Internet services: infrastructure for charging and billing
John Cushnie, David Hutchison, Huw Oliver · Lancaster EPrints (Lancaster University) · 2001
Abstract: The Internet is evolving into a ubiquitous platform for the delivery of services and content. This evolution brings with it a sea of change, as it rapidly becomes the chosen medium for commercial published material and communication. The evolution of Internet services, both mobile and fixed, presents the industry and academia with many research and engineering challenges. Among these the challenge of charging and billing for Internet services stands out. Also where the charging and billing should belong both commercially and physically within the public and private networks is an important area for research. This paper discusses where charging is currently implemented in the Internet, and the requirements for the necessary infrastructure to charge for Internet services and applications, now and into the future. The focus of this research is on the technical challenges of generation, collection and processing of the charging and billing data within the network. To support this research an experimental charging platform is presented that is currently under development.