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Offline Charging White Paper PDF
Offline Charging White Paper PDF
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eLTE2.2
Offline Charging Whitepaper
Issue 01
Date 2014-2-21
and other Huawei trademarks are trademarks of Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd.
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holders.
Notice
The purchased products, services and features are stipulated by the contract made between Huawei and
the customer. All or part of the products, services and features described in this document may not be
within the purchase scope or the usage scope. Unless otherwise specified in the contract, all statements,
information, and recommendations in this document are provided "AS IS" without warranties, guarantees or
representations of any kind, either express or implied.
The information in this document is subject to change without notice. Every effort has been made in the
preparation of this document to ensure accuracy of the contents, but all statements, information, and
recommendations in this document do not constitute a warranty of any kind, express or implied.
Change History
Date Issue Description Prepared by
2014-2-21 01 Completed the draft. Liu Shaofeng (employee ID:
00129458)
Contents
3 References ............................................................................................................................... 31
A Acronyms and Abbreviations .............................................................................................. 32
1 Overview
Gy
eNodeB
UE Uu S-GW P-GW
S1-U S5 SGi PDN
Network
Ga
CG Billing System
In the preceding figure, the dotted line indicates a signaling interface and the solid line
indicates a signaling and data interface.
Devices related to the offline charging system in the preceding figure are described as
follows:
P-GW: collects charging information, generates charging data records (CDRs), and sends
the CDRs to the CG.
CG: After receiving CDRs, the CG stores, consolidates, and standardizes CDRs, and
then sends the processed standardized CDRs to the billing system (BS).
BS: processes received CDRs and generated final CDRs. The BS is the proprietary
system of customers. Huawei does not provide any device.
Devices related to the online charging system in the preceding figure are described as follows:
P-GW
Implements the traffic plane function (TPF). This function allows the P-GW to differentiate
and collect statistics of flow-based charging services, communicate with the OCS over the Gy
interface, and provide the prepayment for common subscribers and flow-based charging
subscribers.
Based on the filter information in the predefined or dynamically delivered charging rules, the
P-GW differentiates packets by service flows.
OCS
Provides the credit control function (CCF) for subscribers and implements the CCF of PS
services by enhancing the current online charging system. For the P-GW, the OCS can
determine whether a subscriber is prepaid and perform rating, credit quota allocation, and fee
deduction for prepaid subscribers.
Category Specification
IETF RFC 3588 Diameter Base Protocol
RFC 4006 Diameter Credit-Control Application
3GPP 3GPP TS 32.299 Telecommunication management; Charging
management; Diameter charging applications
3GPP TS 32.251 Telecommunication management; Charging
management; Packet Switched (PS) domain charging
You can configure multiple CGs. Each CG is identified by the IP address and port number. The
preceding figure is an example using two CGs.
You can configure multiple GTP' links from the eCNS600 to each CG for load sharing.
Where
M: Mandatory
O: Optional
C: Conditional. An item must be provided when prerequisites are met.
OM: A field is mandatory in CDRs if users select it.
OC: A field is mandatory in CDRs if users select it and certain conditions are met.
Final CDRs
Final CDRs are CDRs processed by the CG9812. After the CG9812 collects CDRs from the
eCNS600, it consolidates the CDRs and generates final CDRs that meet BS requirements.
2.1.3 Mechanisms
Original CDR Processing of the eCNS600
CGR Transmission Based On CG Load Sharing
The eCNS600 can connect to multiple CGs and you can configure different (depending on
user planning and ranging from 0 to 5 in descending order) or same priorities for these CGs.
If the CGs have different priorities, the eCNS600 selects the CG with the highest priority.
The eCNS600 supports CG load sharing. You can configure multiple CGs of the same priority
on the eCNS600 to achieve CG loading sharing. When a large number of original CDRs need
to be processed, the eCNS600 can send these CDRs to different CGs. This reduces the
performance requirement on a single CG and improves the reliability of original CDR
transmission.
If the eCNS600 does not receive any response after sending original CDRs to a CG, the
eCNS600 sends the original CDRs to the CG again. If the response times out, the eCNS600
considers the CG to be faulty.
If there is no original CDR to send, the eCNS600 sends an Echo message to the CG every
other minute. If the eCNS600 does not receive any response for N consecutive times, the
eCNS considers the CG to be faulty. N is set to 3 by default.
CDR Storage
If the link between the eCNS600 and the CG is faulty, the eCNS600 buffers original CDRs.
After the link recovers, the eCNS600 sends the CDRs to the CG.
After receiving original CDRs from the eCNS600, the CG9812 generates final CDRs. The
CG9812 supports the storage of final CDRs. Final CDRs are stored on the physical medium
for a specified period. When the specified period expires, the final CDRs are automatically
deleted from the physical medium.
The eCNS600 can control whether to generate original CDRs based on a specified charging
characteristic. Therefore, users can easily control the original CDR generation based on site
requirements. After generating original CDRs, the eCNS600 sends them to the CG9812.
An original CDR contains multiple fields such as subscriber ID, service time segment, and
service duration. The BS charges subscribers based on the information.
The original CDR generation procedure consists of the following three phases:
Generating original CDRs
When the EPS bearer is set up and a UE performs services, the eCNS600 generates original
CDRs at a specific point (charging point when charging information is generated upon the
fulfillment of charging conditions) and records the UE's subsequent actions that require
charging in the original CDRs.
Generating intermediate CDRs
When the EPS bearer is set up and a UE performs services, the eCNS600 generates
intermediate CDRs if the time, volume, or number of QoS changes reaches a specified
threshold.
Generating final CDRs
When the services of the UE is about to stop and before the EPS bearer is released, the
eCNS600 generates final CDRs and the generation of new original CDRs is stopped.
The preceding procedure shows that the eCNS600 may generate multiple original CDRs for a
service procedure. The BS consolidates these original CDRs and implements final billing.
Original CDRs fixedly comply with 3GPP Release 9. Roaming subscribers, visiting
subscribers, and home subscribers are not differentiated in original CDRs. They are uniformly
taken as home subscribers for charging mode selection in CDRs.
After the eCNS600 generates CDRs, it encodes the original CDRs in Abstract Syntax
Notation One (ASN.1) format, encapsulates the CDRs using GTP', and then sends the CDRs
to CGs.
Device Reliability
Users deploy the active and standby boards in the hardware and software systems of the
eCNS600, and by using the automatic failover mechanism in HA systems, system reliability
and service continuity are guaranteed.
The CG9812 collects CDRs from the eCNS600 according to the GTP' protocol and supports
the following CDR types:
S-CDR
G-CDR
M-CDR
S-SMO-CDR
S-SMT-CDR
LCS-MT-CDR
LCS-MO-CDR
LCS-NI-CDR
eG-CDR
S-MB-CDR
G-MB-CDR
S-GW-CDR
P-GW-CDR
Among them, the LCS-MT-CDR, LCS-MO-CDR, and LCS-NI-CDR exist in only 3GPP
Release 4 and later versions, S-MB-CDR, G-MB-CDR, and eG-CDR exist in only 3GPP
Release 6 and later versions, and S-GW-CDR and P-GW-CDR exist in only 3GPP Release 8
and later versions.
The eLTE offline charging solution provides only the P-GW-CDR type whose CDRs are
generated by the P-GW on the LTE network. Therefore, the type of original CDRs processed by
the CG9812 from the eCNS600 is fixed at P-GW-CDR.
The CG9812 supports original and final CDR auto-deletion. Original and final CDRs are
stored in files and deleted automatically when they expire. You can set the storage duration of
original and final CDRs. The default value is 5 days.
The CG9812 supports original and final CDR auto-backup. Original and final CDRs can be
backed up locally or remotely on the network according to the configurations. In local backup
mode, the CG9812 backs up files to a local disk or other storage devices. In remote backup
mode, the CG9812 backs up files to a remote disk.
The CG9812 sends final CDRs to the BS specified by customers using FTP, SFTP, or FTAM.
Customers have high requirements on network security. Therefore, you are advised to use
SFTP. SFTP is a secure file transfer protocol. It authenticates information and data using
encrypted transmission and provides a secure encryption method for file transmission.
The SFTP supports password authentication and key authentication.
Password authentication
The CG9812 logs in to the remote server by using the user name and password, and then
uploads CDRs to the server.
Key authentication
Indicates that a pair of keys are generated for authentication by using SSH. In this mode, a
remote security channel is set up between the CG9812 and remote server for encrypted data
transmission, which prevents attacks, DNS spoofing, and IP spoofing.
When the CG9812 uploads CDR files to the BS, alarms might be generated due to the
following causes:
An exception occurs on distribution links.
An alarm might be generated because of network error, peer server exception, or incorrect
user name and password.
Transmitting CDR files fails.
An alarm might be generated because the CG9812 is unable to access the BS or memory of
storage devices in the BS is insufficient.
In pull mode, alarms might be generated due to the following causes:
The BS does not collect CDR files for a long time.
This problem may be caused by network error and BS failure.
The BS does not delete CDR files after CDR files are collected.
In this case, final CDR files are accumulated. This results in insufficient disk memory.
Device Reliability
The reliability of final CDR files of the CG9812 can be guaranteed based on the following
two aspects:
HA system
Users deploy the active and standby boards in the hardware and software systems of the
CG9812, and by using the automatic failover mechanism in HA systems, system reliability
and service continuity are guaranteed.
Hard disk subsystems configured as the RAID
The CG9812 uses the DRBD technology to automatically synchronize disk data on the active
and standby boards. This ensures the consistency and avoids losses of final CDR files when a
faulty board switches over to another board.
Restrictions
Networking and service restrictions:
The offline charging is limited to the LTE network. It applies only to the LTE UE
charging in the LTE network.
The online charging, content-based charging, and flow-based charging are not supported.
In addition, the Gx interface used to interconnect with the standard PCRF is not
supported.
The charging function does not involve inter-PLMN roaming and does not support the
S-GW. It supports only the P-GW.
The eCNS600 can interconnect with only the CG9812. One eCNS600 supports a
maximum of 10 CG9812s.
The non-roaming and roaming scenarios described in 3GPP specifications are not
differentiated in the offline charging and both scenarios are uniformly taken as the
non-roaming scenario. Roaming subscribers, visiting subscribers, and home subscribers
are not differentiated in original CDRs. They are uniformly taken as home subscribers
for charging mode selection in CDRs.
The charging function does not support CDRs compatible with old versions. CDRs
fixedly comply with 3GPP Release 9 in October 2010.
O&M restrictions:
eNodeB
UE Uu eCNS CG Billing System
S1-U Ga
LTE Network
SGi
PDN Network
the eCNS600 provides vacant ports. This reduces device and maintenance costs. Figure 2-4
shows the typical multi-CN networking (single CG).
eNodeB
UE Uu eCNS
S1-U
LTE Network
eNodeB
UE Uu eCNS CG Billing System
S1-U Ga
LTE Network
SGi
PDN Network
eNodeB
UE Uu eCNS
S1-U
LTE Network
In certain scenarios, multiple CG9812s are deployed for load sharing and disaster tolerance.
Each CG needs to collect CDRs of multiple CNs. Generally, the CG9812s use independent
subracks and OMUs. In certain scenarios, the CG9812 shares one subrack and OMU with the
eCNS600 when the eCNS600 provides vacant ports. This reduces device and maintenance
costs. Figure 2-5 shows the typical multi-CN networking (multiple CGs).
eNodeB
UE Uu eCNS
S1-U CG
LTE Network
eNodeB
UE Uu eCNS CG Billing System
S1-U Ga
LTE Network
SGi
PDN Network
eNodeB
UE Uu eCNS
S1-U
LTE Network
eNodeB
UE Uu eCNS CG
S1-U Ga
Billing System
LTE Network
eNodeB
UE Uu eCNS CG
S1-U Ga
Billing System
LTE Network
SGi
PDN Network
eNodeB
UE Uu eCNS CG
S1-U Ga
LTE Network
2.2.2 Characteristics
The eLTE offline charging solution significantly simplifies the PS charging solution provided
by Huawei. It deletes multi-level control in the PS charging solution, reserves the
customization of generating CDRs based on APNs and charging characteristics (CCs), and
reserves the flexible configuration of holidays and festivals, weeks, rate durations, and
corresponding rates, and reserves charging information collection of CDRs.
Normal billing
Normal billing is used to charge subscribers based on transmitted data traffic or duration
irrespective of service types of data.
It complies with 3GPP specifications and mainly records external network resources used by
an MS.
Hot billing
Hot billing is similar to normal billing. The only difference lies in that hot billing enables
CDRs to be generated faster than normal billing.
After the eCNS600 sends CDRs to the CG9812, the BS delivers dedicated commands to the
CG9812, instructing it to process the CDRs carrying the hot billing flag. Therefore, the BS
can preferentially process the CDRs carrying the hot billing flag sent from the eCNS600 to
the CG9812.
Prepaid
Prepaid subscribers need to pay certain fees before they use a service. If fees are insufficient
to cover the service, the service will be forcibly stopped.
Flat billing
Subscribers are charged at a fixed rate by a specified period (for example, by month).
The eCNS600 billing system collects and sends only CDR information about flat billing
subscribers, such as traffic and time, to the CG9812 and charges subscribers based on
subscription.
Specific-value
Reserved bits of the CC are canceled in 3GPP TS 32.298 V860 and later. Only normal billing,
hot billing, prepaid, and flat billing are kept for forward compatibility. Besides these
keywords, you can customize special CC values. The CC values range from 0x0000 to 0xffff.
If the UE activation request message contains the CC attribute, an AND operation is
performed on the CC value and CC mask configured on the eCNS600. If multiple results are
generated, the result of the highest priority configured based on the CC is selected based on
the configured priorities.
3 References
A
APN access point name
C
CDR charging data record
G
GPRS general packet radio service
GTP GPRS tunneling protocol
I
IMSI international mobile subscriber identity
IP Internet Protocol
M
MME mobility management entity
P
PDN packet data network
Q
QoS quality of service
R
RAI routing area identity
S
S-GW serving Gateway
T
TAI tracking area identity
U
UE user equipment
ULI user location information