Measuring and billing user Internet traffic

Many Internet Service Providers, as part of a declared policy to control the impact of the growth of Internet traffic on their infrastructures, have started billing their users per volume transferred. Such a policy raises a number of issues which we present in this paper. For the most part, users are confronted with a bill which they cannot easily reconcile with their day to day use of the Internet. Based on an experiment in reconciliation between data supplied by the ISP and measured by consumers, we discuss the many difficulties which arise to procure user-meaningful measurements. We analyze their cause and possible workarounds. An example of a new service infrastructure is presented to study how that problem can be treated. Practical deployment constraints are also discussed. We then review the inadequacy of the state of the art in guaranteeing predictability and fairness and present possible avenues for remediation, based on better information and feedback for the user, and possible education in better uses of the Internet as a consumable resource.