Accounting in peered CDNs: Initial thoughts ....

[Abhi Deshmukh <Abhi.Deshmukh@apogeenet.com>]

A few initial thoughts on accounting in peered CDN systems.

1. Accounting information in CDN Peering would be useful for Monitoring
Applications, Billing applications, Reporting and Auditing apps and other
apps (like the ones not mentioned in the above list). Accounting information
includes usage related information and details of other work done. Based on
the discussions at the BoF, the settlement and payment issues are outside
the scope of issues being considered.


2. Based on the (draft-green-cdnp-gen-arch-02.txt) CDN Peering Architectural
Overview draft, it is necessary for the Accounting CPGs to have interfaces
with 
	(A) one or more peered Accounting-CPG, 
	(B) one or more origin accounting system, 
	(C) one or more external billing app, and 
	(D) it's own internal accounting system. 

3. It is possible that the internal accounting system collects information
from different CDN elements like Surrogates, Request Routing system, etc and
optionally aggregates them. Should we be talking about intra-CDN accounting
issues ? I think, we may mention them as needed.

4. Specifically, inter-CDN accounting issues should be looked at in detail.
Do Intra-CDN accounting practices influence the accounting CPG ? This needs
to be investigated. 

5. Certainly, transport of accounting records between accounting CPGs is an
important issue. It should be possible to transport different kinds of
accounting records using the same transport mechanism. There are issues of
pull, push and latency (near-real-time and batch) while transporting
accounting records. A candidate transport mechanism must be simple,
efficient, and be capable of handling multiple details record formats, etc. 

6. Work being done in the AAA group including the Diameter spec should be
studied to see if it is applicable.
                    
Your responses, concerns and questions are greatly appreciated.

- Abhi