This chapter provides an overview of Enhanced Charging Service (ECS)/Active Charging Services (ACS).ECS is an enhanced or extended premium service. The System Administration Guide provides basic system configuration information, and the product administration guides provide information to configure the core network service functionality. It is recommended that you select the configuration example that best meets your service model, and configure the required elements for that model before using the procedures in this chapter.
• [ 600-00-7526 ] Enhanced Charging Bundle 1 1k Sessions — To enable and configure ECS functionality
• [ 600-00-7574 ] Enhanced Charging Bundle 2 1k Sessions — To enable and configure Diameter and DCCA functionality with ECSImportant: For information on additional license requirements for enhanced or customer-specific features, please contact your local sales/service representative.
• Content Service Steering: Redirects incoming traffic to the ECS subsystem
• Protocol Analyzer: Performs inspection of incoming packets
• Rule Definitions: Specifies the packets to inspect or the charging actions to apply to packets based on content
• Rulebases: Allows grouping one or more number of rule definitions together to define the billing policies for individual subscribers or group of subscribersImportant: For more information on CSS, refer to the Content Service Steering chapter of the System Enhanced Feature Configuration Guide. For more information on ACLs, refer to the IP Access Control Lists chapter of the System Enhanced Feature Configuration Guide.
• Shallow Packet Inspection: Inspection of the layer 3 (IP header) and layer 4 (for example, UDP or TCP header) information.
• Deep Packet Inspection: Inspection of layer 7 and 7+ information. DPI functionality includes:
• Routing Ruledefs: Routing ruledefs are used to route packets to content analyzers. Routing ruledefs determine which content analyzer to route the packet to when the protocol fields and/or protocol-states in ruledef expression are true. Up to 256 ruledefs can be configured for routing.
• Charging Ruledefs: Charging ruledefs are used to specify what action to take based on the analysis done by the content analyzers. Actions can include redirection, charge value, and billing record emission. Up to 2048 ruledefs can be configured for charging.
• Post-processing Ruledefs: Used for post-processing purposes. Enables processing of packets even if the rule matching for them has been disabled.Important: Ruledef priorities control the flow of the packets through the analyzers and control the order in which the charging actions are applied. The ruledef with the lowest priority number invokes first. For routing ruledefs, it is important that lower level analyzers (such as the TCP analyzer) be invoked prior to the related analyzers in the next level (such as HTTP analyzer and S-HTTP analyzers), as the next level of analyzers may require access to resources or information from the lower level. Priorities are also important for charging ruledefs as the action defined in the first matched charging rule apply to the packet and ECS subsystem disregards the rest of the charging ruledefs.
ruledef port-80rule-application routingruledef bbc-newshttp url starts-with http://news.bbc.co.ukrule-application chargingruledef catch-allip any-match = TRUErule-application chargingcharging-action free-sitecontent-id 100charging-action charge-by-durationcontent-id 101rulebase standard
Step a
Step bImportant: In the current release traffic routes to the ICMP, TCP, and UDP analyzers by default. Therefore, defining routing ruledefs for these analyzers is not required.
Important: Features described in this section are license enabled. If you have not previously purchased licenses for these services, contact your sales representative for more information.
• Flow Control Functionality: This functionality provides the ability to define and manage the number of simultaneous IP-based sessions and/or the number of simultaneous instances of a particular application permitted for the subscriber.
• Subscriber-Level Session Quota: Configurable on a per-rulebase basis
• Application-Level Session Quota: Configurable on a per-charging-action basis
• Bandwidth Control Functionality: This functionality allows the operator to apply rate limit to potentially bandwidth intensive and service disruptive applications.
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• Start of PDP context: Upon encountering this event, a Credit Control Request (CCR) starts, indicating the start of the PDP context, is sent towards the Online Charging Service. The data volume is captured per service data flow for the PDP context.
• Start of service data flow: An interim CCR is generated for the PDP context, indicating the start of a new service data flow, and a new volume count for this service data flow is started.
• Termination of service data flow: The service data flow volume counter is closed, and an interim CCR is generated towards the Online Charging Service, indicating the end of the service data flow and the final volume count for this service data flow.
• End of PDP context: Upon encountering this event, a CCR stop, indicating the end of the PDP context, is sent towards the Online Charging Service together with the final volume counts for the PDP context and all service data flows.
• Expiration of an operator configured time limit per PDP context: This event triggers the emission of an interim CCR, indicating the elapsed time and the accrued data volume for the PDP context since the last report.
• Expiration of an operator configured time limit per service data flow: The service data flow volume counter is closed and an interim CCR is sent to the Online Charging Service, indicating the elapsed time and the accrued data volume since the last report for that service data flow. A new service data flow container is opened if the service data flow is still active.
• Expiration of an operator configured data volume limit per PDP context: This event triggers the emission of an interim CCR, indicating the elapsed time and the accrued data volume for the PDP context since the last report.
• Expiration of an operator configured data volume limit per service data flow: The service data flow volume counter is closed and an interim CCR is sent to the Online Charging Service, indicating the elapsed time and the accrued data volume since the last report for that service data flow. A new service data flow container is opened if the service data flow is still active.
• Change of charging condition: When QoS change, tariff time change are encountered, all current volume counts are captured and sent towards the Online Charging Service with an interim CCR. New volume counts for all active service data flows are started.
• Administrative intervention by user/service also force trigger a chargeable event.The file naming convention for created xDRs (EDR/UDR/FDRs) are described in the Impact on xDR File Naming section.Important: For more information on Content Filtering support, refer to the Content Filtering Services Administration Guide.
Important: This feature is license dependent. Please contact your local sales representative for more information.
For example, if an operator wants to insert header field x-rat-type in the HTTP header with its value being rat-type, i.e. the header inserted should be:Important: A prefixed URL can be detected and stripped if it is of the type “http://www.xyz.com/http://www.abc.com”. Here, “http://www.xyz.com” will be stripped off. But in “http://www.xyz.com/www.abc.com”, it cannot detect and strip off “http://www.xyz.com” as it looks for occurrence of “http” or “https” within the URL.
Important: Some feature supports described in this section are license enabled. If you have not previously purchased licenses for these services, contact your sales representative for more information.
• Subscriber Category Request: ECS obtains the subscriber category from the AAA server (either prepaid or postpaid) when a new data session is detected. The AAA server used for the subscriber category request can be different from the AAA server used for service authorization and accounting.
• Service Access Authorization: ECS requests access authorization for a specific subscriber and a newly detected data session. The AAA server is the access Policy Decision Point and the ECS the Policy Enforcement Point.
• On-line Service Accounting (Prepaid): ECS reports service usage to the AAA server. The AAA server acts as a prepaid control point and the ECS as the client. Accounting can be applied to a full prepaid implementation or just to keep ECS updated of the balance level and trigger a redirection if the subscriber balance reaches a low level.
• Real-time Rate Service Information: DCCA can verify when end subscribers' accounts are exhausted or expired; or deny additional chargeable events.
• Support for Multiple Services: DCCA supports the usage of multiple services within one subscriber session. Multiple service support includes:Rel 6. Gx Interface: The provisioning of charging rules that are based on the dynamic analysis of flows used for the IMS session is carried out over the Gx interface. The Rel. 6 Gx interface is located between the Access Gateway functioning as Traffic Plane Function (TPF), and the Charging Rule Function (CRF). The GGSN/TPF acts as the client where as the CRF contains the Diameter server functionality. Rel. 6 Gx interface is based on the Diameter base protocol (DIABASE) and the Diameter Credit Control Application (DCCA) standard.Rel. 7 Gx Interface: The Rel. 7 Gx interface enables policy-based admission control support (enforcing policy control features like gating, bandwidth limiting, etc.,) and Flow-based Charging (FBC). This is accomplished via dynamically provisioned Policy Control and Charging (PCC) rules. These PCC rules are used to identify service data flows and do charging. Other parameters associated with the rules are used to enforce policy control.Important: For more information on Gx interface support, see Gx Interface Support chapter of the System Enhanced Feature Configuration Guide.
Important: For more information on G-CDR fields, refer to the AAA Interface Administration and Reference Guide.
Important: For more information on eG-CDR fields, refer to the AAA Interface Administration and Reference Guide.
Important: In EDRs, the maximum field length for normal and escaped strings is 127 characters. If a field’s value is greater than 127 characters, in the EDR it is truncated to 127 characters.
• RADIUS Credit Control Application: RADIUS is used as the interface between ECS and the prepaid charging server. The RADIUS Prepaid feature of ECS is separate to the system-level Prepaid Billing Support and that is covered under a different license key.
• Diameter Credit Control Application: The Diameter Credit Control Application (DCCA) is used to implement real-time credit control for a variety of services, such as networks access, messaging services, and download services.
• Real-time Rate Service Information: DCCA can verify when end subscribers' accounts are exhausted or expired; or deny additional chargeable events.
• Support for Multiple Services: DCCA supports the usage of multiple services within one subscriber session. Multiple service support includes:ECS also supports FBC and TBC methods for postpaid billing. For more information on FBC and TBC in ECS, see the Enhanced Services in ECS section.The following figure illustrates a typical prepaid billing environment with system running with ECS.
Step 1
Step 10Important: External Storage System (ESS) is an optional and separately licensed feature which can be used with or without a billing/mediation system. For more information on the ESS, see the External Storage System section.
Step 10Important: For more information on the ESS, please refer to the ESS Installation and Administration Guide.
Important: In order for session recovery to work there should be at least four packet processing cards, one standby and three active. Per active CPU with active SessMgrs, there is one standby SessMgr, and on the standby CPU, the same number of standby SessMgrs as the active SessMgrs in the active CPU.
The system supports the simultaneous use of ECS and the Inter-chassis Session Recovery feature. (For more information on the Inter-chassis Session Recovery feature, refer to the System Administration and Configuration Guide.) When both features are enabled, ECS session information is regularly checkpointed from the active chassis to the standby as part of normal Service Redundancy Protocol processes.In the event of an unplanned switchover, all accounting data that has not been written to the external storage is lost. (Note that either the ESS can pull the xDR data from the chassis, or the chassis can push the xDR files to a configured ESS at user-configured intervals. For more information, see External Storage System section.) Upon completion of switchover, the ECS sessions are maintained and the “now-active” chassis recreates all of the session state information including the generation of new xDRs.Regardless of the type of switchover that occurred, the names of the new xDR files will be different from those stored in the /records directory of packet processing card RAM on the “now-standby” chassis. Also, in addition to the file name, the content of many of the fields within the xDR files created by the “now-active” chassis will be different. ECS manages this impact with recovery mechanism. For more information on the differences and how to correlate the two files and other recovery information, see the Impact on xDR File Naming section.
• basename: A global configurable text string that is unique per system that uniquely identifies the global location of the system running ECS.
• ChargSvcName: A system context-based configurable text string that uniquely identifies a specific context-based charging service.
• timestamp: Date and time at the instance of file creation. Date and time in the form of “MMDDYYYYHHmmSS” where HH is a 24-hour value from 00-23.
• SeqNumResetIndicator: A one-byte counter used to discern the potential for duplicated FileSeqNumber with a range of 0 through 255, which is incremented by a value of 1 for the following conditions:
• FileSeqNumber: Unique file sequence number for the file with 9 digit integer having range from 000000000 to 999999999. It is unique on each system.
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