RFC 3423 (rfc3423) - Page 2 of 45

XACCT's Common Reliable Accounting for Network Element (CRANE) Protocol Specification Version 1

RFC 3423          XACCT's CRANE Protocol Specification     November 2002


      2.9  CRANE Sessions...........................................13
   3  CRANE Message Format..........................................14
   4  CRANE Messages................................................16
      4.1  Flow Start (START).......................................16
      4.2  Flow Start Acknowledge (START ACK).......................16
      4.3  Flow Stop (STOP).........................................17
      4.4  Flow Stop Acknowledge (STOP ACK).........................17
      4.5  Connect (CONNECT)........................................18
      4.6  Template Data (TMPL DATA)................................18
      4.7  Template Data Acknowledge (TMPL DATA ACK)................23
      4.8  Final Template Data (FINAL TMPL DATA)....................25
      4.9  Final Template Data Acknowledge (FINAL TMPL DATA ACK)....26
      4.10  Get Sessions (GET SESS).................................26
      4.11  Get Sessions Response (GET SESS RSP)....................27
      4.12  Get Templates (GET TMPL)................................30
      4.13  Get Templates Response(GET TMPL RSP)....................30
      4.14  Start Negotiation (START NEGOTIATE).....................33
      4.15  Start Negotiation Acknowledge (START NEGOTIATE ACK).....34
      4.16  Data (DATA).............................................34
      4.17  Data Acknowledge (DATA ACK).............................36
      4.18  Error (ERROR)...........................................37
      4.19  Status Request (STATUS REQ).............................38
      4.20  Status Response (STATUS RSP)............................38
   5  Protocol Version Negotiation..................................39
   6  Security Considerations.......................................42
   7  References....................................................43
   8  Acknowledgments...............................................43
   9  Authors' Addresses............................................44
   10 Full Copyright Statement......................................45

1  Introduction

   Network Elements are often required to export usage information to
   mediation and business support systems (BSS) to facilitate
   accounting.  Though there are several existing mechanisms for usage
   information export, they are becoming inadequate to support the
   evolving business requirements from service providers.

   For example, some of the export mechanisms are legacies of the Telco
   world.  Typically usage information is stored in Network Elements as
   Log files (e.g., CDR files), and exported to external systems in
   batches.  These are reliable methods, however, they do not meet the
   real-time and high-performance requirements of today's rapidly
   evolving data networks.

   RADIUS [1] is a widely deployed protocol that may be used for
   exporting usage information.  However, it can only handle a few
   outstanding requests and is not extensible due to its limited command



Zhang & Elkin                Informational