A new charging scheme for multi-domain DiffServ networks

We propose a new charging scheme for multi-domain differentiated services (DiffServ) networks. Our scheme considers the existence of non-DiffServ networks on the route of transmission. The charging agent at the edge of the source domain inserts in the DiffServ traffic charging measurement (CM) packets which contain traffic and charging information. The CM packets are subsequently returned by the charging agents at the downstream DiffServ domains. The charges can be easily calculated according to the feedback information in the returned CM packets. In addition to the above, we propose two signaling mechanisms for our charging schemes. We show that our scheme is simple, fair and scalable.