Internet Accounting
- 1. I NTERNET A CCOUNTING T SAI B LAKE
- 2. L AYOUT Accounting Overview The Main Questions Behind Accounting Is Internet Accounting Needed Internet Accounting VS. Telephony Accounting Research and Standards Provide-Based Accounting
- 3. A CCOUNTING O VERVIEW IETF-Internet Engineering Task Force ，負責網際網路標準的開發和推動 IRTF-Internet Research Task Force ，是一個由網際網路架構委員會 (IAB) 授權對一些長期的網際網路問題進行理論研究的組織。 AAAWG- Authentication, Authorization and Accounting Working Group
- 4. Metering Pricing Charging Billing Measuring and Collecting resource usage information related to a single customer’s service utilization Determining a cost per unit Use cost per unit to translate the customer’s resource usage information Into Amount is to inform and bill the customer
- 5. T HE M AIN Q UESTIONS B EHIND A CCOUNTING W HAT I S B EING P AID F OR ? Transport accounting, Content accounting Flat-rate or usage-based (charging) W HO I S B EING P AID ? Network provider (provider-based) Owner of the content (server-based) H OW A RE P AYMENTS M ADE ? Inband Outband
- 6. A N V ERVIEW O F A CCOUNTING O PTIONS Accounting What? Who? How? Transport Content Internet Provider (provider-based) Owner Of content (server-based ) Inband Outband
- 7. I S INTERNET A CCOUNTING N EEDED ? There is general agreement that content accounting is actually needed. Which form of transport accounting should remain is still an issue of debate. In fact there are three possibilities: flat-rate , usage-based, or a combination of both. Usage-based charging stimulates users to use the scarce resources within the network in an efficient way. Without usage-based charging, a small number of users will consume most of the resources. The current Internet will be transformed from a best effort service into a service providing different quality of service (QoS) levels. The technique that facilitates this transition is called differentiated services (DiffServ).
- 8. I NTERNET A CCOUNTING VS. T ELEPHONY A CCOUNTING In POTS it is common to measure call duration , time of day , and destination of the call (local, national, or international). As opposed to POTS, where subscriber numbers include a country and city code , early IP addresses do not contain any form of geographical information. IP addresses that follow the rules defined by the Classless Inter Domain Routing (CIDR) standard do have some notion of location, but this information is less detailed than the geographical information contained in telephone addresses. Because of its complexity , it can be expected that usage-based accounting in the Internet will be based on a relatively small number of parameters.
- 9. R ESEARCH A ND S TANDARDS IETF ─ AAAWG Accounting Protocols ─ Simple Network Management Protocol ( SNMP ), COPS , RADIUS /RADIUS++, TACACS/TACACS+, and Diameter . IRTF ─ AAAARCH Although there was general agreement that SNMP would be suitable for accounting, it was not selected because the intention of the AAA WG was to choose one single protocol for authentication, authorization, and accounting.
- 10. T HE IETF A CCOUNTING A RCHITECTURE
- 11. P ROVIDER- B ASED A CCOUNTING Access router Access router Accounting server Accounting server Client Server Client’s provider Server’s provider Backbone Provider(s) Normal data stream (1) (2) (3) (4) (5)
- 12. (1)The process starts with a request from the client to the server to deliver content (2)The server answers with an accounting request message indicating that the client should pay for the content to the client’s provider (3)In case the client agrees to receive charged content, it forwards the information within the accounting request message to the accounting server of its own Internet provider (4)If the client has paid all previous bills, the accounting server within the client's provider stores the information for future billing purposes and forwards the accounting accepted message to the server's provider (5)If this Internet provider is also willing to participate in the accounting process, it stores the information too and forwards the message to the content server
- 13. A CCOUNTINNG R EQUEST M ESSAGE Server information including a readable string identifying the owner of the server, an authentication key, and the server's IP/DNS address. Price which may be a single value or, with multiple components, a chain of values. The currency should also be specified, as well as a timestamp to allow determination of the exact exchange rate to cover cases where the client wants to pay, The timestamp is also needed to ensure that information cannot be reused (replay protection). Content type which may take the value streaming or atomic. In case of streaming, the price is actually a price per unit, and can be expressed in, say, megabytes or minutes. Other differences between these types of content are explained later. Accounting server information which includes the authentication key as well as the IP/DNS address of the accounting server within the server's Internet provider.
- 14. A CTUAL P AYMENTS I NVOLVE T HREE S TEPS The client pays its own Internet provider. The Internet provider of the client pays the Internet provider to which the server is connected. It may be necessary to introduce a trusted third party (TTP) . Finally, the server gets paid by its own Internet provider.
- 15. C ONCLUSIONS The first possibility is to distinguish between transport and content accounting. AAAWG of the IETF selected Diameter as the preferred protocol for transport accounting, although other protocols like SNMP may also be used. Within the research world there is no agreement on whether transport accounting will become flat-rate or usage-based . A second possibility for structuring Internet accounting is to distinguish between provider-based and server-based accounting .
- 16. T HANK Y OU Q & A