Transaction management for sender/receiver-payment schemes in charging and accounting systems for interconnected networks

In this paper, we present an Internet transaction management system for sender/receiver payment schemes. This system allows an arbitrary split of transaction charges between two communication partners. Using this kind of system, new business models can be implemented on the Internet. The new system provides more flexibility than existing charging schemes. Under these new business models, service providers can pick up a share of the cost for the transaction with any of their customers; offer collect-call type of services; or provide services such as the 900 services on the telephone network. This paper describes in detail the transaction management protocol (TMP), its implementation, and the transaction management service platform (TMS). The TMP specifies the protocol state diagram as well as the process of how the costs for resource usage can be allocated to communicating end-users. The TMS platform defines the architecture and the modules, simplifying the implementation of the TMP on the Internet. The TMS provides a module-based transaction management environment, carrying transaction signals such as message schema, accounting policy information, communication reference information, and end-user agreement information. In addition to this, an application of the TMS within the framework of bandwidth broker interconnection networks and a short evaluation of the proposed transaction management system are given.