Policy counter subscription by the PCRF to OCS

Question

Hi,

I am going through the spec 3gpp 29.219(Sy interface) and trying to understand the call flow and AVPS between the OCS and PCRF.

The PCRF sends the the list of Policy counters to OCS initially and OCS will store it against the Sy session. How does the Counter identifiers be identified uniquely b.w OCS and PCRF ?

Because the spec says, If the OCS determines that any policy counter identifiers are invalid, the OCS shall return a response with the Result-Code AVP set to DIAMETER_INVALID_AVP_VALUE.

But my doubt is, how the Policy counter Ids are known across the OCS and PCRF.

Any help in this area is very helpful

Thanks

Comments

Could you please point out to that section of the spec. It will help

Regards,
Peeyush Sharma

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Peeyush,
The section  I was referring to is  4.5.1.2 and 4.5.1.3 of 29.219 v b20. These are initial sections, in specs.
Thanks,
Priya

Answer 1

Found out a note in the spec saying

A policy counter in the OCS can represent the spending for one or more services, one or more devices, one or more subscribers, etc. The representation is operator dependent. There is no explicit relationship between Charging-Key and policy counter.

To me it looks like it is the operator who has to configure these policy counters details in PCRF and OCS like how Rating-Group and Service-Ids are known across PCRF, OCS and PGW.

Meanwhile, I will try to find out if I can find sometime on provisioning policy counters in PCRF and/or OCS

Regards,
Peeyush Sharma

Comments

Peeyush,
Thanks a lot for the info. But I am not able to find any messages which configures these Policy counters in the PCRF and OCS. May be I am not looking at correct specs..
Thanks,
Priya

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They are not configured through messages. They are provisioned in the OCS and SPR. Like your Rating-Group and Service-Ids are there in PCRF and OCS and based on various conditions and service they are chosen. In similar way they should be configured and used.

Regards,
Peeyush Sharma

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Section 4.5.1.3 says "If all the policy counter identifiers are known to the OCS,the OCS shall be able to subsequently notify the PCRF of policy counter state changes.". And Policy counter Identifier is of type UTF8String in section 5.3.1.
My doubt is UTF8String can have any value. So how it is synced b/w OCS and PCRF ?
Lets say PCRF configures the "PolicyCounter1" and how to make sure this value is known to OCS ?

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See, both PCRF and OCS should be aware of this information. As per my understanding PCRF and/or OCS will not generate these values on the fly.

If you are aware of static rules, the rules names are configured in PGW and PCRF is aware of the rule names. In similar fashion PCRF and OCS should be aware of the policy counter identifier. They should be provisioned in their databases probably. If PCRF does not send any Policy Counter Identifier then information about all the identifiers known to OCS are shared with PCRF

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ok that clarifies a lot ..I was trying to see if there is a standard way to pass this info across PCRF and OCS, and hidden in the corner of spec. I am looking into these specs for the first time, so I might have missed somethings..

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Initially in order to negotiate there should be some information that should be configured within the 2 nodes. Otherwise in the first request whatever value that PCRF will send to OCS will be alien to it.
In order to come up with some common counters, they should be initially provisioned with something.

As per my understanding it can be restricted to policy counter per APN or subscriber maybe. Not sure though

Regards,
Peeyush Sharma