The Cumulus Pricing Scheme and its Integration into a Generic and Modular Internet Charging System for Differentiated Services

Pricing and charging are the most important management functionalities future commercial networks need to offer. Since the Internet is on the move to provide differentiated services, for the backbone based on the Differentiated Services Architecture (DiffServ), suitable and scalable management mechanisms are required. Based on a new view of pricing, considered as important management information, on one hand, the Cumulus Pricing Scheme (CPS) proposed targets particularly at DiffServ technology and it is the only approach known so far defining a clear relation between different time-scales of accounting periods, measurement periods, and charging periods. Prices in this scheme are based on flat fees and hence predictable and transparent. On the other hand the scheme is flexible enough to allow network management according to the actual forces of the market. CPS is backed by the design of a generic and modular Internet Charging System. It offers a service-independent architecture and integrates economically-controlled network management functions of charge calculation and pricing. It has been instantiated to an Internet Charge Calculation and Accounting System (ICCAS) to offer user support functions and is utilized for different Internet services. In particular, it has been applied explicitly in this work to DiffServ and the new Cumulus Pricing Scheme.