Patent ID: 8200960

Claim:
A method for communicating cryptographic resource utilization, comprising: receiving a first data packet from a first data flow; generating a second data packet by performing a cryptographic transformation on the first data packet; appending auxiliary information to the second data packet, wherein the auxiliary information includes information that describes a cost for the cryptographic transformation and specifies a type of random number generator used for the cryptographic transformation; providing the second data packet including the auxiliary information; aggregating auxiliary information from the second data packet, other cryptographically-transformed packets from the first data flow that comprise auxiliary information that describes a cost for the cryptographic transformation, and one or more additional cryptographically-transformed data packets from a second data flow that comprise auxiliary information that describes a cost for the cryptographic transformation, wherein the first data flow and the second data flow are for a same user; and determining a user account balance based on the auxiliary information for the first data flow or the second data flow to enable billing based on usage of cryptographic resources for the first data flow or the second data flow.