RFC 3423 (rfc3423) - Page 2 of 45
XACCT's Common Reliable Accounting for Network Element (CRANE) Protocol Specification Version 1
Alternative Format: Original Text Document
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