Although a reservation and spot marketplace may allocate the same physical resource The bandwidth service that is offered through a single Merkato marketplace. It will have service attributes, an available quantity earmarked for it by the NSP, and a market mechanism for distributing bandwidth (either the spot market The Merkato mechanism by which bandwidth is traded, in a progressive second price auction. An optimal fair market price is established and bandwidth is allocated to buyers, based on their bids relative to other buyers. or reservation market The Merkato market mechanism by which a specified quantity of bandwidth, for a specific duration, is sold for a firm price specified by the seller and agreed to by the buyer. This is an automated process based on a rate sheet that the seller establishes in advance. )., Merkato controls them via separate Resource Agents. Bandwidth The amount of data transmitted or received per unit of time. When we refer to acquiring or selling bandwidth, we mean the amount of information that can be sent over a connection at one time, at the allowed speed, without packet loss or excessive delay. Bandwidth is measured in bits-per-second. is pre-assigned to each of these markets, so reservations do not take bandwidth from the spot market or vice versa.
The Capacity In the Merkato interface, the term capacity refers to the total amount of bandwidth available from the Seller. display in the Resource window tells you the bandwidth currently available to you in that marketplace, taking into account quantities currently being allocated to other reservation buyers.