Programmable accounting management for virtual private networks

Until now, proposals for IP accounting management have not exploited the power of programmable networks. Thus, real-time charging and pricing schemes are still regarded as impractical, because the accounting management tasks are executed only at the edges. We introduce the notion of programmable accounting management which is more flexible, efficient and scalable. Specifically, we propose real-time charging and pricing mechanisms using programmable networks. Moreover, we propose a novel programmable accounting architecture for QoS-enabled virtual private networks (VPNs). This architecture gives the flexibility to the providers to employ real-time accounting, and offers an open accounting interface inside the network nodes. This entails that also the VPN subscribers can execute accounting tasks inside the network nodes. For example, they can keep their providers under surveillance, or they can apply their own accounting policies for their users.