What it does

When Diameter Ro charging is in use, the Rhino VoLTE TAS communicates with one or more online charging systems (OCS) in real time to authorize credit for calls. While a call is in progress, Diameter Ro messages are exchanged with the OCS whenever more credit is required, or when there are significant changes in the call that could impact the cost (e.g. video is enabled). If at any point the OCS refuses to grant credit, the call is ended.

While the method for enabling Diameter Ro charging differs between GSM and CDMA based deployments, there is no functional difference in charging behavior as the GSM and CDMA parts of the network are not involved.

Diameter Ro charging announcements

When using Diameter Ro online charging, the Rhino VoLTE TAS supports playing announcements when:

  • the subscriber attempts to make a call when they are running low on credit

  • the subscriber attempts to make a call without having any credit

  • the subscriber begins to run low on credit during a call

  • the subscriber runs out of credit during the call

  • the OCS instructs the TAS to do so.

Low credit announcements are played when the OCS’s response to a credit check includes a low balance indicator. After playing a low credit announcement, the Rhino VoLTE TAS waits for a time before doing another credit check. The time period is set in the charging-reauth-delay-milliseconds field.

Out of credit announcements are played when the OCS sends an "Out of Credit" response to a credit check. The call is terminated after playing an out of credit announcement.

The OCS instructs announcements to be played by including announcement information in its response to a credit check. These announcements will take precedence over the low and out of credit announcements configured in the Rhino VoLTE TAS. If the announcement information came in a "Out of Credit" response, the call will end after the announcement has been played.

When configuring the charging service to play an announcement, you only provide the ID of the announcement that should be played. This ID must correspond to an announcement that has been configured in the announcement service. See Announcements for instruction about how to do this.

Multiple OCS Support

The Rhino VoLTE TAS supports communicating with multiple different Diameter Ro online charging systems. Each OCS must have its own Diameter realm, and those realms must be configured as destination realms in the Rhino VoLTE TAS’s Diameter Ro configuration.

The particular OCS to use for a given call is determined from the ecf parameter of the P-Charging-Function-Addresses header on the initial SIP request for the call. The value of the ecf parameter that identifies a particular OCS is its realm name by default, but can be configured to be any arbitrary value by specifying a charging-function-address when configuring the destination realm for an OCS.

Configuration

The example for sentinel-volte-gsm-config.yaml and example for sentinel-volte-cdma-config.yaml show example configuration relevant to Diameter Ro online charging in the sentinel-volte/charging/ro-charging section.

What you need

  • ❏ The release version of Diameter Ro to use with the online charging system.

  • ❏ The origin realm to use when sending Diameter Ro messages. This is the TAS’s realm.

  • ❏ The destination realm to use when sending Diameter Ro messages. This is the online charging system’s realm.

  • ❏ The OCS peers' hostnames, ports, and transport protocols.

For low balance announcements:

  • ❏ The ID of the low balance announcement to play in call setup.

  • ❏ The ID of the low balance announcement to play in an active call.

  • ❏ The time to wait after playing an announcement before doing another credit check.

For out of credit announcements:

  • ❏ The ID of the out of credit announcement to play in call setup.

  • ❏ The ID of the out of credit announcement to play in an active call.

For multiple OCS support:

  • ❏ The destination realm of each OCS.

  • ❏ A list of which peers are associated with which realms.

  • ❏ (Optional) An identifier for each OCS that will be used to select it with a P-Charging-Function-Addresses header.

Setting up Diameter Ro online charging

I want to…​

Use Diameter Ro online charging on a GSM based deployment
        gsm-online-charging-type: ro
          # Remove this if diameter-ro is disabled
          per-node-diameter-ro:
              diameter-ro-origin-host: mmt1.mmt.site1.mnc123.mcc530.3gppnetwork.org
Disable Diameter Ro charging on a GSM based deployment
        gsm-online-charging-type: disabled
#        ro-charging:
#            diameter-ro:
#                diameter-ro-release: Vcb0
#                origin-realm: metaswitch.com
#                destination-realm: metaswitch.com
#                destination-peers:
#                    -   destination-hostname: peer.metaswitch.com
#                        port: 3868
#                        protocol-transport: aaa
#                        metric: 1
#                continue-session-on-ocs-failure: false
#
#            charging-announcements:
#                low-credit-announcements:
#                    call-setup-announcement-id: 100
#                    mid-call-announcement-id: 100
#                    charging-reauth-delay-milliseconds: 30000
#                out-of-credit-announcements:
#                    call-setup-announcement-id: 101
#                    mid-call-announcement-id: 102
          # Remove this if diameter-ro is disabled
#          per-node-diameter-ro:
#              diameter-ro-origin-host: mmt1.mmt.site1.mnc123.mcc530.3gppnetwork.org
Use Diameter Ro online charging on a CDMA based deployment
        cdma-online-charging-enabled: true
          # Remove this if diameter-ro is disabled
          per-node-diameter-ro:
              diameter-ro-origin-host: mmt1.mmt.site1.mnc123.mcc530.3gppnetwork.org
Disable Diameter Ro charging on a CDMA based deployment
        cdma-online-charging-enabled: false
  • Remove or comment out the entire ro-charging section:

#        ro-charging:
#            diameter-ro:
#                diameter-ro-release: Vcb0
#                origin-realm: metaswitch.com
#                destination-realm: metaswitch.com
#                destination-peers:
#                    -   destination-hostname: peer.metaswitch.com
#                        port: 3868
#                        protocol-transport: aaa
#                        metric: 1
#                continue-session-on-ocs-failure: false
#
#            charging-announcements:
#                low-credit-announcements:
#                    call-setup-announcement-id: 100
#                    mid-call-announcement-id: 100
#                    charging-reauth-delay-milliseconds: 30000
#                out-of-credit-announcements:
#                    call-setup-announcement-id: 101
#                    mid-call-announcement-id: 102
          # Remove this if diameter-ro is disabled
#          per-node-diameter-ro:
#              diameter-ro-origin-host: mmt1.mmt.site1.mnc123.mcc530.3gppnetwork.org
Configure Diameter Ro online charging

In the charging section, ensure that the ro-charging section is present and not commented out:

        ro-charging:
            diameter-ro:
                diameter-ro-release: Vcb0
                origin-realm: metaswitch.com
                destination-realm: metaswitch.com
                destination-peers:
                    -   destination-hostname: peer.metaswitch.com
                        port: 3868
                        protocol-transport: aaa
                        metric: 1
Play an announcement to subscribers when they run low on credit
Warning Ensure the announcement IDs you want to use have been set up in the announcement service. See Announcements.

In charging, ro-charging, ensure that the charging-announcements section is present.:

            charging-announcements:
                low-credit-announcements:
                    call-setup-announcement-id: 100
                    mid-call-announcement-id: 100
                    charging-reauth-delay-milliseconds: 30000
Play an announcement to subscribers when they run out of credit
Warning Ensure the announcement IDs you want to use have been set up in the announcement service. See Announcements.

In charging, ro-charging, ensure that the charging-announcements section is present:

            charging-announcements:
                out-of-credit-announcements:
                    call-setup-announcement-id: 101
                    mid-call-announcement-id: 102
Configure multiple destination realms
            diameter-ro:
                diameter-ro-release: Vcb0
                origin-realm: metaswitch.com
                destination-realms:
                    -   destination-realm: ocs1.metaswitch.com
                        peers:
                            - peer1.metaswitch.com
                    -   destination-realm: ocs2.metaswitch.com
                        peers:
                            - peer2.metaswitch.com
                            - peer3.metaswitch.com
                destination-peers:
                    -   destination-hostname: peer1.metaswitch.com
                        port: 3868
                        protocol-transport: aaa
                        metric: 1
                    -   destination-hostname: peer2.metaswitch.com
                        port: 3868
                        protocol-transport: aaa
                        metric: 1
                    -   destination-hostname: peer3.metaswitch.com
                        port: 3868
                        protocol-transport: aaa
                        metric: 2
Set an identifier for an OCS for selecting it with a P-Charging-Function-Addresses header
                destination-realms:
                    -   destination-realm: ocs1.metaswitch.com
                        charging-function-address: ocs_1
                        peers:
                            - peer1.metaswitch.com
                    -   destination-realm: ocs2.metaswitch.com
                        peers:
                            - peer2.metaswitch.com
                            - peer3.metaswitch.com
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Rhino VoLTE TAS Version 4.1