Multiple incentive internet pricing for national academic research networks: a case study

In this paper we develop a simple, flexible and adaptable pricing model for NRNs offering best effort services, taking into account the specific chara cteristics of these networks which differentiate them from those of the com mercial ISPs, such as congestion patterns, cost sharing and government subs idisation, governmental policy towards equal access and fairness, and over dimensioning of critical resources. The proposed model captures the above m ulti-objective policy concepts by using a pricing scheme consisting of two parts, a fixed part, that reflects specific policy parameters, and a variab le part, that reflects the usage of the congested links. The latter part is used in order to reduce congestion and provide the revenue needed in order to upgrade the congested resources, We discuss the case study of applying the above model for calculating the tariffs for 1999 for the Greek Academic Research Network (GR-NET). (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reser ved.