Policy-based%20Accounting:%20Accounting%20Issues

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Policy-based AccountingAccounting Issues

• Georg Carle, Sebastian Zander, Tanja Zseby
• GMD FOKUS - German National Research Center for
  Information Technology
• carle, zander, zseby_at_fokus.gmd.de
• http//www.fokus.gmd.de/glone/
• http//www.fokus.gmd.de/usr/carle

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Overview

• Accounting requirements
• Derived issues
• Policy-based accounting
• draft-irtf-aaaarch-pol-acct-00.txt
• Accounting architecture with policy translation
• ? Tanja Zseby
• relation to other accounting work
• Examples
• Next steps and open issues

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Accounting Requirements

• Variety of Provider Characteristics
• Size and Purpose (e.g. small ISP, large backbone
  operator)
• QoS provisioning technique (e.g. DiffServ,
  IntServ)
• Service classes
• Charging scheme(s) and models
• Accounting Services
• Accounting agreements with other providers (e.g.
  data exchange, distribute tasks)
• Existing heterogeneous Infrastructure (MIBs,
  profile meters, etc.) ? hide heterogeneity
• Variety of User Profiles
• Number of flows, flow granularity, traffic
  profiles, unicast/multicast
• User preferences (e.g. acc. indication, itemized
  invoices, spending limits)
• Support Distribution of accounting tasks among
  different entities
• Provisioning of accounting service by other
  providers, and also to users

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Accounting Issues

• Flexibility support specific accounting
  functionality, depending on service, tariff,
  user, accounting targetwith rich functionality
  accounting for (1) usage metering and charging,
  (2) QoS auditing, (3) others (traffic
  engineering, non-repudiation of service usage,
  ...)
• Outsourcing - Accounting as separate service
  exchange of accounting information between
  different providers, and to customer.
  Interoperability intra-domain, inter-domain, to
  user.
• Abstraction desire to use variety of metering
  devices while hiding heterogeneity
• Interaction of Accounting with Authentication and
  Authorisation
• Privacy Restrict access to accounting
  information
• Scalability and Efficiency

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Policy based Accounting Service

• Accounting configurability needed for different
  services/users/tariffs/targets
• Accounting service allows outsourcing of
  functionality
• Need for usage accounting and QoS auditing
• Consumers of accounting service ISPs, content
  providers, users
• gt Intra-Domain Acct., Inter-Domain Acct., User
  Acct. Indication
• Accounting policies specify generation, transport
  and storage of acct. data

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Policy-based Accounting Addressing the Issues

• Flexibility
• Make accounting components configurable ?use of
  accounting policies
• Define common configuration interfaces for
  different types of accounting components (e.g.
  different meter types)
• Re-Use existing components (MIBs, admission
  control functions)
• Outsourcing Abstraction
• Relation of service and accounting
  functionality (1) accounting as part of the
  service (2) accounting as a service
• Accounting primitives for specifying accounting
  service (-gt accounting policies needs accounting
  support by policy language)
• Interaction with Authorization Privacy
• Use authorization data bases, messages,
  languages, etc.
• Authorize accounting services (e.g. online
  charging, itemized invoice)
• Support accounting authorization policies.
• Scalability Efficiency
• Perform metering and accounting at most
  appropriate location on the path
• Control allocation of resources for accounting
• Adapt accounting components to specific
  accounting service (required parameters, meter
  accuracy)

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Draft Policy-based accounting

• draft-irtf-aaaarch-pol-acct-00.txt
  (Carle/Zander/Zseby)
• Roles and relations between roles
• Reference Model and Building Blocks
• Accounting Policies
• Accounting Services
• Integrated Accounting / Discrete Accounting
• Intra-Domain Accounting /Inter-Domain Accounting
  / Accounting Indication
• Integration of Accounting Services in
  Authorization Model Agent Sequence, Pull
  Sequence, Push Sequence
• Examples Intra-Domain / Inter-Domain Accounting,
  
• Accounting/Charging Indication, Mobile/Roaming

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Policy based Accounting Architecture
AAA Server
AAA Server
AAA Server
ASM
Accounting Consumer
ASM
ASM
Acct. Policy Datab.

• Acct.policies
• QoS Auditing. policies
• User profiles
• Acct. Authent. policies

Accounting data
configuration
Accout. Data
Accounting Serv.
Accounting Serv.
Accounting Configuration
Accounting Serv.
Meter Conf. Datab.

• Meter
• Characteristics
• Meter resources

Meter Configuration
Meter Reader
Meter data
Meter
Meter
Meter
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Accounting Policies
If condition then action
set
attributevalue
Record collection record type report
interval report target Meter Instructions flow
granularity (attributes) stored
attributes Record Storage storage time storage
format storage location
user ID src/dst host/network flow attributes
(src, dst, dscp, port,..) service time of
day network load individual resource
utilization current QoS