A new accounting mechanism for modern and future AAA services

Abstract

Accounting along with Authentication and Authorization comprise the concept of AAA provided by IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force). In heterogeneous environments, where different administrative domains and different wired and wireless technologies are utilized, those principles are often hard and complex to correctly implement and evaluate. Specifically, accounting which is our topic of interest, is in many cases a complicated procedure since many aspects need to be taken into consideration. In this respect, a distributed, flexible, robust, secure and generic accounting system needs to be implemented in order to provide the ability to determine which user has acquired which services and for how long at each operator domain. This work examines different scenarios applicable to such 3G/4G hybrid mobile environments and suggests a novel, generic mechanism to support accounting. © 2008 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.