News Windows

The News window provides real-time status of your Merkato InvisibleHand's software platform, which dynamically prices, sells, and allocates IP bandwidth in real time. Merkato means "market" in Esperanto.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.. It is useful when you want to get a quick summary of marketplace conditions and confirm the state of your agent.

When your agent is disconnected, you see a News display similar to that below:

When you are connected but not bidding, the News window looks like the one shown below. It indicates the capacity In the Merkato interface, the term capacity refers to the total amount of bandwidth available from the Seller. being offered by the seller and the current 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. of the auction as it is proceeding without your agent's participation.

Once you begin bidding you see displays like the ones below, containing information on activity between your agent and 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 (which conducts the auction).