Accounting Requirements

[Jay Guha <jayg@apogeenet.com>]

CDN Peering Members,

Here is a stab at the requirements of the "Accounting for CDN Peering"
effort.
As usual, suggestions / recommendations / constructive-critiques are
strongly solicited.
I have taken the liberty to deviate somewhat from  DonGilletti & Raj Nair &
Scharbers orgininal document, but I think I have accomodated the essense of
their requirements. (I will discuss precisely where I have deviated in the
conf call if needed)

(note : need to decouple the 'provisioning' works done by the other teams
and stay focused on representation & exchange of
'work done / performed / requested' by PeeringCDN entities ONLY)

REQUIREMENTS :

0) Intro 

- Purpose
- Scope
	a) At this point, the scope is only 'Work' performed, requested,
completed by peering CDNs (Inter CDN)
	b) Scope shall focus only on definition, exchange - generation &
reception of WorkDataUnits between
                'Accounting for CDN Peering' enabled entities.
	c) Interfaces to deliver AccountingData to Provisioning Tiers &
Business Tiers shall exist
- Overview
- Assumptions
- Terminology

1) Reference Model

- Architecture  Model 
(leveraged from CDNPeering docs - architecture & scenarios but decoupled to
decrease any dependencies on any tier)
- Interface Model
- High Level Model 
- Network Model 
- Operations Model
- Data Flow Model

2) Peer-to-Peer Protocol (Data Exchange) Mechanism

- Protocol Data Unit (PDU) - notation, encoding,  message format, procedure
& semantics
- push, pull, poll meschanisms (synchronization, flow-control, recovery)
- Error Conditions & Handling
- Transport Security
- State Machine Model (state definition, transitions & triggers)
- leverage existing / available / alternative transports
- Transport Requirements (Secure & Non-Secure) + (Guaranteed &
Non-Guaranteed)
- Implications / Requirements on Volume & Frequency


3) 'Work' / Usage

- Scaleable 'WorkDataUnit' Definitions 
	- representation, 
	- encoding, 
	- use-cases, 
	- workflow model, 
	- WorkStateModel (state diagram for 'Work', transitions, triggers)
	- attributes (identifiers, measures, counters - required, optional,
conditional, extraneous)
	- formfactors
	
 note : this answers 'what'  we are accounting. The WorkDataUnits are to be
encapsulated inside

- The 'WorkDataUnit' should contain context data & the data itself (to
prevent ambiguity in definition & meaning, scope & domain resolution issues)
[ie Completeness, well-formed, & no-overloading of meaning of attributes]
- Cyclic (Stateless) Work Events &  Discrete (Stateful) Work Events &
Distributed Work Events
- Error Conditions & Handling
- Volume & Frequency Sizing
- Security of WorkDataUnit
- Fault Tolerance & Assurance (Storage - Persistent / Volatile)
- samples

note : the above must be done for 'Work' definition.

4) Interfaces / Requirements with other functional layers / tiers :

- interface to with provisioning (request-routing / distribution) tiers
- interface to business tiers (settlement, capacity planning, Rating &
Discounting,  AccountMgmt etc)
- Interface to Authentication & Authorization tiers ?

5) Issues to be Decided :

- should authentication & authorization be in scope ? (maybe we should only
develop interfaces to Authentication & Authorization Entities) - ie a
loosely coupled strategy


That's all.

Jay Guha
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