A few cautionary notes are in order:
(1) The additional bandwidth will be released, at each price point, only when the market price for all buyers exceeds the unit price represented by the buy-back agent settings. There is no way to penalize only the buyer who desires an unusual amount of bandwidth for a short amount of time.
(2) You cannot use this method to reduce the price for bandwidth as demand goes up (that is, to provide a quantity discount). This kind of pricing is possible in the Reservation market, however.
(3) Buy-back agents tend to hold the market price at their level until demand is sufficient to reach the next level. This is because, until demand is sufficient to take all their bandwidth away, these bidders act as the lowest successful bidder and set the market price. There is nothing wrong with this, but the “stickiness” of the market price tends to surprise some first-time observers.
(4) Changes in the settings of buy-back agents take effect as soon as you click Apply. The changes affect the auction in progress.
Although it reduces market “openness,” a single buy-back agent using the Parabolic valuation, whose bid “curve” is a line, may in some cases be used to replace many Linear buy-back agents. This also eliminates the price “stickiness” that results when Linear buy-back agents are used.