The Merkato administrator configures your reservation parameters. This section describes the reservation Buyer 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. . As a seller, if you buy reservations from your own resources, you are removing 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. from the 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.. (Ask your Merkato Administrator to set up a Reservation Buyer agent for you.)
Buying a reservation gives you guaranteed bandwidth for a set period of time at a fixed price. The pricing is set by the seller and depends on both the quantity of bandwidth desired and the duration of the reservation. There is no additional fee.
Reservations can start and end at any time in the future, as long as you (the seller) provide capacity In the Merkato interface, the term capacity refers to the total amount of bandwidth available from the Seller. to the reservation market.
Buyers can cancel reservations any time prior to expiration, but there may be a cancellation fee based on a percentage of the remaining value of the reservation. The fee may be anywhere between 0% (no penalty for cancellation) to 100% (no refund on cancellation). Merkato quotes the cancellation percentage to you when you make the reservation and again when the cancellation is confirmed.
For complete details about reserving bandwidth, see User Reference for Buyers, “Reservation Agent.”
The portal The unique market mechanism by which Merkato allocates bandwidth to potential buyers at an optimal market price. 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. is the access point to the agent applications, as well as to obtain historical 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. and billing information. When you open the Merkato web site, the screen looks similar to the one show below:
If you enter a valid username and password, and click Login, the top-level agent screen appears:
The central portion of the window shows the Merkato agent. This is the Express agent interface. Below this area, visible when you scroll down, is the Recent Allocations table.
To the right, the pull-down user interface menu allows you to select the Wizard In Merkato, an automated series of inquiry screens that walks you through the process of creating and configuring a buyer agent., Express, or Desktop interface.
The left portion of the page contains a navigation bar, which provides access to all pages of the portal:
The Interface pull-down menu on the left of the portal provides access to the Wizard and Desktop agent applications, described in their own sections of this document. The other areas of the Merkato Portal are described below.