Although you can preview an auction without entering it, this information does not indicate directly what impact the participation of 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. has on the market price. You can estimate your impact if you can determine the valuation The value a buyer or seller places on bandwidth. Setting a valuation is part of setting a purchasing strategy. Valuation settings within a buyer agent let buyers specify the amount they are willing to pay for varying amounts of bandwidth. This information is used by the agent to respond to changing market conditions during a Merkato progressive second price auction. used by other bidders.
It is sometimes possible to guess a bidder’s valuation based on these entries.
· If the “rate” (far right value) of a bidder remains constant, that bidder is most likely bidding on a budget.
· If the quantity (second from left) field is constant, it indicates that the bidder has set a maximum 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. level. (The other indicator is that the bidder is offering more than 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., but is not driving the market up to the bidder’s level.)
If you can divide all bidders into these two categories, you can estimate the market price you will have to pay for any unit of bandwidth, without bidding. Then continue the process as follows:
1. Add up the total bandwidth requested by all bidders who have set a maximum bandwidth level and for whom the market price is lower than their offered price. Subtract this bandwidth from the total the seller is offering.
2. Add up the rates of all the bidders who are using “budget” valuation. Divide this number by the amount of bandwidth remaining from the first calculation. This is the natural market price for this auction.
3. To determine what you would have to pay for an amount of bandwidth, assuming these bidders keep their current valuations and budgets, subtract the bandwidth you want from the total that the “budget” bidders were contending for. Then re-do the market price calculation.
You would have to bid above this calculated price to obtain the bandwidth you desire. You ensure that your agent will bid this amount by using the Budget or Budget Valuation with Limits and entering a budget equal to this price multiplied by the amount of bandwidth desired. If you use the Budget-With-Limits valuation, also set the Max Qty to this desired amount of bandwidth.