Charging Ruledefs And The Charging Engine - Cisco ASR 5000 series Product Overview

▀ How ECS Works

Charging Ruledefs and the Charging Engine

This section describes details of how charging ruledefs are applied to the output from the Protocol Analyzer Stack.
The following figure and the steps that follow describe the process of charging ruledefs and charging engines.
Figure 181. Charging Ruledefs and Charging Engine
data flow from
packet inspection
Step 1
In the Classification Engine, the output from the deep-packet inspection is compared to the charging ruledefs. The
priority configured in each charging ruledef specifies the order in which the ruledefs are compared against the packet
inspection output.
Step 2
When a field or state from the output of the deep-packet inspection matches a field or state defined in a charging
ruledef, the ruledef action is applied to the packet. Actions can include redirection, charge value, or billing record
emission. It is also possible that a match does not occur and no action will be applied to the packet at all.
Group-of-Ruledefs
Group-of-Ruledefs enable grouping ruledefs into categories. When a group-of-ruledefs is configured in a rulebase, if
any of the ruledefs within the group matches, the specified charging-action is performed, any more action instances are
not processed.
A group-of-ruledefs may contain optimizable ruledefs. Whether a group is optimized or not is decided on whether all
the ruledefs in the group-of-ruledefs can be optimized, and if the group is included in a rulebase that has optimization
turned on, then the group will be optimized.
When a new ruledef is added, it is checked if it is included in any group-of-ruledefs, and whether it needs to be
optimized, etc.
▄ Cisco ASR 5000 Series Product Overview
Charging Engine
1
Protocol field
(e.g. HTTP.URL, MMS.From, etc.)
Logical Operator
+
(=, !=, endsWith,
startsWith, contains,...)
Protocol State
(e.g. TCP.State, HTTP.State, etc.)
Usage
Content ID
(e.g. IP, HTTP, TCP, UDP)
Priority 1
ruledef
Priority
Priority 2 ruledef
Priority n
(rule-application charging)
block
redirect
Xmit
Logical Expression Boolean Expression
Logical
&
+ Value
Expression
redirect-to edr-type
. . .
Enhanced Charging Service Overview
matched
ruledef with
highest priority
2
&...
EDR
UDR
Redirection
OL-22938-02