RFC 3334 (rfc3334) - Page 2 of 44


Policy-Based Accounting



Alternative Format: Original Text Document



RFC 3334                Policy-Based Accounting             October 2002


   6.    Accounting Policies.......................................14
   6.1   Accounting Policy Condition...............................15
   6.2   Accounting Policy Action..................................16
   6.3   Example for Meter Configuration...........................17
   7.    Accounting Services.......................................19
   7.1   Integrated Accounting.....................................19
   7.2   Discrete Accounting.......................................21
   7.3   Intra-Domain Accounting...................................22
   7.4   Inter-Domain Accounting...................................23
   8.    Accounting with different Authorization Models............25
   8.1   Agent Sequence............................................25
   8.2   Pull Sequence.............................................26
   8.3   Push Sequence.............................................27
   8.4   Roaming...................................................28
   9.    Examples..................................................29
   9.1   Printing Service Example..................................29
   9.1.1 Intra-Domain Accounting...................................29
   9.1.2 Inter-Domain Accounting...................................30
   9.1.3 User Accounting Indication................................31
   9.2   Mobile/Roaming Example....................................31
   9.3   Diffserv Example..........................................33
   9.4   User Accounting Indication Example........................37
   10.   Security Considerations...................................39
   11.   References................................................41
   12.   Acknowledgments...........................................42
   Author's Addresses..............................................43
   Full Copyright Statement........................................44

1. Introduction

1.1 Motivation

   Even if we will have much more bandwidth in the future than now, the
   control of network resource utilization remains essential for the
   support of applications with special demands and for the prevention
   of (malicious or accidental) waste of bandwidth.  Charging provides a
   possibility to control utilization and sharing of network resources.
   Charging in multi-service networks can be done based on the reserved
   or the actual used resources.  Charging on reserved resources is an
   important concept since reservation usually precludes other users
   from using the reserved resources.  Nevertheless, if charging is
   limited to reservation parameters only, the applied charge depends on
   the ability of the user to give a good prediction of the expected
   traffic characteristics.  This can be extenuated by using a charging
   scheme that is based on both the reserved and the used resources.  In
   order to support usage-based charging, the collection of information
   about the resource reservation and utilization is required.  The
   collection of data about resource usage is called accounting.



Zseby, et. al.                Experimental