Patent ID: 6088687
Filing Date: 2000-07-11
Classification: G06Q,H04L

Abstract:
Procedure for determining the components used to bill the cost, to at least one centralized financing organization, of the operations performed by a packet-switched network used to transmit data in datagram data packets, said packet-switched network comprising:a plurality of communication nodes which carry out said operations by means of one or several operators and serving a plurality of users, wherein said procedure includes the following main steps:a) assigning to each datagram data packet to be transmitted by a packet-switched network user a first value representing a ""toll"" monetary unit credit, as well as the identity of the centralized financing organization supplying the credit, the credit amount corresponding to the cost of the operations to be performed on each data packet in the data-transmission packet-switched network using at least one communication node;b) recording the first representative value and the identity of the centralized financing organization concerned;c) in at least the communication node, reducing the first representative value by an amount representing the cost of the operations to be performed on the data packet in the node in question;d) recording the amount representative of the reduced representative value and the identity of the centralized financing organization;e) for each user and each centralized financing organization, adding the first stored representative values in order to calculate a first total amount owed by the user to the various network operators through the centralized financing organization; andf) for each operator and each centralized financing organization, adding the representative amounts stored in order to obtain a second total amount owed to the operator concerned by the various network users through the centralized financing organization.