Rhino VoLTE TAS 4.2 :: Rhino VoLTE TAS Configuration and Management Guide

On this page

What it does
- Diameter Ro charging announcements
- Multiple OCS Support
Configuration
- What you need
- Setting up Diameter Ro online charging
  - I want to…

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

In the charging section, set the gsm-online-charging-type to ro or cap-ro for mixed CAMEL/Ro deployments:

        gsm-online-charging-type: ro

In the charging section, configure the ro-charging section. See Configure Diameter Ro online charging.
In mmt-gsm-vmpool-config.yaml, you must ensure that all per-node-diameter-ro sections in the MMT cluster configuration are present and not commented out.

          # 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

In the charging section, set the gsm-online-charging-type to disabled:

        gsm-online-charging-type: disabled

Remove or comment out the 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

In mmt-gsm-vmpool-config.yaml, you must comment out all per-node-diameter-ro sections in the MMT cluster configuration.

          # 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

In the charging section, set cdma-online-charging-enabled to true:

        cdma-online-charging-enabled: true

In the charging section, configure the ro-charging section. See Configure Diameter Ro online charging.
In mmt-cdma-vmpool-config.yaml, you must ensure that all per-node-diameter-ro sections in the MMT cluster configuration are present and not commented out.

          # 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

In the charging section, set cdma-online-charging-enabled to false:

        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

In mmt-cdma-vmpool-config.yaml, you must comment out all per-node-diameter-ro sections in the MMT cluster configuration.

          # 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

The diameter-ro-release of Diameter Ro to use.
The Diameter origin-realm for the Rhino VoLTE TAS.
The Diameter destination-realm for the online charging system.
A Diameter destination-peers list that correspond to OCS servers. There must be at least one entry, and for each entry the following values must be set:
- the destination-hostname for the OCS server
- the port for the OCS server
- the protocol-transport to use with the OCS server.
- the metric to use with this OCS server peer.

Play an announcement to subscribers when they run low on credit

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

Add a low-credit-announcements section.
- Set the call-setup-announcement-id of the announcement to play when a subscriber is low on credit at the beginning of a call.
- Set the mid-call-announcement-id of the announcement to play when a subscriber becomes low on credit during a call.
- Set the charging-reauth-delay-milliseconds time to wait (in milliseconds) before doing another credit check after playing a low balance announcement.

Related section: Diameter Ro charging announcements

Play an announcement to subscribers when they run out of credit

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

Add an out-of-credit-announcements section.
- Set the call-setup-announcement-id of the announcement to play when a subscriber tries to make a call without having enough credit.
- Set the mid-call-announcement-id of the announcement to play when a subscriber runs out of credit during a call.