Valuation of and Marketplace for Inter-Network Links Between Balloon Network and Terrestrial Network

A computing system comprising:

• a non-transitory computer readable medium;
• program instructions stored on the non-transitory computer readable medium and executable by at least one processor to cause the client device to:
• determine a demand for inter-network bandwidth between a balloon network and a terrestrial data network;
• determine one or more offers to provide an inter-network link, wherein the inter-network link provides inter-network bandwidth between the balloon network and the terrestrial data network, and wherein each offer is associated with a corresponding client device;
• based at least in part on a comparison of:
• (a) the demand for inter-network bandwidth and (b) the one or more offers to provide an inter-network link, select one or more of the offers to provide an inter-network link;
• and
• initiate a process to establish an inter-network link at each client device that corresponds to one of the one or more selected offers.

A non-transitory computer readable medium having stored therein instructions executable by a client computing device to cause the client computing device to perform functions comprising:

• determining a demand for inter-network bandwidth between a balloon network and a terrestrial data network;
• determining one or more offers to provide an inter-network link, wherein the inter-network link provides inter-network bandwidth between the balloon network and the terrestrial data network, and wherein each offer is associated with a corresponding client device;
• based at least in part on a comparison of:
• (a) the demand for inter-network bandwidth and (b) the one or more offers to provide an inter-network link, selecting one or more of the offers to provide an inter-network link;
• and
• initiating a process to establish an inter-network link at each client device that corresponds to one of the one or more selected offers.

A computer-implemented method comprising:

• determining, based at least in part on a measure of bandwidth utilization by a client device, an amount of available bandwidth that the client device can provide for an inter-network link between a balloon network and a terrestrial data network;
• determining offer pricing information for the available bandwidth;
• and
• sending an offer message that indicates an offer to provide an inter-network link between the balloon network and the terrestrial data network, wherein the offer message comprises:
• (a) an indication of the amount of available bandwidth and (b) the pricing information for the available bandwidth.

A computer-implemented method comprising:

• determining, by a computing device, a demand for inter-network bandwidth between a balloon network and a terrestrial data network;
• based at least in part on the demand for inter-network bandwidth, generating at least one request for an inter-network link, wherein the inter-network link provides inter-network bandwidth between the balloon network and the terrestrial data network;
• and
• initiating a process to make the at least one request for an inter-network link available to one or more client devices via an internetwork marketplace.