The three icons at the upper left of the icon bar indicate “Connect,” “Start,” and “Stop” (from left to right).
When you first download a desktop agent The program that interacts with the rest of Merkato on behalf of buyers
and sellers. Buyers can acquire 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.
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.,
before you configure it to actively bid, it is disconnected from the auction.
Your agent does not bid or allow you to view auction status when it is
disconnected, although you can change its configuration. When the connect
symbol on the icon bar (
on the far left) is un-depressed
and un-colored the agent is disconnected.
When you connect to the auction in “Stopped” mode you can observe the auction but you are not participating in it. The Auction Graph and Auction Table show you the current auction in progress and allow you to determine whether you wish to join it. The Auction Graph and Auction table are shown below:
When you want to start the auction, either click the Start
icon (
second from left on the icon bar) or select “Start”
from the Selection menu. The auction starts immediately with the current
active settings.
To stop selling, click the Stop icon (
third from left on icon bar) or select Stop from the Selection
menu. Your agent stops selling and disconnects. To begin selling again
you must reconnect. (Stopping during an auction disrupts the auction.)
Note that if more than one user has access to the Merkato username and password, it is possible that one bidder will be previewing an auction and be observing his own agent bidding on another user’s desktop. (If an auction is in progress when you, as a seller, access the desktop, this must be the case.) Since bidder ID’s are anonymous, there is no way to know directly which agent is yours (although once you become adept at reading the auction table and auction graph, it is possible to identify the seller’s agent by its behavior.)
If you download an agent using a login that is already in use, you will be able to connect and view the auction in progress. But if you click Start, a message like the one below appears.
If you click Yes, your agent takes control of the bidding process. The other agent, on another user’s desktop, is disconnected.
If two users attempt to activate the same login ID, the last user to log in successfully “wins” control of the agent. The previous user receives an error message, shown below:
Bumping of an active Seller agent is very disruptive to the auction. You should not do this without good reason.
The agent that takes control of an existing agent by bumping it starts with the profile stored in the garage. Any changes made to the profile of the bumped agent that are not saved are lost.
Saving your configuration preserves changes to your agent’s profile in 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. while you continue to keep you agent on your desktop. While the agent is active on your desktop there is a non-active profile of the agent’s parameters stored in the garage, which should be kept up do date.
If you want to save the way your agent is configured, but not upload your agent to the garage, from the File menu, select Save Configuration:
A confirmation box appears, asking which garage you want to save your configuration to.
This is useful if there is more than one garage available, and you want to make the same agent configuration available in each garage.
Click OK to confirm saving your configuration.
In rare instances, you will want to close your desktop window without updating your agent’s profile in the garage. Do this by selecting “Close” rather than “Upload” in the menu-bar list. When you do this, the following confirmation screen appears:
If you click Yes, your agent is uploaded to the garage before it is closed on the desktop.
If you click No, your agent closes without any changes saved.
If you click Cancel, you return to your Desktop agent; the agent is neither uploaded nor closed.
To exit 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.,
click the close-box tab at the upper right hand corner of the window (
),
or select “Exit Merkato” from the File pull-down menu.
You can leave 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 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. 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. page in the browser open to monitor your agent status (via the Express agent), or click Logout in the list on the left side of the window.