On the spot market The Merkato mechanism by which bandwidth is traded, in a progressive second price auction. An optimal fair 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. is established and bandwidth is allocated to buyers, based on their bids relative to other buyers., 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 distributed by a system that ranks bidders by the price they offer, but charges them based on the price offered by the lowest bidder who receives an 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. of bandwidth (the “fair market price” for bandwidth at that time). If you bid too low in an auction you will be out-bid by other buyers.
The bidding process can be automated and run continuously without your intervention.
The spot market lets you get allocations of bandwidth to be used immediately; it provides bandwidth-on-demand. The changes you make to your agent’s bidding profile take effect immediately and a resulting allocation will be granted in less than five minutes¾at the close of the auction in progress. You may start or stop bidding at any time.
Note: Bidding From the Garage or From the DesktopAlthough the auction allocation process runs continuously, there is no need for you to be directly involved at all times. 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. can bid automatically for you after you configure it with figures indicating the value you place on bandwidth. Your agent communicates with the seller’s agent on a Merkato platform called the Garage A server from which buyer and seller agents can bid when they are not actively bidding on a user's PC desktop. The garage is generally installed on the Merkato server, providing maximum performance and reliability. . The Garage is Merkato’s name for auction services it runs from a server. Once you configure your agent, you can either bid from your PC using a Java-based application, or communicate remotely with your agent as it bids from the Garage. Bidding from your PC and operating a remote agent each has advantages. On your PC, the Merkato desktop The Merkato desktop is the first window that appears when the user begins to bring the Merkato buyer or seller agent to their desktop. It lets users specify which Merkato agent or agents they want to download to the desktop. display gives you real-time information about the auction and its participants. If you are not interacting with the agent, you can configure it and upload it to the garage. It will continue to run, and you avoid the chance of ceasing to bid if your PC crashes or you have network connectivity problems. |