User-level billing and accounting in IP networks

Abstract

Internet protocol (IP) networks were originally designed by universities and government research agencies, not by network operators with commercial objectives. As a result, while aggregate accounting is possible for network management, detailed accounting at the level of individual users is often not possible. In today's networks, this limitation hinders the effective introduction of a variety of new IP-based services. Network operators lack the tools to monitor individual customers' use of network services, measure the type and quality of service that they receive, and ultimately establish service-level agreements and bill for those services. This paper presents an approach to accounting in IP networks that meets these needs based on a special-purpose network probe, which we term a NetCounter. The key functionality of a NetCounter is real-time, in-network correlation of network traffic with the individual users that generated it. This approach has several technical advantages over alternative approaches. Most importantly, the NetCounter achieves substantial in-network aggregation, reducing the volume of usage data generated by between two and four orders of magnitude (when compared to flow-logging systems). In addition, NetCounters capture usage data at the level of individual users and record detailed, user- and service-specific performance metrics.