WWW: Beyond the Basics

Chapter 8. Commerce

8.4. Other Commerce Issues

8.4.1. Paying for network traffic

To this point, this chapter has discussed payment systems that handle purchases of one sort or another using the WWW. They do not handle transactions for such low-level activities as passing communications packets across a network. The Digital Silk Road (Hardy) proposes including a money field in some packets that can be used to pay for the transit of the packet across the network. In a sense, the packets are cars and the links in the networks are toll roads. The companies that maintain links on the network receive income from the packets that use their links. Per-packet pricing for international network traffic has already been implemented in Chile(Baeza-Yates) and New Zealand (Brownlee).

This approach to paying for network access has advantages. Instead of paying a set amount each month, a user pays only for what he uses. This could save a light-traffic user money if the user transmits only a small amount of traffic. This approach also subsidizes companies for maintaining network links. The companies' income is related to their quality of service, reliability, and toll rate. The major (and potentially prohibitive) disadvantage is that current protocols must be rewritten to use this approach.

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Copyright © 1996 Patrick N. Brooks
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Patrick N. Brooks <pbrooks@vt.edu>