Internet2 bandwidth contracts are flat-rate; 50% headroom maintained by policy; augment trigger at 40% utilization

Internet2's 2025 Higher Education Fee Model ties Sustaining Contributions to institutional research and total expenditures, not traffic volume: the bandwidth a member institution actually consumes does not change the bill. Internet2's IP backbone capacity-augment practice flags circuits for discussion when 95th-percentile utilization reaches 30% over a week, maintains 50% headroom by policy on connections between regionals, Internet2, and campuses, and triggers a backbone augment at 40% sustained utilization.

The implication for C-0006: the marginal cost of additional traffic carried over an institutional Internet2 connection is effectively zero. There is no usage-based charge, and the network is provisioned with at least 50% headroom against current load. A research institution adding Tier 3 protocol traffic to its existing Internet2 connection pays nothing additional in bandwidth costs and is operating well inside the headroom Internet2 policy already maintains.

Combined with E-0073 (idle servers) and E-0074 (26% network utilization), this completes the three-axis case that the marginal cost of Tier 3 deployment on existing institutional infrastructure approaches zero.