Network management system Accounting management

Purpose of accounting The focus of accounting is to track the usage of network resources and traffic characteristics.

Accounting scenarios Network monitoring User monitoring and profiling Application monitoring and profiling Capacity planning Traffic profiling and engineering Peering and transit agreements Billing Security analysis

Network monitoring

User monitoring and profiling This information can be used to • Monitor and profile users. • Track network usage per user. • Document usage trends by user, group, and department. • Identify opportunities to sell additional value-added services to targeted customers. • Build a traffic matrix per subdivision, group, or even user. A traffic matrix illustrates the patterns between the origin and destination of traffic in the network.

Application monitoring and profiling The collected accounting information can help you do the following: • Monitor and profile applications: - In the entire network - Over specific expense links • Monitor application usage per group or individual user • Deploy QoS and assign applications to different classes of service • Assemble a traffic matrix based on application usage

Traffic profiling and engineering

Peering and transit agreements

Peering and transit agreements

Peering and transit agreements

Billing

Billing For a billing solution, the following steps are necessary: • Data collection— Measuring the usage data at the device level. • Data aggregation— Combining multiple records into a single one. • Data mediation— Converting proprietary records into a well-known or standard format. • De-duplication— Eliminating duplicate records. • Assigning usernames to IP addresses • Calculating call duration • Charging • Invoicing

Billing Volume-Based Billing Destination-Sensitive Billing Destination and Source-Sensitive Billing Quality-of-Service Billing Application and Content-Based Billing Time/Connection-Based Billing Voice over IP (VoIP) and IP Telephony (IPT) Billing