[asterisk-dev] Passing AOC information across channels

[Olle E Johansson]

Koopmann, Jan-Peter wrote:
> On Monday, January 30, 2006 1:46 PM Olle E Johansson wrote:
> 
> 
>>To get the discussion going, please tell us what AOC is and what you
>>want to do. Don't assume that everyone on the mailing list is aware
>>of the old discussions...  
> 
> 
> I am terribly sorry I simply assumed everybody would know about AOC or the ongoing requests in the asterisk mailing list. I am talking about "Advice of Charge" which is used heavily at least in German ISDN but from other postings I gather that other countries are using it as well. There seem to be three types of AOC:
> 
> AOC-S: Advice of Charge at call set-up time
> AOC-E: Advice of Charge at the end of the call
> AOC-D: Advice of Charge during the call 
> 
> Several ISDN APIs incl. bristuff zaptel are able to extract at least AOC-E information for the ISDN channel. Unfortunatly there still seem to be at least two problems:
> 
> 1. How can we get the AOC information in CDR fields (custom fields will be fine)? I learned how to put information in a custom CDR field but how can one get the AOC-E information into the dial-plan? Even if there is a way, this would have to be done after a successful dial which is dirty to say the least. Is this not something that should rather be done automatically and therefore in the channel driver? 
> 
> 2. AOC information should survive channel hops. E.g. if you have ISDN <-> IAX <-> ISDN, the AOC information coming in on the first ISDN should be sent to the outgoing ISDN as well. A new AST_CONTROL frame might be a solution to this but I am far from understanding the consequences.
> 
> 
> A lot of companies are depending on the AOC information for their own internal bookkeeping, project analysis, charging it to customers etc. So if a company depends on AOC information being available at the moment, Asterisk unfortunatly is not an option. Since the AOC information is already extracted from the ISDN D-channel by the channel drivers, it should not be too hard to implement the two wishes, should it?
> 
> Mattf suggested in http://bugs.digium.com/view.php?id=6152 that it would be "nice" to implement this in Asterisk, especially if there are AOC/SIP implementations out there as well. He also was the one suggesting to move the discussion to the -dev mailing list. Unfortunatly I have not heard from him since and do not know how to contact him best.
> 
What is the difference between AOC and our use of Accountcode in Asterisk?

/O