Patent ID: 7493285

Claim:
A payment process for operations carried out within a data packet transmission network, during a session between a source unit and a destination unit interconnected via at least one node of said network, at least one of said destination unit or said at least one node being used by at least one operator or at least one service provider, said process being such that: in at least one of said source unit or the at least one node, called a credit node, a credit gateway assigns to each data packet sent by said source unit a payment token which has an initial value representing a credit of monetary units previously acquired from a toll center; in at least one of said destination unit or the at least one node, called a debit node, located downstream of said at least one credit node, a debit gateway modifies the payment token assigned to each data packet received, so as to reduce said initial value of the payment token, by an amount representing the cost of the operations to be carried out, for said received packet, by at least one of said destination unit or the at least one debit node; at least one of said destination unit or each debit node, in which is included said debit gateway, receives from said toll center, for each packet received during said session, financial settlement of said representative amount; characterised in that, between said source unit and said destination unit at least one node is used as a cache node, including caching that allows at least one cache operation to be carried out, on behalf of at least one replaced unit or node, namely at least one of said destination unit or at least one node, located downstream of said at least one cache node, in that said at least one cache node also behaves like a debit node, and includes said debit gateway modifying the payment token assigned to each data packet received, so as to reduce said initial value of the payment token, by an amount representing the cost of said at least one cache operation carried out, for said packet received, by said cache node, in that a manager of said at least one cache node: receives from said toll center, for each packet received during said session, said financial settlement of said representative amount and restores it to a manager of said at least one replaced unit or node, or allows a manager of said at least one replaced unit or node to receive said financial settlement directly.