Manual Chapter :
Usage Monitoring Over a Gx Interface
Applies To:
Show VersionsBIG-IP LTM
- 16.0.1, 16.0.0, 15.1.8, 15.1.7, 15.1.6, 15.1.5, 15.1.4, 15.1.3, 15.1.2, 15.1.1, 15.1.0, 15.0.1, 15.0.0
BIG-IP PEM
- 16.0.1, 16.0.0, 15.1.8, 15.1.7, 15.1.6, 15.1.5, 15.1.4, 15.1.3, 15.1.2, 15.1.1, 15.1.0, 15.0.1, 15.0.0
Usage Monitoring Over a Gx Interface
Overview: Usage monitoring over a Gx and Sd interface
In Policy Enforcement Manager™, you can create a rule within an enforcement
policy that tells the system to send aggregated usage data concerning individual subscribers to a
Policy and Charging Rules Function (PCRF). The rule specifies what type of traffic you are
interested in, and one of the actions the system can take with the data collected is to send it
for processing over a Gx interface to a PCRF.
The system sends the data in the standard Gx format. The report granularity must be set to
session for Gx reporting to be available. The PCRF determines the policies for each subscriber,
whether or not reporting is enabled, and how often to send the data and monitoring key that
identifies the type of traffic PCRF wants to get usage for.
Similarly, the Traffic Dectection function (TDF) functionality performs applications traffic
detection and reporting of detected application by using TDF application identifier. The Policy Enforcement Manager™ supports the Sd interface which is used by PCRF to
talk to TDF. This provides the ability to apply the detection, enforce actions and apply charging
parameters for the specified application traffic.
Gx and Sd are mutually exclusive.
For example, a rule might collect session-based information about all traffic destined to a
particular IP address. The BIG-IP system communicates with the PCRF and
sends information about the subscribers for whom reporting is enabled. You establish the
connection to the PCRF by creating a listener with Gx interface enabled.
Task summary
Creating a listener for subscriber discovery and policy provisioning
You can create listeners that specify how to handle traffic for policy enforcement.
Creating a listener does preliminary setup tasks on the BIG-IP
system for application visibility, intelligent steering, bandwidth management, and
reporting. You can also connect with a Policy and Charging Rules Function (PCRF) over a
Gx interface.
- On the Main tab, click.The Control Plane Listeners page opens.
- In the Policy Provisioning and Online Charging Virtuals area, clickAdd.The New Configure Diameter Endpoint Provisioning and Online Charging screen opens.
- In theNamefield, type a unique name for the listener.
- In theDescriptionfield, type a description of the listener.
- For theVLANs and Tunnelssetting, move the VLANs and tunnels that you want to monitor from theAvailablelist to theSelectedlist.
- To connect to a PCRF, from theDiameter Endpointlist, selectEnabledand selectGxorSdfrom theSupported Appsoptions.
- In theProduct Namefield, type the product name which is used to communicate with the PCRF.
- In theOrigin Hostfield, type the fully qualified domain name of the PCRF or external policy server, for example,ocs.xnet.com.
- In theOrigin Realmfield, type the realm name or network in which the PCRF resides, for example,xnet.com.
- In theDestination Hostfield, type the destination host name of the PCRF or external policy server, for example,pcrfdest.net.com.
- In theDestination Realmfield, type the realm name or network of the PCRF, for example,net.com.
- For thePool Member Configurationsetting, add the PCRF servers that are to be members of the Gx endpoint pool. Type theMember IP AddressandPortnumber, then clickAdd.
- In theMessage Retransmit Delayfield, type the number of milliseconds to wait before retransmitting unanswered messages in case of failure from the BIG-IP system to the PCRF over the Gx interface. The default value is1500.
- In theMessage Max Retransmitfield, type the maximum number of times that messages can be retransmitted from the BIG-IP system to the PCRF. The default value is2.
- In theFatal Grace Timefield, type the time period in seconds that a diameter connection can remain disconnected before the system terminates all sessions associated with that diameter endpoint. The default value is500.
- ClickFinished.The Policy Enforcement Manager creates a listener.
When you create a listener, the Policy Enforcement Manager also
creates virtual servers for each type of traffic (TCP, UDP, or both), and a virtual
server for HTTP traffic. The system sets up classification and assigns the appropriate
policy enforcement profile to the virtual servers. The system also creates a virtual
server for the Gx interface with a diameter endpoint profile. If you are connecting to a
RADIUS authentication server, a virtual server for RADIUS is also added.
Creating a rule for usage monitoring
In an enforcement policy, a rule can specify that usage monitoring statistics
concerning traffic affected by the rule are sent to a Gx interface.
- On the Main tab, click.The Policies screen opens.
- Click the name of the enforcement policy you want to add rules to.The properties screen for the policy opens.
- In the Policy Rules area, clickAdd.The New Rule screen opens.
- In theNamefield, type a name for the rule.
- In thePrecedencefield, type an integer that indicates the precedence for the rule in relation to the other rules. Number 1 has the highest precedence. Rules with higher precedence are evaluated before other rules with lower precedence.All rules in a policy are run concurrently. Precedence takes effect when there are conflicting rules. The conflict occurs when the traffic matches two rules and the policy actions from these rules differ. For example, if you have rule 1 with precedence 10 andGate Statusdisabled for a search engine, and you have rule 2 with precedence 11 andGate Statusenabled, then rule 1 is processed first because it has higher precedence. Rules conflict if they have identical or overlapping classification criteria (for the traffic that matches more than one rule). In some cases, different policy actions are not conflicting, and hence, applied in parallel.
- Use the Classification, URL, Flow, and Custom Criteria tabs to identify the traffic that you want to be affected by this rule.
- From theUsage Reportinglist, selectEnabled.
- From theReport Granularitylist, selectSession.You can send only session-based reporting data over the Gx interface.
- For theVolume Thresholdsetting, specify, in octets, the amount of data to receive from the client, send to the client, and the total traffic volume before logging the information.
- For theDestinationsetting, specify these values:
- ForGxorSd, selectEnabled.
- In theGx Monitoring KeyorSd Monitoring Keyfield (as selected), type a string to use for usage monitoring of the service data that the enforcement policy rule or dynamic policy and charging control (PCC) rule controls.
- ClickFinished.
You have created a rule that sends data about the traffic to the Gx interface in the
standard Gx format.