[comp.protocols.tcp-ip] refund mechanisms in charging

craig@NNSC.NSF.NET (Craig Partridge) (04/26/88)

Dennis,

    I suspect you can't permit a refund mechanism....

    Take the case of the 14 of 15 megabytes transferred.

    If I know that aborting a connection before all the data requested
has been passed then I can happily set up schemes with my friends to
pad all FTPable files with an extra few megabytes of junk.  Then
we transfer our data, abort while the junk is being transferred,
and apply for a refund.  Voila, free networking....

    I think the implication of this is that you'd have to certify
programs as not able to abuse the charging scheme this way before
you permitted a refund mechanism.

Craig

perry@MCL.UNISYS.COM (Dennis Perry) (04/27/88)

Craig, you are right about the certification of bad transfers.  Messages
from some trusted network component might satisfy such a
requirement.  I know this sounds messy, but even the telephone
system sort of relys upon my work to say the a call was disconnected
during use and I get a full refund, even if I only call back and say 
goodbye and pay only the minimum charge.  Such are the issues
of charging for useage.

dennis

CERF@A.ISI.EDU (04/27/88)

At MCI, we had the policy of refunding charges if users called with
complaints - both for the telephone charges and for MCI Mail. If,
however, a user had a track record of claiming refunds regularly,
we looked a lot more closely and sometimes revoked the user's
subscription to service.

Its generally good business to believe customers but, like the
Russian saying quoted by Reagan: Trust but Verify.

Vint

braden@VENERA.ISI.EDU (04/28/88)

	
	Craig, you are right about the certification of bad transfers.  Messages
	from some trusted network component might satisfy such a
	requirement.  I know this sounds messy, but even the telephone
	system sort of relys upon my work to say the a call was disconnected
	during use and I get a full refund, even if I only call back and say 
	goodbye and pay only the minimum charge.  Such are the issues
	of charging for useage.
	
	dennis
	
Dennis,

The solution is to implement the FTP protocol, including FTP Restart! The
user DID transfer most of the bytes... why should we return his money?
Why create a hard problem when there is a trivial solution?

Bob Braden