From: Adam Back <aba@dcs.ex.ac.uk>
Date: Fri, 1 Aug 1997 03:22:57 +0800
To: whgiii@amaranth.com
Subject: Re: uncensorable net based payment system?
In-Reply-To: <199707311307.IAA17412@mailhub.amaranth.com>
Message-ID: <199707311722.SAA02457@server.test.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain




William Geiger <whgiii@amaranth.com> writes:
> In <199707311240.NAA00742@server.test.net>, on 07/31/97 
> >  at 01:40 PM, Adam Back XXIVth <aba@dcs.ex.ac.uk> said:
> >
> >Then I can have some net cash savings backed by the rights to 1Tb of
> >bandwidth at 100 Mb/sec.  100 Mb/sec for 3 days.
> >
> >A problem with this is that the market prices of the assets is
> >continually dropping.  How do I hedge against this.  Can I buy futures? 
> >Sell 100 Mb/sec for 3 days now in exchange for 200 Mb/sec for 3 days in 1
> >years time at an predicted equivalent value? 
> 
> Well I see some problems with this. Any increase in bandwith requires the
> addition of hardware to accomplish it. It would be of little use to me to
> have 100 Mb/sec for 3days considering the cost of installing the lines and
> purchacing the extra equipment.

I wasn't thinking of using the bandwidth myself, just using it as a
commodity to back an electronic cash system with.  Eg it's like a gold
currency, I can't eat gold or do anything that useful with it myself,
but some people use it (jewelers, circuitry, etc), and those people's
demand give's it value.  There demand + other speculators such as
myself defines the current market price.

So I was thinking that this bandwidth would be readily transferable as
there will always be people on the look out for a good buy for their
bandwidth.  If you're going to auction off unused bandwidth on leased
pipes etc, there will be people dynamically buying bandwidth at the
best price they can get.

> Also in a packet switching environment how do you plan on insuring any
> amount of bandwith? The Backbone is not set-up for this. The only way in
> the current enviorment that you can guarantee a given bandwith is by
> having a dedicated connection point to point.

ATM?  Virtual ATM?  We were talking 10-15 years time frame there.

Guaranteed bandwidth virtual pipes have got to come for metering to
make sense.  Metering is going to come for some aspects of the net
sooner or later.  Even if you buy outright your leased line and all
the bandwidth on it, it will be more efficient if you can sell off
spare bandwidth during your weekends and evenings.  Also you could
underbuy your bandwidth if you knew with an acceptable degree of
certainty that you could buy in the extra bandwidth as needed in an
efficient market.

There will be people happy to buy your off peak bandwidth for batch
data shovelling.

Adam
-- 
Have *you* exported RSA today? --> http://www.dcs.ex.ac.uk/~aba/rsa/

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