CN103780401B - Charging method and system - Google Patents

Abstract

The invention discloses a kind of charging method and system, wherein, system includes：Home gateway, for the dial request that receive user equipment sends, and dial request is sent to network system；After network system returns dial response, dial response is sent to user equipment, so that user equipment connects network according to dial response；After user equipment is successfully surfed the Net, monitor in real time charging is started according to charging policy, and shows this online spending amount in real time.Network system, for receiving the dial request of home gateway transmission, and returns dial response；The present invention carries out charging by using home gateway, on the one hand, so that charging be that user side is carried out in home gateway, allow user it is convenient inquire the consumed amount of money of oneself surfing the Net every time；On the other hand, when userbase is huge, pressure, the vigorousness that can effectively share network system is strong, makes charge system possess localization, distributed advantage.

Description

Billing method and system

technical field

The present invention relates to the field of communication technology, in particular to a charging method and system.

Background technique

Intelligent home network is a high-tech product brought to people by the information age. With the help of existing computer network technology, it connects various home appliances and equipment in the family to the network, and provides people with various rich, diverse and personalized services through the network. , Convenient, comfortable, safe and efficient service. But the realization of intelligent home network system needs to design an ideal home gateway. A home gateway is a physical interface that connects all external access networks to the inside of the home, enabling users to obtain various home services.

At present, the billing of the home gateway adopts a centralized management method, that is, one or more background servers are set up to perform unified billing management on the home gateway.

However, this centralized billing method, along with the large increase in the number of home gateways, the system billing burden will also increase sharply, which will easily cause the billing server to break down; and once the billing server breaks down, all the home gateways connected to it will Billing cannot continue, and the robustness of the system is poor.

Contents of the invention

The present invention provides a billing method and system to solve the billing system in the prior art with a large increase in the number of home gateways, the system billing burden also increases sharply, which easily leads to billing server failure and poor robustness .

The present invention provides a billing method, including:

The home gateway receives the dialing request sent by the user equipment, and sends the dialing request to the network system;

The network system receives the dial request sent by the home gateway, and returns a dial response;

The home gateway sends the dial-up response to the user equipment, so that the user equipment connects to the network according to the dial-up response;

After the user equipment successfully accesses the Internet, the home gateway starts real-time monitoring and charging according to the charging policy, and displays the current online consumption amount in real time.

The present invention also provides a billing system, including: a home gateway and a network system;

The home gateway is configured to receive a dialing request sent by the user equipment, and send the dialing request to a network system; after the network system returns a dialing response, send the dialing response to the user equipment, so that The user equipment connects to the network according to the dial-up response; after the user equipment successfully accesses the Internet, real-time monitoring and charging is started according to the charging policy, and the current online consumption amount is displayed in real time;

The network system is configured to receive the dialing request sent by the home gateway, and return a dialing response.

The present invention uses the home gateway for billing. On the one hand, the billing is performed on the home gateway, that is, the user side, so that the user can more conveniently inquire about the amount of money he spends each time he surfs the Internet; on the other hand, when the user scale is huge , can effectively share the pressure of the network system, and has strong robustness, so that the billing system has the advantages of localization and distribution.

Description of drawings

FIG. 1 is a schematic flow chart of Embodiment 1 of the billing method provided by the present invention;

FIG. 2 is a schematic flow chart of Embodiment 2 of the billing method provided by the present invention;

FIG. 3 is a schematic diagram of signaling in Embodiment 3 of the billing method provided by the present invention;

Fig. 4 is a schematic structural diagram of an embodiment of a billing system provided by the present invention.

detailed description

In order to make the purpose, technical solutions and advantages of the embodiments of the present invention clearer, the technical solutions in the embodiments of the present invention will be clearly and completely described below in conjunction with the drawings in the embodiments of the present invention. Obviously, the described embodiments It is a part of embodiments of the present invention, but not all embodiments. Based on the embodiments of the present invention, all other embodiments obtained by persons of ordinary skill in the art without creative efforts fall within the protection scope of the present invention.

Embodiment one

As shown in Figure 1, it is a schematic flow chart of Embodiment 1 of the billing method provided by the present invention, which specifically includes the following steps:

S101. The home gateway receives the dialing request sent by the user equipment, and sends the dialing request to the network system;

It should be noted that the user equipment is a terminal device with an Internet access function, which may be a fixed terminal device, such as a desktop computer, or a mobile terminal device, such as an ipad, iphone, and the like. When the user needs to surf the Internet, he will use the above-mentioned terminal equipment to initiate a dial-up request to the home gateway, and the home gateway will send the dial-up request to the network system after receiving the dial-up request.

S102. The network system receives the dialing request sent by the home gateway, and returns a dialing response;

Specifically, the user name information can be included in the dial-up request; wherein, the user name information can be the user name and the user's online password, and the network system can determine the user status according to the user name information. For example, the network system can query the network database according to the user name. If the user is in arrears or has not subscribed to the network, the user is not allowed to access the Internet, and a dial-up failure response is returned. If the user is inquired to be a network user and is not a user in arrears, the user is allowed to access the Internet. , to establish a connection channel between the user equipment and the network, and return a successful dial-up response. In this way, some malicious arrears users can be prevented from accessing the Internet illegally, and effective management of users can be realized.

S103. The home gateway sends the dial-up response to the user equipment, so that the user equipment connects to the network according to the dial-up response;

It should be noted that, if the dial-up response is a dial-up failure response, the user equipment fails to connect to the network, and if the dial-up response is a dial-up success response, the user equipment successfully connects to the network. At this time, the user can start to surf the Internet.

S104. After the user equipment successfully accesses the Internet, the home gateway starts real-time monitoring and charging according to the charging policy, and displays the consumption amount in real time.

After the user equipment successfully accesses the Internet, the billing function of the home gateway is triggered, and the home gateway starts real-time monitoring and billing according to the billing policy, and displays the current consumption amount in real time. Or, after the user equipment successfully accesses the Internet, the charging function of the home gateway is triggered. The home gateway obtains the user balance from the network system, and starts real-time monitoring and charging according to the charging policy, and displays the user's available amount in real time. The available amount is the user's balance Subtract the balance of this online real-time consumption. If the payment mode is pre-payment, when the user's available amount reaches 0, the home gateway prompts the user whether to switch to the post-payment mode; or, when the user's available amount reaches 0, the home gateway reports the user's available amount to the network system, and the network system determines If the amount available to the user is 0, the network will be disconnected. Specifically, the home gateway can start real-time monitoring and charging according to the charging policy in the following three ways:

Method 1: If the billing policy is billing by hour, the home gateway will count the online time according to the preset time period, and charge according to the online time.

Specifically, if the hourly billing policy is set to 3 yuan/hour, and the preset time period can be set to 10 minutes, then the home gateway will perform billing every 10 minutes, that is, it will start deducting every 10 minutes Fee, the deducted fee is (10/60)*3=0.5 yuan.

Method 2: If the billing policy is billing by traffic; then the home gateway will monitor the network traffic in real time and bill according to the network traffic;

Specifically: if the traffic-based billing policy is 0.1 yuan/K, then the home gateway will deduct 0.1 yuan for every 1K used by the user.

Method 3: If the billing policy is the billing policy based on signaling packets, then the home gateway will count signaling packets in real time and charge according to the number of signaling packets;

Specifically: if according to the signaling message charging policy, each signaling message is 0.1 yuan, then the home gateway will deduct 0.1 yuan when the user sends a signaling message.

In addition, the above charging policy can be selected and set by the user on the home gateway, and the charging policy of the network system is kept in sync with the home gateway. For example, three policies of billing by hour, billing by traffic and billing by signaling packet are preset in the home gateway, and users can choose from the above three policies according to their own needs. When the policy selected by the user is the billing by time policy, it will report to the network system, and the network system will use the billing by time policy to perform billing in the background, so as to keep the billing synchronized with the home gateway.

This embodiment uses the home gateway for billing. On the one hand, the billing is performed on the home gateway, that is, the user side, so that the user can more conveniently inquire about the amount of money he spends each time he surfs the Internet; on the other hand, when the user scale is huge When , it can effectively share the pressure of the network system and has strong robustness, so that the billing system has the advantages of localization and distribution.

In addition, the network system can also determine the user's charging mode according to the user name information. For example, the network system can query the user's charging mode information stored in the network database according to the user name. If the user's charging mode is found to be the local charging mode , then the billing system of the present invention performs billing, and if the billing mode of the user is inquired as the background billing mode, then the existing billing system is used for billing, so that the billing method is more flexible and convenient for users.

Embodiment two

As shown in Figure 2, it is a schematic flow chart of the second embodiment of the billing method provided by the present invention. On the basis of the first embodiment above, this embodiment further adds that the home gateway reports the consumption amount to the network system and the network system verifies the home gateway. The relevant method steps of cost accuracy, specifically include the following steps:

S201. The home gateway stores the consumption amount;

S202. After the user equipment is disconnected from the network, the home gateway generates a billing bill for the consumption amount, and reports the billing bill to the network system;

In addition, before reporting the charging bill to the network system, the billing bill can be encrypted to ensure the security of the billing bill during transmission.

S203. The network system receives the billing bill, and compares the billing bill with the background bill generated by itself to verify the accuracy of the home gateway billing.

It should be noted that if the billing bill received by the network system is an encrypted billing bill, it needs to be decrypted first.

In addition, the network system can extract billing bills of some home gateways in a targeted manner according to the setting of the operator or the setting of the user, and verify the correctness of the charging of these extracted home gateways. For example, if the operator finds that there is a problem with the user's home gateway billing, the network system can set network system parameters so that the network system can extract these home gateway billing bills and compare them with the billing bills generated in the background.

In this embodiment, not only the home gateway can be used for billing, but also the network system can be used for billing, and the background call list generated, the network system will compare the call list generated by the home gateway with the back-end call list, and can monitor and discover home bills in time. Illegal issues in gateway billing.

A specific embodiment is given below to describe the technical solution of the present invention in detail.

Embodiment Three

As shown in FIG. 3 , it is a schematic diagram of signaling in Embodiment 3 of the billing method provided by the present invention, which specifically includes the following steps:

S301. The user equipment initiates an Internet access dial-up request to the home gateway, and the dial-up request carries user information;

S302. The home gateway sends a dial-up request to the network system;

S303. The network system determines the status of the user, determines whether to allow the user to access the Internet according to the user status, and establishes a network access channel if the user is allowed to access the Internet;

The network system determines the user status according to the user name information carried in the dial-up request. If the user is found to be in arrears or has not opened the network, the user is not allowed to access the Internet and returns a dial-up failure response. If the user is found to be a network user and If the user is not in arrears, the user is allowed to surf the Internet, a connection channel between the user device and the network is established, and a successful dial-up response is returned. .

S304. The network system returns a dial-up response to the home gateway;

S305. The home gateway sends a dial-up response to the user equipment;

S306. The user equipment successfully accesses the network;

The user equipment accesses the network according to the dial-up response. If the dial-up response is a dial-up failure response, the user equipment fails to connect to the Internet. If the dial-up response is a dial-up success response, the user equipment successfully connects to the Internet. At this time, the user can start to surf the Internet.

S307. The home gateway monitors the billing in real time according to the billing policy, displays the consumption amount, and saves the consumption amount;

S308. The user equipment is disconnected from the network;

S309. The home gateway generates a billing bill with the consumption amount, and encrypts the billing bill;

After the user goes offline, the home gateway will generate a billing bill with the consumption amount.

S310. The home gateway reports the billing bill to the network system;

S311. The network system decrypts the billing bill, verifies and compares the billing bill with the background billing bill generated by itself, and verifies whether the billing by the home gateway is accurate.

Embodiment four

As shown in FIG. 4 , it is a schematic structural diagram of an embodiment of a billing system provided by the present invention, specifically including: a home gateway 41 and a network system 42;

The above-mentioned home gateway 41 is configured to receive the dial-up request sent by the user equipment, and send the above-mentioned dial-up request to the network system 42; after the above-mentioned network system 42 returns a dial-up response, send the above-mentioned dial-up response to the above-mentioned user equipment, so that the above-mentioned user The device connects to the network according to the above-mentioned dial-up response; after the above-mentioned user device successfully accesses the Internet, it starts real-time monitoring and billing according to the billing policy, and displays the current online consumption amount in real time;

The aforementioned network system 42 is configured to receive the dialing request sent by the aforementioned home gateway 41 and return a dialing response.

Further, the above-mentioned dial request includes user name information; the above-mentioned network system 42 is specifically used for:

Determine the user status according to the user name information, and determine whether to allow the above-mentioned user to access the Internet according to the above-mentioned user state. If the above-mentioned user is allowed to access the Internet, a dial-up success response is returned; if the above-mentioned user is not allowed to access the Internet, a dial-up failure response is returned.

Further, the above-mentioned billing strategy is an on-time billing strategy; correspondingly, the above-mentioned home gateway 41 is specifically used for: counting the duration of surfing the Internet according to a preset time period, and charging according to the duration of surfing the Internet;

or,

The above-mentioned billing strategy is a traffic-based billing strategy; correspondingly, the above-mentioned home gateway 41 is specifically used for: monitoring network traffic in real time, and charging according to the above-mentioned network traffic;

or,

The above-mentioned charging strategy is a charging strategy based on signaling packets; correspondingly, the above-mentioned home gateway 41 is specifically used for: real-time statistics of signaling packets, and charging according to the number of signaling packets;

Further, the above-mentioned home gateway 41 is also used to: store the consumption amount; after the above-mentioned user equipment is offline, generate a charging bill for the above-mentioned consumption amount, and report the above-mentioned billing bill to the above-mentioned network system 42; correspondingly , the above-mentioned network system 42 is also used to receive the above-mentioned charging bill, and compare the above-mentioned charging bill with the background bill generated by itself to verify the accuracy of the above-mentioned home gateway 41 billing.

Further, the above-mentioned home gateway 41 is also used for: encrypting the above-mentioned charging bill; correspondingly, the above-mentioned network system 42 is also used for: decrypting the above-mentioned billing bill.

The billing system described in this embodiment is used to execute the method steps described in the first embodiment, the second embodiment and the third embodiment above, and its technical effect is similar, so it will not be repeated here.

It should be noted that, for the foregoing method embodiments, for the sake of simple description, they are expressed as a series of action combinations, but those skilled in the art should know that the present invention is not limited by the described action sequence. Because of the present invention, certain steps may be performed in other orders or simultaneously. Secondly, those skilled in the art should also know that the embodiments described in the specification belong to preferred embodiments, and the actions and modules involved are not necessarily required by the present invention.

Those of ordinary skill in the art can understand that all or part of the steps for realizing the above-mentioned method embodiments can be completed by hardware related to program instructions, and the aforementioned program can be stored in a computer-readable storage medium. When the program is executed, the It includes the steps of the above method embodiments; and the aforementioned storage medium includes: ROM, RAM, magnetic disk or optical disk and other various media that can store program codes.

Finally, it should be noted that: the above embodiments are only used to illustrate the technical solutions of the present invention, rather than to limit them; although the present invention has been described in detail with reference to the foregoing embodiments, those of ordinary skill in the art should understand that: it can still be Modifications are made to the technical solutions described in the foregoing embodiments, or equivalent replacements are made to some of the technical features; and these modifications or replacements do not make the essence of the corresponding technical solutions deviate from the spirit and scope of the technical solutions of the various embodiments of the present invention.

Claims (4)

1. A billing method, characterized in that, comprising: The home gateway receives the dialing request sent by the user equipment, and sends the dialing request to the network system; The network system receives the dial request sent by the home gateway, and returns a dial response; The home gateway sends the dial-up response to the user equipment, so that the user equipment connects to the network according to the dial-up response; After the user equipment successfully accesses the Internet, the home gateway starts real-time monitoring and charging according to the charging strategy, and displays the current online consumption amount in real time; Wherein, the billing policy is an on-time billing policy; correspondingly, starting real-time monitoring and billing according to the billing policy, including: counting the duration of surfing the Internet according to a preset time period, and charging according to the duration of surfing the Internet; or, the counting The charging strategy is a billing strategy based on traffic flow; correspondingly, start real-time monitoring and charging according to the charging strategy, including: real-time monitoring of network traffic, and charging according to the network traffic; or, the charging strategy is based on signaling packets Billing strategy; correspondingly, start real-time monitoring and charging according to the billing strategy, including: real-time statistics of signaling packets, and charging according to the number of signaling packets; After the real-time display of the current online consumption amount, it also includes: The home gateway stores the consumption amount; After the user equipment is disconnected from the network, the home gateway generates a billing bill for the consumption amount, and reports the billing bill to the network system; The network system receives the charging bill, and compares the billing bill with the background bill generated by itself to verify the accuracy of the home gateway billing; Before reporting the charging bill to the network system, it also includes: The home gateway encrypts the billing bill; Correspondingly, after the network system receives the charging bill, it further includes: The network system decrypts the charging bill. 2. The method according to claim 1, wherein the dialing request includes user name information; The network system receives the dial request sent by the home gateway, and returns a dial response, including: Determine the user status according to the user name information, determine whether to allow the user to access the Internet according to the user status, if the user is allowed to access the Internet, then return a dial-up success response, if the user is not allowed to access the Internet, then return a dial-up failure response. 3. A billing system, characterized in that it comprises: a home gateway and a network system; The home gateway is configured to receive a dialing request sent by the user equipment, and send the dialing request to a network system; after the network system returns a dialing response, send the dialing response to the user equipment, so that The user equipment connects to the network according to the dial-up response; after the user equipment successfully accesses the Internet, real-time monitoring and charging is started according to the charging policy, and the current online consumption amount is displayed in real time; The network system is configured to receive the dialing request sent by the home gateway, and return a dialing response; Wherein, the billing policy is an on-time billing policy; correspondingly, the home gateway is specifically used to: count the duration of the Internet according to a preset time period, and charge according to the duration of the Internet; or, the billing strategy is According to the traffic charging strategy; correspondingly, the home gateway is specifically used to: monitor network traffic in real time, and charge according to the network traffic; or, the charging strategy is a signaling message charging strategy; correspondingly , the home gateway is specifically used for: real-time statistics of signaling packets, charging according to the number of signaling packets; The home gateway is further configured to: store the consumption amount; after the user equipment is disconnected from the network, generate a billing bill for the consumption amount, and report the billing bill to the network system; Correspondingly, the network system is further configured to receive the charging bill, and compare the billing bill with the background bill generated by itself to verify the accuracy of the home gateway billing; The home gateway is further configured to: encrypt the charging bill; correspondingly, the network system is further configured to: decrypt the billing bill. 4. The system according to claim 3, wherein the dialing request includes user name information; The network system is specifically used for: Determine the user status according to the user name information, determine whether to allow the user to access the Internet according to the user status, if the user is allowed to access the Internet, then return a dial-up success response, if the user is not allowed to access the Internet, then return a dial-up failure response.