Subject: [Ieprep] Accounting

From: RJ Atkinson <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2002 08:21:15 -0500

So I remain very confused about what the accounting advocates
are asking for.  I might be slower than most to puzzle some
stuff out, but what I got out of the Accounting presentation
was roughly this:

	- Accounting is a requirement.
	- We don't mean that packet accounting is a requirement.

Which begs the question of precisely which stuff folks think operators
need to perform accounting on.  Scott Bradner suggested that maybe
folks meant that there should be some form of accounting within SIP.
Is that suggestion correct ?

I'd really like to understand precisely what folks think is required.

When folks say that "accounting is a requirement" do they really
mean that " A SIP implementation must be able to perform accounting
for (some specific list of objects/events)" or mean something else ?

- If the quoted sentence above is close, could folks please be specific 
and
	enumerate which specific objects/events need to have accounting 
support ?
- If something else, then please be specific and tell us what exactly
	folks want to perform accounting on ?

I don't know off-hand whether a (draft) SIP MIB exists yet or not.
If folks are thinking about accounting within SIP and if a (draft)
SIP MIB exists, could those folks please check and see if the MIB
already has counters for the objects/events of concern ?  And if
the (draft) MIB exists and is missing objects/events, maybe those
particular objects could be requested from the WG that is working
on the MIB ?

Also, would it be consistent with the Accounting advocates desires to
say something like this:

	Network operators that do not operate (SIP servers) are not required
	to perform any accounting in order to support IEprep services.

If yes, then that is a good start and could we please document that
understanding some place.

If not, what edits to "(SIP servers)" would make that sentence true ?
In other words, what accounting do the accounting advocates want ISPs
to perform particularly to support IEprep services ?

Thanks,

Ran
[email-masked]

_______________________________________________
Ieprep mailing list
[email-masked]
https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ieprep

---

From: Henning Schulzrinne <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 28 Nov 2002 07:20:12 -0500

Quick responses:
- There is (slow) work in the SIPPING WG on accounting requirements for 
SIP-related sessions. Sankaran Narayanan and I have put out a draft for 
DIAMETER enhancements and there is also requirements work. (We also had 
an earlier RADIUS draft, but RADIUS is no longer politically correct. 
Cisco has a proprietary set of RADIUS enhancements for VoIP services, I 
believe.)

My understanding of the Atlanta discussion was that this was a major 
facet of the problem.

- There are probably two modes that matter: when connecting to a 
traditional circuit-switched network and otherwise. For CSN, the typical 
dial-in-style by-the-minute accounting probably works just fine. For 
hypothetical bill-by-the-byte services, doing accounting at the SIP 
layer makes little sense.

I think there was some sense that this was actually more about auditing 
than traditional send-a-paper-bill type of accounting.

Yes, there's a SIP MIB, but I doubt that it would make a good accounting 
interface. (It doesn't do timestamping of requests, for example.)

RJ Atkinson wrote:
> - If the quoted sentence above is close, could folks please be specific and