Subject: [AAA-WG]: Issue: Accounting issues

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 12 Nov 2001 16:57:51 +0200

Hi,

I have sent some of these questions already to the mailinglist but they have
not been answered yet. So I thought that making them as an issue might
trigger more feedback.

Best Regards, Jaakko

Submitter name: Jaakko Rajaniemi 
Submitter email address: [email-masked] 
Date first submitted: 2001-11-12 
Document: base 
Comment type: T 
Priority: 1 
Section: 9.6, 8.2, 9.3 
Rationale/Explanation of issue: 

It says in the section 9.6 "Correlation of Accounting Records" that the
correlation for accounting sub-sessions is performed using the Session-Id.
Is this correct? Aren't both the Accounting-Sub-Session-Id and Session-Id
used for the correlation?

I think that it is not possible to terminate one or several accounting
sub-session from the server side. Only all accounting sub-sessions can be
terminated by using the Abort-Session command. Is this left for each
application to handle or should this possibility be in the base protocol?

The accounting state machine in the section 8.2 describes that the
accounting session is terminated by the action where the accounting stop
request is sent. It is not totally clear what the accounting stop request
here can mean. I think that it only describes the case where the accounted
service is a one-time event (where EVENT_RECORD is sent and the ACA
terminates the session) and a measurable length accounting service (where
STOP_RECORD is sent to terminate the session). However, it seems to be
missing the server initiated termination by the Abort-Session command.

This application document requirements for accounting were discussed some
time ago and I proposed a change to the section 9.3 which got some support,
but not get to the base-08. The issue is that because it is possible that a
service makes only use of the Accounting portion of the Diameter application
then the application must clearly described in the application specification
which part contains the accounting portion. The current text describes in
the section 9.3 (Application document requirements) clearly how new
accounting AVPs must be described in new applications but it does not say
anything how new accounting command codes should be described. One way to
guarantee that this is clearly described in the new applications is to
modify the section 9.3 according to the changes proposed in the Requested
change part below.

Requested change: 

The change to the section 9.3, the Application document requirements:

"Each Diameter application (e.g. NASREQ, MobileIP), MUST define their
Service-Specific accounting part in a section entitled "Accounting". Under
the section "Accounting" they MUST define their Service-Specific AVPs that
MUST be present in the Accounting-Request message in a section entitled
"Accounting AVPs" and their Service-Specific command codes if exists in a
section entitled "Accounting Command-Codes". The application MUST assume
that the AVPs described in this document will be present in all Accounting
messages, so only their respective service-specific AVPs need to be defined
in this section."

If the above change is adopted then it would require some minor editing to
the NASREQ and Mobile IP application. 

For other question changes are still open.