The Economics of the Internet: Utility, Utilization, Pricing, and Quality of Service

Abstract

Can high quality be provided economically for all transmissions on the Internet? Current work assumes that it cannot, and concentrates on providing differentiated service levels. However, an examination of patterns of use and economics of data networks suggests that providing enough bandwidth for uniformly high quality transmission may be practical. If this turns out not to be possible, only the simplest schemes that require minimal involvement by end users and network administrators are likely to be accepted. On the other hand, there are substantial inefficiencies in the current data networks, inefficiencies that can be alleviated even without complicated pricing or network engineering systems.