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This document describes the Gateway-to-Gatekeeper Billing Redundancy feature that is introduced in Cisco IOS Release 12.1(1)T. This document contains the following sections:
The Gateway-to-Gatekeeper Billing Redundancy feature enhances the accounting capabilities of the Cisco H.323 Gateway and provides support for Vocaltec Gatekeepers. The Gateway-to-Gatekeeper Billing Redundancy feature provides redundant billing information to an alternate gatekeeper if the primary Gatekeeper to which a Gateway is registered becomes unavailable.
During the process of establishing a call, the primary Gatekeeper sends an admission confirmation (ACF) message to the registered Gateway. The ACF message includes the user's billing information and an access token. To provide the billing information to an alternate gatekeeper if the primary Gatekeeper is unavailable when the call session ends, the access token information sent in the ACF message in now also included in the disengage request (DRQ) message that is sent to the alternate Gatekeeper.
This features enables the alternate Gatekeeper to obtain the billing information required to successfully complete the transaction.
The Gateway-to-Gatekeeper Billing Redundancy enables the maintenance of billing information on alternate Gatekeepers.
The Gateway-to-Gateway Billing Redundancy feature is related to the Cisco H.235 Accounting and Security Enhancements for Cisco Gateways and to the Gateway support for Alternate Gatekeepers.
The Gateway-to-Gateway Billing Redundancy feature is supported on any existing Cisco IOS Gatekeeper platform, including the following:
Standards
No new or modified standards are supported by this feature.
MIBs
No new or modified MIBs are supported by this feature.
For descriptions of supported MIBs and how to use MIBs, see the Cisco MIB web site on CCO at http://www.cisco.com/public/sw-center/netmgmt/cmtk/mibs.shtml.
RFCs
No new or modified RFCs are supported by this feature.
The Gateway-to-Gatekeeper Billing Redundancy feature requires the Cisco H.323 VoIP Gatekeeper for Cisco Access Platforms feature and the Gateway support for Alternate Gatekeepers feature.
There are no configuration tasks for this feature.
Because there are no configuration tasks associated with the Gateway-to-Gatekeeper Billing Redundancy feature, no configuration examples are provided.
There are no new or modified commands for this feature.
There are no new or modified Debug commands supported by this feature.
ACF---An RAS message sent as an admissions confirmation.
gatekeeper---A gatekeeper maintains a registry of devices in the multimedia network. The devices register with the gatekeeper at startup, and request admission to a call from the gatekeeper.
The gatekeeper is an H.323 entity on the LAN that provides address translation and control access to the LAN for H.323 terminals and gateways. The gatekeeper may provide other services to the H.323 terminals and gateways, such as bandwidth management and locating gateways.
gateway---A gateway allows H.323 terminals to communicate with non-H.323 terminals by converting protocols. A gateway is the point at which a circuit-switched call is encoded and repackaged into IP packets.
An H.323 gateway is an endpoint on the LAN that provides real-time, two-way communications between H.323 terminals on the LAN and other ITU-T terminals in the WAN, or to another H.323 gateway.
H.323---An International Telecommunication Union (ITU-T) standard that describes packet-based video, audio, and data conferencing. H.323 is an umbrella standard that describes the architecture of the conferencing system, and refers to a set of other standards (H.245, H.225.0, and Q.931) to describe its actual protocol.
RAS---Registration, admission, and status protocol. This is the protocol that is used between endpoints and the gatekeeper to perform management functions. The RAS signaling function performs registration, admissions, bandwidth changes, status and disengage procedures between the VoIP gateway and the gatekeeper.
VoIP---Voice over IP. The ability to carry normal telephone-style voice over an IP-based Internet with POTS-like functionality, reliability, and voice quality. VoIP is a blanket term which generally refers to Cisco's standards based (H.323, etc.) approach to IP voice traffic.
Posted: Fri Mar 24 12:57:13 PST 2000
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