Goals of the Old Internet Accounting Working Group

• Provide an Internet accounting framework
  (RFC 1272, Internet Accounting Background)

• Provide a near-term architecture for Internet accounting
  (Internet-Draft, Internet Accounting Architecture)

• Provide a draft MIB for experimentation
  (Internet-Draft, Internet Accounting: Meter Services Experimental MIB)

Accounting Model

• Accounting applications: manage the accounting database, correlate information from separate metering systems, direct monitoring and control of meters.

• Collection and network management protocols: provide transport between applications and meters.

• Meters perform the aggregation and attribution of counts (packets, bytes).

View the Internet as a Loose Hierarchy for Internet Accounting

• Counting every packet for every user in every network at every router is too fine a granularity---too much overhead. (This is the same problem that routing protocols have!)

• Hold each network responsible/accountable for its own traffic.
• Perform accounting only at entry and/or exit gateways.
• Use coarser granularity for measuring transit traffic.
• Use multiple granularities to differentiate exception traffic.
• Use simple collection mechanisms real-time (if reliable enough) and post-process into accounting records.

Selecting the "Right" Granularity

Internet Accounting Process

Future Issues

• Finer granularities
  • Quality of Service
  • Host participation in identifying end-users
  • Upper-layer protocols (application-level accounting)
• Quota systems
  • Limiting costs and resources
  • Real-time interactions and access control
• Additional features
  • Reserved bandwidth
  • Inter-domain policy routing
  • Distance
• Standardized file formats
  • Exchanging accumulated and/or reduced usage data between accounting applications