Patent ID: 8805980

Claim:
A method of accounting for policy decision in access requests in a network, the method comprising: receiving a pre-authentication request from a client for a call at a policy server, wherein the pre-authentication request allows the network to determine if a call is to be granted prior to allocating any resources to the call; applying at least one policy at the policy server to determine a policy decision for the request, wherein the policy decision is based upon other factors than capabilities and capacity of the network; transmitting at least one reject message to an accounting system configured to track rejections associated with the policy and to the client making the pre-authentication request if the call is outside the policy, wherein the reject message includes a policy identifier identifying the policy applied to the pre-authentication request; transmitting at least one accept message to the accounting system and to the client making the pre-authentication request if the call is within policy, wherein the accept message includes the policy identifier to allow the accounting system to track acceptances associated with the policy; requiring the client to transmit the reject message to the accounting system if the call is outside the policy; and requiring the client to transmit the accept message to the accounting system if the call is within policy.