Resumen
The Internet-driven networked economy is evolving to the point where firms are beginning to realize the enormous business value possible from a richly connected, global network of consumers and producers. Online auctions, brought about by the synergetic combination of Internet technology and traditional auction mechanisms, represent a significant new dimension of mercantile processes, many of which are not yet fully understood. Using auctions, firms have the opportunity to engage in dynamic and demand-driven production planning and control. Auctions provide information about demand that can in turn influence the nature of the input to be employed to meet the demand. While the majority of the online auction sites started with the objective of clearing aging or perishable inventory, auction-based dynamic pricing has expanded well beyond the realm of collectibles or surplus goods and in fact is a legitimate complement to the conventional notion of posted prices. Most auctioneers prefer to keep low opening bids in order to attract Web traffic, at the risk of selling an item below its cost.

Resumen
The article outlines requirements, characteristics and performance of an ideal price-setting mechanism of pricing computer network traffic, which would be essential to manage network traffic and to control and provide different Quality of Service (QoS), required by different applications and users. The realization comes from market forces, changing network infrastructure, projected Internet application base, projected use of the network and the performance requirements of network users. Decentralized price computation provides a high degree of protection against disruption due to network failure and congestion, the informational and computational requirements of price-computing mechanisms are minimal, it provides an economic rationale for multiple levels of QoS and also, will prevent the misuse of the network by redistributing the user demand patterns. The article emphasizes the necessity to do research, in order to implement, pricing mechanisms for network traffic as challenges arise from network infrastructure, integration with network protocols and ownership structure.