Information Services@ANU > Internet Traffic Types

Internet Traffic Types

Internet usage traffic is split into only two types – “On-Net” and “Commodity”.

On-Net traffic is made up of international and national Internet traffic within is only traverses Research and Education networks. These are on-net, in that they interconnect both national and international research institutions – ie are contained within the world-wide Research & Education networks such as AARNet3 (in Australia), Internet 2 (in the USA) and JANET (in Europe). In general, and “.edu” domain name designator is on-net. The On-Net traffic charge from AARNet is a Subscription and this has been split up among the business areas based on a 2004 allocation. Therefore, the volume of On-Net traffic downloaded by a business area is now independent of the business unit’s subscription contribution so as to encourage a greater use of inter-institution on-line research and education activity.

Commodity traffic is general web traffic (typically to .com sites). The charge is billed monthly.

Internet Charges

From 2008 the Internet usage charges are made up of two elements – one fixed cost – called the AARNet Subscription, and the other is a usage cost based on Commodity incoming traffic usage.

The AARNet Subscription incorporates the old On Net subscription and it also includes a subscription for Commodity access. The AARNet Subscription is allocated across Budget Units based on the notion of utility of the AARNet network in a similar way that the allocation of the NetComms Service Charge is based on each Budget Unit’s utilisation of the University’s ICN (Integrated Communications Network).

The usage charge remains based on actual usage of incoming Commodity traffic. For 2008, incoming Commodity traffic is $5 per GigaByte. The usage charge is billed monthly.