To open Traffic page click the Traffic link on the left of the Portal The unique market mechanism by which Merkato allocates bandwidth to potential buyers at an optimal market price The price for something that buyers and sellers agree on. Merkato establishes a market price for bandwidth during each spot market auction round. There is a fixed amount for sale, so as demand increases, prices rise. The market price is reached when the cumulative demand of all the buyers is exactly equal to the amount of bandwidth being offered by the seller. . An auction is established, where each bid consists of a unit price and the quantity desired at that price. Bidders are ranked according to the unit price they offer. Bidders who get an allocation pay the unit price offered by the lowest accepted bidder. (This is the "second price" aspect of the auction.) Bidders who don't get an allocation can re-bid at a higher unit price, in an attempt to improve their ranking in the auction. (This is the "progressive" aspect of the auction.) An auction round closes when all bidders are either successful, based on their last bid, or cannot match the price offered by the current lowest successful bidder..
For a Seller agent The program that interacts with the rest of Merkato on behalf of buyers and sellers. Buyers can acquire bandwidth by configuring their agents to offer the price they are willing to pay for a range of available quantity, or use their agent to request a quote for a fixed-price bandwidth reservation. Sellers configure their agents with a quantity of bandwidth for sale and a minimum price they are willing to accept for that quantity., the Traffic page shows the combined amount of data all buyers have transferred through the Merkato network control point.
Three charts are provided to represent three time scales:
All three charts are based on five-minute sample intervals. Merkato gathers traffic statistics in both the input and output directions every five minutes. Each five-minute sample represents an average over that five-minute period. In other words, peaks lasting less than five minutes are not accurately represented in the charts. These five-minute samples are used directly in the daily chart. These values are then combined into longer averages for the weekly and monthly charts.
The green-shaded portion of the chart indicates traffic in the incoming direction. Traffic indicated by the blue line is in the outgoing direction.
Below each chart are three columns of figures indicating the maximum, average, and current values for the period displayed.
Merkato’s Charge Reports feature lets you see details about 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. allocations you have made. The reports it generates provide all the details about each allocation An amount of bandwidth available for your use. Depending on the type of service being offered through Merkato, this can represent the maximum bandwidth available to you or a minimum guarantee of bandwidth available to you., but they are also summarized.
The Charge Report form allows you to select start and end
dates. Rather than enter the dates manually, click on the small calendar
icon to the right of the field (
). A pop-up calendar appears,
from which you can select query start and end dates.
Select the beginning date by selected a month and year from the pull-down menus, and then clicking on a calendar date. The date appears in the From field.
Repeat this procedure for the To field.
Click the 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.
).
icon (
). A list box appears from which you can select a
resource on which to do billing queries.
The selection boxes on the Report Type panel control how the information is displayed on the screen.
For example, if you select Ordered by Resource and Detailed and click Generate Report, the view looks like this:
If you select Ordered by Resource, check Detailed, and click Generate Report, the charge report appears broken down by date:
