Network accounting enables monitoring of user behavior, justifies and enforces policy decisions, and supports network planning, network security plans and management of budgets. It also enables billing and charge-back thus helping to reduce network costs. An audit trail must be set up to verify security and policy violations. Network accounting provides such a trail. As in the case of call accounting, knowing an accounting system is in place will curb network abuse, therefore limiting personal network use.
Session management offers the best defense against intrusion and policy violation.
Access blocking software and devices are fallible. Session records provide a trail back to intruders and network abusers. Network accounting statistics, such as peak period traffic, traffic origination points, subscriber profiles, summary bandwidth utilization and average connect time, help plan for network growth and budgeting. Information made readily available to end users, department managers, and network administrators enables better control, planning and forecasting. Allocating costs across the enterprise helps in network planning and in reducing network costs.