[Asterisk-Users] billing realtime

[Thameem Ansari]

Hello All,

I had the same question when I was writing my own billing software in java.
Here is what I am doing to track multiple calls at a time from the prepaid
account.

1. Keep on db table for balance and reserver_balance.
2. First call coming to agi, check the balance - Sum of all the
reserve_balance of that account code.
3. Check the destination and allowed minutes for that balance amount from
step 2.
4. Reserve balance table will contain destination, amount, reserved secs
columns
5. If the avaialable balance is <= 0 then announce not enough credit and
hangup.
6. If the available balance is > 0 but seconds allowed to talk is less than
reserved secs (see step 8 for more details about what this is)
   then set absolutetimeout for those seconds.
7. Otherwise the allowed seconds is more than the allowed seconds, set
absolute time out for the reserved seconds and make the call.
8. Reserved secs is a custom constant seconds, say you can reserve fund for
3 minutes (180 seconds). if the account has balance for only 2 minutes (120
seconds) then the absolute time out will be 120 seconds.
9. Once the channel status changed to reserved, insert an record to
reserve_balance table with uniqueid, accountcode, amount, reserved_secs
information.

The above steps will handle one call so far now...and lets see how the dial
plan should be,
10. In your dial plan, add an AbsoluteTimeout extension "T" and call another
AGI script which will just to reset the absolute timeout.
11. When the particular timeout is reached asterisk will transfer the call
to 'T" extension which will in turn call another agi.
12. The agi will receive all the information about the channel including
uniqueid, repeat the steps 2- 7 (except dial) and reset the abstimeout and
this process will repeat until the channel hangup.
13. Once the channel hangup, you can either use Manager to receive the cdr
event or you can set "h" extension (not reliable and not recommended) to
calculate the real balance and update the balance table. Once you update the
balance table, remove the record from reserve_balance table for the
uniqueid, channel and accountcode. (these three are enough to find out the
entry in that table).

Now lets take the scenario for  second call when the first call was  active,

14. When the second call comes in, start from step 2. In step 2, we are
doing finalBalance = Balance - Sum(reserve_balance) for that account code.
If there is already a call on this accountcode, then this table will have
one entry and the reserved amount. Get the finalBalance by subtracting the
amounts. Follow step 3 and allow or deny the caller.
The above said solution is very stable and doesn't overflow the memory or
session and not using any threads. The only restriction here is, if we have
the scenario,

Call -1
balance = $0.10
destination= 1 (which is US)
rate = $0.02 per minute
reserveSecs  = 10 minutes (600secs)
finalBalance = $0.10 - $0 (consider this is first call and no entry in
reserve_balance table) = $0.10
allowedMints = $0.10/$0.02 = 5 minutes  = 300 seconds.
AbsoluteTimeout = 300 seconds (this is less than the default reserveSecs so
set this as abstimeout)

Call -2
balance = $0.10
destination= 1 (which is US)
rate = $0.02 per minute
reserveSecs  = 10 minutes (600secs)
finalBalance = $0.10 - $0.10 (consider this is second call and already an
entry in reserve_balance table) = $0.0
allowedMints = 0 seconds.
announce the denied ivr.

So, the reserveSecs is critical to avoid how much threshold amount the
caller should have to make two calls. If they have $10 in their account as
per the above two algorithms, they can make as many simultaneous calls.

I hope this solves most of your problems. I looked at ASTCC, A2Billing etc
and they are not doing this way and not know whether they work properly. But
this works for me. Shoot me your questions if you have one.

I am developing my own billing and routing app (in java) and I need a name
for that.. guys pls suggest one.. i may put that in sourceforge if i feel
confident.

Thanks,
Thameem


On 4/27/06, JP Carballo <lists at netfone2x.com> wrote:
>
> Dovid Bender wrote:
>
> >A while back some one posted some code that he used
> >that took out the flag in astcc that kept track if
> >there was a call in progress for that pin or not. Dont
> >know if it wil work for real time though.
> >
> >Dovid
> >
> >
> I don't know if you were pertaining to what I posted in the message
> "ASTCC: How to reset "in-use" flag automatically ?".
> The setinuse() routine already exists in ASTCC.
> One simply has to use that routine to disable the inuse flag when a call
> begins and ASTCC will allow multiple calls for the same account.
>
> However, I too have no idea if this will work for real time.
>
> --
> JP Carballo
>
> http://www.netfone2x.com
> Bringing the world closer.
>
> It might look like I'm doing nothing, but at the cellular level, I'm
> really quite busy.
>
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