Introduction

Nswitch Diameter Platform is a turnkey solution that is

made to easy the introduction of rich and innovative

Value Added Services (VAS) into GSM network, in a

time-to-market approach.

Based on the proven Nswitch suite and its well-known

billing technologies, the Nswitch Diameter Platform

will hence act as the Authentication, Authorization and

Accounting (AAA) Server for GSM subscribers

It supports several billing modes, such as prepaid,

shared prepaid/postpaid, and complex billings

features (discount, flat-rate billing, double-play, Etc.)

and enhances the services to the convergent billing.

Key features

The Nswitch Diameter Platform offers the following

features and benefits:

 Real-Time credit control

 Convergent Billing for GSM services (call, SMS/MMS, Data, )

 Convergent services : GSM, Land line, Web phone or IP based,

 Multiple billing modes (Prepaid, Postpaid, Shared Prepaid, Monthly

Postpaid)
 New billing features

The sophisticated Nswitch Billing system will allow

Operators to develop attractive and well targeted offers,

built to meet the needs of several customer profiles.

 Support of more than 2 Billing levels, very

 useful for MVNE and MVNA

 Reduction of VAS development costs

 New VAS are developed on the top of the

 Diameter Server.

 Multi-languages IVR

 IMS Compliancy
Service and Credit Control
Nswitch Diameter Platform provides a real-time credit

control for the following applications:

 Audio and Video Call

 Voicemail

 Short Number Translation

 Interactive Voice Response

 SMS / MMS / Data

 Internet

 Others
With the Diameter Credit reservation, the N-Soft billing system

supports the multiservice concurrent access

The N-Soft billing System takes into consideration all the variants

and options that may affect services prices such as Roaming,

Busy Hour, Etc

Billing Modes

Beside the well-known prepaid and postpaid services, Nswitch platform

supports a wide range of billing schemes, such as:

Flat-rate billing: unlimited access to a specific service for a fixed

amount over a predefined period)

Offer & Gift: e.g. When an end-user reloads a certain amount on his

credit, the Operator rewards him with a percentage of the total

purchased credit

Promotion: e.g. For a given day of the year, decrease the price of the

service
Discount or Rebate: e.g. After a certain credit consumption, the end-user

is rewarded with a rebate for each new access of the service

Bundle: a combination of previous billing mode. (e.g. Flat-rate billing for

SMS + Prepaid for calls + 10 % rebate for calls between 8 P.M and 8 A.M +

Flat rate for data service)

Protocol compliancy

Nswitch Diameter Platform is compliant with the

Diameter Base Protocol (RFC 3588) and Credit Control

application (RFC 4006). It is also compliant with the IMS

charging System as described in the 3GPP TS 32.260

(Telecommunication management; charging

management; IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS)

charging)
The N-Soft Billing System is made of the following:

Redundant Diameter platform for telecom routines

Nswitch Clustered, redundant and centralized Databases that contain a

unique account per User. They also store CDRs.

Web Server for Back and Front Office :

o Help desk team. The support can be done remotely via the web interface

o End user care. Subscribers check their data via the web interface. (Credit

consumption, Billings, Etc.)

Nswitch Supervision Unit for automatic maintenance tasks. It locally

monitors the whole platform and warns the administrators if fault occurs

in the system.
The Nswitch Diameter platform is an open and scalable

platform. It is easily extendable as the operator needs

grow. Therefore, one can start with a very small

configuration to reduce the CAPEX, and expands the

system as revenue grows.

Case-studies: MVNO

The following drawing points out the interaction between the MNO

and the MVNO network which can is an N-Soft Diameter Platform.

It is linked to the MNO Service Control Point (SCP) through the

Diameter Interface. The Authentication and Accounting information

of MVNO customer are exchanged over that interface. The entire

system is

REAL-TIME (Billing, Reporting, Exploitation, and Maintenance).

The MVNO Network may also include:

An N-Soft VoIP Switch for Least Cost Routing (LCR), IVR, and SIP

Register Server.

 An N-Soft Web for Helpdesk. This Web server can also handle the

 N-Soft Web phone Server. This is a Sip phone, available

CISCO
Enhanced Charging: Provide Flexible Billing While

Reducing Cost

The explosion of mobile data traffic is creating a financial burden

for mobile operators as network costs outpace the growth in

revenue. To maximize the return on your network investments, you

will need to charge subscribers based on the content of specific

services or other unique usage characteristics.

Cisco's Enhanced Charging Service (ECS) helps ensure that the prices

you charge reflect the value of your services, the subscriber's

willingness to pay, and the competitive landscape. The Unified

Reporting feature provides detailed insight into service usage to

assist in network planning and targeted marketing. Figure 1 shows

how tiered billing can increase revenue on a per-subscriber basis

while also increasing the number of subscribers accessing data

services. Figure 2 is a functional diagram of the Enhanced Charging

Service within the ASR 5000 Gateway.

Enhanced Charging Service

Cisco's Enhanced Charging Service (ECS) is an In-line Service in the

ASR 5000 Multimedia core platforms. It is integrated within the

platform, reducing billing-related costs and giving mobile operators

the ability to offer tiered, detailed, and itemized billing to

subscribers. Using deep packet inspection (DPI), ECS allows

operators to charge subscribers based on actual usage, number of

bytes, premium services, location, etc. ECS also generates charging

records for postpaid and prepaid billing systems.

How It Works

Incoming traffic goes into a protocol analyzer for packet inspection.

Routing rules definitions are applied to determine which packets to

inspect. This traffic is then sent to the charging engine where

charging rules definitions are applied to perform actions such as

block, redirect, or transmit.

Charging rules definitions can be based on the following:

• Duration and time of day - minutes used, peak/off-peak, in

network/out-of-network

• Volume - packet amount, number of bytes, per destination

• Content - messaging, email, MP3, video or application download

• Event - quantity of file downloads or actual video streaming play

time

• Destination - partner website, special offers

• Applications - video, VoIP, instant messaging

Key Features and Benefits

• ECS integrates with best-in-class solutions from third-party

categorization providers

• Traffic analysis is performed with the use of shallow or deep

packet inspection (including state ful inspection) to correlate

packets with configured rules

• IP Re-addressing enables redirecting of unknown gateway traffic

to known/trusted gateways

• HTTP Header Enrichment gives the ability to append subscriber

information to HTTP header to be used by end application, such as

mobile advertising insertion (MSISDN, IMSI, IP address, user-

• Credit control/quota reservation is provided for prepaid services

• ECS redirects subscriber to a top-up site if credit is exhausted

• Advice of charge and user notification redirect subscribers to

information page when accessing high-value content

• Supports G-CDRs, eG-CDRs, EDRs, and UDRs for usage-data

generation

• QoS optimization manages data rate of particular traffic to help

ensure fair usage of bandwidth among subscribers

• In-line Services enable real-time charging with no risk of revenue

leakage that may occur with out-of-band offerings

Figure 3 illustrates how, integrated within the multimedia core platform,

Unified Reporting

Unified Reporting provides a comprehensive set of real-time

statistics and customized reports. This information can be very

powerful for marketing organizations to identify usage patterns and

groups to target for tiered services. It is also used for network

planning and traffic management planning. Figure 4 shows how

traffic categorization reports allow the viewer to see connections,

throughput, bandwidth, and more.

Report examples include:

• Real-time statistics per site, per category, and per subscriber, as

well as global statistics

• Number of bytes/packets on a per-session/content-type /

application basis

• The percentage of traffic (in bytes/packets) by a particular

content-type, as compared to total traffic to and from the mobile

node

• Data reported as a function of "on-net" and "off-net" traffic

• Report on any subscriber whose percentage of a particular

application traffic (such as third-party voice or video) exceeds 30

Description Specification
Protocols ● DNS
● FTP
● HTTP
● ICMP
● ICMPv6
● IMAP
● IPv4
● IPv6
● MMS
● POP3
● RTCP
● RTP
● RTSP
● SDP
● SIP
● SMTP
● TCP
● UDP
● WSP
● WTP
Account interfaces for ● RADIUS

postpaid service ● GTTP (GGSN only)

Account and charging

interface for prepaid service ● RADIUS Prepaid Credit Control interface

● Diameter Prepaid Credit Control

Application (DCCA) interface

● Gx interface with Diameter (GGSN only)

Q 1. What are the various methods of subscriber authorization?
Ans: the various methods of subscriber authorization are :
1. WEB-authorization.
2. Authorization by MAC-address;
3. Standard NGN authorization mechanisms (SIP-register);
4. EAP-SIM authorization;
5. MSISDN- or IMSI-based authorization for GSM/UMTS data services;
Q.2. what are the hardware and software are used in GSM Billing system?
Ans: The hardware and software used in GSM billing system are:
1. Industrial servers on an Intel platform (HP DL or equivalent).
2. PCI interface boards.
3. CAMEL subsystem (if used), which provides connectivity with GSM network via SS
1. SIGTRAN connectivity is also supported. One server can contain one interface
board providing support for up to 4E1 and up to 16 SS7 links.
2. Redundant HDD storage is provided by SCSI Raid I controllers.
3. Redundant PSU are also available, depending on server Configuration.
4. System SW runs on Linux operating system (XFS file system).

Q.3 Explain the Connection to the operator’s equipment in Brief .

Ans:

1. Connection to the operator’s billing system or SCP can be carried out using

the CAMEL protocol (over E1/SS7 or over SIGTRAN), using the DIAMETER

protocol or one of the proprietary protocols supported by the billing system.

2. Connection to the operator’s MSC/HLR for EAP-SIM authorization is carried

out using the MAP protocol (over E1/SS7 or over SIGTRAN).

3. Connection to NGN, GGSN or broadband network equipment is performed

via SIP (voice call processing), RADIUS or DIAMETER (authorization and

charging of data sessions).

4. Connection to messaging platforms for on-line charging of messaging

services can be performed via DIAMETER, HTTP or IACC.

5. SMPP v3.4 is used for connection to the operator’s SMSC and USSDC.
Q.4 Function of Real Time Data charging?
Ans:
1. Real-time charging of data services provided by GSM/UMTS network or by other
networks (e.g. wireless broadband networks like Wi-Fi);
2. Per-session or per-call subscriber authorization and charging;
3. Volume-based or time-based billing of data transfer sessions using the operator’s
main billing system;
6. Built-in password generation subsystem for access to services via Wi-Fi or any
other broadband network (using WEB-authorization);
7. Generation of access parameters (one-time passwords) on SMS or USSD
request;
8. Delivery of one-time passwords via SMS;
9. CDR generation for all processed sessions/transactions;
10. SNMP support for integration with operating and maintenance systems.
Q.5 What are the SS7 network components?
Ans: The SS7 network components are:

signal switching points (SSPs)—SSPs are telephone switches

equipped with SS7-capable software and terminating signaling links.
They generally originate, terminate, or switch calls.
signal transfer points (STPs)—STPs are the packet switches of the
SS7 network. They receive and route incoming signaling messages to
destination.
signal control points (SCPs)—SCPs are databases providing
information necessary for advanced call-processing capabilities