An evaluation of pricing schemes that are based on effective usage

We evaluate usage-based pricing schemes that are based on bounds of the effective bandwidth. The schemes include ones that require simple measurements (time and volume) for the whole duration of a call, and two schemes that require measurements in distinct time intervals, smaller than the duration of a call: pricing with renegotiation and the virtual bucket scheme. Using MPEG-1 compressed video, the schemes are compared for different link capacities and buffer sizes in terms of their fairness, i.e., the ability to capture the relative amount of resources used by connections.