[asterisk-biz] Experimental/new VoIP rate search engine.

[Alex Balashov]

Ken Rice wrote:

> I don't think it does... How else are you going to bill it start and stop of
> media? Then how do you account for early media? Do you really wanna pay for
> the ringing cause some (l)user cant get it thru his head that after 45
> seconds changes are they arent going to answer

That's not really how billing methods that consider media stream state 
work.  They have to be involved in the signaling, too, otherwise they 
get none of the metadata about the call setup / teardown, such as ANI, 
destination, etc.  They know that the media corresponding to a one-way 
1xx SDP offer is early media.  These CDR catchers pretty much work as 
you might expect.

The difference is simply this:  When you're handling media, you have a 
way of knowing when media from one or both endpoints stops flowing and 
doesn't start again after a certain minor timeout.  So, for example, the 
B2BUA and media relay process in an SBC will know to throw a RADIUS 
accounting STOP record in a CDR for which it is not seeing media anymore 
from one (or both) endpoints as set up by an INVITE and 200 OK SDP 
offer/answer.

It's just about knowing when the call ends based on the media stream 
versus waiting for a BYE.  Other than that, signaling is still heavily 
brought to bear on the accounting process.

-- 
Alex Balashov
Evariste Systems
Web    : http://www.evaristesys.com/
Tel    : (+1) (678) 954-0670
Direct : (+1) (678) 954-0671
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