A Dynamic Pricing Framework to support a Scalable, Usage-Based Charging Model for Packet-Switched Networks

We describe a dynamic pricing framework designed to support a radical approach to usage-based charging for packet-switched networks. This approach addresses various scalability issues by shifting responsibility for accounting and billing to customer systems. The ultimate aim is to create an active multi-service network which uses pricing to manage supply and demand of resources. In this context, the role of the dynamic pricing framework is to enable a provider to establish ‘active tariffs’ and communicate them to customer systems. These tariffs take the form of mobile code for maximum flexibility, and the framework uses an auditing process to provide a level of protection against incorrect execution of this code on customer systems. In contrast to many active networks proposals, the processing load is moved away from routers to the edge of the network.