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Accounting Management
IACT 918 April 2005
Glenn Bewsell/Gene Awyzio
SITACS University of Wollongong
Overview
• Accounting Management is the process
of
– Gathering data about the utilisation of
network resources
– Setting usage quotas using metrics
– Billing users for their use of the network
– Using collected network statistics to assist
in resource allocation
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Benefits of the Accounting
Management Process
• Enables the measurement and reporting of
billing information for individuals and groups
• This information can be used to
– Bill those users
– Allocate resources
– Compute the cost of transmitting data across the
network
• Billing users is essential in recovering costs of
building and maintaining network
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Benefits of the Accounting
Management Process
• Accounting management assists in ensuring
that distribution of charges is fair
– Quotas and metrics can be used to ensure users
have sufficient resources to do jobs
• Usage information can be used to
– Decide when to install new equipment
– Allocate time on a time share computer
– Determine the cost-effectiveness of technologies
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Accomplishing Accounting
Management
• Accounting Management consists of the
following steps
– Gathering data about the utilisation of
network resources
– Setting usage quotas using metrics
– Billing users for their use of the network
– Using collected network statistics to assist
in resource allocation
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Gathering Data
• Time frame for data collection will depend
upon storage capacity of devices
• Information to be gathered includes
– Number of total transactions
– Total number of bytes or packets sent and received
• This data can be collected by
– Querying activity logs on individual hosts
– Gathering traffic counters off bridges, switches or
routers
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Setting Usage Quotas Using
Metrics
• Metrics can be used to
– Learn to what extent users network resources
• As part of Accounting management you need to
– Decide which resources to measure
– Collect metrics about their use
• RFC 1272 discusses metrics and setting quotas
• Metrics work with quotas to help ensure each user
gets a “fair share” of network resources
– Going ‘over quota’ could be used to deny access to a
resource
– Increase bill if over quota
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Billing Users for Their Use of
the Network
• Users are often billed for
– One-time installations and monthly fees
• Accounting management NOT required
– Fee based on amount of resources used
• Requires stats on user network installation
• The following criteria can be used individually or in
combination
– Total number of transactions
– Total packets
– Total bytes
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Billing Users for Their Use of
the Network
• Total number of transactions data can be used
to
– Determine number of logins to compute server
– Connections made from cluster controller
– Emails sent
– Remote login sessions established
– This data cannot differentiate between large and
small VOLUMES
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Billing Users for Their Use of
the Network
• Total packets data can be used to
– Reflects network usage
– Applications that send small packets are
billed at a higher rate than those that send
LARGE packets
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Billing Users for Their Use of
the Network
• Total bytes
– Overcomes many drawbacks of first two methods
– Generally users are billed for data received from
the network
– Drawbacks may include
• Users are billed for acknowledgement packets
• Unsolicited data adds to the users bill
• Users may be billed for management data
– These drawbacks can be negated by using
statistical analysis to subtract known data
quantities from bill
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Accounting Management on a
Network Management System
• Simple tool
– Monitor for metrics that exceed quotas
– Report ONLY that data
– Store data and calculate quotas
• More complex tool
– Enable network engineer to perform billing and determine
WHERE to poll for billing
• Advanced tool
– Should be able to forecast need for network resources
– Assist in metric establishment
– Help users predict their billing costs
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Reporting Accounting
Information
• Can be in the form of
– Real-time messages
• Current value of a metric
– Text reports
• Historical accounting and billing information
• Network statistics
• Trend predictions
• Reports for users (Bills)
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