Appeal No. 2004-2127 Page 3
Application No. 09/441,693
provider "must carry at least a contracted fraction of offered load (i.e., of offered stream
bandwidth) when the offered load lies within a contracted limit, but need only carry a
specified load when the offered load exceeds the contracted limit." (Id. at 3.) A revenue
penalty is exacted for bandwidth lost while the service provider is non-compliant. (Id.)
A further understanding of the invention can be achieved by reading the following
claim.
2. A method for computing billing for at least one class of service provided
by carrying offered bandwidth between source nodes and destination
nodes of a communication network, each source-destination node pair F in
association with a service class s to be referred to as a stream (s, F), the
method comprising:
(a) with respect to at least one stream (s, F), determining for each
of two or more consecutive time windows whether the network is
compliant or non-compliant;
(b) for each of said time windows, accruing a positive revenue
increment for each unit of offered bandwidth that is carried; and
(c) for each of said time windows, accruing a negative revenue
increment for each unit of offered bandwidth that is lost while the network
is noncompliant, wherein:
(A) for measured values of the offered stream bandwidth that do
not violate a contracted maximum limit, the network is compliant if a
measured ratio of carried-to-offered stream bandwidth is at least a
contracted value thereof, but otherwise the network is non-compliant; and
(B) for measured values of the offered stream bandwidth that
violate the contracted maximum limit, the network is compliant if a
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