Accounting and Charging: Guarantees and Contracts

Abstract

Charging for IP-based communications determines the overall term for metering or monitoring, accounting, pricing, charge calculation, and billing. These five actions are detailed in this chapter to provide a clear view on their interdependencies as well as their relations to distributed computing. Since an ubiquitous computing approach does require communication means between all entities involved, the provisioning of these communication channels is supported typically by commercial service providers— covering network, transport, and value-added services. Thus, the legal and contractual relationships between customers and providers as well as technological choices of protocols, mechanisms, and parameters define the area of interest here.