Patent ID: 8560463

Claim:
A non-transitory machine-readable medium having sets of instructions stored thereon which, when executed by a machine, cause that machine perform the steps of: determining first charging information for a service based on a request for content or a service, wherein the content or service is rendered on a client device; determining second charging information for a network layer based on transmission related to the requested service or content, wherein the transmission is over a network medium; determining metadata for the service and the network layer; based on the metadata for the service and the network layer, sending from a network layer smart router to a correlator a request into a charging enabler to generate billing events for a billing system, wherein the billing events are associated with the first charging information and the second charging information; correlating, at the correlator, the billing events, the metadata for the service, the metadata for the network layer, the first charging information, and second charging information; based on the correlation, generating a single charge for an overall transaction, the overall transaction including activity at the service and the network layer, wherein the single charge for the overall transaction is configured to provide non-duplicative charging of both the service or content and the transmission of traffic used to download the service or content; determining that the request for content or a service is associated with a download error, wherein: downloading the content or service was comprised of a first download session and a second download session, wherein: the first download session is associated with a first network layer charge; and the second download session is associated with a second network layer charge; the first download session did not result in downloading the content or service functional for its intended purpose; and the second download session resulted in downloading the content or service functional for its intended purpose; adjusting a charge generated for the service and a charge generated for the network layer based on the correlation information and in response to at least one charging overlap between the service charges and the network layer charges, wherein the overlap comprises at least one charge for the requested service or content and a charge for the transmission over the network medium; and adjusting the charge generated for the network layer based on the correlation information, wherein the at least a portion of the first network layer charge is adjusted based on the determination that the first download session did not result in downloading the content or service functional for its intended purpose.