The 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. window provides information about the quantity of 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. you bought and the price paid for that bandwidth at the close of each auction. It also monitors the time left in the current auction.
When an allocation is made to your 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. it appears in the left-hand side of the Allocation window, and is displayed until the next allocation. After a period of non-bidding, the allocation indicated is the last one made to this agent when it was last active.
The allocation window also provides a time indicator for the current auction. Each time any buyer places a bid the timer is set back.
When all bidders cease bidding (either because they are satisfied with their proposed allocation or have dropped out of the bidding because of the market price The price for something that buyers and sellers agree on. Merkato establishes a market price for bandwidth during each 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. 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.), the timer counts down to zero. At this point 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 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. ). agent turns the proposed allocations into real allocations. This occurs during a “pause” period. The pause period is indicated by several changes to the time display: the timer label changes from “Time Left” to “Time Since,” the font changes to red, and the counter counts up to the pause limit, rather than counting down as before (see below).
