Re: Logical sessions vs. statement reconcilliation (was RE: )

[Barney Wolff <barney@databus.com>]

On Tue, Jan 04, 2005 at 02:39:17PM -0500, Nelson, David wrote:
> 
> The grouping of accounting records by CUI value is very similar to
> grouping of accounting records by User-Name value -- typically a
> reconciliation process that leads to issuing an itemized statement or
> bill, e.g. on a monthly basis.
> 
> One question remains in my mind, however.  If the Home AAA changes the
> CUI value for a given user on a (frequent) logical session basis, how
> many CUI values will the Home AAA need to remember as belonging to the
> given user, in order for the end-of-month statement reconciliation
> process to be feasible? 

The home server does not have to remember the handle at all.  It has
the Acct-Session-Ids for each of the sessions, and surely for its own
purposes must store the accounting records with the real user as a key.
When the NAS or proxy owner presents a bill or makes an inquiry about
one or more sessions, the home server can verify that each of them did
indeed belong to the same user.

On the other hand, if the NAS/proxy presents a semi-itemized bill with
only a total for each CUI, then the home server must be able to derive
the real user from the CUI for as long as either the bill or an accusation
of abuse could take to arrive.  In such a case I might use an
algorithm for reversably computing CUI from real-user-id with a key
that changed for each period.  But really, this is over-design - storage
is pretty cheap these days.

Regards,
Barney

-- 
Barney Wolff         http://www.databus.com/bwresume.pdf
I'm available by contract or FT, in the NYC metro area or via the 'Net.

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