VoIP Gk or Proxy Accounting?

[m.laporta]

Hi all.

My Customer is a long distance VoIP Service Provider, currently collecting calls from and delivering them to the PSTN using several Cisco 5350's. In this environment, billing is a "simple" matter - they collect syslog info from the PSTN gateways.

Now they want to interconnect VoIP carriers, and they're going to implement a Cisco Gk infrastructure with Cisco H.323 Proxies and RADIUS Accounting. Now generating billing info seems to be more involved.

I have a few questions:

1. Is a Cisco Proxy able to generate CDR's as detailed as a Cisco Voice Gateway?

2. Does a Cisco Gk know *exactly* when a call is connected and disconnected and would it be possible to centralize CDR generation on the Cisco GK?

Thank you very much!

michele

[thusain]

Michele,

If you are using the GK as proxy then it will know the exact times for call connect and disconnect as the signalling passes through the GK in proxy mode. It will send the same VSA's that the gateway sends to the raidus server.

Regards,

Taimoor

[m.laporta]

Hi Taimoor,

and thank you very much for your prompt response.

You propose me a different solution than the one I thought, and please let me check if I understand it right, so I can present it to the Customer.

--- My proposal: Get rid of all CDR's from the GW's and Proxies and let the GK (a *separate* Cisco router from the Gk) generate the CDR - I know this might not be the best choise as I don't know if the GK is able to generate detailed CDR in this environment.

--- Your proposal (as far as I understand it): use the CDR's generated by the GW's and the by Gk/Proxy - good because we already know how these CDR's are made and how to elaborate them

My question is: does your proposal still work if I use separate Cisco routers for the GK and the Proxy (which is the Customer's target)?

That is, would it be possible to have the Cisco Proxy generate detailed CDR's and bill in the following environment?

|-------- Cisco Voice GW

| (generates CDR's for outbound/outbound PSTN calls)

|

|

Cisco MCM GK----|

|

|

|-------- Cisco MCM Proxy

(generates CDR's or outbound/inbound VoIP calls)

Thank you

michele

[thusain · Accepted solution]

The scenario would still work. The MCM proxy woould have to be registered to the gatekeeper in question and the signalling will go through the proxy as the GK should return the Proxy IP address in Call setup.

I have not tested this scenario myself, but in theory, it should work.

Good Luck.

Taimoor