Gateway Charging via Sub-Gateway Segmentation
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Solution Overview
Problem
The development of gateways faces a bottleneck in achieving refined service control and charging due to the differing focuses on either control processing or data forwarding throughput, with existing solutions struggling to balance both effectively.
Innovation Solution
A gateway is divided into two sub-gateways, where one processes charging policies and controls the other, allowing for efficient data forwarding and charging information collection, reducing the need for extensive information transfer between them.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If the gateway focuses on improving user data forwarding throughput using dedicated hardware router platform, then data forwarding performance is improved, but service control and charging processing capability deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
The gateway is divided into two independent sub-gateways: a first sub-gateway dedicated to control plane functions (service control, charging processing, signaling) and a second sub-gateway dedicated to user plane functions (data forwarding). This segmentation allows each sub-gateway to be optimized for its specific function, resolving the contradiction between data forwarding throughput and service control capability.
2Adaptability or versatility
If the gateway focuses on service control and charging processing, then control processing capability is improved, but user data forwarding throughput deteriorates
Solution Approach 1:
By separating the gateway into control plane sub-gateway and user plane sub-gateway, the control processing functions can be enhanced without compromising data forwarding performance. The user plane sub-gateway maintains high-speed forwarding capability while the control plane sub-gateway handles complex charging and service control operations.
3Adaptability or versatility
If gateway information is divided into multiple sub-gateways, then functional specialization is improved, but information transmission amount between sub-gateways increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts only the essential charging information parameters that are strictly necessary for billing and service control, removing redundant information from the inter-sub-gateway communications. This minimizes the information transmission amount while maintaining functional specialization between sub-gateways.
Data Source
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AI summary
Embodiments of the present invention provide a gateway charging method and a gateway, relate to the field of communications, which can lower information transmission amount between two sub-gateways obtained by dividing the gateway. The method includes: determining, by the first sub-gateway, a charging policy of an access user according to gateway configuration or information of the access user, sending a first message to the second sub-gateway, where the first message indicates a charging policy; receiving, by the second sub-gateway, the first message, and collect charging information of the access user according to the charging policy indicated by the first message, and send a second message to the first sub-gateway, where the second information carries the charging information; and receiving, by the first sub-gateway, the second message sent by the second sub-gateway. The embodiments of the present invention are applied to gateway charging.