Subject: [AAA-WG]: Issue 241: Accounting issues - need closure

From: <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 27 Feb 2002 10:12:17 +0200

Hi all,

I have the following comment on this:

	Sub 1&4 accepted, sub 2 discussed, 
	sub 3 clarification request sent to list.

Could someone provide a summary where we stand and what text needs to be added?

John	

Issue 241: Accounting issues 
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.