CURRENT_MEETING_REPORT_



Reported by Gregory Ruth/BBN

Minutes of the Internet Accounting Working Group (ACCT)

Internet Accounting Background

The Wednesday session reviewed the Internet Accounting Background
document which had recently moved to the status of RFC (1272).  The
major changes to this document since the July IETF were in the areas of
security requirements and counting strategy.

The security concerns for internet accounting were discussed and
fundamental requirements were found to be data integrity and data
confidentiality.  It was recommended that, to the extent possible, SNMP
security services should be used to satisfy these requirements.

The counting strategy discussion revolves around how packets (datagram
fragments) should be counted:  on entry to a network or upon successful
delivery.  Since there are good arguments for both methods (depending on
the intended use of the accounting information), the capability for both
should be included in and internet accounting system.

Working group participants offered comments, criticisms and suggestions
that will be incorporated into either a new version of the RFC or follow
on documents.  Two new items were suggested:  (1) it should be mentioned
that, in addition to the uses already listed, internet accounting may
also be used to monitor the correct operation of the network (i.e.  it
may reveal problems/anomalies); (2) among the values that an internet
accounting system could report for a flow might be a binary value
indicating whether a flow was active or not in the measured time period.

Internet Accounting Architecture

On Thursday the Working Group discussed the latest draft of the Internet
Accounting architecture.  Although this document has existed for several
months now and has undergone 3 or 4 extensive revisions, it still needs
work, both in form and content.  An intensive session was spent going
over the document section be section and paragraph by paragraph to
refine both form and content.  In particular the Working Group worked on


   o Tightening up the statement of scope that this document will
     address.

   o More carefully and clearly defining the IA model (and its
     difference from the OSI accounting model) and the interactions of
     its components.

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Numerous detailed (but important) changes were suggested and will be
incorporated into the next version of the architecture document.  Among
them:


   o An explanation that we intend to develop a draft MIB and accounting
     control function definition, but not a complete protocol
     specification for accounting.

   o A clear statment about which packet processing layer accounting is
     done at, namely the IP layer.

   o The addition of a security section to the architecture document
     (and the role to be played by SNMP security services).

   o Definition of ``subscriber'', ``flow start time'' and other loosely
     used terms.


The Working Group intends to conduct a dialog over the changes and a
review of this document over the Internet in the next couple of months
with a view of advancing it to the status of Internet Draft by the next
IETF conference.

General

The Working Group has decided to combine the metering services document
(formerly intended to be separate) with the architecture document and to
announce our intention to produce a draft MIB document (separately)
before the Working Group's effort is done.

It was agreed that it is time once again to check what progress if any
the OSI effort on accounting is making.

Attendees

Larry Blunk              ljb@merit.edu
David Bolen              db3l@nis.ans.net
Ronald Jacoby            rj@sgi.com
Kenneth Laube            laube@bbn.com
Mike Marcinkevicz        mdm@csu.net
Cyndi Mills              cmills@bbn.com
Rebecca Nitzan           nitzan@nersc.gov
Allan Rubens             acr@merit.edu
Gregory Ruth             gruth@bbn.com
Sharad Sanghi            sharad@ans.net
Timon Sloane             peernet!timon@uunet.uu.net
Sally Tarquinio          sally@gateway.mitre.org
Frank Welch



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