > Even ISDN, where it has been at all successful, is flat rate.  Where
> > it is metered, market penetration is zip.  (btw - Its still metered
> > where I live afaik and might as well not be offered).
> > 
> > > Furthermore, you are talking about billing. Indeed, one of the reasons op
> erto
> > > rs
> > > choose flat rate is to simplify billing because the control/management pl
> ane
> > > can't generate accurate information.
> > >
> > > The bottom line is that as the building block of the overall management
> > > functions, control plane should provide adequate function to support high
>  lev
> > > el
> > > services. Otherwise, everything becomes commodity.
> > 
> > So what does this billing and control/management plane nonsense mean
> > in a world with flat rate or tiered service with no customer initiated
> > connections to bill for?  It has absolutely no purpose except to try
> > to perpetuate a mindset and perpetuate a hope that services with the
> > X.25 and ISDN metered billing model will somehow gain penetration and
> > the SP will be able to milk huge profits from it.  Unfortunately the
> > customer isn't stupid enough, so short of a return to monopoly rule or
> > other exclusion of competition, it won't happen.
> > 
> > > Yangguang
> > 
> > Curtis
>